In the wake of the 2011 UK riots and the British government's new American-style 'war on gangs', this book is the definitive account of 'how gangs work'. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork with gangs and drawing on a variety of sources, How Gangs Work provides a vivid portrayal of gang life, but not as the British traditionally know it.
The book deconstructs the mythology of gangs to make sense of the profiles and motivations of gang members in straightforward, rational terms. How Gangs Work examines the vital processes of evolution, organization, and recruitment within gangs and gang members' instrumental and expressive uses of violence, media, and technology. Special attention is paid to the role of gangs in the drugs trade and the relationship between gangs and organized crime. The book concludes with a critical appraisal of gang desistance and the precarious future of gang prevention and intervention, with practical advice for practitioners, police and policy-makers.

The Hizmet Movement and Peacebuilding assesses the peacebuilding implications and societal impact of the Hizmet Movement, characterized as a pacifist and inclusive expression of Islam. With a range of both supporters and critics, the studies of the Hizmet Movement presented in these cases provide a counter to negative stereotypes with examples of positive educational institutions rooted in Islamic values. The book includes contributions from scholars and practitioners around the world that critically explore the intersection of the movement and peacebuilding in countries such as Northern Iraq, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines.

Early modern Spain has long been viewed as having a culture obsessed with honor, where a man resorted to violence when his or his wife's honor was threatened, especially through sexual disgrace. This book--the first to closely examine honor and interpersonal violence in the era--overturns this idea, arguing that the way Spanish men and women actually behaved was very different from the behavior depicted in dueling manuals, law books, and "honor plays" of the period. Drawing on criminal and other records to assess the character of violence among non-elite Spaniards, historian Scott K. Taylor finds that appealing to honor was a rhetorical strategy, and that insults, gestures, and violence were all part of a varied repertoire that allowed both men and women to decide how to dispute issues of truth and reputation.

Drawing on more than 150 in-depth interviews, Becoming Strong: Impoverished Women and the Struggle to Overcome Violence explores the diverse effects of trauma in the lives of homeless female victims of violence. Laura Huey and Ryan Broll closely examine the negative patterns common to cases of homeless female victims of violence and develop informed solutions for responding to issues that perpetuate cycles of female homelessness. Becoming Strong offers not only a comprehensive examination of trauma and the role it can play in shaping homeless women's lives, but it also explores how women may recover and develop strategies for coping with traumatic experiences.

Intimate Partner Violence and Advocate Response: Redefining Love in Western Belize offers new insight into the cross-cultural analysis of gender-based intimate partner violence by blending activist anthropology with in-depth ethnographic research to evaluate and help ameliorate the crisis in Belize. Drawing from twenty months of fieldwork in the Belizean Cayo District conducted between 2002 and 2013, Melissa A. Beske investigates the prevalence and complexity of partner abuse, the contributing cultural and structural factors, and the advocate dynamics across local, national, and transnational frameworks in combating the problem. Combining enlivened narratives, comparative viewpoints, and scholar-activism, this book not only illustrates the lived suffering of partner abuse in Cayo, but it also engages with the passionate commitment of survivors and supporters as they endeavor to create a more equitable and peaceful community. In doing so, it demonstrates an effective strategy for the interdisciplinary assessment of gender-based abuse, which satisfies demands for theoretical impartiality while simultaneously enabling researchers to take an ethical stand in social causes.

This volume contributes to understanding childhoods in the twentieth and twenty-firstcentury by offering an in-depth overview of children and their engagement with the violent world around them. The chapters deal with different historical, spatial, and cultural contexts, yet converge on the question of how children relate to physiological and psychological violence. The twentieth century has been hailed as the "century of the child" but it has also witnessed an unprecedented escalation of cultural trauma experienced by children during the two World Wars, Holocaust, Partition of the Indian subcontinent, and Vietnam War. The essays in this volume focus on victimized childhood during instances of war, ethnic violence, migration under compulsion, rape, and provide insights into how a child negotiates with abstract notions of nation, ethnicity, belonging, identity, and religion. They use an array of literary and cinematic representations-fiction, paintings, films, and popular culture-to explore the long-term effect of violence and neglect on children. As such, they lend voice to children whose experiences of abuse have been multifaceted, ranging from genocide, conflict and xenophobia to sexual abuse, and also consider ways of healing. With contributions from across the world, this comprehensive book will be useful to scholars and researchers of cultural studies, literature, education, education policy, gender studies, child psychology, sociology, political studies, childhood studies, and those studying trauma, conflict, and resilience.

