Evil

Presenter: Prof Adam Possamai

ABSTRACT: What is evil and how can it be understood? If some would see this as a social construction depending on a socio-cultural situation, others would understand this as a psychological trait and/or a supernatural phenomenon that oppresses us. But what is the real evil, if it exists? Is it the biological and/or psychiatric root found in serial killers, or is it the devil himself? And what if evil is used as a tool of social control, with labelling a person or group as evil being its first step? Also, in art and popular culture, evil fascinates (e.g. Georges Bataille’s notion of transgression) and repulses, and can be embraced by some and rejected by others. And when it comes to the supernatural realm, evil must be harnessed or exorcised. Are we safe to think that evil is rare and an extraordinary encounter? That is assuming that evil is circumscribed in extreme situations, is a pathological trait of a rare breed of people, and/or is a supernatural force that people do not often encounter. Historical accounts and various psychological experiments offer another proposition: evil, according to Hannah Arendt, can be banal.  This paper argues that evil cannot be reduced to any single explanation and must be approached through an interdisciplinary lens that holds these frameworks in productive tension.

Presenter Bio: Adam Possamai is Professor of Sociology and the Associate Dean Global, Partnerships, and Advancement in the Faculty of SABEL at Western Sydney University. He has recently edited with David Tittensor Muslims in Contemporary Australia (Brill, 2025), with James Richardson and Bryan Turner the second edition of The Sociology of Shari’a: Case Studies from Around the World (Springer, 2023), with Anthony Blasi, The Sage Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion (2020), and with Giuseppe Giordan, The Social Scientific Study of Exorcism in Christianity (Springer, 2020). He is the author of Religion and Change in Australia (with David Tittensor, Routledge, 2022) and The i-zation of Society, Religion, and neoliberal Post-Secularism (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018). He is currently completing his forthcoming books on Evil and on the Sociology of Horror.