What is the basis for choosing a nonviolent response to conflict and violence? By presenting and analyzing some of the most significant answers that have been given to this question throughout history, this anthology of writings from both Western and nonwestern traditions proposes principled and strategic nonviolence as a realistic alternative. It includes a selection of historical sources on nonviolence--ranging from the Bhagavad-Gita to the Bible--as well as a wide range of writings by authors such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela, who have contributed to both the theory and the practice of nonviolence. Besides tracing the historical development of the concept, this volume also suggests ways of applying nonviolence to our everyday lives in the first decade of the 21st century, which the United Nations General Assembly has declared to be the Decade for Education for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence.

This edited volume examines the implications for international development actors of new kinds of terrorism taking place in civil conflicts. The threat from terrorism and violent extremism has never been greater - at least in the global South where the vast majority of violent extremist attacks take place. Some of the most violent extremist groups are also parties to civil conflicts in regions such as the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. But are these groups - especially the violent Islamists which constitute the greatest current threat - qualitatively different from other conflict actors? If they are, what are the implications for development practitioners working in war zones and fragile or poverty-afflicted countries? This study aims to answer these questions through a combination of theoretical enquiry and the investigation of three case studies - Kenya, Nigeria, and Iraq/Syria. It aims to illuminate the differences between violent Islamists and other types of conflict actor, to identify the challenges these groups pose to development practice, and to propose a way forward for meeting these challenges.

Violent Becomings conceptualizes the Mozambican state not as the bureaucratically ordered polity of the nation-state, but as a continuously emergent and violently challenged mode of ordering. In doing so, this book addresses the question of why colonial and postcolonial state formation has involved violent articulations with so-called 'traditional' forms of sociality. The scope and dynamic nature of such violent becomings is explored through an array of contexts that include colonial regimes of forced labor and pacification, liberation war struggles and civil war, the social engineering of the post-independence state, and the popular appropriation of sovereign violence in riots and lynchings.

It is widely recognized that American culture is both exceptionally religious and exceptionally violent. Americans participate in religious communities in high numbers, yet American citizens also own guns at rates far beyond those of citizens in other industrialized nations. Since 9/11, United States scholars have understandably discussed religious violence in terms of terrorist acts, a focus that follows United States policy. Yet, according to Jon Pahl, to identify religious violence only with terrorism fails to address the long history of American violence rooted in religion throughout the country's history. In essence, Americans have found ways to consider blessed some very brutal attitudes and behaviors both domestically and globally.

In Empire of Sacrifice, Pahl explains how both of these distinctive features of American culture work together by exploring how constructions along the lines of age, race, and gender have operated to centralize cultural power across American civil or cultural religions in ways that don't always appear to be "religious" at all. Pahl traces the development of these forms of systemic violence throughout American history, using evidence from popular culture, including movies such as Rebel without a Cause and Reefer Madness and works of literature such as The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Handmaid's Tale, to illuminate historical events. Throughout, Pahl focuses an intense light on the complex and durable interactions between religion and violence in American history, from Puritan Boston to George W. Bush's Baghdad.

This book focuses on the problem of ethnic conflict in Africa and seeks to explain its root causes. The main thesis of the book is that ethnic political mobilization is essentially a function of deeply-felt grievances on the part of the groups so mobilized.

Based on the largest survey of gay, lesbian, bisexual, intersex, transgender and queer reactions to violence and harassment ever undertaken in Australia, this book gives voice to the many victims who have suffered in the state once recognised as Australia's most homophobic. It tells of the barriers people face in dealing with the legal system, the reasons why some do not report their experiences, and the complex historical, religious and educational factors affecting the perpetuation of homophobia across the country. Most importantly it provides a roadmap forward for all Australian legislative, policing, and judicial jurisdictions via a wide ranging set of recommendations, from the individual's understanding of their rights and responsibilities, to the responses of police, legal professionals and judicial officers.

