While terrorism is hardly a new phenomenon, terrorism by the state and its opponents reached new levels in the twentieth century. Drawing together veteran experts on terrorism with authorities in Islam, media studies, American history, and social psychology, Dr. Howard presents a volume which lends fresh interpretations to such major issues as the origins, the impact, and the appropriate personal and public responses to terrorism. The volume covers a wide range of relevant topics, from an examination of insurgency, counterinsurgency, and terrorism during the struggle for Mexican independence in the early nineteenth century, to an overview of the difficulties of creating a concerted policy toward terrorism within the European Community, and the possible connections between terrorism and guerrilla warfare in the future. Particular attention has been placed on examining the role of the media and military retaliation in either exacerbating or checking the prevalence of terrorism.

As we come to recognize that the problem of terrorism can not be viewed solely through the lens of military policy, we need to rethink the concepts and assumptions of international security using the additional disciplines of cross-cultural studies, psychology, and history. This collection makes a major contribution by refocusing our thinking, toward an interdisciplinary approach and will be of value to policy makers, as well as those involved with military studies, social psychology, and international relations.

In September 2001, the world witnessed the horrific events of 9/11. A great deal has happened on the counterterrorist front in the 20 years since. While the terrorist threat has greatly diminished in Northern Ireland, the events of 9/11 and their aftermath have ushered in a new phase for the rest of the UK with some familiar, but also many novel, characteristics. This ambitious study takes stock of counterterrorism in Britain in this anniversary year. Assessing current challenges, and closely mirroring the 'four Ps' of the official CONTEST counterterrorist strategy - Protect, Prepare, Prevent, and Pursue - it seeks to summarize and grasp the essence of domestic law and policy, without being burdened by excessive technical detail. It also provides a rigorous, context-aware, illuminating, yet concise, accessible, and policy-relevant analysis of this important and controversial subject, grounded in relevant social science, policy studies, and legal scholarship. This book will be an important resource for students and scholars in law and social science, as well as human rights, terrorism, counterterrorism, security, and conflict studies.

In this impressive book, Edward S. Herman and David Peterson examine the uses and abuses of the word "genocide." They argue persuasively that the label is highly politicized and that in the United States it is used by the government, journalists, and academics to brand as evil those nations and political movements that in one way or another interfere with the imperial interests of U.S. capitalism. Thus the word "genocide" is seldom applied when the perpetrators are U.S. allies (or even the United States itself), while it is used almost indiscriminately when murders are committed or are alleged to have been committed by enemies of the United States and U.S. business interests. One set of rules applies to cases such as U.S. aggression in Vietnam, Israeli oppression of Palestinians, Indonesian slaughter of so-called communists and the people of East Timor, U.S. bombings in Serbia and Kosovo, the U.S. war of "liberation" in Iraq, and mass murders committed by U.S. allies in Rwanda and the Republic of Congo. Another set applies to cases such as Serbian aggression in Kosovo and Bosnia, killings carried out by U.S. enemies in Rwanda and Darfur, Saddam Hussein, any and all actions by Iran, and a host of others. With its careful and voluminous documentation, close reading of the U.S. media and political and scholarly writing on the subject, and clear and incisive charts, The Politics of Genocide is both a damning condemnation and stunning expose of a deeply rooted and effective system of propaganda aimed at deceiving the population while promoting the expansion of a cruel and heartless imperial system.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Prairie Fires comes a terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond—a gripping investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landscape of deadly industrial violence.

Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?

As Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem—the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson—Fraser’s Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy’s Tacoma stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was hardly unique in the West. As Fraser’s investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of these smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives but also warped young minds, including some who grew up to become serial killers.

A propulsive nonfiction thriller, Murderland transcends true-crime voyeurism and noir mythology, taking readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk.

