Systems of mass denunciation
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The act of one individual accusing another to political or religious authorities for transgressions against those authorities—denunciation—is a recurring and ubiquitous phenomenon throughout human history. Mass denunciation, where denunciations largely characterize the relationship between commoners and elites, has existed in places including Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy, Spain, North Korea, China, Guatemala, The Dominican Republic, Argentina, Libya and more. In this dissertation, I develop a general theory of how these systems are implemented, how they function, and what motivations lead individuals to denounce. I focus particularly on voluntary systems of mass denunciation, where individuals are not pressured or coerced (either overtly or subtly) into denouncing, yet there is still widespread participation. To this end, I examine four separate case studies—the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, Romanov Russia, and Nazi Germany—and find widespread agreement in both their institutional structures and individuals' motivations to denounce. In such settings, I find that mass denunciation involves an uneasy cooperation between elites and commoners, as elites provide the institutional framework making denunciation possible, and commoners supply the denunciations, though they often co-opt the system for their own purposes. The primary motivation on the elite side is usually to control the population in order to stabilize a new regime and consolidate power. On the commoner side, the primary motivation is to punish those they dislike. Systems of mass denunciation are complex, almost paradoxical political regimes in that they lead to greater government control over the society as a whole, while empowering individual citizens to serve almost as individual judges, to punish those they choose at will.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Bergemann, Patrick | |
|---|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Sociology. | |
| Primary advisor | Granovetter, Mark S | |
| Thesis advisor | Granovetter, Mark S | |
| Thesis advisor | Cook, Karen | |
| Thesis advisor | Parigi, Paolo, 1973- | |
| Advisor | Cook, Karen | |
| Advisor | Parigi, Paolo, 1973- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Patrick Bergemann. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Sociology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Patrick Daniel Benjamin Bergemann
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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