Scapegoat: Targeted for Blame - Hardcover

Wilcox, Dr Clifton W

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1432749439 ISBN 13: 9781432749439

Publisher: Outskirts Press, 2009

Synopsis

In scapegoating one thing is clear. The individual, group, or object that is deemed the scapegoat had been perceived as the cause of the troubling circumstances and has become the target of aggression. Scapegoating is the quintessential example of a ritual practice that magically shapes the natural world The scapegoa's sacrifice enables the group to live another day and indelibility makes the survivors a tighter-knit group.

About this title

From the Publisher:

The Scapegoat is part of human life, although the actual word only came into existence in the 1500's when William Tyndale coined the phrase to describe his own predicament. He had dared to suggest that he knew more than the scholars of his time. Of course he was burnt at the stake for his efforts! The concept of a Scapegoat goes far further back in the annals of time, there are mentions of the concept in the bible, the book of Leviticus discusses it. In fact you can even go back to the ancient Greeks and find the process alive and well very far back in time.

From the Inside Flap:

The term scapegoat, in its typical common usage, conjures perhaps images of the Nazi's launching of a mass extermination campaign against the Jewish people; the Israeli campaign against the Palestinians; the early Americans committed to capturing and burning women who were perceived to be witches, or the United States' policy of confiscating Native American land which resulted in the widespread destruction of Native American culture. The term has been applied to certain illegalized drugs such as marijuana, the musical genre of hip-hop, or the adolescent population, among multitudinous other individuals, groups and entities. In all of these examples the parties on the receiving end of social aggression can be defined as the scapegoats--pseudo-enemies that have been created within the aggressors' in-group consciousness; entities that have been dubbed as the causal agents of social problems and have subsequently become the targets of human aggression. Scapegoating, in this sense, can be considered a psychosocial phenomenon in which an in-group perceives a particular out-group as the cause of a social problem and takes action to minimize or eliminate the problem through targeting the labeled individual or group. While the psychosocial meaning of the term represents the common understanding of the present day, cultures from other time periods and geo-climactic, socio-cultural niches have demonstrated different and, in some ways, far more interesting behaviors which fall under the canopy of this term. The term scapegoat can be originally located as a linguistic construct in the cultural history of the Hebrew people. The scapegoat, in the biblical sense of the word, was part of a ritual outlined in the book of Leviticus. In this ritual, the ancient Hebrews selected two goats. One was sacrificed to the Hebrew god Yahweh so that all of the sins of Israel were pardoned. The other was dedicated to Azazel, a chthonic God of goats and herdsmen. A high priest would confess all of the sins of the children of Israel over the head of the second goat, and the living goat was sent into the wilderness to bear them away.

About this edition

• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1432749439
• ISBN 13: 9781432749439
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 182