This study, based on quantitative and qualitative data gathered over a twelve-year period, takes its title from the two predominant styles of gang violence: "drive-bys," which have replaced "rumbles" as the primary form of gang violence; and "gang-bangs"--a generic term for other gang violence that includes assaults, knifings, and beatings.

The author attempts to understand the situations in which a young man would drive up to another human being and, without further ado, blow his head off. By examining hundreds of such situations, and employing both structural and phenomenological analysis, Sanders explores the various configurations of gang violence.

Gangbangs and Drive-bys also examines the routines of gang members and their view of life, the different styles of gangs, and changes undergone by gangs from the early 1980s to the end of the same decade. Over that period, the emphasis shifted from parties and paybacks to big money from the sale of rock cocaine, and from unstructured to organized crime. Along with that shift came an increase in the violence.

Finally, Sanders traces the beginning and evolution of a metropolitan police gang unit over the same decade in order to present an inside view of how the police attempt to deal with and understand gangs.

Against Violence Against Women is a journey through time and across the globe to bring to light the roots of sanctioned violence against women. Rona M. Fields utilizes an interdisciplinary approach combining psychology, sociology, anthropology, and women's studies to examine cases and causes of gender-based atrocities in Afghanistan, Sudan, China, India, Siberia, and Europe. Fields reveals how these disparate cultures and societies have evolved formal institutions in which extremist ideologies (both left and right) politicize religion and other belief systems to rationalize irrational, oppressive behavior. Against this long history of institutionalized femicide, this volume investigates the potential of non-governmental agencies and international courts to provide a forum for the protection of human rights, and for the prevention of gender-based violence.

Aggression usually involves a sequence of behaviors, reflecting escalations and de-escalations in the form or intensity of the actions taken, which play out over time. This book provides a context in which social and biological research on the aggressive behaviors of human and non-human subjects, interacting in dyads or groups, can be compared and integrated. Implicit in this juxtaposition is the major question of whether general principles governing the dynamics of aggression within and between episodes may be discerned. Aggressive behavior is described at different levels of analysis in humans and a number of other animal species. Three basic views of aggression dynamics become apparent:
* The economic interpretation: Aggression will be escalated when it pays one of the combatants to do so or, more generally, when the potential benefits outweigh the risks. Decisions to escalate or de-escalate are part of a calculated "strategy," in one or another sense. This interpretation is formalized within game theoretic models as applied to animal conflicts and to international conflicts, within the chapters of this text.
* The psychological process interpretation: Emphasis is placed on psychological/physiological processes within the individual. The chapters stress the importance of acute emotional states of anger and aggressive arousal and argue the role of peripheral sympathetic activation, while proposing a central neural mechanism. Children escalating their tantrums, adult humans and animals of other species intensifying their interpersonal conflicts, national leaders going to a war footing all appear to suffer a narrowing of attention and progressive failure of cognitive function under the intensifying stress of conflict. Perhaps these changes in attention, sensory and cognitive functions, and risk taking reflect a "commitment to aggression" which is necessary for organisms to engage in potentially dangerous and painful encounters.
* The emergent process interpretation: Escalation emerges in a spontaneous and dynamic way as the actions of one participant elicit reactions from the other(s).

Chapter 4 of this book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com. This edited collection explores the agency of women who do violence and have violence done to them. Topics covered include rape, pornography, prostitution, suicide bombing and domestic violence. The volume contributes to the philosophical and theoretical debate, as well as offering practical, social and political responses to the issues examined.

