Wedding an analysis of relevant anthropological literature and philosophical theory, this important book re-positions violence--long trivialized by philosophers as an incidental or anomalous feature of humanity--as a central concern for ethical thought. Wendy Hamblet focuses on a fundamental paradox that emerges when well-meaning communities and individuals attempt to implement their ideals in our social, or socialized, world. Very often the unintended consequences of these individual or communal ideals run headlong into the brute fact of bloody human engagement. Through her investigation of...

Wedding an analysis of relevant anthropological literature and philosophical theory, this important book re-positions violence--long trivialized by philosophers as an incidental or anomalous feature of humanity--as a central concern for ethical thought. Wendy Hamblet focuses on a fundamental paradox that emerges when well-meaning communities and individuals attempt to implement their ideals in our social, or socialized, world. Very often the unintended consequences of these individual or communal ideals run headlong into the brute fact of bloody human engagement. Through her investigation of...

Savage Constructions composes a critical examination of the popular assumption that violence is an essential quality of certain ethnic or racial populations. Wendy Hamblet challenges the supposition, all too common in the West, that darker-skinned peoples are inherently violent. To challenge this myth, Savage Constructions offers a theory of subjectivity transformed by historical violence. It rethinks how African peoples, once living in simple neighborly communities more democratic and egalitarian than modern states, have come to the condition of abjection, misery, and fierce aggression, in...

The Lesser Good represents a timely meditation on the incapacity of mere laws and state politics to adequately address the ethical exigencies that arise in human life. Through the philosophies of Plato and post-Holocaust phenomenologist, Emmanual Levinas, Hamblet demonstrates that state models of justice strive for the lesser good of ordered continuity of their forms, rather than promoting citizen internalization, of the "higher goods" of ethics humility, self-overcoming, and compassion for the weak and suffering.

Punishment and Shame: A Philosophical Study reveals the economic and religious underpinnings to modern notions of crime and punishment. Contra Michel Foucault's claim that modern penal practices witness a revolution in Western moral sensibilities, awakened by Enlightenment ideals, Hamblet shows that punishment practices in the West grew out of Protestant moralizations, capitalist greed, and the need for a cheap labor pool.

Punishment and Shame: A Philosophical Study reveals the economic and religious underpinnings to modern notions of crime and punishment. Contra Michel Foucault's claim that modern penal practices witness a revolution in Western moral sensibilities, awakened by Enlightenment ideals, Hamblet shows that punishment practices in the West grew out of Protestant moralizations, capitalist greed, and the need for a cheap labor pool.