For as long as people have been working to bring peace to areas suffering long-standing, violent conflict, there have also been those working to spoil this peace. These "spoilers" work to disrupt the peace process, and often this disruption takes the form of violence on a catastrophic level. Galia Golan and Gilead Sher offer a broader perspective. They examine this phenomenon by analyzing groups who have spoiled or attempted to spoil peace efforts by political or other nonviolent means. By focusing in particular on the Israeli-Arab conflict, this collection of essays considers the impact of a democratic society operating within a broader context of violence. Contributors bring to light the surprising efforts of negotiators, members of the media, political leaders, and even the courts to disrupt the peace process, and they offer coping strategies for addressing this kind of disruption. Taking into account the multitude of factors that can lead to the breakdown of negotiations, Spoiling and Coping with Spoilers shows how spoilers have been a key factor in Israeli-Arab negotiations in the past and explores how they will likely shape negotiations in the future.

This book constitutes a critical engagement with debates on the possibilities and limits of fighting racism with the help of criminal law. With in-depth analyses of cases of anti-Muslim violence in Sweden-a mosque fire, hate speech and of a series of assaults-Anti-Muslim Racism on Trial sheds light on issues central for understanding the ways in which racism is approached in court. It also illustrates the different forms that Islamophobia can take. Departing from a definition of law as a knowledge regime that embodies the power to decide on the meaning of the acts on trial and to establish a valid version of these events, the author explores the possibility of justice and recognition in court. From within a post-Holocaust and post-colonial context, this book recounts the complex and ambiguous history of laws against racism, examining the ways in which racist practices change in a society where certain manifestations of racism have come to be treated as crimes. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and criminology with interests in Islamophobia, race and ethnicity and violence.

The Social Dynamics of Family Violence explores family violence throughout the life course, from child abuse and neglect to intimate partner violence and elder abuse. Paying special attention to the social character and institutional causes of family violence, Hattery and Smith ask students to consider how social inequality, especially gender inequality, contributes to tensions and explosive tendencies in family settings. Students learn about individual preventative measures and are also invited to question the justice of our current social structure, with implications for social policy and reorganization. Hattery and Smith also examine violence against women globally and relate this to violence in the United States. Unique coverage of same-sex and multicultural couples, as well as of theory and methods, make this text an essential element of any course considering the sociology of family violence.

The twentieth century has been scarred by political violence and genocide, reaching its extreme in the Holocaust. Yet, at the same time, the century has been marked by a growing commitment to human rights. This volume highlights the importance of history-of socially processed memory-in resolving the wounds left by massive state-sponsored political violence and in preventing future episodes of violence. In Genocide, Collective Violence, and Popular Memory: The Politics of Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, the editors present and discuss the many different social responses to the challenge of coming to terms with past reigns of terror and collective violence.

Designed for undergraduate courses in political violence and revolution, this volume treats a wide variety of incidents of collective violence-from decades-long genocide to short-lived massacres. The selection of essays provides a broad range of thought-provoking case studies from Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. This provocative collection of readings from around the world will spur debate and discussion of this timely and important topic in the classroom and beyond.

Violence and tragedy riddle democracy - not due to fatal shortcomings or unnecessary failures, but because of its very design and success. To articulate this troubling claim, Steven Johnston explores the cruelty of democratic founding, the brutal use democracies make of citizens and animals during wartime, the ambiguous consequences of legislative action expressive of majority rule, and militant practices of citizenship required to deal with democracy's enemies. Democracy must take responsibility for its success: to rule in denial of violence merely replicates it. Johnston thus calls for the development of a tragic democratic politics and proposes institutional and civic responses to democracy's reign, including the reinvention of tragic festivals and holidays, a new breed of public memorials, and mandatory congressional reparations sessions. Theorizing the violent puzzle of democracy, Johnston addresses classic and contemporary political theory, films, little known monuments, the subversive music of Bruce Springsteen, and the potential of democratic violence by the people themselves.

