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