Angst und Vorurteil
Encyclopedia
Angst und Vorurteil: AIDS-Ängste als Gegenstand der Vorurteilsforschung (German: "Fear and prejudice: AIDS paranoia from the view of scientific prejudice studies") is a sociology book written by German sociologist, ethnologist, and sexologist Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg
that was first published in 1989.
The book Angst und Vorurteil - AIDS-Ängste als Gegenstand der Vorurteilsforschung was based on the work of the Enquetekommission AIDS, as well as Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg's own final report brought forth in parliamentary hearings and towards the Helmut Kohl administration
.
before, by pointing out in Angst und Vorurteil further aspects she had already brushed on in Der pädophile Impuls four years earlier. According to Angst und Vorurteil, an important derivational motivation of Leibfeindlichkeit was an intense connotation that was at first numinous, then mythological, then religious in nature, of sexual deviance with divine punishments for it, particularly natural disasters and epidemics. An obvious, exemplary line originated from the Old Testament
where leprosy
was God's just answer to sensual sins, especially sins of the flesh; by the Medieval Age, the Black Death
had taken the former place of leprosy in ecclesiastical dogma. Just when early science dawned, syphilis
came from across the ocean to the Old World, perpetuating the ancient cultural notions repressive towards sensuality by seemingly confirming the idea that lose sexual morals resulted in severe epidemics of fatal diseases.
Western society's own cultural misconception of sexuality only supported perpetuation of these ancient cultural notions, as this misconception saw sexuality as purely procreative and thus purely penetrative in nature, whereas any non-penetrative sexual activity, while actually running a lower risk of STD infection, was regarded as deviant and sinful. Thereby Western science was barred from even just slightly disposing all the religious and cultural superstitions pertaining to sexuality that the Enlightenment
did away with in most any other field beside sexuality. Finally, the next significant loosening of traditional Western mores occurring after WWII, caused by penicillin and the anti-baby pill, was rolled back effectively in quite a similar reactionary process when HIV and AIDS arrived during the early 1980s, with quite similar cultural patterns of rationalizing derivations as ideological justifications, such as moral panics and witch hunts concerning factual or putative sexual minorities aka deviants.
Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg's understanding of prejudice therein is largely informed by Critical Theory
and its concept of the Authoritarian personality
(also see Right-wing authoritarianism), but also incorporates, among other schools of prejudice studies, Labeling theory
by George Herbert Mead
and Howard S. Becker
, Social identity theory
by Henri Tajfel
and John Turner, Frustration-Aggression hypothesis
by John Dollard and Neal E. Miller, Social learning theory
by Albert Bandura
, as well as dispositif
and discourse analysis
by Michel Foucault
.
Without such a negative out-group identity, there is no cohesiveness for the majority in-group which itself is based on the Authoritarian personality type, and indeed the positive in-group identity is only created as a response to the constructed negative out-group identity. The majority in-group conceives itself, its own role and identity, as direct opposite of these marginalized out-groups down to every detail; filthy sinners and other outsiders or aliens, who are basically regarded as evil incarnate and often tagged with dehumanizing, partly zoomorphic attributes, are contrasted with good, decent, law-abiding citizens, as the most dichotomous, yet most basic socio-cultural and socio-psychological distinction in Western and Indo-European
culture and civilization since the beginning of the Iron Age
.
Regarding the dehumanizing and zoomorphic attributes given to social out-groups, it is important to remember the influential cultural precursor quintessentially found in the archetype of the non-human, demonic, shape-shifting nithing fiend from Tabu Homosexualität (see the book's own article
).
and the defense mechanism of psychological projection
, in its socio-cultural interpretation of the Authoritarian personality type brought forth by Critical Theory. Early on, from earliest childhood, people's socialization consists of internalizing the difference of "good" and "evil" impulses, resulting in a psychological apparatus where those impulses labeled as the most "evil" and "filthiest" are separated from conscious ego by work of the super-ego consisting of the most forcefully internalized social values, and by means of psychological repression
the repressed impulses turn into the unconscious Id.
The more forceful and restrictive the socialization, the more authoritarian a super-ego will result, and the behavioral result of internalizing these restrictive traditional values is at first learning to masochistically deny and repress certain impulses, then later on the continuously pent-up frustration is acted out as sadistically passing on these restrictive values on to others, which in case of the in-group's intention to inflict in-group values upon a minority out-group as a whole shows as discrimination all over Allport's Scale
.
