General provisions

Department of History, Uppsala University, is responsible for the course.

Entry requirements

120 credits including 90 credits in a subject in the humanities or the social sciences. Proficiency in English equivalent to the Swedish upper secondary course English 6.

Learning outcomes

After completing the course the student will be able to:

• Account for theories explaining the cognitive and social processes that provide the basis for individual and collective identities.
• Analyze the mechanisms that become activated during social and ethnic mobilization, and explain their effects at individual and group levels.
• Understand and explain the effect of identity on the dynamics of violence, with an emphasis on aspects such as ethnic distance, dehumanization and ideology.
• Analyze the relationship between different theoretical explanations for participation in mass violence, with a focus on aspects such as predisposition, context and group dynamics.
• Analyze differences in the propensity to participate in mass violence with regard to socio-economic status, ideological beliefs and gender, with an emphasis on social, cultural and biological explanations.
• Independently compare the dynamics of violence in different institutional, political and cultural contexts.
• Explain the social dynamics that arise through the interaction between perpetrators, victims, bystanders and others in different contexts.
• Analyze the effects of trauma and secondary traumatization, as well as to identify and explain the strategies that victims and perpetrators apply to cope with negative impacts on their well-being during and after mass violence.
• Apply the theoretical reasoning to empirical examples of genocide and other forms of mass violence.

Content

The course aims to provide students with in-depth knowledge of the social, psychological and social psychological factors that influence individual behaviours in connection with outbreaks of genocide and other mass violence. We will discuss different theoretical perspectives, with an emphasis on their explanatory value in terms of the factors that affect perpetrators, victims and bystanders. Particular emphasis is placed on the potentially destructive relationship between individuals, groups and leaders.

Instruction

The course will consist of seminars.

Assessment

Assessment will be based upon written and oral assignments. Students that have missed a small number of mandatory assignments may complete them by the end of the term at the latest. If there are special reasons for doing so, an examiner may make an exception from the method of assessment indicated and allow a student to be assessed by another method. An example of special reasons might be a certificate regarding special pedagogical support from the University´s disability coordinator.