"This fascinating, massive, wide-ranging collection that editors Christopher K. Coffman and Daniel Lukes have gathered together into William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion will soon be recognized as one of those rare critical books for which that egregiously overused term 'groundbreaking' is fully justified." -Larry McCaffery, from the preface of William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion The essays in this collection make a case for regarding William T. Vollmann as the most ambitious, productive, and important living author in the US. His oeuvre includes not only outstanding work in numerous literary genres, but also global reportage, ethical treatises, paintings, photographs, and many other productions. His reputation as a daring traveler and his fascination with life on the margins have earned him an extra-literary renown unequaled in our time. Perhaps most importantly, his work is exceptional in relation to the literary moment. Vollmann is a member of a group of authors who are responding to the skeptical ironies of postmodernism with a reinvigoration of fiction's affective possibilities and moral sensibilities, but he stands out even among this cohort for his prioritization of moral engagement, historical awareness, and geopolitical scope. Included in this book in addition to twelve scholarly critical essays are reflections on Vollmann by many of his peers, confidantes, and collaborators, including Jonathan Franzen, James Franco, and Michael Glawogger. With a preface by Larry McCaffery and an afterword by Michael Hemmingson, this book offers readings of most of Vollmann's works, includes the first critical engagements with several key titles, and introduces a range of voices from international Vollmann scholarship.

Each primary source in this essential collection on capital punishment features an authoritative introduction and analysis that helps provide crucial context for understanding the evolution of law and public attitudes toward the death penalty from colonial times to the present. This book showcases and explains key primary documents that reflect and have influenced the history of capital punishment in the United States. By presenting and examining a wide range of fascinating and momentous documents, including court decisions and transcripts, legislation, personal accounts and perspectives, congressional testimony, and government documents issued from all political perspectives, students will gain valuable insight into the evolution of public opinion and government policy on the death penalty in America. To better understand these documents, each primary source is prefaced with an introduction and followed by scholarly analysis. These documents and accompanying analysis complement one another, helping students gain a better and more accurate understanding of the viewpoints, convictions, and perspectives that have shaped American attitudes and practices toward capital punishment since the United States' earliest days. Provides a detailed overview of the history of—and controversies about—capital punishment in the United States Offers a unique mix of government documentation, court cases, and political/social advocacy perspectives Expert commentary supplies context for primary documents on capital punishment Readers Guide to Related Documents organizes all featured primary sources by theme for researchers

The outgrowth of a conference planned as a response to the need for researchers and clinicians to develop integrated plans for addressing the psychological trauma of children exposed to violence, this volume's goals are:
* to summarize research on the subject with particular emphasis on the Gulf War;
* to use this information to formulate an outline of what current knowledge suggests are reasonable approaches to public mental health intervention; and
* to develop an agenda for future research necessary for improving clinical efforts in varying international conflicts.
A significant collection of diverse perspectives attending to a diversity of cultural and political contexts, the contributors offer many conclusions about important dimensions for analyzing the effects of violence on children. Suggesting informed approaches to public mental health efforts which can be implemented, the work presented here directs attention to the need for interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers and clinicians to better understand the effects of exposure to violence on the psychological well being of children and the optimal modes of remediation on individual, family, and community levels.

An Element on the role of violence in the traditional religions of the Pacific Ilands (Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia) and on violent activity in islander religious life after the opening of Oceania to the modern world. This work covers such issues as tribal warfare, sorcery and witchcraft, traditional punishment and gender imbalance. and moves on to consider reprisals against foreign intruders in the Pacific and the continuation of old types of violence in spite of massive socio-religious change.

This book provides a concise-yet-comprehensive overview of the broad-ranging topics in the field of violence and aggression. It uses a functional approach that acknowledges the evolutionary, cultural, and operant nature of violence and aggression. The book defines the nature of different forms of violence and aggression; examines epidemiology and risk factors; describes biological, cultural and individual causes; and discusses individual and societal prevention and treatment. Key areas of coverage include: Epidemiology of violence and aggression. Biological and social causes of violence and aggression. Cultural interventions, psychotherapies, and individual biological interventions. The effects of violence and aggression in special populations. Violence and Aggression: Integrating Theory, Research, and Practice is a must-have resource for researchers, academics, and upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in forensic psychology, public health, criminology/criminal justice, developmental psychology, psychotherapy/counseling, psychiatry, social work, educational policy and politics, health psychology, nursing, and behavioral therapy/rehabilitation.

