2017 Douglass Prize Winner: Nitzan Shoshan

The 2017 William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology was awarded to Nitzan Shoshan for his book,  The Management of Hate: nation, affect, and the governance of right-wing extremism in Germany. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (2016).

The Management of Hate is an outstanding book in the quality and scope of its scholarship, its ethnographic richness, and the elegance of its prose. Based on a study of extreme right youth in Berlin, accessed by the author via social workers, the book explores official and policy-led attempts to control public expressions of hate. Through detailed ethnographic work, combined with highly accomplished conceptual and empirical scholarship, the book demonstrates how the ‘management of hate’ is an ambivalent set of state structures, procedures and practices that are aimed at somehow containing the public expression and implications of hate. The book demonstrates how the author’s approach could address a potentially much wider field concerning how state structures work towards attempting (and often failing) to manage the public expression of particular emotions. The Management of Hate is a deeply erudite and timely work, addressing a topic that urgently needs this quality of attention – not only in Europe, but also in many other parts of the world.

Other comments made by the judges:
“Allowing the reader to accompany right-wing extremist groups in Germany, in this rich and high-quality ethnography, the author succeeds in debating major arguments on power, racism, rights, citizenship and politics that have been (re)gaining predominance in Europe today. An excellent and ambitious study, and a pleasure to read.”

“The Management of Hate is: 1) topical as the far right is important for understanding Europe within and beyond the EU (taking for example Russia and Ukraine as comparative cases and not just the ones Shoshan addresses) as well as the USA, where Trump has tapped into the American version of Heimat ideologies. 2) It is an important contribution for understanding nationalist sentiments precisely as sentiments, that is, emotions and states of affect. 3) In this and other aspects this is a study that is interesting not just because it is about Europe: the scope of theoretical discussion is impressive and speaks to a number of important theoretical debates.”

Sarah F. Green, President-elect of the SAE and Chair of the Panel of Judges, University of Helsinki, Finland

Catarina Frois, Panel Judge, Centre for Research in Anthropology, ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal

Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, Panel Judge, HSE, St. Petersburg, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Russia