This book sets out to explore three conflict contexts in which religion is generally acknowledged to be at least a factor, although some minimize religion's role while others identify it as a major cause of violence. The book evaluates what role religion does play (or has played) in the Northern Ireland, Bosnian and Israel-Palestinian conflicts including the contribution of the women's movement in Ireland. It takes seriously the psychological tendency to demonise those who do not share our views and will argue that religion, although one factor among others, does all too easily lends itself in support of conflict. The author argues that stories of how religion has helped to solve conflict are rare, which is a major handicap when advocating that religion can play a peacemaking role. He argues that scriptures can be used to justify conflict and that an alternative interpretative paradigm is needed if this tendency is to be reversed. Given that, for religious people, the reduction of scriptures to totally human constructs is hugely problematical, the book will argue that the allegorical approach is more fruitful than the option of viewing all scriptures as human response to the divine. Drawing on post-modern theory, the book also argues that, though scriptures may be 'divine', interpretation is always human. However, post-modernity's maxim that there are no single or authoritative interpretations of any text, that all interpretations are equally valid, including those that justify violence, will be rejected on the basis that there is a higher moral ground on which humans should stand which values peace. Drawing on the philosophy of E. W Hocking, the book's conclusion suggests that peacewill be best guaranteed when religions transcend their particularities and human individuals commune directly with the divine, without the necessity of organised religions as mediators. Intended as a course text, discussion questions are included but it is hoped that the book will also be of interest to a general readership.

This book sets out to explore three conflict contexts in which religion is generally acknowledged to be at least a factor, although some minimize religion's role while others identify it as a major cause of violence. The book evaluates what role religion does play (or has played) in the Northern Ireland, Bosnian and Israel-Palestinian conflicts including the contribution of the women's movement in Ireland. It takes seriously the psychological tendency to demonise those who do not share our views and will argue that religion, although one factor among others, does all too easily lends itself in support of conflict. The author argues that stories of how religion has helped to solve conflict are rare, which is a major handicap when advocating that religion can play a peacemaking role. He argues that scriptures can be used to justify conflict and that an alternative interpretative paradigm is needed if this tendency is to be reversed. Given that, for religious people, the reduction of scriptures to totally human constructs is hugely problematical, the book will argue that the allegorical approach is more fruitful than the option of viewing all scriptures as human response to the divine. Drawing on post-modern theory, the book also argues that, though scriptures may be 'divine', interpretation is always human. However, post-modernity's maxim that there are no single or authoritative interpretations of any text, that all interpretations are equally valid, including those that justify violence, will be rejected on the basis that there is a higher moral ground on which humans should stand which values peace. Drawing on the philosophy of E. W Hocking, the book's conclusion suggests that peace will be best guaranteed when religions transcend their particularities and human individuals commune directly with the divine, without the necessity of organised religions as mediators. Intended as a course text, discussion questions are included but it is hoped that the book will also be of interest to a general readership.

Violence remains endemic in today's society. Religious morality and social prejudice can lead to many acts of violence going unnoticed. 'Weep Not for Your Children' presents a selection of essays that examine the ways in which religion and violence interconnect. The presence of violence in the origins of cultural and religious norms is examined. The essays cover a wide range of examples of violence: from the Holocaust to domestic violence and from the violence created by economic systems to that created by the construction of gender itself. 'Weep Not for Your Children' challenges and provokes the reader to think beyond traditional associations of good and evil.

A special issue of Radical History Review In bringing together a geographically and temporally broad range of interdisciplinary historical scholarship, this issue of Radical History Review offers an expansive examination of gender, violence, and the state. Through analyses of New York penitentiaries, anarchists in early twentieth-century Japan, and militarism in the 1990s, contributors reconsider how historical conceptions of masculinity and femininity inform the persistence of and punishments for gendered violence. The contributors to a section on violence and activism challenge the efficacy of state solutions to gendered violence in a contemporary U.S. context, highlighting alternatives posited by radical feminist and queer activists. In five case studies drawn from South Africa, India, Ireland, East Asia, and Nigeria, contributors analyze the archive's role in shaping current attitudes toward gender, violence, and the state, as well as its lasting imprint on future quests for restitution or reconciliation. This issue also features a visual essay on the "false positives" killings in Colombia and an exploration of Zanale Muholi's postapartheid activist photography. Contributors: Lisa Arellano, Erica L. Ball, Josh Cerretti, Jonathan Culleton, Amanda Frisken, Raphael Ginsberg, Deana Heath, Efeoghene Igor, Catherine Jacquet, Jessie Kindig, Benjamin N. Lawrance, Jen Manion, Xhercis Mendez, Luis Moran, Claudia Salamanca, Tomoko Seto, Carla Tsampiras, Jennifer Yeager

