Sociology

From primatology to ancient Greece and Rome to the Bible, ...

(Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History, )

From primatology to ancient Greece and Rome to the Bible, early-modern Europe and the Enlightenment, Docker's profound and original analyses provide a deeply unsettling narrative of the longevity of human practices of group violence. At the same time as The Origins of Violence dethrones regnant frameworks of genocide studies that stress the role of modernity or the state, and invites us to historicise genocide into the very longue durée, it challenges us to recognise the uncomfortable truth that genocidal tendencies remain tolerated, even celebrated, today - and not only in 'developing countries' - whenever they cohere with states' self-images. A Gandhian plea for non-violence that shockingly demonstrates the almost Sisyphean nature of the task.

(Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History, Royal Holloway University of London)

This is a most interesting and disturbing book. ... It ...

(Sabby Sagall, former senior lecturer in )

This is a most interesting and disturbing book. ... It displays a high level of scholarship in its examination of the ways in which classical historical and literary texts contain both a description and a moral critique of the ancient's world inter-group violence. ... It combines this analysis with a firm commitment to the modern, humanist values of non-violence and internationalism

(Sabby Sagall, former senior lecturer in Sociology at the University of East London)