It's widely accepted that Transcendental Meditation (TM) can create peace for the individual, but can it create peace in society as a whole? And if it can, what could possibly be the mechanism? In An Antidote to Violence Barry Spivack and Patricia Saunders examine the peer-reviewed research and suggest that TM can influence the collective consciousness of a society which leads to a decrease in negative social trends, such as a decline in war fatalities, and to an increase in cooperation between nations. Weaving together psychology, sociology, philosophy, statistics, politics, physics and meditation, An Antidote to Violence provides evidence that we have the knowledge to reduce all kinds of violence in society.

Domestic violence against women is a problem that cries out for informed discussion and effective treatments. "Intervening With Assaulted Women" is a definitive response to those cries.
The authors of each of the chapters included in this collection were selected for their ability to address a different issue related to the abuse of women. As a result, a wide range of concerns are confronted and discussed in this book, among them, the socio-political underpinnings of violence against women, the early childhood learning of assaultive men, and the traumatic impact of abuse on women and children.
As for possible treatments, a current and uniquely comprehensive range of responses is described and evaluated, making this an excellent text for both front-line and classroom settings.

This book contains articles on the theory of conflict. Conflict appears in many forms, from a dictator terrorizing his country to organized crime demanding protection money. Among the questions addressed are the conditions which make conflict severe (for example, is class conflict worse than ethnic conflict?), whether voluntary agreements can avoid future conflict, how the outcome of one war will affect the incentives of countries to wage war in the future, how dictators hold power, and why revolutions appear. The book provides an overview of existing literature, applies the theory of conflict to new situations, and gives foundations for future work. It should interest both researchers and students studying political economy, public choice, international relations, and comparative politics.

'A robust, decolonial challenge to carceral feminism' - Angela Y. Davis ***Winner of an English PEN Award 2022*** The mainstream conversation surrounding gender equality is a repertoire of violence: harassment, rape, abuse, femicide. These words suggest a cruel reality. But they also hide another reality: that of gendered violence committed with the complicity of the State. In this book, Francoise Verges denounces the carceral turn in the fight against sexism. By focusing on 'violent men', we fail to question the sources of their violence. There is no doubt as to the underlying causes: racial capitalism, ultra-conservative populism, the crushing of the Global South by wars and imperialist looting, the exile of millions and the proliferation of prisons - these all put masculinity in the service of a policy of death. Against the spirit of the times, Francoise Verges refuses the punitive obsession of the State in favour of restorative justice.

This book presents a critical portrait of the British police through a detailed ethnography of their work at football matches. Megan O'Neill not only sheds light on a topic of intense media interest, football hooliganism, but also presents the police in a totally fresh perspective. By using the work of Erving Goffman, she demonstrates how the police are a far from unified force. Their informal interaction "teams" divide them operationally and socially.

Violence and Personhood in Ancient Israel and Comparative Contexts is the first book-length work on personhood in ancient Israel. T. M. Lemos reveals widespread intersections between violence and personhood in both this society and the wider region. Relations of domination and subordination were incredibly important to the culture and social organization of ancient Israel often resulting in these relations becoming determined by the boundaries of personhood itself. Personhood was malleable-it could be and was violently erased in many social contexts. This study exposes a violence-personhood-masculinity nexus in which domination allowed those in control to animalize and brutalize the bodies of subordinates. Lemos argues that in particular social contexts in the contemporary "western" world, this same nexus operates, holding devastating consequences for particular social groups.

This first volume in a series on research in human social conflict covers such topics as demography and ethnic conflict, racial and ethnic conflict, psychological perspectives on inter-racial and inter-ethnic group conflict, and attitudes related to racial and ethnic conflict.

This concise and accessible volume introduces the reader to issues around religion, gender, and violence, using a wide range of case studies to engage the reader and apply the subject area to the real world. An outstanding resource for students approaching the topic for the first time. The eBook is open access and therefore widely available.