In this book, Vincenzo Ruggiero offers a typology of different forms of political violence. From systemic and institutional violence, to the behaviour of crowds, to armed conflict and terrorism, Ruggiero draws on a range of perspectives from criminology, social theory, political science, critical legal studies and literary criticism to consider how these forms of violence are linked in an interdependent field of forces. Ruggiero argues that systemic violence encourages more institutional violence, which in turn weakens the ability of citizens to set up political agendas for change. He advocates for a reduction of all types of violence, which can be enacted through fairer distribution of resources and the provision of political space for contention and negotiation. This book will be of interest to all those engaged in research on violence, terrorism, armed conflict and the crimes of the powerful. It makes an important contribution to criminological and social theory.

Violence remains endemic in today's society. Religious morality and social prejudice can lead to many acts of violence going unnoticed. 'Weep Not for Your Children' presents a selection of essays that examine the ways in which religion and violence interconnect. The presence of violence in the origins of cultural and religious norms is examined. The essays cover a wide range of examples of violence: from the Holocaust to domestic violence and from the violence created by economic systems to that created by the construction of gender itself. 'Weep Not for Your Children' challenges and provokes the reader to think beyond traditional associations of good and evil.

Social conflicts are ubiquitous and inherent in organized social life. This volume examines the origins and regulation of violent identity conflicts. It focuses on the regulation of conflict: the constraining, directing, and repression of violence through institutional rules and understandings. The core question the authors address is how violence is regulated and the social and political consequences of such regulation.

The contributors provide a multidisciplinary multi-regional analysis of identity conflicts and their regulation. The chapters focus on the forging and suppression of religious and ethnic identities, problematic national identities, the recreation of identity in post-conflict peace-building efforts, and the forging of collective identities in the process of democratic state building. The instances of violent conflict treated here range across the globe from Central and South America, to Asia, to the Balkans, and to the Islamic world.

One of the key findings is that conflicts involving religious, ethnic, or national identity are inherently more violence prone and require distinctive methods of regulation. Identity is a question both of power and of integrity. This means that both material and symbolic needs must be addressed in order to constrain or regulate these conflicts. Accordingly, some chapters draw on a political-economy approach that places primary emphasis on resources, organization, and interests, while others develop a cultural approach focusing on how identities are constructed, grievances defined, blame attributed, and redress articulated.

This volume offers new ideas about the regulation of identity conflicts, at both the global and local level, that engage both tradition and modernization. It will be of interest to policymakers, political scientists, human rights activists, historians, and anthropologists.

Troubling Masculinities: Terror, Gender, and Monstrous Others in American Film Post-9/11 is the first multigenre study of representations of masculinity following the emergence of violent terror as a plot element in American cinema after September 11, 2001. Across a broad range of subgenres - including disaster melodrama, monster movies, postapocalyptic science fiction, discovered footage and home invasion horror, action-thrillers, and frontier westerns - author Glen Donnar examines the impact of "terror-Others," from Arab terrorists to giant monsters, especially in relation to cinematic representations in earlier periods of national turmoil. Donnar demonstrates that the reassertion of masculinity and American national identity in post-9/11 cinema repeatedly unravels across genres. Taking up critical arguments about Hollywood's attempts to resolve male crisis through Orientalizing figures of terror, he shows how this failure reflects an inability to effectively extinguish the threat or frightening difference of terror. The heroes in these movies are unable to heal themselves or restore order, often becoming as destructive as the threats they are supposed to be fighting. Donnar concludes that interrelated anxieties about masculinity and nationhood continue to affect contemporary American cinema and politics. By showing how persistent these cultural fears are, the volume offers an important counternarrative to this supposedly unprecedented moment in American history.