Providing convenient targets for the Authoritarian personality's outlet, the negative out-group identity is created as a convenient projection screen
made out of the repressed impulses; lowering the inhibition threshold for all kinds of discrimination including structural violence and even physical violence, the minority out-group is tagged with all kinds of negative attributes, partly dehumanizing, partly pathologizing, partly such mental and behavioral attributes that are factually harmful.
This process only works because the out-group is defined by not only imaginary or constructed attributes, but also by its factual attributes. The conscious mind of Authoritarian in-group members cannot even distinguish on the one hand between the out-group's factual and imaginary attributes, perceiving either as equally real. On the other hand, these in-group members are mentally incapable of distinguishing between any of the constructed imaginary attributes, as out-group members stereotypically appear to them as altogether and nothing but pathological, menacing, dangerous, abominable, and criminal, or, in a word, plain evil.
(Zwangsvorstellungen) that may spill over into Allport's Scale
discrimination, including violent hate crimes, as a form of obsessive-compulsive behavior
(Zwangshandlung; also see Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
). Due to what Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg terms "distorted perception" (verzerrte Wahrnehmung, relating to Altemeyer's compartmentalized thinking) of constructed social reality, the prejudiced aggressor regards themselves as a rectifying, maybe curing agent, as an upholder of "natural order" and "society", and/or as protector of people they perceive as "victims" of the discriminated.
(i. e. a form of irrational related to magical thinking
), in such that the following characteristics apply to prejudice:
As also individual social identity, i. e. what social group(s) an individual identifies with due to their traits, is socially learned, it is that the more Authoritarian and hostile the prejudiced discourse on a particular out-group, the fewer positive social identities are available to be acquired by individual out-group members. Therefore, the behavior-guiding individual social identity of out-group members is strongly influenced by the stigmatizing labels applied by the majority in-group, and prejudice may yield the very pathological traits, the very aggressive, harmful, even criminal behavior in individual out-group members that out-groups are said to indulge in. In short, the majority in-group's dominant prejudices can thereby result in a self-fulfilling prophecy, a process which Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg dubs "self-maintenance of prejudice" (Selbststabilisierung des Vorurteils). For this reason, Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg dedicated Angst und Vorurteil to the prefaced motto Minderheitenschutz ist Mehrheitenschutz ("Protecting minorities (from prejudice) helps protect the majority.")
Furthermore, Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg expressedly incorporates structural violence of the state, including involuntary medico-therapeutical intervention, as a form of discrimination, considering it a regulating, standardizing dispositif
motivating further discrimination by "vigilant" individuals. Due to laws born out of ethnocentric prejudice, their potential to motivate "vigilant" hate crimes, and the tendency of dominant severe prejudice to self-fulfill, another prominent adage of the book is Falsche Gesetze zeitigen echte Verbrechen ("False laws ripen into true crimes.") which is also included in Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg's 1972 fiction novel Deutschlands Hoffnung, and her 1985/88 work Der pädophile Impuls.
Such cultural codes for lewdness and sexual deviance particularly included sadism, insidiousness, madness, weakness, cowardice, untrustworthiness, obsessive lying, betrayal, treason, evil sorcery, satanism, witchcraft, intoxicating drugs and poisoning potions, laziness, stubbornness, waywardness, incorrigibility, physical diseases and ailments (especially limping). These cultural codifications always have been, until the present day, largely identical with the imaginary, or constructed, attributes that sexual minorities were, and are, tagged with.
Additional such codifying associations were patterned according to particular sexual deviances, in such that these particular sexual minorities were perceived as either biologically or mentally faulted in a way that associated them with those social groups or social categories that their particular sexuality was regarded as naturally belonging to; for instance, gay males were regarded as effeminate, i. e. womanish, as women were regarded as the only category of people that could legitimately feel sexual desire towards men.
prior to World War I
. Even though the percentage of Jews in population was much lower in the German Empire
and thus Germans had much fewer personal contacts with Jews, anti-Semitism
was much more common and radical in Austria-Hungary than it was in Germany at the time. Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg explains this pattern as due to above-mentioned self-maintenance of prejudice, the fact that prejudice seeks to self-corroborate, and prejudice's tendency to self-fulfill.
Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg lists three assumptively more effective countering strategies:
Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg
Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg , M. A., Ph.D., is a German sociologist, ethnologist, sexologist, and writer further specializing into the fields of psychology, Indo-European studies, religious studies, and philosophy, since 1980 also increasingly anthropology...
that was first published in 1989.