This book investigates the forms that the aggression and violence of peasant elites could take in early modern Fennoscandia, and their role within society. The contributors highlight the social stratification, inner divisions, contradictions and conflicts of the peasant communities, but also pay attention to the elite as leaders of resistance against the authorities. With the formation of more centralised states, the elites' status and room for agency diminished, but regional and temporal variations were great in this relatively drawn-out process, and there still remained several favourable contexts for their agency. Even though the peasant elite was not a homogenous entity, the chapters in this collection present us one uniting feature - the peasant elites' tendency to assert themselves with an active and aggressive agency, even if this led to very different outcomes.

The construction of Africa as the other has meant that factors commonly used to explain war elsewhere have been neglected in SubSaharan Africa. The political power struggle which evolved around the state is at the forefront of the analysis of civil war and societal conflict. This text argues that African civil wars arise from political struggle rather than ethnic conflict. It aims to offer new perspectives on conflicts in Rawanda, Congo-Brazzaville, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Somalia. Taking a multidiscipliniary approach, the book examines these situations from political, philisophical, cultural, economic, historical, regional and international perspectives.

This book aims at shifting the emphasis from a general vision of gender-based violence to a more opaque, yet equally destructive one, that related to "proximity violence". The first type of violence is exercised in multiple situations and in the generality of relationships experienced by people involving others who are both strangers to and intimate with each other. Proximity violence provides and includes a fiduciary kind of "proximity", of "dependent intimacy", where the trust that the victim places in the other (her tormentor) favours the exercise of violence itself, allowing it to take place, thus making it practically imperceptible when not actually normal, in extreme cases. In turn, this confidence is comparable to "a veil of Maja" which, in conditions of vulnerability typical of victims, attenuates the consequences of the violence undergone or the omens of what becomes violent action. The conceptual triad: proximity violence, vulnerability, resistance-resilience is explored here, in the three main chapters and in the details aimed at identifying, in the final chapter, the mutual interconnections. This book will be of particular interest and use to undergraduate and graduate students of sociology and gender studies

In a political climate that holds limited promise for addressing the issue of child recruitment, Child Soldiers and Transitional Justice: Protecting the Rights of Children Involved in Armed Conflicts challenges the trend towards a narrow focus on recruitment and use of the child, and seeks to contribute to more effective prevention and responses that offer the child a chance of recovery, reconciliation and reintegration.This book adapts existing theoretical frameworks of transitional justice in order to analyse child recruitment, with a view to demonstrating how a society can address the issue in a holistic way. It systematises relevant knowledge across a wide range of legal fields to allow for greater understanding of the law and principles, and a more informed basis for practical engagement with transitional justice mechanisms.Delving deep into the travaux prparatoires of each of the fundamental legal instruments, the author analyses their evolution, spanning humanitarian law, human rights law, criminal law, and other aspects of public law, including peace agreements and action plans developed with armed groups and forces. He provides a particular focus on and in-depth analysis of the Lubanga case, and its implications for other components of transitional justice. The findings highlight arguments for placing child recruitment firmly on the transitional justice agenda.By considering child recruitment against a transitional justice framework, the book allows a detailed understanding of the distinct but complementary components rule of law, criminal justice, historical justice, reparatory justice, institutional justice, and participatory justice and reveals the untapped potential in interactions between different areas of transitional justice.

