The Trouble With Evil: Social Control at the Edge of Morality (Deviance Social Control)

185 pages. cover worn, A broadly based analysis of good and evil grounded in examination of the conc eptual, philosophical, and theoretical bases of the study of evil within the soc ial sciences.Edwin Lemert investigates the possibility that a considerati on of evil will provide new power to explanations of deviance. He links classic studies of witchcraft and sorcery to the wider problem of social control. The se arch for prototypical evil (a view that Lemert rejects) turns to an investigatio n of sorcery because sorcery involves selfish interest and intentions on the par t of the sorcerer, who uses cryptic means to harm a victim that he/she dislikes. The author then examines comparatively the conditions that produce evil a ctions, and social reactions to them, in a variety of societies; and he reviews explanations that previous scholars have offered for the presence and consequenc es of evil. A tangential consequence of this method is that the work takes on a strong Melanesian flavor, because so many of the classic studies of sorcery were conducted in that culture area. Lemert argues that the fragmented nature of pol itical organization, rapid shifts in political alliance, and the frequency of co mpetitive rituals involving food combine in Melanesia to produce conditions that favor the development of whole cultures that celebrate forms of animosity and v iolence.