Product Description: This book challenges a basic assumption held by many responsibility theorists: that agents must be morally responsible in the retrospective sense for anything in virtue of which they deserve praise or blame (the primacy assumption)...read more

Product Description: In his eye-opening book Why?, world-renowned social scientist Charles Tilly exposed some startling truths about the excuses people make and the reasons they give. Now he's back with further explorations into the complexities of human relationships, this time examining what's really going on when we assign credit or cast blame...read more

Product Description: Humans may have come a long way from the days when a goat was saddled with all the iniquities of the children of Israel and driven into the wilderness, but is the desperate need to find some organization or person to pin the blame on and absolve ourselves of responsibility really any more advanced? Charlie Campbell highlights the plight of all those others who have found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, illustrating how God needs the Devil as Sherlock Holmes needs Professor Moriarty or James Bond needs "Goldfinger...read more

One mark of interpersonal relationships is a tendency to blame. But what precise evaluations and responses constitute blame? Is it most centrally a judgment, or is it an emotion, or something else? Does blame express a demand, or embody a protest, or does it simply mark an impaired relationship? What accounts for its force or sting, and how similar is it to punishment?The essays in this volume explore answers to these (and other) questions about the nature of blame, but they also explore the various norms that govern the propriety of blame. The traditional question is whether anyone ever deserves to be blamed, but the essays here provide a fresh perspective by focusing on blame from the blamer's perspective instead. Is our tendency to blame a vice, something we should work to replace with more humane ways of relating, or does it rather lie at the very heart of a commitment to morality? What can we legitimately expect of each other, and in general, what sort of attitude do would-be blamers need to have in order to have the standing to blame? Hypocritical or self-righteous blame seems objectionable, but why?The contributions to this volume aim to give us a fuller picture of the nature and norms of blame, and more generally of the promises and perils of membership in the human moral community.

Product Description: This ground-breaking collection of research-based chapters addresses the themes of shame, blame and culpability in their historical perspective in the broad area of crime, violence and the modern state, drawing on less familiar territories such as Russia and Greece, not just on material from familiar locations in western Europe...read more

Product Description: The inspiring new book from the author of Emotional Bullshit reveals why no one is to blame-but everyone's accountable. For many, a rare day goes by in which the need to blame does not arise-be it to cover one's own errors or just to assign an unfortunate event some kind of name (i...read more

FROM HIS YEARS OF EXPERIENCE CONSULTING to leading companies, psychologist Ben Dattner has discovered that at the root of the worst problems we confront at work is the skewed allocation of blame and credit. In so many workplaces, people feel they’re playing a high-stakes game of “blame or be blamed,” which can be disastrous for the individuals who get caught up in it and can sink teams and afflict whole companies. Dattner presents compelling evidence that whether we fall into the trap of playing the blame game or learn to avoid the pitfalls is a major determinant of how successful we will be. The problem is that so many workplaces foster a blaming culture. Maybe you have a constantly blaming boss, or a colleague who is always taking credit for others’ work. All too often, individuals are scapegoated, teams fall apart, projects get derailed, and people become disengaged because fear and resentment have taken root. And what’s worse, the more emotionally charged a workplace is—maybe our jobs are threatened or we’re facing a particularly difficult challenge—the more emphatically people play the game, just when trust and collaboration are most needed. What can we do? We can learn to understand the hidden dynamics of human psychology that lead to this bad behavior so that we can inoculate ourselves against it and defuse the tensions in our own workplace. In lively prose that is as engaging as it is illuminating, Dattner tells a host of true stories of those he has worked with—from the woman who was so scapegoated by her colleagues that she decided to quit, to the clueless boss who was too quick to blame his staff. He shares a wealth of insight from the study of human evolution and psychology to reveal the underlying reasons why people are so prone to blaming and credit-grabbing; it’s not only human nature, it’s found throughout the animal kingdom. Even bats do it. He shows how our family experiences, gender, and culture also all shape the way we cope with credit and blame issues, and introduces eleven personality types that are especially prone to causing difficulties and illustrates how we can best cope with them. He also profiles how a number of outstanding leaders, from General Dwight Eisenhower and President Harry Truman to highly respected business figures such as former Intel CEO Andy Grove and Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, employed the power of taking blame and sharing credit to achieve great success. The only winning move in the blame game, Dattner shows, is not to play, and the insights and practical suggestions in this book will help readers, at any level of any organization and at any stage of their careers, learn to manage the crucial psychology of credit and blame for themselves and others.