This unprecedented book provides a comprehensive examination of the issue of protecting journalists in conflict situations from both a practical and humanitarian law perspective. Violent criminals and corrupt governmental officials harass, co-opt, and kill local and foreign journalists in countries from Mexico to Afghanistan, to Russia and the Philippines. Staggeringly, there has been little or no prosecution in 89 percent of journalist murders worldwide. Such widespread impunity is arguably one of the greatest threats to press freedom. A number of international organizations and advocates have developed efforts to mitigate this problem, but belligerents continue to act with few restraints and little, if any, accountability. War on Words: Who Should Protect Journalists? is an examination of the deteriorating and dangerous environment facing journalists and what stakeholders are doing to address this serious problem threatening democracy worldwide. The authors explore the peril facing journalists, delve into the legal and practical history of press protection, evaluate current safety strategies for journalists, and gather opinions from an array of local and international correspondents and practitioners on how to improve this untenable situation. Provides descriptions of contemporary strategies used to protect journalists in conflict Contains contributions from more than 60 stakeholders interested in the protection of journalists Presents a historical background of international policies, declarations, and resolutions intended to protect journalists Contains 18 vignettes of journalists killed, harassed, or threatened when reporting from Mexico to Gaza to Pakistan and China

Littleton. Columbine. Sandy Hook. Each school shooting in the United States is followed by a series of questions. Why does this happen? Who are the shooters? How can this be prevented? Along with parents, school officials, media outlets, and scholars, popular culture has also attempted to respond to these questions through a variety of fictional portrayals of rampage violence. Rampage Violence Narratives: What Fictional Accounts of Rampage Violence Say about the Future of America's Youth offers a detailed look at the state of youth identity in American cultural representations of youth violence through an extended analysis of over forty primary sources of fictional narratives of urban and suburban school violence. Representations of suburban and rural school shootings that are modeled after real-life events serve to shape popular understandings of the relationship between education and American identity, the liminal space between childhood and adulthood, and the centrality of white heterosexual masculinity to definitions of social, political, and economic success in the United States.Through a series of 'case studies' that offer in-depth examinations of fictional depictions of school shootings in film and literature, it becomes clear that these stories are representative of a larger social narrative regarding the future of the United States. The continuing struggle to understand youth violence is part of an ongoing conversation about what it means to raise future citizens within a cultural moment that views youth through a lens of anxiety rather than optimism.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of probably the most horrific solo terrorist operation the world has ever seen. On 22 July 2011 Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people when he bombed the Government District in Oslo, before he conducted a shooting attack against a political youth camp at Utoya. The main focus of the book is on the operational aspects of the events, particularly the target selection and decision-making process. Why did Breivik choose the targets he finally attacked, what influenced his decision-making and how did he do it? Using unique source material, providing details never published before, the authors accurately explain how even this ruthless terrorist acted under a number of constraints in a profoundly dynamic process. This momentous work is a must read for scholars, students and practitioners within law enforcement, intelligence, security and terrorism studies.

Violence is one of the most important challenges, not only for public health systems, but also for public mental health. Violence can have immediate as well as long-term and even transgenerational effects on the mental health of its victims. This book provides a comprehensive and wide-ranging assessment of the mental health legacy left by violence. It addresses the issues as they affect states, communities and families, in other words at macro-, meso- and microlevels, beginning by describing the impact of violence on neurobiology and mental health, as well as the spectrum of syndromes and disorders associated with different forms of violence.

The work moves on to tackle violence at the international and intranational level before zeroing in on the nature of violence in communities such as villages or city districts. It also examines the results of violence in the family. Each type of violence has distinct effects on mental health and in each chapter specific groups are explored in depth to demonstrate the heterogeneity of violence as well as the diversity of its outcomes in the realm of public mental health. Finally, the book addresses the notion of undoing violence by detailing case studies of effective interventions and prevention occurring in countries, communities and families. These cases give us pause to reflect on the nature of resilience and dignity in the context of violence and mental health.

All the chapters have been written by leading authors in the field and provide a state-of-the-art perspective. The authors, from different fields of expertise, facilitate interdisciplinary and international insights into the impact of violence on mental health."

