16. Januar 2024. Siniša Malešević: Why Soldiers Kill

The Emotional Dynamics of Battlefield Experiences The act of close-range killing in war is often interpreted through contrasting perspectives: while neo-Darwinian approaches insists that taking lives on the battlefield is relatively easy, the neo-Durkheimian perspectives perceive killing as an extremely difficult and traumatic event for soldiers. In this lecture, Siniša Malešević challenges these influential views and argues that the process of killing is defined by its variability, contingency and context-dependence. Rather than assuming, as the dominant perspectives do, that violence simply triggers biologically ingrained and uniform emotional responses, he argues that acts of violence create various emotional dynamics. Drawing on primary research with ex-combatants from wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (1991–1995), he shows how the shared experience of close-range violence generates highly diverse forms of emotional dynamics. Prof. Dr. Siniša Malešević, Professor für Soziologie am University College Dublin. Prof. Dr. Stefan Malthaner, Sprecher der Forschungsgruppe »Makrogewalt« am Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung und Gastprofessor an der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg. Eine Veranstaltung der Reihe Im Nebel des Krieges | 40 Jahre HIS