In the 1980s; America was gripped by widespread panics about Satanic cults. Conspiracy theories abounded about groups who were allegedly abusing children in day-care centers; impregnating girls for infant sacrifice; brainwashing adults; and even controlling the highest levels of government. As historian of religions David Frankfurter listened to these sinister theories; it occurred to him how strikingly similar they were to those that swept parts of the early Christian world; early modern Europe; and postcolonial Africa. He began to investigate the social and psychological patterns that give rise to these myths. Thus was born Evil Incarnate; a riveting analysis of the mythology of evilconspiracy. The first work to provide an in-depth analysis of the topic; the book uses anthropology; the history of religion; sociology; and psychoanalytic theory; to answer the questions "What causes people collectively to envision evil and seek to exterminate it?" and "Why does the representation of evil recur in such typical patterns?" Frankfurter guides the reader through such diverse subjects as witch-hunting; the origins of demonology; cannibalism; and the rumors of Jewish ritual murder; demonstrating how societies have long expanded upon their fears of such atrocities to address a collective anxiety. Thus; he maintains; panics over modern-day infant sacrifice are really not so different from rumors about early Christians engaging in infant feasts during the second and third centuries in Rome. In Evil Incarnate; Frankfurter deepens historical awareness that stories of Satanic atrocities are both inventions of the mind and perennial phenomena; not authentic criminal events. True evil; as he so artfully demonstrates; is not something organized and corrupting; but rather a social construction that inspires people to brutal acts in the name of moral order.
#1017519 in Books Princeton University Press 2007-01-22Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 10.28 x 1.26 x 7.34l; 2.03 #File Name: 0691119546424 pages
Review
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. ThoughtfulBy Peter McCluskeyThis book is designed to make you feel less sure of your knowledge; and it succeeds in that goal. That's a worthy accomplishment; although it provides much less satisfaction than a book that provides a grand vision for solving problems would. At some abstract intellectual level I liked the book; but my gut feelings often told me that reading the book was unrewarding work that I shouldn't do unless it was assigned reading for a course I needed.The book will dissatisfy anyone who wants to view politics as a fight between good and evil. For many issues such as the minimum wage; he provides strong arguments that the effects are small enough that we should doubt whether the issue is worth fighting about.He gives good explanations of why it's hard to even have clear concepts of poverty and discrimination by providing examples of how seemingly trivial or unobservable differences can create results that our intuitions say are important to our moral rules.He provides clear evidence that some discrimination still exists; and then thoroughly explains why there's large uncertainty about how harmful it is. He presents one moderately unrealistic model in which discrimination is common but doesn't affect wages. Then he presents a somewhat more realistic model in which a tiny bit of discrimination produces large wage differences. But those wage differences may overstate the harm done; because they're partly due to minorities spending less on education and to women pursuing careers in lower risk occupations or careers which allow more flexibility to take time off.There are only a handful of places where I doubted his objectivity.He reports one study showing evidence of racial discrimination in home loans; but fails to mention any of the contrary evidence such as the Anderson and Vanderhoff paper showing higher marginal default rates for blacks.The final few pages on policy implications seem poorly thought out compared to the rest of the book (he says that's the least important chapter of the book). He claims that income taxes on the bottom quintile can be reduced to zero by a 10% increase on the top quintile; but that claim depends on assumptions about how reported income changes in response to tax increases. He doesn't indicate what assumptions his claim depends on.He claims "The high rate of incarceration in the United States and the high level of inequality are related." He gives a plausible theory about why inequality causes the wealthy in some countries to spend a lot protecting their wealth from the poor; but provides no evidence connecting that theory to U.S. incarceration rates.
