Books by Sinisa (University College Dublin) Malesevic

The Social Dynamics of CloseRange Violence. Sociology, Political sociology, Comparative politics

Challenging the dominant view of nationalism as a historically declining social force, Malesevic explains why the recent escalation of populist nationalism is not a social anomaly but rather a historical norm. Globalisation is not the enemy of nationalism; instead, as this book shows, the two forces have developed together through modern history.

Despite many predictions made over the last two hundred years that nation-states and nationalism are transient phenomena that will eventually fade away, the historical record and contemporary events show otherwise.

Challenging the prevailing belief that organised violence is experiencing historically continuous decline, this book provides an in-depth sociological analysis that shows organised violence is, in fact, on the rise. Malesevic demonstrates that violence is determined by organisational capacity, ideological penetration and micro-solidarity, rather than biological tendencies, meaning that despite pre-modern societies being exposed to spectacles of cruelty and torture, such societies had no organisational means to systematically slaughter millions of individuals. Malesevic suggests that violence should not be analysed as just an event or process, but also via changing perceptions of those events and processes, and by linking this to broader social transformations on the inter-polity and inter-group levels he makes his key argument that organised violence has proliferated. Focusing on wars, revolutions, genocides and terrorism, this book shows how modern social organisations utilise ideology and micro-solidarity to mobilise public support for mass scale violence.