A study based on first-hand accounts by those involved in the violence of apartheid South Africa. This profound and deeply compassionate study aims to reach into the complexities of political violence in South Africa between 1960 and 1995. At the centre of this book are a vivid sequence of narratives by people who reveal how they came to be involved in violence. On one side there are reflections by a former police commissioner, a Koevoet operative, a former general in military intelligence and an agent who infiltrated student organizations. From the liberation movements there are MK and APC guerrilla commanders: township activists reflect on what gain there was in necklace killings. It also offers a critical consideration of the Truth and Reconciliation amnesty process. North America: Independent Publishers Group; South Africa: HSRC Press

Winner of the 1993 Michael J. Hindelang award of the American Society of Criminology.

By 1990 there were approximately 200 million guns in private hands in the United States, and around half of American households contained a gun. Over 30,000 people a year are killed with guns in suicides, homicides, and acci-dents, and Americans use guns for defensive purposes over a million times a year. There is little doubt that gun violence and control are issues of vital importance, and they continue to inspire national debate. It is doubtful, however, whether most gun debates are worth listening to. Not surprisingly, such debates generally leave their participants exactly where they began, with their biases intact, and onlookers perplexed.

Written deliberately to counter an atmosphere of hysteria and extremism. Point Blank, now in paperback, offers logi-cal argument supported by empirical information. It con-fronts fundamental questions head-on. On its initial publication in 1993, Point Blank won the Michael J. Hindelang Award of the American Society of Criminology for the book that "made the most outstanding contribution to criminology." Point Blank reports both original research and assesses existing evidence drawn from a wide variety of academic disciplines, including criminology, sociology, law, and medicine.

Who said nothing ever happens in the French countryside?Picardie, 1964. On a deserted country road, three Moroccan nationals are shot dead with precision, a cold-blooded execution, one bullet each. To Inspector Lucas Rocco, it's a mystery. Why them and why here? A short time later, he happens upon two police officers who have been assaulted by an enraged motorist, one of them seriously. The unapologetic assailant, found to have an unregistered gun in his possession, claims to be the secretary of a high-profile and influential Parisian lawyer, Guy De Lancourt. The two cases seemingly have nothing in common. But on closer examination Rocco feels something isn't quite right. Just what lies beneath De Lancourt's carefully-cultivated public persona? And what secrets are hidden at Les Cypres, the heavily-guarded former mental asylum De Lancourt has made his home? A scintillating French historical crime thriller, perfect for fans of Martin Walker, Donna Leon and Maigret.

Heavily influenced by Max Weber's definition of the state, political scientists and criminologists alike have focused their attention on the legitimization struggles of non-state actors who resort to violence. This book constitutes an attempt to redress that imbalance by examining a series of controversies concerning the State of Israel's use of force and its failure to prevent the violence of others. Separate chapters deal with the public discourse about Palestinian and Jewish terrorism, the war in Lebanon, the alleged connection between the verbal violence of government leaders and the physical violence of their supporters, and the use of history to justify the state use of force. The concluding section considers why these controversies play such a central role in Israeli politics and offers a number of suggestions as to the function they fulfill in other Western societies.

While the causes of rampage violence have been analysed thoroughly in diverse academic disciplines, we hardly know anything about the factors that affect their consequences for public policy. This book addresses rampage shootings in Western Europe and their conditional impact on politicization and policy change in the area of gun control. The author sets out to unravel the factors that facilitate or impede the access of gun control to the political agenda in the wake of rampage shootings and analyses why some political debates lead to profound shifts of the policy status quo, while others peter out without any legislative reactions. In so doing, the book not only contributes to the theoretical literature on crisis-induced policy making, but also provides a wealth of case-study evidence on rampage shootings as empirical phenomena. In particular, the extent to which gun control gets politicized as a policy failure can either result from a bottom-up process (event severity and media pressure) or from a top-down logic (issue ownership and the electoral cycle). Including 12 case studies on the rampage shootings which have triggered a debate over the appropriateness of the affected countries gun policies, it illustrates that the way political processes unfold after rampage shootings depends strongly on specific causal configurations and draws comparisons between the cases covered in the book and the way rampage shootings are typically dealt with in the United States. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of public policy, policy analysis, European Politics and more broadly to comparative politics, criminology, psychology, and sociology. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315209425, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