Clinical psychologist Daniel J. Flannery reveals the impact of violence and victimization in the lives of children and adolescents from a developmental perspective. He explores how young people experience violence in their everyday lives and how this impacts their mental health and ability to cope with challenges and crises. His case studies show the significance of these mental health issues for the individual, family, neighborhood, and community. He offers lists of professional resources, including web sites and readings related to violence and mental health. This book will be a valuable resource for parents, teachers, social workers, childcare workers, public health officials, police officers and others who interact every day with young people, to help them understand more about child development and how experiences with violence can affect development and daily life.

In Curative Violence Eunjung Kim examines what the social and material investment in curing illnesses and disabilities tells us about the relationship between disability and Korean nationalism. Kim uses the concept of curative violence to question the representation of cure as a universal good and to understand how nonmedical and medical cures come with violent effects that are not only symbolic but also physical. Writing disability theory in a transnational context, Kim tracks the shifts from the 1930s to the present in the ways that disabled bodies and narratives of cure have been represented in Korean folktales, novels, visual culture, media accounts, policies, and activism. Whether analyzing eugenics, the management of Hansen's disease, discourses on disabled people's sexuality, violence against disabled women, or rethinking the use of disabled people as a metaphor for life under Japanese colonial rule or under the U.S. military occupation, Kim shows how the possibility of life with disability that is free from violence depends on the creation of a space and time where cure is seen as a negotiation rather than a necessity.

This book examines the impact of neoliberalism on society, bringing to the forefront a discussion of violence and harm, the inherent inequalities of neoliberalism and the ways in which our everyday lives in the Global North reproduce and facilitate this violence and harm. Drawing on a range of contemporary topics such as state violence, the carceral state, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, death, sports and entertainment, this book unmasks the banal forms of violence and harm that are a routine part of life that usurp, commodify and consume to reify the existing status quo of harm and inequality. It aims to defamiliarize routine forms of violence and inequality, thereby highlighting our own participation in its perpetuation, though consumerism and the consumption of neoliberal dogma. It is essential reading for students across criminology, sociology and political philosophy, particularly those engaged with crimes of the powerful, state crime and social harm.

Series Information:
War and Society

Violence, Inequality, and Human Freedom is a sociological introduction to the study of violence that looks at violence on three different levels-structural, institutional, and interpersonal. The third edition is updated throughout, including a new chapter on educational violence and revised sections on economic and international violence.

Since the 1980s, transitional justice mechanisms have been increasingly applied to account for mass atrocities and grave human rights violations throughout the world. Over time, post-conflict justice practices have expanded across continents and state borders and have fueled the creation of new ideas that go beyond traditional notions of amnesty, retribution, and reconciliation. Gathering work from contributors in international law, political science, sociology, and history, New Critical Spaces in Transitional Justice addresses issues of space and time in transitional justice studies. It explains new trends in responses to post-conflict and post-authoritarian nations and offers original empirical research to help define the field for the future.

One of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2022, Kirkus Reviews "A righteous indictment of racism and misogyny."-Publishers Weekly A powerful account of violence against Black women and girls in the United States and their fight for liberation. Echoing the energy of Nina Simone's searing protest song that inspired the title, this book is a call to action in our collective journey toward just futures. America, Goddam explores the combined force of anti-Blackness, misogyny, patriarchy, and capitalism in the lives of Black women and girls in the United States today. Through personal accounts and hard-hitting analysis, Black feminist historian Treva B. Lindsey starkly assesses the forms and legacies of violence against Black women and girls, as well as their demands for justice for themselves and their communities. Combining history, theory, and memoir, America, Goddam renders visible the gender dynamics of anti-Black violence. Black women and girls occupy a unique status of vulnerability to harm and death, while the circumstances and traumas of this violence go underreported and understudied. America, Goddam allows readers to understand How Black women-who have been both victims of anti-Black violence as well as frontline participants-are rarely the focus of Black freedom movements. How Black women have led movements demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Toyin Salau, Riah Milton, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and countless other Black women and girls whose lives have been curtailed by numerous forms of violence. How across generations and centuries, their refusal to remain silent about violence against them led to Black liberation through organizing and radical politics. America, Goddam powerfully demonstrates that the struggle for justice begins with reckoning with the pervasiveness of violence against Black women and girls in the United States.

