Waller, James E. “The Ordinariness of Extraordinary Evil: the Making of Perpetrators of Genocide and Mass Killing”

Waller states that humans are the constant in extraordinary evil. Therefore, he maintains, to understand these evils, such as mass murder, a shift in focus is needed from structures to actors, to the people who are overwhelmingly ordinary. In this chapter, he offers a psychological explanation of how the capacity for genocide is in all of us, despite our continued efforts to keep this troubling insight at a safe distance. Waller adopts a perspective informed by evolutionary psychology to outline an explanatory model, in which he focuses on the process through which people are made into perpetrators. The model is centred on what Waller terms an ‘ultimate influence’ for human behaviour, which is the evolution of human nature, so that we can “examine the impact of what we are upon who we are” (150, emphasis in original). From this ultimate influence, Waller states, flow three ‘proximate influences,’ direct and real-time causes for human behaviour, which the chapter explores in depth. The first is the ‘cultural construction of worldview,’ in which Waller elaborates on the significance of shared cultural models by the perpetrator group. Secondly, he points to the ‘psychological construction of the ‘other’’ explores how victims of mass killings become regarded as less than human. Lastly, the ‘social construction of cruelty,’ Waller states, is an analysis of how perpetration can commence, be sustained, and be rationalised. The chapter ends on the note that genocide, as an unavoidable and unthinkable evil, must and can be morally rejected, but that it also must be acknowledged and studied in order to help our efforts to prevent it.

Author of this entry: Lisanne van Rossum

James E. Waller, “The Ordinariness of Extraordinary Evil: the Making of Perpetrators of Genocide and Mass Killing,” Ordinary People as Mass Murderers: Perpetrators in Comparative Perspectives, edited by Olaf Jensen and Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann (2008): 145-164.