In this book, in which definitions and examples of abuse from men and women from every continent and a very diverse set of backgrounds are considered. The volume provides information on the extent to which family violence is a recognized problem in each country, research findings available on different forms of family violence, and information on governmental responses to family violence. Finally, the value of an international human rights approach to abuse and violence in families is considered. The book presents an unparalleled international coverage, addressing all forms of family violence in Australia and at least two countries from every other continent. Each chapter begins by describing the cultural context in which family violence and abuse take place. These sections emphasize the role of women and children in the country. Providing a multitude of voices, each chapter includes fascinating and often dramatic definitions and examples of abuse from ordinary citizens of the country. The concluding chapter elaborates on the appropriateness of a human rights approach in addressing family violence cross-nationally and cross-culturally; and provides an excellent integration of much of the material from the previous chapters. The book is intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in psychology and sociology, as well as pre-professionals and professionals in medicine, law, and social services. It has strong relevance and value to individuals training in counseling (counselor education) and clinical psychology. Because of its readable style and extensive use of quotations from citizens of the countries studied for the book, it may also appeal to a much broader audience, including a lay audience.

Many people consider Canada, particularly in comparison to its southern cousin, as a "peaceable kingdom." However, as the historical record demonstrates, Canadians have never been a thoroughly non-violent people. "Violence in Canada" highlights from an interdisciplinary perspective the major areas and contexts where violence takes place. Consisting of thirteen contributions, the book forms an indispensable guide to the subject. All of the authors are experts in their field, many with international reputations, and are drawn from the fields of sociology, political science, history, and criminology. The foreword by Ted Robert Gurr, author of "Violence in America," is followed by an historical analysis of violence on the Canadian western frontier. Other scholars describe contemporary violence: by and against indigenous peoples, women, children, and the elderly; in labor-related disputes; homicide; police and prison violence; terrorism; and discuss government responses and policy implications. Each chapter specifically addresses the sociological and political dimensions of violence. The authors make ample use of statistics and empirical research. Jeffrey Ian Ross's introduction outlines the sociopolitical dynamics of violence, and his summary chapter offers directions for future research. When the book was first published in 1995 it was widely praised by scholarly journals and has since become a standard text in the study of violence and modern Canadian cultural studies. The book is all the more valuable as its new introduction places its findings in the context of research that has been produced since the original publication. "Violence in Canada" will be of interest to sociologists, criminologists, and political scientists. Jeffrey Ian Ross is an associate professor in the Division of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Social Policy and fellow with the Center for Comparative and International Law, University of Baltimore. His work has appeared in many academic journals and chapters in academic texts, as well as articles in popular magazines in Canada and the United States. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of eight books. Ted Robert Gurr is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. Among his books are "Why Men Rebel" and "Violence in America."

Latin America is both the world's most urbanized fastest developing regions, where the links between social exclusion, inequality and violence are clearly visible. The banal, ubiquitous nature of drug crime, robbery, gang and intra-family violence destabilizes countries' economies and harms their people and social structures. Encounters with Violence & Crime in Latin America explores the meaning of violence and insecurity in nine towns and cities in Columbia and Guatemala to create a framework of how and why daily violence takes place at the community level. It uses pioneering new methods of participatory urban appraisal to ask local people about their own perceptions of violence as mediated by family, gender, ethnicity and age. It develops a typology which distinguishes between the political, social, and economic violence that afflicts communities, and which assesses the costs of consequences of violence in terms of community cohesion and social capital. This gives voice to those whose daily lives and dominated by widespread aggression, and provides important new insights for researchers and policy-makers.