Background
In 1988, due to her former scientific achievements Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg was appointed member of the parliamentary inquiry commission Enquetekommission AIDS that was formed in order to research into the disease's social, cultural, legal, and public health care consequences and challenges. While the commission's 1990 final report focussed entirely on bio-chemical epidemiology and prevention, Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg's influence was incorporated mostly into its 1989 preliminary report dealing rather with sociological, cultural, and legal aspects.The book Angst und Vorurteil - AIDS-Ängste als Gegenstand der Vorurteilsforschung was based on the work of the Enquetekommission AIDS, as well as Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg's own final report brought forth in parliamentary hearings and towards the Helmut Kohl administration
Cabinet Kohl III
The third cabinet led by Helmut Kohl was sworn in on March 12, 1987. The cabinet was formed after the 1987 elections. It laid down its function on January 17, 1991 after the formation of the Cabinet Kohl IV, which was formed following the 1990 elections...
.
Leibfeindlichkeit, natural disasters, and epidemics
In Angst und Vorurteil, Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg on the one hand supplements the structural history of Western Leibfeindlichkeit (repression of sensuality) she related at a fuller scope in Tabu HomosexualitätTabu Homosexualität
Tabu Homosexualität: Die Geschichte eines Vorurteils is a standard work of Germanophone research into homophobia, written by German sociologist, ethnologist, and sexologist Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, and first published in 1978.- Background :...
before, by pointing out in Angst und Vorurteil further aspects she had already brushed on in Der pädophile Impuls four years earlier. According to Angst und Vorurteil, an important derivational motivation of Leibfeindlichkeit was an intense connotation that was at first numinous, then mythological, then religious in nature, of sexual deviance with divine punishments for it, particularly natural disasters and epidemics. An obvious, exemplary line originated from the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
where leprosy
Leprosy
Leprosy or Hansen's disease is a chronic disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Named after physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen, leprosy is primarily a granulomatous disease of the peripheral nerves and mucosa of the upper respiratory tract; skin lesions...
was God's just answer to sensual sins, especially sins of the flesh; by the Medieval Age, the Black Death
Black Death
The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...
had taken the former place of leprosy in ecclesiastical dogma. Just when early science dawned, syphilis
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
came from across the ocean to the Old World, perpetuating the ancient cultural notions repressive towards sensuality by seemingly confirming the idea that lose sexual morals resulted in severe epidemics of fatal diseases.
Western society's own cultural misconception of sexuality only supported perpetuation of these ancient cultural notions, as this misconception saw sexuality as purely procreative and thus purely penetrative in nature, whereas any non-penetrative sexual activity, while actually running a lower risk of STD infection, was regarded as deviant and sinful. Thereby Western science was barred from even just slightly disposing all the religious and cultural superstitions pertaining to sexuality that the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
did away with in most any other field beside sexuality. Finally, the next significant loosening of traditional Western mores occurring after WWII, caused by penicillin and the anti-baby pill, was rolled back effectively in quite a similar reactionary process when HIV and AIDS arrived during the early 1980s, with quite similar cultural patterns of rationalizing derivations as ideological justifications, such as moral panics and witch hunts concerning factual or putative sexual minorities aka deviants.
Prejudice studies, sexuality, and Leibfeindlichkeit
On the other hand, in Angst und Vorurteil Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg gives a thorough, comprehensive description of post-WWII scientific prejudice studies, particularly regarding the re-inforcement of traditional Western Leibfeindlichkeit (prejudices directed against factual or putative sexual deviance) triggered by HIV, and chronicles the field's academic history from its roots.Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg's understanding of prejudice therein is largely informed by Critical Theory
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
and its concept of the Authoritarian personality
Authoritarian personality
-Historical Origins:Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford compiled a large body of research and theory , which attempted to characterize a personality type that described the “potentially fascistic individual”...
(also see Right-wing authoritarianism), but also incorporates, among other schools of prejudice studies, Labeling theory
Labeling theory
Labeling theory is closely related to interactionist and social construction theories. Labeling theory was developed by sociologists during the 1960's. Howard Saul Becker's book entitled Outsiders was extremely influential in the development of this theory and its rise to popularity...
by George Herbert Mead
George Herbert Mead
George Herbert Mead was an American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatists. He is regarded as one of the founders of social psychology and the American sociological tradition in general.-...
and Howard S. Becker
Howard S. Becker
Howard Saul Becker is an American sociologist who made major contributions to the sociology of deviance, sociology of art, and sociology of music. Becker also wrote extensively on sociological writing styles and methodologies. In addition, Becker's book The Outsiders provided the foundations for...
