John H. Evans (1) (1965–)

Tediously written. Argues that one's theory of what it means to be "human" impacts attitudes towards human rights. Although his awkward operationalizations of the relevant variables makes the generalizability of the results questionable (his understanding of human rights is particularly naive and simplistic, referring to little more than mistreatment in any way, but not all mistreatment is a violation of human rights), it is an interesting claim nonetheless. The biggest failing of the book is that having used his university sample to test a few hypotheses, he never attempts to apply those results to the real world to see if the help us understand reality. Evans is very satisfied to putter with his small sample, unbothered by any possible external validity of his work. The recent disgust the public has expressed to helping Syrian refugees, for example, directly contradicts his conclusions that a Christian theological viewpoint disposes one toward equality of treatment.

The author has only enough content here for a journal article. To plump it into a full book, he recounts in excruciating details the full interview records of the limited number of subjects upon which his argument is based. Whereas a better writer would choose illustrative exemplars, Evans subjects us to the retelling of how every participant responded to every question of the formal interview. He should have been reminded that the plural of anecdote is not "data." Most readers can stop after chapter 3. The final two thirds of the book is redundant and not very interesting.

I am surprised this manuscript was accepted for publication by Oxford; that press is usually more demanding than this.… (mehr)