This book presents a comprehensive history of lynching and mob violence in North and South Carolina, focusing on seven specific case studies from the region. Lynching marked the violent outer boundaries of race and class relations in the American South between Reconstruction and the civil rights era. Everyday interactions could easily escalate into mob violence, and did so thousands of times. Bruce Baker examines this important aspect of American history by taking seven lynchings in North Carolina and South Carolina and studying them in detail. He succeeds in getting behind the superficial accounts and explanations provided at the time to explain the deeper causes and wider contexts of these events.Many studies of lynching begin only after Reconstruction had ended and African Americans found themselves with little political power. However, this book provides the most thorough study yet written of the Ku Klux Klan's most violent episode - the killing of thirteen black militia members in Union, South Carolina, in 1871 - to argue that this act of mob violence set the conditions in important ways for the entire lynching era. Enmities born in Reconstruction lingered afterwards and lay behind an 1887 lynching in York County, South Carolina. As lynching became an unsurprising part of life in the South, African Americans even found that they could use it themselves, in once case to punish a child's killer and in another to settle a church's factional squabbles. In addition, a variety of forces opposing lynching was rising and by the 1930s their efforts would begin to make a difference.

Accounts of the relationships between states and terrorist organizations in the Cold War era have long been shaped by speculation, a lack of primary sources and even conspiracy theories. In the last few years, however, things have evolved rapidly. Using a wide range of case studies including the British State and Loyalist Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, as well as the United States and Nicaragua, this book sheds new light on the relations between state and terrorist actors, allowing for a fresh and much more insightful assessment of the contacts, dealings, agreements and collusion with terrorist organizations undertaken by state actors on both sides of the Iron Curtain. This book presents the current state of research and provides an assessment of the nature, motives, effects, and major historical shifts of the relations between individual states and terrorist organizations. The articles collected demonstrate that these state-terrorism relationships were not only much more ambiguous than much of the older literature had suggested but are, in fact, crucial for the understanding of global political history in the Cold War era.

This book is an academic work which reviews and critiques the research literature concerning violent games and their alleged effects on players. It examines the debates about the potential effects of these games and the divisions between scholars working in the field. It places the research on violent video games in the longer historical context of scholarly work on media violence. It examines research from around the world on the nature of video games and their effects. It provides a critique of relevant theories of media violence effects and in particular theories developed within the older media violence literature and then considers how useful this and newer scholarly work might be for policy-makers and regulators. The book identifies where gaps exist in the extent literature and where future research attention might be directed.

Violence against women is an enduring problem around the globe, yet very few books look at the full range of men's violences against women - perpetrated in relationships, in the family, in public spaces, and in institutions. While books that look at different types of violence, such as domestic violence, 'honour' based violence and rape in isolation are useful for depth, it is only by looking across these different spheres that the true extent of men's violences against women becomes clear. This book usefully covers all of the main forms of violence against women, looking at it from a research, policy, and practice perspective. Including discussion of fifteen different types of violence against women, this book is original in offering an introduction to such a broad range of topics, and for including chapters on violences that have rarely been written about, as well as those that are more commonly discussed and those that have been sidelined in recent years. By bringing together work on violence against women committed by partners, family members, strangers, acquaintances, institutions and businesses, this book widens the lens through which we view men's violences against women. Violence against Women is essential reading for criminologists and sociologists who want to be up to date with cutting-edge knowledge on this topic. It is also an invaluable text for those training to enter or become qualified in the specialist domestic and sexual violence sector.

Violence against women is an enduring problem around the globe, yet very few books look at the full range of men's violences against women - perpetrated in relationships, in the family, in public spaces, and in institutions. While books that look at different types of violence, such as domestic violence, 'honour' based violence and rape in isolation are useful for depth, it is only by looking across these different spheres that the true extent of men's violences against women becomes clear. This book usefully covers all of the main forms of violence against women, looking at it from a research, policy, and practice perspective. Including discussion of fifteen different types of violence against women, this book is original in offering an introduction to such a broad range of topics, and for including chapters on violences that have rarely been written about, as well as those that are more commonly discussed and those that have been sidelined in recent years. By bringing together work on violence against women committed by partners, family members, strangers, acquaintances, institutions and businesses, this book widens the lens through which we view men's violences against women. Violence against Women is essential reading for criminologists and sociologists who want to be up to date with cutting-edge knowledge on this topic. It is also an invaluable text for those training to enter or become qualified in the specialist domestic and sexual violence sector.

