The Postemotional Bully

Stjepan Mestrovic holds three degrees from Harvard University (in psychology, education, and theology) and a PhD in sociology from Syracuse University. He is the author of twenty books and numerous scholarly articles on classical and contemporary social theory, war crimes, and culture.

CHAPTER: 1 THE PROBLEM Defining bullying Force versus obligation: Revisiting Marcel Mauss's The Gift The forced gift-the connection to bullying CHAPTER 2: MODERNITY AS A BULLY Auguste Comte: positivism at war with theology Charles Darwin, emotions, and cooperation Durkheim's application of Darwin's insights Ferdinand Tonnies on the extinction of community Max Weber on the disappearance of charisma William James and the bullying inherent in vicious abstractionism The Chicago School of sociology and the movement from primary to secondary groups David Riesman and the society of sameness The battle hymn of the lonely crowd The Buffy television series as the Shakespearean drama of the postemotional age George Ritzer and the McDonaldization of society McDonaldization as the postemotionalization of Puritanism Postemotional charisma CHAPTER 3: POSTMODERNISM AS NEGATION OF THE GIFT Deconstruction: tear down, but do not rebuild Decentering: everything and everyone is marginalized The Marxist basis for postmodernism Walter Benjamin: the loss of aura, and simulacra The postmodern theme of disenchantment Truths are cut down to size CHAPTER 4: POSTEMOTIONALISM ILLUSTRATED Revisiting David Riesman and Marshall McLuhan on oral, written, and screen image societies Postemotionalism in Dostoevsky's "The Grand Inquisitor" Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground The narrative in the film, Idiocracy, as an example of postemotional society The pharmaceutical control of emotions in The Giver and Equilibrium CHAPTER 5: ABU GHRAIB AND POSTEMOTIONAL SOCIETY The digital photographs, or screen image element The postemotional carry-over of Zimbardo's theory Postemotional soldiers as "fungible assets" The lawyers as fungible assets, and postemotional law The postemotional smile Holding back emotions, and reliance upon techniques Postemotional manipulation The scripted, postemotional society CHAPTER 6: DRIVEN TO SUICIDE BY BULLYING Immediate desiccation of emotional import Disavowal by Johnny's parents Postemotional suicide prevention Definition of hazing What is the conduct of corrective training? Jury selection: over as soon as it started Racial slurs postemotionalized into nicknames and terms of endearment The social disorganization at the outpost CHAPTER 7: BEATEN TO DEATH Postemotional groupthink The dysfunctional social system that will not self-correct Postemotional anomie The postemotional panopticon CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSIONS: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Stjepan Mestrovic has always been worth reading, and here is Mestrovic at his very best. Written with passion and principle, this book builds on the sociological tradition to explore the darkness of these postemotional times. A shining example of sociology as it should be - and so rarely is. -- Keith Tester Stjepan Mestrovic presents a thought-provoking and critical piece of cultural sociology on the contemporary social issue of bullying rooted in the everyday but with recognition of the influential belief of historical forms of barbarism. He draws many vivid examples from social media, popular culture and the distressing but his close observations from the fallout and confrontations of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses in Iraq. Mestrovic keenly frames bullying as part and parcel of the paradoxes of a postemotional age, society and zeitgeist comprised and sustained by interpersonal estrangement, personal anxiety, and artificial and standardized emotions. -- Marcus Aldredge Mestrovic's The Postemotional Bully is a Maussian gift. This deeply intellectual and theoretically informed exploration of the Bully as a universal character-type, shows the deep tie-in between the Modern's transformation of how we experience emotions, and demonstrates Western culture's simultaneous attraction too and fear of the bullying impulse. Through the lens of a wide range of neglected sociologists, philosophers and anthropologists, this work offers-up the first bridge to understand the social and cultural roots of bullying and thus demands from the reading public, a reciprocal obligation to explore, understand and change our own role in coming to understand the bully in us. -- Professor Keith Kerr Stjepan Mestrovic offers a timely, new perspective for exploring the social problem of bullying. Contrary to the assertion that modern life appeals to the better angels of our nature, Mestrovic observes that modern society has accelerated serious dysfunctional and disruptive human tendencies. The act of bullying is not just carried out by the violent person hiding in the shadows of the classroom, the workplace, the boardroom, or a government office. Mestrovic demonstrates that the act of bullying hides in plain sight in the daily acts of fraud perpetrated within modern society: sham political processes, the abusive manipulation of consumers' emotions by advertisers, peer group opinion that acts like a poltergeist within the machine that is the Internet, the relentless trend to make every person fungible or replaceable, and media saturation that becomes a type of electronic solitary confinement for most people. The Postemotional Bully is a welcome contribution to ongoing debates about the character and future of modern society. -- Ronald Lorenzo In lay terms, The Postemotional Bully provides a practical and up-to-date application of classical theoretical statements with regards to coercive forms of power in industrialized society. Furthermore, the text exposes how the role of deconstruction and mass emotional manipulation has permeated postmodern culture. As the voice of "postemotional theory", Mestrovic provides readers with an essential and unique perspective for interpreting a range of human activities from common everyday interactions, world events, and public policy, in order to better discern the proliferation of institutionalized barbarianism and broad and subtle forms of bullying. -- Michael D. Royster Professor Mestrovic is one of the few social scientists who consistently pushes the boundaries of the discipline. With this book, he has once again confirmed his reputation as an original and important thinker. -- Ambassador Akbar Ahmed In this thought-provoking, theoretically dense essay, sociologist Mestrovic seeks to understand and explain the phenomena of bullying and hazing through the lens of what he labels "postemotional social theory." [...] His theory is informed by a plethora of popular cultural artifacts, and also by empirical studies of high-profile cases of bullying worldwide. The result is an ambivalent gift to the discerning reader: a novel manner in which to better understand the cultural and social roots of these phenomena, but little suggestion or guidance on "what is to be done" to curtail this disturbing trend. -- J. R. Mitrano, Central Connecticut State University