Welcome Dr. Ervin and Laurie Staub to Cambodia!

A dear friend of mine, retired professor Dr. Ervin Staub, is here in Cambodia, with his wife Laurie for the first time!  He has generously offered to meet with interested individuals for conversations, a small intimate gathering which will be hosted by CIVICUS: Center for Cambodian Civic Education later this week before March 11, exact day and time to be announced. 

I first met Ervin in Stellenbosch, South Africa in December 2009 at a Reconciliation Workshop organized by Folke Bernadotte Academy of the Swedish government and then again this October 2010 in Sando, Sweden.  I have read and re-read and underlined/made copious notes in the book which he gave and signed me for me, The Roots of Evil (with a chapter on Cambodia), and look forward to reading his current release Overcoming Evil, which he says features conversations with me from our time in South Africa.

-        Theary C. Seng, Phnom Penh, Sunday, 6 March 2011

Ervin Staub (back row, 4^th from left) with reconciliation experts and practitioners from around the world in Stellenbosch, South Africa, Dec. 2009.

Theary Seng with Dr. Ervin Staub in Sando, Sweden, Oct. 2010.

More photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/spies.c/StellenboschReconciliationWorkshop?feat=email#

http://www.thearyseng.com/conferences/64-conferences-2010/107-conferences--speaking-engagements-2010/226

http://ki-media.blogspot.com/2010/11/nobel-peace-prize-1982-alva-myrdal.html

I am Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Founding Director of its Ph.D. concentration in the Psychology of Peace and Violence. I was born in Hungary, where as a young child I lived through Nazism, and then communism. I escaped from there when I was 18 years old, lived in Vienna for two years, and then came to the U.S. I finished my undergraduate education at the University of Minnesota and received my Ph.D. at Stanford. I taught at Harvard and was visiting professor at Stanford, the University of Hawaii and the London School of Economic and Political Science.

I have studied the influences that lead to caring, helpful, altruistic behavior in children and adults, and the development of caring and helping in children. Having studied both “active bystandership,” and passivity in the face of people in need, I turned to a focus on perpetration. I studied the social conditions, culture, psychology of individuals and groups, and social processes that lead to mass violence, especially genocide and mass killing, but also violent conflict, terrorism and torture. I studied the role of passive bystanders in allowing the unfolding of violence. Increasingly I focused on understanding how violence between groups can be prevented, as well as how hostile groups can reconcile, especially in post-conflict settings after violence between them, as well as how positive group relations can be facilitated. I have been concerned with how active bystandership in the service of prevention and reconciliation can be promoted.

-        Dr. Ervin Staub

How can human beings kill or brutalize multitudes of other human beings? Focusing particularly on genocide, but also on other forms of mass killing, torture, and war, Ervin Staub explores the psychological, cultural, and societal roots of group aggression. He sketches a conceptual framework for the many influences on one group's desire to harm another: cultural and social patterns predisposing to violence, historical circumstances resulting in persistent life problems, and needs and modes of adaptation arising from the interaction of these influences. Such notions as cultural stereotyping and devaluation, societal self-concept, moral exclusion, the need for connection, authority orientation, personal and group goals, "better world" ideologies, justification, and moral equilibrium find a place in his analysis, and he addresses the relevant evidence from the behavioral sciences. Within this conceptual framework, Staub then considers the behavior of perpetrators and bystanders in four historical situations: the Holocaust (his primary example), the genocide of Armenians in Turkey, the "autogenocide" in Cambodia, and the "disappearances" in Argentina. Throughout, he is concerned with the roots of caring and the psychology of heroic helpers. In his concluding chapters, he reflects on the socialization of children at home and in schools, and on the societal practices and processes that facilitate the development of caring persons, and of care and cooperation among groups. A wide audience will find The Roots of Evil thought-provoking reading.

Overcoming Evil describes the origins or influences leading to genocide, violent conflict and terrorism. It identifies principles and practices of prevention, and of reconciliation between groups after violence, or before violence thereby to prevent violence. It uses both past cases such as the Holocaust, and contemporary ones such as Rwanda, the Congo, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, contemporary terrorism, and the relations between the Dutch and Muslim minorities, which also has relevance to other European countries, as examples.

The book draws on the author's previous work on all these issues, as well as on research in genocide studies, the study of conflict and of terrorism, and psychological research on group relations. It also describes the work of the author and his associates in real world settings, such as promoting reconciliation in Rwanda, Burundi and the Congo.

The book considers what needs to be done to prevent impending or stop ongoing violence. It emphasizes early prevention, when violence generating conditions are present and a psychological and social evolution toward violence has begun, but not yet immediate danger of intense violence.

The book considers the role of difficult social or life conditions, repression, culture, the institutions or structure of society, the psychology of individuals and groups, and the behavior of witnesses or bystanders within and outside societies. It emphasizes psychological processes, such as differentiation between us and them and devaluation of the "other," past victimization and psychological woundedness, the power of ideas and people's commitment to destructive ideologies. It considers humanizing the other, healing from past victimization, the creation of constructive ideologies and groups and how these help people develop cultures and institutions that make violence less likely.

The book asks what needs to be accomplished to prevent violence, how it can be done, and who can do it. It aims to promote knowledge, understanding, and "active bystandership" by leaders and government officials, members of the media and citizens to prevent violence and create harmonious societies.

www.ervinstaub.com