Читать книгу Approaching Victimology as social science for Human rights a Spanish perspective онлайн

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In contrast to the above-mentioned typologies, on the origin of Victimology, it is very interesting to note that the English term “Victimology” dates back to the book The show of violence (1949) by the polemical German-American psychiatrist F. Wertham. In the so-called American crime comics of that period, Wertham criticised the fact that the victimiser is presented to the youth as a hero whereas the victim is a passive object of his violent acts. Wertham suggested that this cultural representation was linked to increasing juvenile delinquency. This thesis was later developed in his contested book Seduction of the innocent (1954). Thus, that view of Victimology was a moralising one.

Somehow, in the origin of Victimology, we can see this persistent utilitarian temptation of balancing the notion of the victim between banalising (demonising) and moralising (mystification). In the birth of the discipline of Victimology, we can find the use (and abuse) of the notion of the victim as an instrument to consider either the causes of violence or the defence of concrete moral ideologies, beyond the tangible injustice of the harm suffered. That potential manipulation should have little to do with scientific research, defined as an attempt to know by being objective (observing reality aware of the persistent potential bias); being dialectical (offering limited evidence and under constant verification), and being intelligible (with a systematic simplification and representation of the observation of a complex reality). However, Victimology moves in a difficult arena: with those premises, how to conceptualise victims, victimhood, victimisation, victimism, reparation, recovery and justice? And how to develop practical victimological interventions, evaluations and research?