This edited collection highlights international research on domestic homicides and death reviews which are a rapidly growing intervention/prevention initiative in various countries. Chapters focus on: the impetus for the international development of such initiatives, the identification of risk factors and recommendations for improving systemic responses, the uptake and impact of these recommendations and, finally, the social and public policy implications of outcomes for developed and developing countries. Despite rapid growth, the current state of research and knowledge about domestic violence death review initiatives is limited, fragmented, and primarily descriptive, largely comprising annual public reports. The authors of this book bridge this significant gap by analysing the wide range of models currently in development and operation. A bold and important examination, this work will have a powerful impact on policy makers and scholars of social science theory, women's studies, and domestic violence.

International human rights activist Lisa Shannon spent many afternoons at the kitchen table having tea with her friend Francisca Thelin, who often spoke of her childhood in Congo. Thelin would conjure vivid images of lush flower gardens, fish the size of small children, and of children running barefoot through her family's coffee plantation, gorging on fruit from the robust and plentiful mango trees. She urged Shannon to visit her family in Dungu, to get a taste of "real" Congo, "peaceful" Congo; a place so different than the conflict-ravaged places Shannon knew from her activism work.
But then the nightly phone calls from Congo began: static-filled, hasty reports from Francisca's mother, "Mama Koko," of gunmen--Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army-- who had infested Dungu and began launching attacks. Night after night for a year, Mama Koko delivered the devastating news of Fransisca's cousins, nieces, nephews, friends, and neighbors, who had been killed, abducted, burned alive on Christmas Day.
In an unlikely journey, Shannon and Thelin decided to travel from Portland, Oregon to Dungu, to witness first-hand the devastation unfolding at Joseph Kony's hands. Masquerading as Francisca's American sister-in-law, Shannon tucked herself into Mama Koko's raw cement living room and listened to the stories of Mama Koko and her husband, Papa Alexander--as well as those from dozens of other friends and neighbors ("Mama Koko's War Tribunal")--who lined up outside the house and waited for hours, eager to offer their testimony.
In "Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen," Shannon weaves together the family's tragic stories of LRA encounters with tales from the family's history: we hear of Mama Koko's early life as a gap-toothed beauty plotting to escape her inevitable fate of wife and motherhood; Papa Alexander's empire of wives he married because they cooked and cleaned and made good coffee; and Francisca's childhood at the family "castle" and coffee plantation. These lively stories transport Shannon from the chaos of the violence around her and bring to life Fransisca's kitchen-table stories of the peaceful Congo.
Yet, as the LRA camp out on the edge of town grew, tensions inside the house reach a fever pitch and Shannon and Thelin's friendship was fiercely tested. Shannon was forced to confront her limitations as an activist and reconcile her vision of what it means to affect meaningful change in the lives of others.
"Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen" is at once an illuminating piece of storytelling and an exploration of what it means to truly make a difference. It is an exquisite testimony to the beauty of human connection and the strength of the human spirit in times of unimaginable tragedy.

From prison interviews with violent offenders and a wealth of experience and research, psychologist Dr Katie Seidler explores the complex interaction between crime and culture. Featuring the voices of the offenders themselves, 15 convicted adult male violent offenders from various ethnic cultural communities explain their understanding, motivations and rationalisations for their actions and how these relate to questions of identity, community and responsibility within their cultural experience and values. In challenging current criminological theory, Dr Seidler suggests that offenders from group-oriented (collectivist) cultures offend for group-oriented reasons, whereas those from cultures prioritising individualism offend for individual reasons. This more nuanced understanding of crime and criminals within the context of culture adds significantly both to criminological theory, as well as providing suggestions for improvements to policing and offender management and rehabilitation within the criminal justice system.