Dr. Philippe Cotter, historian and researcher in the sociology of violence, presents:

Violence and Modernity: Challenges and Perspectives

In people’s minds, extreme violence is an enigma.  The tortures inflicted on defenseless victims seem to defy reason.  Yet, the fact that these incidents keep recurring is proof that there are rules governing them.  It is these rules that Philippe Cotter attempts to isolate in his research.

As his presentation will show, the rules governing extreme violence are clearly defined and they are to be found in individual as well as collective violence.  To categorize them is the first step towards implementing preventative measures which will help to protect the rational majority from a dangerous minority.  Practice and theory are inextricably linked in the analysis of “organized insanity” that is extreme violence.

What are the roots of extreme violence?  Philippe Cotter examines the common origins of numerous tragedies of violence that have marked the 20th Century and the beginning of this millennium.  An inventory is taken of the catalysts of Nazism, terrorism and serial killers, and they will be placed in comparison along a journey that takes us into the ante-room of murderous insanity.  The journey continues and brings us into the complacent mobs that are ready to support expansionist goals of bloody dictators, mafia-like gangs, or sectarian networks like al-Qaeda.

Philippe Cotter invites us finally to take a preventive viewpoint, and to question ourselves on our capacity to integrate into a modern world without falling back onto the dangerous devices of domination and constraint.

Dr. Philippe Cotter is a researcher in the field of sociology of violence.  After studying history and international relations at the University of Geneva. He obtained his PhD in International Relations at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva with work on the psychopathology of violence.

Besides having worked for the University of Geneva, the Geneva Business Institute, and the Graduate Institute of International Studies, and having published in different media, Philippe has authored a first book “Nazisme, terrorisme et tueurs en série: l’énigme de la violence extrême” (Editions Eclectica, Geneva, 2006), which would translate to “Nazism, Terrorism, and Serial Killers: The Enigma of Extreme Violence”.  This book is the result of several years of research on the common roots of all kinds of violence.