Hijackings and bombings have plagued civil aviation since 1930 and air rage incidents are on the rise. While there is aircraft and in-flight training available for air marshals, other first responders receive minimal training on inflight security awareness and protocols. There are no other resources currently available to flight crews or armed first responders that specifically address in-flight security and how to address threats of disturbances on airplanes. How to Stop a Hijacking provides readers with fundamental principles on how to think more critically about onboard security threats. The aircraft cabin poses unique environment and security challenges, and first responders can apply security awareness and critical thinking skills to establish a safer environment in the cabin and airport for everyone onboard. The lessons in this book are driven with the central objective of teaching the reader how to counter inflight aggression and maintain tactical control of the cabin. Written by a former federal air marshal instructor, this book looks at the recent rash of air rage incidents and violence on airplanes, in addition to the real and ever-present threat of hijack or potential explosive device. How to Stop a Hijacking is a practical guide that offers methodological and tactically proven strategies for stopping violent acts onboard an aircraft inflight.

This innovative book tells the fascinating tale of the long histories of violence, punishment, and the human body, and how they are all connected. Taking the decline of violence and the transformation of punishment as its guiding themes, the book highlights key dynamics of historical and social change, and charts how a refinement and civilizing of manners, and new forms of celebration and festival, accompanied the decline of violence.

Pieter Spierenburg, a leading figure in historical criminology, skillfully extends his view over three continents, back to the middle ages and even beyond to the Stone Age. Ranging along the way from murder to etiquette, from social control to popular culture, from religion to death, and from honor to prisons, every chapter creatively uses the theories of Norbert Elias, while also engaging with the work of Foucault and Durkheim.

The scope and rigor of the analysis will strongly interest scholars of criminology, history, and sociology, while the accessible style and the intriguing stories on which the book builds will appeal to anyone interested in the history of violence and punishment in civilization.

Amidst the carnage of the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg posed a stark choice for humanity: socialism or barbarism. Violence Today asks if current patterns mark a decent into the barbarism that Luxemburg feared and if a just society, one capable of transcending the endemic violence of the neoliberal order, is possible in the new century.

This powerful and provocative new collection explores the roots of violence -- military, terrorist, criminal, and casual -- in contemporary society. It analyzes the social context, history, and structure of modern violence, casting light on patterns and practices from America's inner cities and prisons to "failed states" like Afghanistan. Violence Today also gives special attention to debate within the Left about violence, including a controversial defense of armed struggle.

Contributors: John Berger, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, Peter Thomas, Vivek Chibber, Christian Parenti, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Georgi Derluguian, Sofiri Joab-Peterside, Ulrich Oslender, Achin Vanaik, Barabara Harriss-White, Lynne Segal, Joe Sim and Steve Tombs, Dennis Rodgers, Avishai Erlich, Philip Green, Garance Upham, Mary des Chenes and Stephen Mikesell, Samir Amin.

An urgent look at the relationship between guns, the police, and race The United States is steeped in guns, gun violence-and gun debates. As arguments rage on, one issue has largely been overlooked-Americans who support gun control turn to the police as enforcers of their preferred policies, but the police themselves disproportionately support gun rights over gun control. Yet who do the police believe should get gun access? When do they pursue aggressive enforcement of gun laws? And what part does race play in all of this? Policing the Second Amendment unravels the complex relationship between the police, gun violence, and race. Rethinking the terms of the gun debate, Jennifer Carlson shows how the politics of guns cannot be understood-or changed-without considering how the racial politics of crime affect police attitudes about guns. Drawing on local and national newspapers, interviews with close to eighty police chiefs, and a rare look at gun licensing processes, Carlson explores the ways police talk about guns, and how firearms are regulated in different parts of the country. Examining how organizations such as the National Rifle Association have influenced police perspectives, she describes a troubling paradox of guns today-while color-blind laws grant civilians unprecedented rights to own, carry, and use guns, people of color face an all-too-visible system of gun criminalization. This racialized framework-undergirding who is "a good guy with a gun" versus "a bad guy with a gun"-informs and justifies how police understand and pursue public safety. Policing the Second Amendment demonstrates that the terrain of gun politics must be reevaluated if there is to be any hope of mitigating further tragedies.

