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His many teaching appointments included the Collège de France in Paris and Columbia University in New York. De Swaan’s most successful books include In Care of the State, Words of the World, and The Killing Compartments, all published in English editions. His books have been translated into twelve languages. His oeuvre was awarded the prestigious P.C. Hooft Prize in 2008.

Abram de Swaan

Since its original release in 1996, Human Societies has never once been out of print as the social processes it first described have continued their course. Drawing on insights from such thinkers as Norbert Elias, Richard Dawkins, Bruno Latour, Max Weber, Pierre Bourdieu and Adam Smith, this modern classic deals with such fundamental questions as: What do people need from one another? How are they connected? How do they control themselves and one another, and how do they coordinate their efforts?Divided across twelve chapters, the book’s structure mirrors that of human history as one of increasing complexity and interdependence. Starting with our basic qualities and requirements as individuals, De Swaan progresses through our dependence and (unintended) influence on one another to the evolution from tribes and kingdoms to states and global markets. Although societies have constantly changed as the scale of our species’ coordination has grown, certain challenges like the ‘dilemma of collective action’ still hamper our approaches to such global issues as the climate crisis. Often a chapter begins with seemingly simple observation – that we clap or bow for certain people when they enter a room, while ignoring others, say – before unfolding into an expansive, perceptive argument on, for example, property relations, social stratification, differences in age and gender, or the exclusion of newcomers.Recognised throughout Europe for his academic work, De Swaan was awarded the P.C. Hooft Prize, the highest literary award for an entire oeuvre in the Netherlands, in 2008. In this new, fully updated edition of Human Societies, we see at work an analytical mind and a nimble literary pen. Driven by a playful curiosity, the clear-sighted societal analyses offered here serve not only as a highly readable guide for our history and times, but also as an original and compelling rebuttal to the popular narrative of our increasing individualisation.

Martians could benefit greatly from this book.

This should be required reading at every secondary school.

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Non-Fiction

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Assets

De Mensenmaatschappij

From the moment we’re born, we are dependent on other humans for our survival, whether we choose to acknowledge so or not. Over the course of history, and our progression from hunter-gatherer tribes to modern states, these networks of dependence have only extended across the globe. In his seminal text Human Societies, Abram de Swaan combines anthropology, sociology and political science to trace the evolution, dilemmas and consequences of human social life to the globalised world of today.

Human Societies

In Words of the World De Swaan describes the process by which a particular language comes to occupy such a central position. The various factors which play a role in that process are illustrated by case studies focusing on the rivalry between Hindi and English in India; the triumph of Malaysian over the former colonial language – Dutch – in Indonesia, contrasted with the persistence of other colonial languages – French and English in Africa –; the complex linguistic regime in South Africa following apartheid; and the only slightly less complicated linguistic situation within the European Union.All these various scenarios are governed by the same underlying rules. According to De Swaan, it is not until languages come to be regarded as economic goods that it becomes clear what makes these supercentral languages so appealing. Like other ‘hypercollective goods’ (cable networks, for example), the value of a language increases in proportion to the number of new speakers. An ‘invisible hand’ guides an ever more intensive process of concentration, in which a central role is reserved for a small number of languages with maximum communicative value. De Swaan shows that that number is fairly simple to calculate.Words of the World is a pioneering book, in that in combines the insights of sociology, sociolinguistics and economics to demonstrate that the concentration in the direction of the super-central languages is both a rational and an undirected process. It is also a provocative book, because it presents this development as a momentous opportunity for human communication, rather than as a threat to the peripheral regional languages.

De Swaan’s book is unique. I know of no other work that sets out the problem of language – together with the solution – with such clarity.

'Words of the World' is a fascinating read. De Swaan writes in a lucid style and constructs his argument with iron-clad logic.

Woorden Van De Wereld

There are over five thousand languages in the world, and yet humankind has still retained its cohesion. Sociologist Abram de Swaan believes that this is due to the people who speak more than one language. As a result of multilingualism, certain languages within the global system have a kind of ‘umbrella function’, serving as a means of communication between the speakers of regional languages. For the last half-century or so the ‘supercentral’ language crowning this linguistic hierarchy has been English.

