Charles Derber - Bully Nation: How the American Establishment Creates a Bullying Society

PRAISE FOR BULLY NATION

A canny and sobering look at bullying behavior and how it permeates our nations major institutions. When children do it, we abhor it. When our leaders do it, we usually applaud it. The authors remind us.

Oliver Stone

This thoughtful study expertly dissects the bullying scourge that poisons lives and society, exposing its roots in the institutional structure of a militaristic capitalist culture that it reflects and nurtures, while also revealing the encouraging reactions that may offer cures for the malady and the factors that engender it.

Noam Chomsky

Bully Nation is the most comprehensive analysis of bullying yet published. It is a brilliant book that refuses to define bullying as merely a psychological concept. Instead, it addresses in great detail the interplay of bullying as having its roots in a range of historical, economic, political, and social conditions. In this instance, bullying functions as a metaphor to connect the private to the public, specific acts of violence to larger forms of systemic violence. Rather than treat bullying as part of a rite of passage confined to the often difficult process of growing up, Derber and Magrass treat it as a systemic force that produces values, social relations, structures, and collective identities steeped in violence and aggression. This is a powerful and compelling book that addresses one of the most important social problems of our time. It should be read by all educators, parents, and anyone else interested in a world free of aggression and violence. Bully Nation deserves widespread attention.

Henry Giroux, author of Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism

Clear and compelling. Its case for shifting our focus from individual schoolyard bullies to power imbalances in American society is badly needed in current discussions of bullying. A brilliant example of the sociological imagination at work.

Daniel Geary, author of Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and Its Legacy

A welcome departure from the popular habit of reducing distasteful behavior to family pathologies or genetic dispositions, Bully Nation is an important example of how intelligent social science can help heal the world. If bullying is rooted in history and structured by institutions, then citizen action can do something about it.

John Ehrenberg, author of Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea

Bully Nation is absolutely terrifican important, powerful, and timely book that should be read by academic and public audiences alike. The authors have done a remarkable job of taking the topical social problem of bullying, which has received a great deal of attention over the past decade, and extrapolating it to economic, political, corporate, and militaristic bullying. We come to understand that bullying isnt just for the schoolyard, its a sociopathology woven throughout our culture and guiding much of the way that the political economy is run. Their illuminating analysis illustrates how corporations and governments bully not only citizensthe 99 percentbut also the planet, and with reckless abandon. The consequences are potentially direfor our culture, for the middle class, for the nations and worlds poor, and for the survival of the planet. Without question, this is a book that will have wide appeal to academics, students, and public audiences. I imagine using this book in my own courses and am already anticipating with great excitement the important discussion that will be opened with my students as they grapple with the bully nation, and with the most important issues facing their generation.

Jonathan White, coauthor of Sociologists in Action: Sociology, Social Change, and Social Justice

Derber and Magrass force us to rethink our concept of bullying. Moving beyond the relatively limited focus on the psychological paradigm and interactions among children, they instead situate the process in a broader institutional context and relationships among adults. Their creative and expert treatment of bullying brings in the economy, the military, dominant political organizations, and indeed global inequalities as well. Their analysis of structural bullying fulfills C. Wright Millss call for a sociological imagination that links personal problems to our social world. Their contribution offers new ideas, not only on the concept and sources of the behavior, but also on the direction where more humane and effective solutions will be found.

Paul Joseph, professor of sociology at Tufts University, past president of the Peace Studies Association, and editor of The SAGE Encyclopedia of War: Social Science Perspectives

Bully Nation

Bully
Nation

How the American Establishment
Creates a Bullying Society

Charles Derber and Yale R. Magrass

2016 by the University Press of Kansas

All rights reserved

Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66045), which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Derber, Charles, author. | Magrass, Yale R., author.

Title: Bully nation : how the American establishment creates a bullying society / Charles Derber, Yale Magrass.

Description: Lawrence : University Press of Kansas, 2016. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015049989| ISBN 9780700622603 (hardback) | ISBN 9780700622641 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: BullyingUnited States. | AggressivenessUnited States. | ViolenceUnited States. | BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Violence in Society. | HISTORY / United States / 20th Century. | HISTORY / United States / 21st Century.

Classification: LCC BF637.B85 .D47 2016 | DDC 302.34/30973dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049989.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication is recycled and contains 30 percent postconsumer waste. It is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Acknowledgments

We first want to thank our editor, Michael Briggs, who proposed that we write this book. Mike not only inspired the volume but also provided intellectual and social support all through the process. We are deeply grateful.

We would like to thank as well the colleagues, reviewers, and friends who read all or part of the manuscript and offered constructive suggestions. These include Jonathan White, Henry Giroux, Paul Joseph, Javier Trevino, David Karp, and John Williamson.

I, Charles Derber, want to thank Elena Kolesnikova for her heroic patience and support throughout the many hours I devoted to working on the book.

I, Yale Magrass, must thank Ana Matos for providing substantial research material and helping edit several chapters. She often called my attention to issues that I had overlooked or misstated, which proved most helpful.

We want to gratefully acknowledge the support of Randall Wallace and the Wallace Action Fund in making this book possible. Randall helped inspire this work and played a major role in helping us disseminate the book and shape the public conversation on bullying.

Bully Nation

CHAPTER ONE

Rethinking Bullying

From the Individual to the Institution