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Passivity Generation

Human Rights and Everyday Morality

  • Book
  • © 2013

Overview

Authors:
  1. Irene Bruna Seu

    1. Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

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Part of the book series: Studies in the Psychosocial (STIP)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. Introduction

    • Irene Bruna Seu
    Pages 1-8

  3. Between Knowledge and Action: Multidisciplinary Frames and the Psychosocial

    • Irene Bruna Seu
    Pages 9-35

  4. The Web of Passivity: Everyday Morality and the Banality of a Clear Conscience

    • Irene Bruna Seu
    Pages 36-67

  5. The Public and NGOs: Neutralisation and Denial in Response to Human Rights Appeals

    • Irene Bruna Seu
    Pages 68-97

  6. Us and Them

    • Irene Bruna Seu
    Pages 98-129

  7. Identities, Biographies and Invested Narratives

    • Irene Bruna Seu
    Pages 130-156

  8. A Plea for Emotional Complexity: Conflicts and (Psycho)Dynamic Equilibria

    • Irene Bruna Seu
    Pages 157-190

  9. Conclusions

    • Irene Bruna Seu
    Pages 191-215

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 216-252
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Keywords

About this book

The book applies a unique mix of psychosocial methods to understand the complexity of emotional, cognitive and ideological responses to human rights violations and examines the banal quality of the everyday vocabularies that people use to make sense of human rights and their violations, and justify not intervening. In Passivity Generation, Irene Bruna Seu offers a vivid and compassionate account of how past experiences of trauma and suffering affect individual (un)responsiveness, and explores the psychodynamics of passivity and its underpinning defence mechanisms.

Reviews

'Seu's nuanced discussion of the widespread borrowing by participants of vocabularies or scripts from other contexts, the complex interaction of such scripts (the 'web of passivity'), and the psychological defence mechanisms used to sustain them, is both perceptive and breaks new ground.' - Journal of Human Rights Practice

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

    Irene Bruna Seu

About the author

Irene Bruna Seu is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Her books include Who am I? The Self and the Ego in Psychoanalysis and Feminism and Psychotherapy: Reflections on Contemporary Theory and Practice (co-editor). Her main research interests are human rights, social responsibility and helping behaviour, gender, and psychoanalysis, reflecting an intellectual interest in Western culture and values, and a political commitment to the attainment of a just society.

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