"Aggression and Adaptation" raises thought provoking questions about interpersonal functioning within social groups. The reader may find him/herself entertaining thoughts about the nature of goodness as the chapters suggest that aggressive behavior can offer significant avenues for personal growth, goal attainment, and bolstering one's social standing. The volume brings to light alternative points of view to the prevailing orthodoxy that aggression equals pathology. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book features evolutionary, school, feminist, historical, and methodological perspectives.
Adaptation is addressed at multiple levels, the first of which is ultimate causation. Four chapters cover the aggression-adaptation link from various evolutionary perspectives. Succeeding chapters focus on: adaptation as psychological adjustment; aggression in the peer system and the contexts in which these systems occur; and the self-other dialectic in societal context, highlighting that aggressive children are often well-embedded in the social network.
Intended for researchers in developmental, evolutionary, social, personality, and educational psychology, as well as developmental psychopathologists, this book is also suitable for advanced courses on social-personality development, the psychology of violence, aggression, peer relationships, and human motivation.

This unique volume seeks both to historicize and to deconstruct the pervasive, almost ritualistic, association of Africa with forms of terrorism as well as extreme violence, the latter bordering on and including genocide.

Africa is tendentiously associated with violence in the popular and academic imagination alike. Written by leading authorities in postcolonial studies and African history, as well as highly promising emergent scholars, this book highlights political, social and cultural processes in Africa which incite violence or which facilitate its negotiation or negation through non-violent social practice. The chapters cover diverse historical periods ranging from fourteenth century Ethiopia and early twentieth century Cameroon, to contemporary analyses set in Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast and South Africa. It makes a crucial contribution to a revitalized understanding of the social and historical coordinates of violence - or its absence - in African settings.

Violence and Non-Violence in Africa will be of interest to students and scholars of African history and anthropology, colonialism and post-colonialism, political science and Africanist cultural studies.

'Violence' is virtually synonymous in the popular imagination with the period of the Later Roman Empire-a time when waves of barbarian invaders combined with urban mobs and religious zealots to bring an end to centuries of peace and serenity. All of these images come together in the Visigothic sack of the city of Rome in A.D. 410, a date commonly used for the fall of the entire empire. But was this period in fact as violent as it has been portrayed? A new generation of scholars in the field of Late Antiquity has called into question the standard narrative, pointing to evidence of cultural continuity and peaceful interaction between "barbarians" and Romans, Christians and pagans. To assess the state of this question, the fifth biennial 'Shifting Frontiers' conference was devoted to the theme of 'Violence in Late Antiquity'. Conferees addressed aspects of this question from standpoints as diverse as archaeology and rhetoric, anthropology and economics. A selection of the papers then delivered have been prepared for the present volume, along with others commissioned for the purpose and a concluding essay by Martin Zimmerman, reflecting on the theme of the book. The four sections on Defining Violence, 'Legitimate' Violence, Violence and Rhetoric, and Religious Violence are each introduced by a theme essay from a leading scholar in the field. While offering no definitive answer to the question of violence in Late Antiquity, the papers in this volume aim to stimulate a fresh look at this age-old problem.

Sexual violence, in all its forms, is a crime for which anecdotal accounts and scholarly reports suggest victims in their great majority do not receive adequate 'justice' or redress. The theory and practice of restorative justice is rapidly developing and offers some well-argued new avenues for dealings with crime in general. It has the potential to be extended to cases of sexual violence and a number of small scale programmes are already underway across the world. Restorative Responses to Sexual Violence examines this innovative justice paradigm in more depth in the particular context of sexual trauma and violence in order to establish the empirical realities of restorative justice approaches in cases of sexual violence, and considers how such approaches could be developed adequately in the future. This book is divided into two parts, each representing a key area of research and practice: theoretical and conceptual frameworks, and justice and therapeutic perspectives. This international collection brings together leading expert scholars and practitioners to offer both theoretical and practical perspectives on restorative justice and sexual violence. This book will be of interest to researchers in the field of law, criminology, psychology, social science, social work and psychotherapy, as well as practitioners in the fields of criminal justice, restorative justice and sex offender and victim trauma therapies.

Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that it never dies peacefully. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world. The "Four Horsemen" of leveling-mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues-have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich. Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future. An essential contribution to the debate about inequality, The Great Leveler provides important new insights about why inequality is so persistent-and why it is unlikely to decline anytime soon.

The conventional wisdom since the suicide attacks of 9/11 is that the world has been transformed and, according to President Bush, "September 11 changed the strategic thinking" of the US. Challenging both of these assumptions, this volume highlights the gap between the new security environment and the notion of state-centered national security favored by Washington, and shows how a Cold War phenomenon known as the national security state, in which defense and foreign policy interests essentially converge, remains largely intact. Indeed, the Bush administration's National Security strategy of 2002 has reinvigorated and even extended the idea of national security.
Paradoxically, the renewed emphasis on a distinctly state-centered approach to security, including the war on terror, has unfolded during an era of deepening globalization. This book is one of the first major attempts to identify what is novel and what is constant in today's strategic landscape.
Drawing on the international expertise of fourteen specialists, the book examines four inter-related themes. These embrace the impact of globalization on the concept of security; the strategic outlook of the world's only superpower, the US; the new conflicts that have come to characterize the post-Cold War era; and efforts to regulate the emerging patterns of conflict in the world.
This volume will be essential reading for students of strategic studies, security studies and international relations.

"David Cortright is a life-long activist and respected scholar. In Gandhi and Beyond, he convincingly shows the power of nonviolence as a philosophy of life, not just a method of social action. His practical analysis of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez, and others brings new insights and inspiration to those of us attempting to live that philosophy, and to those, especially a new generation, who are seeking a better way to respond to their world. I commend this book to all who are seeking an alternative to violence." Jim Wallis, author of God's Politics and editor of Sojourners Is there room for nonviolence in an age of terrorism? Drawing on the legend and lessons of Gandhi, Cortright traces the history of nonviolent social activism through the early twentieth century to the civil rights movement, the Vietnam era, and up to the present war in Iraq. Gandhi and Beyond offers a critical evaluation and refinement of Gandhi's message, laying the foundation for a renewed and deepened dedication to nonviolence as the universal path to social progress and antidote to terrorism.

Identity, Morality, and Threat offers a critical examination of the social psychological processes that generate outgroup devaluation and ingroup glorification as the source of conflict. Dr. Daniel Rothbart and Dr. Karina Korostelina bring together essays analyzing the causal relationship between escalating violence and opposing images of the Self and Other. The essays confront the practice of demonizing the Other as a justification for violent conflict and the conditions that enable these distorted images to shape future decisions. The authors provide insight into the possibilities for transforming threat-narratives into collaboration-narratives, and for changing past opposition into mutual understanding. Identity, Morality, and Threat is a strong contribution to the study of identity-based conflict and psychological defenses.

Dwellers of Memory is an ethnographic study of how urban youth in Colombia came to be at the intersection of multiple forms of political, drug-related, and territorial violence in a country undergoing forty years of internal armed conflict. It examines the ways in which youth in the city of Medellin reconfigure their lives and, cultural worlds in the face of widespread violence. This violence has transgressed familiar boundaries and destroyed basic social supports and networks of trust. This volume attempts to map and understand its patterns and flows.

The author explores how Medellin's youth locate themselves and make, sense of violence through contradictory and shifting memory practices. The violence has not completely taken over their cultural worlds or their subjectivities. Practices of remembering and forgetting are key methods by which these youth rework their identities and make sense of the impact of violence on their lives. While the experience of violence is rooted in urban space and urban youth, the memory dwellers use a sense of place, oral histories of death, and narratives of fear as survival strategies for inhabiting violent neighborhoods. The book also examines fissures in memory, the contradictory constructions of young people's subjective selves, and practices of gendered violence and terror. All have and continue to pose risks to the historical memory and cultural survival of the residents of Medellin.

