From intimate relationships to global politics Sarah Schulman observes a continuum: that
inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability. Illuminating the difference
between Conflict and Abuse Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of
scapegoating. This deep brave and bold work reveals how punishment replaces personal and
collective self-criticism and shows why difference is so often used to justify cruelty and
shunning. Rooting the problem of escalation in negative group relationships Schulman
illuminates the ways in which cliques communities families and religious racial and
national groups bond through the refusal to change their self-concept. She illustrates how
Supremacy behaviour and Traumatized behaviour resemble each other through a shared inability
to tolerate difference. This important and sure to be controversial book brings insight into
contemporary and historical issues of personal racial and geo-political difference as tools
of escalation towards injustice exclusion and punishment whether the objects of
dehumanization are other individuals in our families or communities African Americans at the
hands of police people with HIV and Palestinians. Conflict Is Not Abuse is a searing
rejection of the cultural phenomenon of blame cruelty and scapegoating revealing how those
in positions of power exacerbate and manipulate fear of the other to avoid facing themselves.
