ABSTRACT
The concentration of the sacred in the person of the triumphant hero comes at the price of desacralizating others. The heroes, in the moment of triumph, can, and frequently do, produce victims. This chapter outlines why particular institutional arenas impede the cultural coding of evil as victims, whereas others give way to the cultural construction of victimhood. It also outlines the general structural position of the victim at the fringe of moral communities. What considers as genocide or exploitation is seen as normal or natural behavior on the part of the perpetrators and as a kind of natural catastrophe on the part of the victims. The chapter also defines different paradigms of coping with the twilight zone of restricted membership at the fringe of human societies. The social construction of victims has a core function for the distinction between center and periphery, between inside and outside, between subjects and objects.
