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

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ssss1.The ignoring of mass victimisation by positivist Victimology is quite surprising if we consider two factors. First, Victimology emerges in the context of the pre– and post-war periods when evident massive victimisation occurred. Second, the two so-called fathers of Victimology, the Rumanian lawyer Mendelsohn and the German jurist and psychologist von Hentig (1919) suffered, in one way or another, the consequences of the First World War and the Nazi persecution. Von Hentig, even though he was in favour of certain eugenic practices, suffered Nazi persecution because of his sympathy towards Bolshevik ideas that obliged him to leave his university position and migrate to the United States in 1935. Later, after the Second World War, he returned to Germany. With regard to Mendelsohn, the fact that he belonged to a family of Jewish-French origin determined his later links with Israel.

The lack of consideration of the mass victimisations produced in the first half of the 20th century by the first victimologists contrasts with the observation made by some abolitionists. Among those abolitionists, Louk Hulsman grew up observing the Nazi concentration camps established in The Netherlands during World War II (Postay, 2012) and Nils Christie started his research interviewing guards of Norwegian concentration camps and thinking about the factors promoting dehumanisation (vid. Christie, N. 1972. Fangevoktere i konsentrasjonsleire (Prison guards in concentration camps). Universitetsforlaget, Oslo. Originally published in 1952). However, the victimological impact of these aboltionists’ writings came also much later. Thus even though criminal law and Victimology academicians themselves faced the evident qualitative and quantitative violence in processes that we can call macro-victimisation and abuse of power, an early and complete theorisation by the two disciplines supposedly specialised in that sort of violence (internal criminal law and Victimology) is missing. To redress these blind spots, a reframing of the interdisciplinary meaning of violence, macro-victimisation, and abuse of power is needed.