Abstract
A viable sociology of the powers should be able to account for the sociological linkages between the instituted objective structures and embedded subjective structures, for which the devil uses to induce massive systematic violence. This chapter aims to reimagine the unceasing interplays between these two structures as a structural resonance field. Genocide is a modern evil because it has been closely associated with the state-building project. I will outline an alternative historical sociology to illustrate how such evils as interethnic rivalry and inter-class jealousy contributed to the state-endorsed genocidal mobilizations in Africa and Asia. Genocide was made possible by the agents of darkness because they managed to instrumentalize the historically embedded cultural–spiritual specifics found in the structural resonance field of the concerned society.
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Notes
- 1.
In social science, an actor refers to the person who carries out an action. For example, in the sentence ‘a chef cooks’, the chef is the actor while ‘cooks’ is the action that the actor carries out.
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Wong, P.N. (2016). Sovereign, Déjà Vu! Unmasking the Resonating Structures in the Rwandan and Cambodian State-Making Genocides. In: Discerning the Powers in Post-Colonial Africa and Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-511-2_3
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