An innovative and accessible work that introduces readers to the main arguments for and against the use of violence in politics. Indeed, the problem of political violence has acquired new salience in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. The book has been specially designed to engage readers by encouraging them to assume the role of impartial jurors in a simulated trial against nonviolence.

Refractions of Violence collects the recent essays of leading cultural critic and intellectual historian Martin Jay. Ranging over a wide variety of subjects, from Walter Benjamin's response to World War I to the Holocaust and the events of 9/11, this collection addresses the troubling issues of the intersection of violence and visual culture. It argues that we live in a closed economy of violence in which no outside can provide us with a safe haven from the threat of sudden, perhaps even fatal injury, either real or symbolic. By examining a number of ways in which the dialectic of violence and counter-violence finds its way into the arts, both high and low, and permeates visual experience in general, it hopes to cast some light on the dark recesses of contemporary life.

Series Information:
War and Society

An innovative and accessible work that introduces readers to the main arguments for and against the use of violence in politics. Indeed, the problem of political violence has acquired new salience in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. The book has been specially designed to engage readers by encouraging them to assume the role of impartial jurors in a simulated trial against nonviolence.

Although war and physical violence may seem inevitable, societies from around the world prove differently. This collection of ethnographies discusses how non-violent values and conflict resolution strategies can help to create and maintain peace. Societies like the Hopi of Northern Arizona, the Nubians of Egypt and the Zapotec of Mexico serve as models of peacemaking.

A leading scholar explores what it means to dehumanize others-and how and why we do it. "I wouldn't have accepted that they were human beings. You would see an infant who's just learning to smile, and it smiles at you, but you still kill it." So a Hutu man explained to an incredulous researcher, when asked to recall how he felt slaughtering Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. Such statements are shocking, yet we recognize them; we hear their echoes in accounts of genocides, massacres, and pogroms throughout history. How do some people come to believe that their enemies are monsters, and therefore easy to kill? In Making Monsters David Livingstone Smith offers a poignant meditation on the philosophical and psychological roots of dehumanization. Drawing on harrowing accounts of lynchings, Smith establishes what dehumanization is and what it isn't. When we dehumanize our enemy, we hold two incongruous beliefs at the same time: we believe our enemy is at once subhuman and fully human. To call someone a monster, then, is not merely a resort to metaphor-dehumanization really does happen in our minds. Turning to an abundance of historical examples, Smith explores the relationship between dehumanization and racism, the psychology of hierarchy, what it means to regard others as human beings, and why dehumanizing others transforms them into something so terrifying that they must be destroyed. Meticulous but highly readable, Making Monsters suggests that the process of dehumanization is deeply seated in our psychology. It is precisely because we are all human that we are vulnerable to the manipulations of those trading in the politics of demonization and violence.

Feminist research on gender, violence and abuse has been an area of academic study since the late 1970s, and has increased exponentially over this time on a global scale. Although situated in a predominantly qualitative tradition, research in the field has developed to include quantitative and mixed methodologies. This book offers a compendium of research methods on gender and violence, from the traditional to the innovative, and showcases best practice in feminist research and international case studies. Researching Gender, Violence and Abuse covers: The origins of feminist research, Ethical considerations relating to research on gender, violence and abuse, Working in partnership with organisations such as the police or the voluntary sector, A comprehensive range of research methods including interviews and focus groups, surveys, arts-based research and ethnography, The challenges and opportunities of working with existing data, The influence of activism on research and the translation of research into policy and practice. This book is perfect reading for students taking courses on violence against women, domestic violence, gender and crime, as well as advanced students embarking on new research.