, Social identity theory
Social identity
A social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group. As originally formulated by Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s and 80s, social identity theory introduced the concept of a social identity as a way in which to...
by Henri Tajfel
Henri Tajfel
Henri Tajfel was a British social psychologist, best known for his pioneering work on the cognitive aspects of prejudice and social identity theory, as well as being one of the founders of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology.-Early life in Poland:Tajfel grew up in Poland...
and John Turner, Frustration-Aggression hypothesis
Frustration aggression theory
Frustration-aggression hypothesis is a theory of aggression proposed by John Dollard, Neal E. Miller et al. in 1939, and further developed by Miller, Roger Barker et al. in 1941 and Leonard Berkowitz in 1969.-Further reading:...
by John Dollard and Neal E. Miller, Social learning theory
Observational learning
Observational learning is a type of learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and replicating novel behavior executed by others...
by Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura is a psychologist and the David Starr Jordan Professor Emeritus of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford University...
, as well as dispositif
Dispositif
Michel Foucault generally uses the term "dispositif," "deployment," or "apparatus" to refer to the various institutional, physical and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures which enhance and maintain the exercise of power within the social body.-Roots:...
and discourse analysis
Discourse analysis
Discourse analysis , or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, spoken, signed language use or any significant semiotic event....
by Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
.
Prejudice's main function: In-group cohesiveness
As one important pattern of prejudice can be named, according to Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, that prejudice's main social function is creating and maintaining the in-group's social cohesiveness, united against a constructed foe or enemy identity (Feindbild) tagged on marginalized out-groups that are thus perceived as threatening and must be overcome by harsh measures correlating to how outrageous and abominable these minorities are perceived by the majority in-group.Without such a negative out-group identity, there is no cohesiveness for the majority in-group which itself is based on the Authoritarian personality type, and indeed the positive in-group identity is only created as a response to the constructed negative out-group identity. The majority in-group conceives itself, its own role and identity, as direct opposite of these marginalized out-groups down to every detail; filthy sinners and other outsiders or aliens, who are basically regarded as evil incarnate and often tagged with dehumanizing, partly zoomorphic attributes, are contrasted with good, decent, law-abiding citizens, as the most dichotomous, yet most basic socio-cultural and socio-psychological distinction in Western and Indo-European
Indo-European
Indo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan race, a 19th century and early 20th century term for those peoples who are the native speakers of Indo-European languages...
culture and civilization since the beginning of the Iron Age
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...
.
Regarding the dehumanizing and zoomorphic attributes given to social out-groups, it is important to remember the influential cultural precursor quintessentially found in the archetype of the non-human, demonic, shape-shifting nithing fiend from Tabu Homosexualität (see the book's own article
Tabu Homosexualität
Tabu Homosexualität: Die Geschichte eines Vorurteils is a standard work of Germanophone research into homophobia, written by German sociologist, ethnologist, and sexologist Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, and first published in 1978.- Background :...
).
The Authoritarian personality
Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg links this in-group vs. out-group conflict model closely with neo-Freudian psychology, particularly the psychological apparatus of Id, ego, and super-egoId, ego, and super-ego
Id, ego and super-ego are the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described...
and the defense mechanism of psychological projection
Psychological projection
Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people...
, in its socio-cultural interpretation of the Authoritarian personality type brought forth by Critical Theory. Early on, from earliest childhood, people's socialization consists of internalizing the difference of "good" and "evil" impulses, resulting in a psychological apparatus where those impulses labeled as the most "evil" and "filthiest" are separated from conscious ego by work of the super-ego consisting of the most forcefully internalized social values, and by means of psychological repression
Psychological repression
Psychological repression, also psychic repression or simply repression, is the psychological attempt by an individual to repel one's own desires and impulses towards pleasurable instincts by excluding the desire from one's consciousness and holding or subduing it in the unconscious...
the repressed impulses turn into the unconscious Id.
The more forceful and restrictive the socialization, the more authoritarian a super-ego will result, and the behavioral result of internalizing these restrictive traditional values is at first learning to masochistically deny and repress certain impulses, then later on the continuously pent-up frustration is acted out as sadistically passing on these restrictive values on to others, which in case of the in-group's intention to inflict in-group values upon a minority out-group as a whole shows as discrimination all over Allport's Scale
Allport's Scale
Allport's Scale is a measure of the manifestation of prejudice in a society. It is also referred to as Allport's Scale of Prejudice and Discrimination or Allport's Scale of Prejudice. It was devised by psychologist Gordon Allport in 1954 ....