Words of the World

Philosopher Hannah Arendt described war criminal Adolf Eichmann as the very embodiment of ‘the banality of evil’, just another ordinary man, even though she knew he had been a fanatical Nazi Jew hunter. Arendt’s view seemed borne out by American psychologist Stanley Milgram, who staged an experiment which showed that many people were prepared to inflict what appeared to be dangerous electric shocks on a ‘student’ (in reality an actor). In fact, however, as De Swaan points out, more than a third of participants in that experiment refused to continue at some point.With his erudition and analytical skill, De Swaan brings us a step closer to discov­ering why one person becomes a war criminal while another does not, arguing that it depends not merely on circumstance but on personality. Mass murderers are more likely to have served in the army or police, or to have a violent criminal past. Genocidaires, as De Swaan calls them, tend to be obedient to their superiors and loyal to their comrades. They are often also devoted to their families. Almost all deny responsibility for their atrocities and they hardly ever display remorse, shame or empathy. They rarely show any pity for their victims and are unwilling or unable to identify with them. Looking back on their outrageous crimes, they have a tendency to say: ‘Yes, but that wasn’t me; I was a different person then.’It is not enough to look at mass murder­ers in isolation. They need to be placed in the wider social context of a society going through a process of compartmentalization that separates the target group from the regime’s approved people at all levels: in the dominant culture, in social institutions, in everyday interaction and in people’s minds. This approach allows us to identify four different modes of mass annihilation: victors’ frenzy, rule by terror, losers’ triumph and megapogroms.

De Swaan has written the first sociology of mass murder.

De Swaan illustrates his discussion of this complex subject with concrete examples. His argument is clear, logical, and soundly constructed. It is also bold. In most studies of genocide the consensus is that ordinary people can commit extraor­dinary evil and that the perpetrators’ own past hardly matters. De Swaan’s focus on precisely those personal stories is what makes his book so fascinating: ‘Even mass murderers are persons, in many respects different persons, distinct like everyone else.’<ul><li>Provides an overall framework for an understanding of genocide as an outcome of the compartmentalization of society.</li><li>Presents a typology of twentieth-century episodes of mass annihilation in order to aid our understanding of specific instances.</li><li>Explores the mind-set of massmurderers.</li></ul>

De Swaan commands respect for the sharpness of his observations in the field, the way he sets it all down and the shrewdness of his arguments.

One of De Swaan’s great qualities is his insatiable curiosity, which ultimately goes far beyond the boundaries of his field of study. His work has enriched not only sociol¬ogy but Dutch essay writing.

The Killing Compartments

Why do some regimes commit mass murder, and how do they always find willing participants? That is the terrible question sociologist Abram de Swaan has set out to tackle.

Swaan sees the rise of the new extreme right, Christian fundamentalism, and jihadism as a response to women’s liberation. This is his simple thesis, which he proves in three steps. His first section is a lucid overview of the many ways patriarchies exercise their ‘reign of terror’ over women. Girl babies are tossed out like rubbish, girls are forced to marry adult men (‘nothing more than legalized paedophilia’), and their genitals and faces are permanently mutilated. As young women, they face threats such as rape and honour killings. De Swaan avoids the fallacy of ‘anti-Islamic enthusiasm’, instead showing how all forms of dogmatism support the ideology of male supremacy and pointing out the many forms of male dominance that persist in the West.The second section describes the unstoppable rise of women in today’s world, which he attributes mainly to educational reform. Women have made their way into all levels of the school and university system, even in countries where you would least expect it. And higher levels of education have been shown to raise women’s feminist consciousness, making them more likely to have fewer children.While the inequalities between women and men remain very real, De Swaan points to the huge strides taken over the past forty years in areas such as politics, health care and the work force and explains why emancipation can only continue to spread.

An exceptionally lively and readable account that fearlessly makes its way through today’s political minefields with a mix of sociological insights, level-headed selfanalysis, and cut-the-crap reasoning.

This sets the stage for the groundbreaking third section, in which de Swaan sketches the origins of opposition to women’s liberation. He lays out the evidence for the surprising theory that such disparate groups as jihadists, evangelical Christians, Latin American machos, ultraorthodox Jews and the secular extreme right are entrenched in sexism and motivated by the same ‘male resentment’. Along the way, he offers glimpses of their terrifying misogynistic subcultures, such as the alt-right online forums where women are, at best, the bearers of ‘bouncing baby whites’.In Against Women, Abram de Swaan steers a sure course through the minefields of contemporary cultural politics and never shies from confronting blind spots and prejudice, even his own.<ul><li>Nominated for the Bookspot non-fiction prize 2019.</li></ul>

De Swaan’s book is uninhibitedly political and activist. It forms the exact counterpart of the essay Thierry Baudet wrote for American Affairs under the title “Houellebecq’s Unfinished Critique of Liberal Modernity”.

Tegen de vrouwen

Over the past fifty years, education has improved, especially for girls and young women, and machines have taken over the heavy work traditionally done by men. This has liberated many women from dependence on men for financial support or physical protection and allowed them to flourish in the workplace. But now, men’s wounded pride is leading to tensions.

Against Women

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