Violence against women is a violation of women's human rights and a priority public health issue. It is endemic worldwide. While much has been written about it in industrialized societies, there has been relatively little attention given to such violence in Asian societies. This book addresses the structural and interpersonal violences to which women are subject, both under conditions of conflict and disruption, and where civil society is relatively ordered. It explores sexual violence and coercion, domestic violence, and violence within the broader community and the state, avoiding sensationalised accounts of so-called cultural' practices in favour of nuanced explorations of violences as experienced in Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and India.

Violence against women is a violation of women's human rights and a priority public health issue. It is endemic worldwide. While much has been written about it in industrialized societies, there has been relatively little attention given to such violence in Asian societies. This book addresses the structural and interpersonal violences to which women are subject, both under conditions of conflict and disruption, and where civil society is relatively ordered. It explores sexual violence and coercion, domestic violence, and violence within the broader community and the state, avoiding sensationalised accounts of so-called cultural' practices in favour of nuanced explorations of violences as experienced in Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and India.

This powerful book deals with the issue of how Christians, especially those called to counsel, can help survivors of sexual abuse find healing and hope. From 20 years of experience, the author demonstrates how counselors can walk alongside people deeply wounded by sexual abuse as they face the truth about who they are, who their abuser was, and who God is as the Savior and Redeemer of all life. Counseling Survivors of Sexual Abuse issues a strong call to the church at large to walk with survivors through the long dark nights of their healing.

Concern about violence on television has been publicly debated for the past 50 years. TV violence has repeatedly been identified as a significant causal agent in relation to the prevalence of crime and violence in society. Critics have accused the medium of presenting excessive quantities of violence, to the point where it is virtually impossible for viewers to avoid it.
This book presents the findings of the largest British study of violence on TV ever undertaken, funded by the broadcasting industry. The study was carried out at the same time as similar industry-sponsored research was being conducted in the United States, and one chapter compares findings from Britain and the U.S.A.
The book concludes that it is misleading to accuse all broadcasters of presenting excessive quantities of violence in their schedules. This does not deny that problematic portrayals were found. But the most gory, horrific and graphic scenes of violence were generally contained within broadcasts available on a subscription basis or in programs shown at times when few children were expected to be watching. This factual analysis proves that broadcasters were meeting their obligations under their national regulatory codes of practice.

This volume, newly published in paperback, is part of a comprehensive effort by R. J. Rummel to understand and place in historical perspective the entire subject of genocide and mass murder, or what he calls democide. It is the fifth in a series of volumes in which he offers a detailed analysis of the 120,000,000 people killed as a result of government action or direct intervention.

In Power Kills, Rummel offers a realistic and practical solution to war, democide, and other collective violence. As he states it, "The solution...is to foster democratic freedom and to democratize coercive power and force. That is, mass killing and mass murder carried out by government is a result of indiscriminate, irresponsible Power at the center."

Rummel observes that well-established democracies do not make war on and rarely commit lesser violence against each other. The more democratic two nations are, the less likely is war or smaller-scale violence between them. The more democratic a nation is, the less severe its overall foreign violence, the less likely it will have domestic collective violence, and the less its democide. Rummel argues that the evidence supports overwhelmingly the most important fact of our time: democracy is a method of nonviolence.

"Ensuring Safe School Environments: Exploring Issues--Seeking Solutions" presents research findings and information about school violence, with a focus on strategies for increasing school safety. Based on a special topical issue of "Rural Special Education Quarterly," the original journal articles have been rewritten to address safe schools from the perspective of suburban and urban, as well as rural environments. Topics include the frequency of violence in these different settings; violence as it directly impacts school administrators; strategies for preventing and addressing violence at both the school and individual levels; and ways to work with the community both in and out of schools. Part I focuses on issues. In Part II, solutions that have been used to deal with youth violence are offered for readers to consider, including chapters on effective conflict management practices, behavioral support plans, school-community relations, the development of a caring school community as a way to decrease tendencies toward violence, and a model which demonstrates an in-practice, state-wide program designed to assist in the development of a community-focused school. Each chapter concludes with discussion questions and a case study to enhance understanding of and reflection on the issues surrounding school violence.
The text is intended as supplementary material for any course preparing school administrators. Presenting both research and practice, the text can be a guide for practicing school administrators in their search for ways to insure the safety and well being of the students whom they serve, as well as a resource for individuals in other community-based human service agencies who deal with school violence.

