Volume 49, Issue 3, July 2023
Anne-Cathrine Wackerhausen
Pages 543-577
Dehumanization Clarified
What Are We Talking About, When We Talk About Dehumanization?
In this article, three new concepts of dehumanization are proposed in order to distinguish clearly between three different kinds of phenomena that are frequently conflated and misrepresented in current research: subjective dehumanization, detrimental conditions, and objective dehumanization. The article offers (i) a more fine-grained understanding of these three kinds of dehumanization phenomena, which in turn (ii) illuminates new strategies for conflict prevention. This is achieved through a process of conceptual engineering, where the boundaries of our concepts are redrawn, so they are better suited for the dealing with the phenomena in question.