Dwellers of Memory offers an alternative ethnographic approach to the study of memory and violence, one that calls into question whether the, role of the ethnographer of violence is to be a mere witness of terror, or to oppose it by writing against it. It will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, and students of, ethnography.

Abuse, although often not detected or reported, existed in every facility we surveyed. It is a serious problem. Old, weak, and often cognitively impaired, nursing home patients can be easy targets for physical, psychological, material, and financial mistreatment at the hands of those entrusted with their care, safety, and well-being. Maltreatment of Patients in Nursing Homes: There Is No Safe Place examines the dark side of nursing homes, where not every employee has the commitment of Mother Theresa. This groundbreaking book applies criminological theory to help develop practical methods of controlling abuse and presents the results of the first and only nationwide study on the theft of patients' belongings, a form of abuse too often ignored by the nursing home industry. Maltreatment of Patients in Nursing Homes surveys employees, administrators, and family members of patients in 47 nursing homes throughout the United States. Their responses provide invaluable insights on a wide range of topics, including the social and psychological factors that cause different types of abuse, characteristics of nursing home patients and employees, the bureaucracy of nursing homes, victimization rates, workforce issues of nursing home aides, and federal regulations for nursing homes. The information gained from the surveys forms the basis for detailed recommendations for creating a safer environment and reducing all forms of abuse, including theft-prevention training programs, background checks and improved screening of potential employees, education and advocacy for current staff, and the reform of federal regulations. Maltreatment of Patients in Nursing Homes examines: types of physical abuse (restraints, sexual abuse, neglect) the who, what, and why of nursing home theft types of financial abuse (trust accounts, bank accounts, improper charges for services and drugs, identity theft) types of psychological abuse (abandonment, segregation, childlike treatment, verbal abuse) effects of psychological abuse (depression, learned helplessness, psychiatric disorders) reasons for abuse by employees (staff turnover, job burnout, job dissatisfaction, caregiver stress) One of the few books to deal with abuse of the elderly outside a domestic setting, Maltreatment of Patients in Nursing Homes: There Is No Safe Place interprets and analyzes abuse to provide new ways of thinking about this growing problem and new methods of preventing it from growing any more widespread.

They usually start out as ordinary people, doing their best to deal with mixed messages in a complex world. What they donOt realize is that they may be the target of a violent system that is building an obedient workforce. One day theyOre enjoying a few laughs with buddies, and seemingly the next day, they wake up as human killing machines. And they allowed it to happen. Addressing one of the most serious threats to the world today, Human Killing Machines applies the model of systematic indoctrination to case studies of brutality in Iran, Nazi Germany, Al Qaeda, and Abu Ghraib. The book reveals how these transformations take place_how systems redefine morality to turn ordinary people into torturers, terrorists, and genocidal killers. Analyzing the key differences between these cases also helps to identify the safeguards which limit violence. Lankford demonstrates the weaknesses of indoctrination, the ways heroic individuals have resisted its influence, and the potential for countermeasures. Based on these examples, he offers recommendations for how we can begin to reform the U.S. military and increase its accountability, reduce Al Qaeda terroristsO commitment to their missions, and spark an awakening in Iran so that the oppressive regime goes out with a whimper_not with a bang.

This book explores the nature of power in persons, groups, and nations by asking a question that we can understand in contemporary terms: what would Bill Gates do if he had Hitler's absolute power? It is a sociological question that exposes power as a tool of control over the powerless, not as a psychological trait or manners of personal interactions. With Hitler's power, any individual, group, or nation could become as crazy as Hitler or as cruel as the Nazis. Call from the Cave argues that the savage struggle for power, exemplified in the free market system of America-history's first and purest "natural" society-is in our very human nature. In the footsteps of the ancient Romans and the recent Nazis, we push on in every waking moment of our lives to expand our power and to control the souls and minds of other human beings to do our bidding. The book concludes that this is the very destiny of humanity we cannot escape.