Concern about violence on television has been publicly debated for the past 50 years. TV violence has repeatedly been identified as a significant causal agent in relation to the prevalence of crime and violence in society. Critics have accused the medium of presenting excessive quantities of violence, to the point where it is virtually impossible for viewers to avoid it. This book presents the findings of the largest British study of violence on TV ever undertaken, funded by the broadcasting industry. The study was carried out at the same time as similar industry-sponsored research was being conducted in the United States. The research groups kept in contact, and one chapter compares findings from Britain and the U.S.A. The book concludes that it is misleading to accuse all broadcasters of presenting excessive quantities of violence in their schedules. This does not deny that problematic portrayals were found. But the most gory, horrific and graphic scenes of violence were generally contained within broadcasts available on a subscription basis or in programs shown at times when few children were expected to be watching. This factual analysis proves that broadcasters were meeting their obligations under their national regulatory codes of practice. Contents: Preface. Violence on Television: The Parameters of Concern. Issues of Measurement and Analysis. Amount and Distribution of Violence on Television. Form of Violence on Television. Motives and Consequences of Violence on Television. Gender and Violence on Television. Children and Violence on Television. Violence in Soaps. News Values and Violence. Violence on Television in British and the United States. Violence on Television andHelping the Audience.

Violence is a research topic that is fraught with difficulties. A notoriously sensitive subject, and one that is presumed to be largely hidden, researchers have long struggled with the question of how to measure its impact and how to explore its incidence. Arising from the ESRC's Violence Research Programme, Researching Violence is a practical guide both to these problems and to the obstacles encountered when negotiating this uneasy terrain. Comprising the reflections of researchers who have worked on diverse projects - from violence in the home to racial violence and homicide - this book demonstrates the ingenuity and at times courageous actions of researchers having to think on their feet. It also investigates the ethical and emotional issues arising from working with the victims and perpetrators of violence. This book will be indispensable for students and academics doing research projects on violence.

Violence is a research topic that is fraught with difficulties. A notoriously sensitive subject, and one that is presumed to be largely hidden, researchers have long struggled with the question of how to measure its impact and how to explore its incidence. Arising from the ESRC's Violence Research Programme, Researching Violence is a practical guide both to theses problems and to the obstacles encountered when negotiating this uneasy terrain. Comprising the reflections of researchers who have worked on diverse projects - from violence in the home to racial violence and homicide - this book demonstrates the ingenuity and at times courageous actions of researchers having to think on their feet. It also investigates the ethical and emotional issues arising from working with the victims and perpetrators of violence. This book will be indispensable for students and academics doing research projects on violence.

Violence in schools is a pervasive, highly emotive and, above all, global problem. Bullying and its negative social consequences are of perennial concern, while the media regularly highlights incidences of violent assault - and even murder - occurring within schools. This unique and fascinating text offers a comprehensive overview and analysis of how European nations are tackling this serious issue.
Violence in Schools: The Response in Europe, brings together contributions from all EU member states and two associated states. Each chapter begins by clearly outlining the nature of the school violence situation in that country. It then goes on to describe those social policy initiatives and methods of intervention being used to address violence in schools and evaluates the effectiveness of these different strategies. Commentaries from Australia, Israel and the USA and an overview of the book's main themes by eminent psychologist Peter K. Smith complete a truly international and authoritative look at this important - and frequently controversial - subject.
This book constitutes an invaluable resource for educational administrators, policymakers and researchers concerned with investigating, and ultimately addressing, the social and psychological causes, manifestations and effects of school violence.