.
Providing convenient targets for the Authoritarian personality's outlet, the negative out-group identity is created as a convenient projection screen
Psychological projection
Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people...
made out of the repressed impulses; lowering the inhibition threshold for all kinds of discrimination including structural violence and even physical violence, the minority out-group is tagged with all kinds of negative attributes, partly dehumanizing, partly pathologizing, partly such mental and behavioral attributes that are factually harmful.
This process only works because the out-group is defined by not only imaginary or constructed attributes, but also by its factual attributes. The conscious mind of Authoritarian in-group members cannot even distinguish on the one hand between the out-group's factual and imaginary attributes, perceiving either as equally real. On the other hand, these in-group members are mentally incapable of distinguishing between any of the constructed imaginary attributes, as out-group members stereotypically appear to them as altogether and nothing but pathological, menacing, dangerous, abominable, and criminal, or, in a word, plain evil.
Prejudice resembles intrusive thoughts, discrimination is OCD
Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg thus defines Authoritarian prejudice as socially learned manifest, recurring intrusive thoughtsIntrusive thoughts
Intrusive thoughts are unwelcome involuntary thoughts, images, or unpleasant ideas that may become obsessions, are upsetting or distressing, and can be difficult to manage or eliminate. Most people experience these thoughts...
(Zwangsvorstellungen) that may spill over into Allport's Scale
Allport's Scale
Allport's Scale is a measure of the manifestation of prejudice in a society. It is also referred to as Allport's Scale of Prejudice and Discrimination or Allport's Scale of Prejudice. It was devised by psychologist Gordon Allport in 1954 ....
discrimination, including violent hate crimes, as a form of obsessive-compulsive behavior
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Obsessive–compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry, by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety, or by a combination of such obsessions and compulsions...
(Zwangshandlung; also see Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
Obsessive–compulsive personality disorder is a personality disorder characterized by a pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency.- Signs and symptoms :The primary symptoms of OCPD...
). Due to what Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg terms "distorted perception" (verzerrte Wahrnehmung, relating to Altemeyer's compartmentalized thinking) of constructed social reality, the prejudiced aggressor regards themselves as a rectifying, maybe curing agent, as an upholder of "natural order" and "society", and/or as protector of people they perceive as "victims" of the discriminated.
The Authoritarian and numinous characteristics of prejudice
Although ethnocentric prejudice is often pseudo-scientifically rationalized in Western modernity, it is inherently both modern Authoritarian and archaically numinousNuminous
Numinous is an English adjective describing the power or presence of a divinity. The word was popularised in the early twentieth century by the German theologian Rudolf Otto in his influential book Das Heilige...
(i. e. a form of irrational related to magical thinking
Magical thinking
Magical thinking is causal reasoning that looks for correlation between acts or utterances and certain events. In religion, folk religion, and superstition, the correlation posited is between religious ritual, such as prayer, sacrifice, or the observance of a taboo, and an expected benefit or...
), in such that the following characteristics apply to prejudice:
- "Das Vorurteil sucht seine eigene Bestätigung" ("Prejudice seeks to self-corroborate"): The slightest imaginary or factual hint towards any individual out-group member conforming to prejudice is taken as undeniable corroborating evidence for the prejudice being justified (also see self-maintenance of prejudice below),
- Moral absolutism: Particular prejudices are often presented in public and private discourse as an absolute, unquestionable social consensus, as the bare minimum standards of any civilized society, with a wide number of irrational ethnocentric derivations provided as rationalizations, and
- Guilt-by-association: Any critic of prejudice is quickly suspected a sympathizer, even closeted member of the particular out-group.