"Homicide Survivors: Misunderstood Grievers" is about families that have faced murder and how they have dealt with the trauma. It offers an interpretation of personal accounts of homicide survivors in order to understand the particular nature of homicide bereavement. The author herself a homicide survivor, Judie Bucholz offers a unique perspective and experiential base for examining the phenomenon of homicide bereavement. Her intent is to help the reader understand the homicide griever's situation both as one who grieves and one who grieves within a social context, as one who confronts horrific death at the personal level as well as at the social level.

"At a time when school systems have completely lost focus on what really matters, John Hunter reminds us what we should be teaching our children. His ideas will help anyone who has the courage to understand that a real education must go beyond filling in circles on a standardized test form." -- Rafe Esquith, author of "Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire"
Can playing a game lead to world peace? If it's John Hunter's World Peace Game, it just might. In Hunter's classroom, students take on the roles of presidents, tribal leaders, diplomats, and military commanders. Through battles and negotiations, standoffs and summits, they strive to resolve a sequence of many-layered, interconnected scenarios, from nuclear proliferation to tribal warfare.
Now, Hunter shares inspiring stories from over thirty years of teaching the World Peace Game, revealing the principles of successful collaboration that people of any age can apply. He offers not only a forward-thinking report from the frontlines of American education, but also a generous blueprint for a world that bends toward cooperation rather than conflict. In this deeply hopeful book, a visionary educator shows us what the future of education can be.
"Inspired, breath-of-fresh-air reading." --" Kirkus Reviews"
"With numerous reflections on the game's impact on certain students and a resounding final chapter highlighting his class's 2012 visit to the Pentagon, Hunter proves the value of 'slow teaching' in this important, fascinating, highly readable resource for educators and parents alike." -- "Booklist"

In low-income U.S. cities, street fights between teenage girls are common. These fights take place at school, on street corners, or in parks, when one girl provokes another to the point that she must either "step up" or be labeled a "punk." Typically, when girls engage in violence that is not strictly self-defense, they are labeled "delinquent," their actions taken as a sign of emotional pathology. However, in Why Girls Fight, Cindy D. Ness demonstrates that in poor urban areas this kind of street fighting is seen as a normal part of girlhood and a necessary way to earn respect among peers, as well as a way for girls to attain a sense of mastery and self-esteem in a social setting where legal opportunities for achievement are not otherwise easily available. Ness spent almost two years in west and northeast Philadelphia to get a sense of how teenage girls experience inflicting physical harm and the meanings they assign to it. While most existing work on girls' violence deals exclusively with gangs, Ness sheds new light on the everyday street fighting of urban girls, arguing that different cultural standards associated with race and class influence the relationship that girls have to physical aggression.

In the midst of unprecedented attention to gender based violence (GBV), prompted in part by the #MeToo movement, Collaborating for Change: Transforming Cultures to End Gender-Based Violence in Higher Education provides a groundbreaking analysis of higher education culture and how it can be transformed to eradicate GBV. This book builds on existing scholarship and practice, offering unique reflections from faculty, staff, and students about potential avenues for change that go beyond programs and policies. It recognizes the important work achieved to date on this topic but argues that transformation of cultures, rather than reform of practices, is now required. Starting from the premise that cultural change must be embedded in groups of people working together, the contributors to the book offer insights into what makes for constructive, effective collaborations between activists in universities and the wider community, as well as with university leaders, managers, and policy-makers. The volume is an interdisciplinary, international account/analysis of attempts to transform higher education cultures in an attempt to eradicate GBV. The chapters, contributed by leading scholars and practitioners in the field, span the experiences of GBV in Canada, the United States, Scotland, England, France, and India. Collaborating for Change reveals the different institutional, political, and cultural contexts in which activists, scholars, and practitioners endeavor to eradicate GBV and provides insights for others engaged in this work around the globe. The book argues that nothing short of a transformation is required to make higher education safe for all.

