Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T05:47:34.472Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Cleansing and separating: From modern agriculture and genocide to post-separation era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2021

Michal Bilewicz
Affiliation:
Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, 00-183, Warsaw, Polandbilewicz@psych.uw.edu.pl; http://cbu.psychologia.pl/pl/zespol/bilewicz
Aleksandra Bilewicz
Affiliation:
Institute of Rural and Agricultural Development, Polish Academy of Sciences, 00-330, Warsaw, Poland. abilewicz@irwirpan.waw.pl; http://www.irwirpan.waw.pl/12/zespol/pracownicy/2/zespol/pracownicy/2/wpis/75

Abstract

We propose that the metaphor of cleansing was a by-product of modernization processes. Based on cultural and historical evidence, we claim that the activation of cleansing metaphor triggered positive associations in times when separation was a positively regarded element of human culture and agriculture, but it should not exert the same effect in times when separation became culturally anachronistic.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(3), 193209.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bandura, A. (2012). Moral disengagement. In Christie, D. J. (Ed.) The encyclopedia of peace psychology (pp. 15). Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bandura, A. (2016). Moral disengagement: How people do harm and live with themselves. Macmillan.Google Scholar
Bauman, Z. (2000). Modernity and the holocaust. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Bilewicz, A. M. (2020). Beyond the modernisation paradigm: Elements of a food sovereignty discourse in farmer protest movements and alternative food networks in Poland. Sociologia Ruralis, 60, 754772.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bilewicz, M. (2019). Obedient authoritarians or lay Darwinists? Ideological motivations of genocide. In: Newman, L. (Ed.) Confronting humanity at its worst: Social psychological perspectives on genocide (pp. 2961). Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Čehajić-Clancy, S. (2019). Perceptions of shared morality as an important socio-psychological mechanism for finding the common ground. Social Psychological Bulletin, 14(4), 18.Google Scholar
Čehajić-Clancy, S., & Bilewicz, M. (2020). Appealing to moral exemplars: Shared perception of morality as an essential ingredient of intergroup reconciliation. Social Issues and Policy Review, 14(1), 217243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, O. F. (1916). Eugenics and agriculture. Journal of Heredity, 7(6), 249254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durrheim, K., & Dixon, J. (2005). Racial encounter: The social psychology of contact and desegregation. Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Gibbons, S. R. (2014). Our power to remodel civilization: The development of eugenic feminism in Alberta, 1909–1921. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 31(1), 123142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harmon-Jones, E., Harmon-Jones, C., & Levy, N. (2015). An action-based model of cognitive-dissonance processes. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(3), 184189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holmgren, D. (2002). Permaculture. Principles and pathways beyond sustainability. Holmgren Design Services.Google Scholar
Kevles, D. J. (1995). In the name of eugenics: Genetics and the uses of human heredity (No. 95). Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kimmelman, B. A. (1983). The American Breeders’ Association: Genetics and eugenics in an agricultural context, 1903–13. Social Studies of Science, 13(2), 163204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, S. W. S., & Schwarz, N. (2018). Methodological deviation from the original experiment. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(9), 605. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0403-7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mazoyer, M, & Roudart, L. (2006). A history of world agriculture. From the Neolithic age to the current crisis. Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
McAlister, A. L., Bandura, A., & Owen, S. V. (2006). Mechanisms of moral disengagement in support of military force: The impact of Sept. 11. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 25(2), 141165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mingay, G. E. (1977). The agricultural revolution: Changes in agriculture, 1650–1880. A and C Black.Google Scholar
Semin, G. R., & Smith, E. R. (2008). Embodied grounding: Social, cognitive, affective, and neuroscientific approaches. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siev, J., Zuckerman, S. E., & Siev, J. J. (2018). The relationship between immorality and cleansing. Social Psychology, 49, 303309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veteto, J. R., & Lockyer, J. (2008). Environmental anthropology engaging permaculture: Moving theory and practice toward sustainability. Culture & Agriculture, 30(1–2), 4758.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, W. J. (2016). Black youths, joblessness, and the other side of “Black Lives Matter.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(8), 14501457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witkowska, M., Beneda, M., Čehajić-Clancy, S., & Bilewicz, M. (2019). Fostering contact after historical atrocities: The potential of moral exemplars. Political Psychology, 40(3), 565582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar