Kindness Wars

The History and Political Economy of Human Caring
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-032-54977-4
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 266 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 543 g

Reihe: New Critical Viewpoints on Society

Kindness Wars rescues our understanding of kindness from the clutches of an intellectually and morally myopic popular psychology and returns it to the stage of big ideas, in keeping with the important Enlightenment-era debates about human nature and possibilities. Cazenave conceptualizes kindness not just as a benevolent feeling, a caring thought, or a generous action but as a worldview, a theory, or an ideology that explains who we are and justifies how we treat others. Here “kindness wars” refer to the millennia-old “kindness theory” and ideological conflicts over what kind of societies humans can and should have. The book’s title denotes the two types of kindness wars it analyzes, conflict over (1) whether to be kind or not (i.e., the conflicts between kindness and other societal values and ideologies) and (2) what it means to be kind (i.e., the wars within kindness over different ideas as to what it means to be kind and to whom). Using a conflict theoretical perspective, Kindness Wars examines the history of the kindness concept; its many struggles with opposing notions of our true nature and possibilities; and what the lessons of that history and those battles offer us toward the development of a large, robust, and politically engaged conceptualization of kindness.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cazenave, Noel A.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Gesellschaftstheorie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface and Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Kindness Wars: An Introduction

Chapter 2 The Evolution of Human Kindness from Before History

Chapter 3 The Political Construction of Kindness from Thucydides to Hobbes

Chapter 4 Self-Interest Versus the Common Good: The Enlightenment Debates

Chapter 5 Industrialization, Socialism, and Social Darwinism in the Nineteenth-Century Social Thought

Chapter 6 Wars, Hyper-Capitalism, and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

Chapter 7 Making Black Lives Matter: Kindness Battles in Twenty-First Century America

Chapter 8 The Future Of Kindness: Toward the Construction of Kinder Societies

Index

About the Author

Über Autor(innen)

Noel A. Cazenave is Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. In addition to his other books, numerous journal articles, book chapters, and various other publications, Professor Cazenave coauthored Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America’s Poor, which won five book awards, and has most recently published Killing African Americans: Police and Vigilante Violence as a Racial Control Mechanism.