The best-selling author of The Proper Care & Feeding of Husbands seeks to help the reader acknowledge that the past influences the present and explains how to understand each person's unique coping style and how to tap into the extraordinary quality of human spirit that will create the transition from victim to victor. Reprint. 200,000 first printing.

Product Description: Scanlon reframes current philosophical debates as he explores the moral permissibility of an action. Blame, he argues, is a response to the meaning of an action rather than its permissibility. This analysis leads to a novel account of the conditions of moral responsibility and to important conclusions about the ethics of blame...read more

Product Description: Blame is an unpopular and neglected notion: it goes against the grain of a therapeutically-oriented culture and has been far less discussed by philosophers than such related notions as responsibility and punishment. This book seeks to show that neither the opposition nor the neglect is justified...read more

Product Description: In these uplifting personal stories, ordinary people describe in their own words how the teachings of Kabbalah enabled them to move beyond blame and transform their life experiences from victim status to mastery. Renowned Kabbalist Yehuda Berg provides an engaging spiritual overview that makes the book useful as well as inspirational...read more

The best-selling author of The Proper Care & Feeding of Husbands seeks to help the reader acknowledge that the past influences the present and explains how to understand each person's unique coping style and how to tap into the extraordinary quality of human spirit that will create the transition from victim to victor. Simultaneous.

An associate professor of philosophy probes the issue of blame and culpability in crime by taking a hypothetical case of a woman who kills her husband and asking how much responsibility for the crime she would carry under five different scenarios. Original.

Scapegoats are a universal phenomenon, appearing in all societies at all times in groups large and small, in public and private organizations. Hardly a week passes without some media reference to someone or something being made a scapegoat. Tom Douglas examines the process of scapegoating from the perspectives of victims and perpetrators, tracing its development from earliest times as rite of atonement to the modern forms of the avoidance of blame and the victimisation of innocents. The differences and similarities between the ancient and modern forms are examined to reveal that despite the modern logical explanations of behaviour, the mystical element in the form of superstition is still evident. Directly responding to the Diploma in Social Work's call for texts on anti-discriminatory practice Scapegoats should become essential reading for all social workers in training and practice. Will also be a invaluable resource for all professionals engaging in groupwork and group workers in training.

(view table of contents)

Product Description: Survivors of trauma often experience strong feelings of guilt which can lead to depression, paranoia, physical complaints, and anxiety. The author counsels to respect this guilt and examine it while taking into account the whole situation, including one's own role during the event...read more

Explores the widespread phenomenon of misplaced anger that characterizes so many relationships in the 1990s, resulting from an increased intolerance to the feelings aroused by intimacy

Product Description: If we all could internalize the simple truths in this book, the world we live in and the organizations in which we work would be better places. Why? Because we would all finally understand that "God does not make junk". People are beautiful; they're just no perfect...read more

Explores the widespread phenomenon of misplaced anger that characterizes so many relationships in the 1990s, resulting from an increased intolerance to the feelings aroused by intimacy

The authors show couples how to develop healthy, loving relationships by avoiding misplaced anger and blame in their relationships and by teaching partners how to cope with the uncomfortable emotions that intimacy arouses and take responsibility for them.

Product Description: Based on the premise that when we blame we are abdicating responsibility, this short, concise book shows the damage caused by the current epidemic of finger pointing and blaming which permeates our society. Beyond Blame is for those readers interested in shifting paradigms and in taking greater responsibility for the quality of their lives...read more

Product Description: Focuses on the only party in a conflict that we have any control over: ourselves Conflict is an interactive process--you cannot look at a person who makes life difficult for you without also looking at yourself. While blaming others may lead to short-term relief, it often escalates conflicts and produces long-term damage...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

A clinical therapist and author of Managing Your Anxiety addresses the phenomenon of 'victimhood,' arguing that this approach to life can become an addictive, self-perpetuating cycle of therapy, recovery, and self-help. 20,000 first printing. Tour.