Self-maintenance of prejudice: Prejudice, cognition, and social identity
As the human mind's cognitive structures are naturally disposed to both consciously and unconsciously gather and process information constantly in order to relate to the outside world, to oneself, and to one's own relations to the world (in other words, man constantly seeks and constructs sense, meaning, association, and belonging in order to understand and cope) also and most foremost in a social sense ("Who am I, and how do I relate to the social continuum around me?"), and because individual cognitive capabilities are as limited as that the individual is required to widely rely on social conventions in everyday life (which in combination with decreased instinctual drives is the origin of cognitive disposition towards social learning in primates), Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg posits that if no more positive social identity relating to one's traits is available, then even the most negative social identity, no matter with what aggressive and harmful behavior it is associated, is preferred to total loss of identity.As also individual social identity, i. e. what social group(s) an individual identifies with due to their traits, is socially learned, it is that the more Authoritarian and hostile the prejudiced discourse on a particular out-group, the fewer positive social identities are available to be acquired by individual out-group members. Therefore, the behavior-guiding individual social identity of out-group members is strongly influenced by the stigmatizing labels applied by the majority in-group, and prejudice may yield the very pathological traits, the very aggressive, harmful, even criminal behavior in individual out-group members that out-groups are said to indulge in. In short, the majority in-group's dominant prejudices can thereby result in a self-fulfilling prophecy, a process which Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg dubs "self-maintenance of prejudice" (Selbststabilisierung des Vorurteils). For this reason, Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg dedicated Angst und Vorurteil to the prefaced motto Minderheitenschutz ist Mehrheitenschutz ("Protecting minorities (from prejudice) helps protect the majority.")
Furthermore, Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg expressedly incorporates structural violence of the state, including involuntary medico-therapeutical intervention, as a form of discrimination, considering it a regulating, standardizing dispositif
Dispositif
Michel Foucault generally uses the term "dispositif," "deployment," or "apparatus" to refer to the various institutional, physical and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures which enhance and maintain the exercise of power within the social body.-Roots:...
motivating further discrimination by "vigilant" individuals. Due to laws born out of ethnocentric prejudice, their potential to motivate "vigilant" hate crimes, and the tendency of dominant severe prejudice to self-fulfill, another prominent adage of the book is Falsche Gesetze zeitigen echte Verbrechen ("False laws ripen into true crimes.") which is also included in Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg's 1972 fiction novel Deutschlands Hoffnung, and her 1985/88 work Der pädophile Impuls.
Sexual deviance and prejudice
Throughout Western history, particularly factual or putative sexual deviance could only be seen as pathologically and thus counter-naturally motivated, harmful and corrupting in its consequences, criminal according to the laws, heinous and despicable to any decent person's sentience and morals, basically just plain evil. Most social out-groups in history were constructed by associating them with lewdness and sexual deviance, or, due to taboo making sexual deviance unmentionable directly, by means of cultural codifications for such that Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg related in detail after chronicling their cultural origins in Tabu Homosexualität.Such cultural codes for lewdness and sexual deviance particularly included sadism, insidiousness, madness, weakness, cowardice, untrustworthiness, obsessive lying, betrayal, treason, evil sorcery, satanism, witchcraft, intoxicating drugs and poisoning potions, laziness, stubbornness, waywardness, incorrigibility, physical diseases and ailments (especially limping). These cultural codifications always have been, until the present day, largely identical with the imaginary, or constructed, attributes that sexual minorities were, and are, tagged with.
Additional such codifying associations were patterned according to particular sexual deviances, in such that these particular sexual minorities were perceived as either biologically or mentally faulted in a way that associated them with those social groups or social categories that their particular sexuality was regarded as naturally belonging to; for instance, gay males were regarded as effeminate, i. e. womanish, as women were regarded as the only category of people that could legitimately feel sexual desire towards men.
Countering strategies
Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg critizizes as ineffective the traditional approach to prejudice of assuming that personal contact with out-group members might decrease prejudice towards their group, by pointing out, for instance, the societal situation of Jewish people in Austria-HungaryAustria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
prior to World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Even though the percentage of Jews in population was much lower in the German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
and thus Germans had much fewer personal contacts with Jews, anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
was much more common and radical in Austria-Hungary than it was in Germany at the time. Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg explains this pattern as due to above-mentioned self-maintenance of prejudice, the fact that prejudice seeks to self-corroborate, and prejudice's tendency to self-fulfill.
Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg lists three assumptively more effective countering strategies:
- Authorities, institutions, and the mass media must provide the general public with less biased, less emotional, and less scandalizing information regarding discriminated out-groups.
- More positive social identities relating to the particular factual traits of out-groups must be constructed and brought to attention both of the general public and individual out-group members.
- Collaborative goals must be provided in order to unite the majority in-group and minority out-groups for the same causes.
Editions
- 1989: Angst und Vorurteil: AIDS-Ängste als Gegenstand der Vorurteilsforschung, Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg. ISBN 3-499-18247-5
External links
- Angst und Vorurteil on Open LibraryOpen LibraryOpen Library is an online project intended to create “one web page for every book ever published”. Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive and has been funded in part by a grant from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation.-Books for the blind and...