Understanding Psychopathy is an essential, accessible new guide on psychopathy and its development. Through the lens of the biopsychosocial model, Thomson explores a wide range of factors contributing to the development of psychopathy, from the genetic to the environmental, supported by the latest research into the disorder. Thomson examines psychopathy from all angles, analysing social, psychological and biological factors, in addition to the history and assessment of psychopathy, and links to violent crime. Theory and research are supported throughout with fascinating case studies. These case studies provide accessible and relevant examples for readers who are new to the field, and to those more familiar with psychopathy and its implications. Understanding Psychopathy is a brilliant resource for psychology students, researchers and practitioners in the criminal justice system alike, with grounding in forensic psychology, clinical psychology and criminology. The author is donating his royalties in full to Project EMPOWER, UK, a multidisciplinary initiative dedicated to enhancing prevention and intervention services to individuals and their families who experience intimate partner violence, sexual violence, domestic violence, or human trafficking.

"Gregg Barak?s Violence and Nonviolence is a thoughtful, comprehensive examination of violence in the United States. Structurally and conceptually this book works. Barak addresses violence in an interdisciplinary way, addressing history, psychology, biology, cultural studies, and sociology. Moreover, Barak does an excellent job of discussing the intersection of race, class, and gender and those relationships with violence."

-- Heather Melton, University of Utah

 "Clearly, the strength of this book is its comprehensive and reciprocal approach. I found this to be an enjoyable and provocative book? that treats the topic holistically and offers a vision for overcoming current patterns of violence. I am convinced that this is an important work that will ultimately be well-received by undergraduates, graduate students, violence specialists, and general readers."

 -- Mathew T. Lee, University of Akron

--Charis Kubrin/Sociology, George Washington University

--Walter Dekeseredy, Ohio University

Violence and Nonviolence: Pathways to Understanding is the first book to provide an integrative, systematic approach to the study of violence and nonviolence in one volume. Eminent scholar and award-winning author Gregg Barak examines virtually all forms of violence?from verbal abuse to genocide?and treats all of these expressions of violence as interpersonal, institutional, and structural occurrences. In the context of recovery and nonviolence, Barak addresses peace and conflict studies, legal rights, social justice, and various nonviolent movements. Employing an interdisciplinary framework, Barak emphasizes the importance of culture, media, sexuality, gender, and social structure in developing a comprehensive theory of these two separate, but inseparable phenomena.

This innovative and accessible volume includes

• Figures, tables, and illustrations that reinforce important concepts and relationships
• Introduces a new, original theory of reciprocal violence and nonviolence
• Numerous case studies on violence and recovery throughout the book
• Chapter summaries and review questions to aid student comprehension
• Models of nonviolence such as "mutuality," "altruistic humanism," "positive peacemaking," and "resiliency"

Designed to be a core text for graduate and undergraduate courses on violence in criminology, sociology, criminal justice, and social work departments, Violence and Nonviolence is also an outstanding supplementary text for violence against women and criminal behavior courses. This book will transform the way students and readers think about violence, nonviolence, and the reciprocal relationship between the two.

In Unsafe Home: Child Harming within the Family, Limor Ezioni focuses on the three major types of child harming within the family-abuse, incest, and filicide-and provides an in-depth exploration of each type historically, legally, and comparatively. In the first part, focusing on abuse executed on children, Ezioni addresses both physical and emotional abuse, discussing what constitutes child abuse, how it should be punished, and whether any damage caused to a child is prosecutable by law. In the second part of the book, Ezioni examines childhood incest, focusing on adult survivors and the multitude of legal problems they face while attempting to pursue justice through the legal system and questioning whether the current legal and criminal provisions provide sufficient protection for survivors. In the final section of the book, Ezioni examine the filicide phenomenon and how the judicial system in western countries deals with the painful reality that reflects the society in which it occurs-filicide is often carried out by parents who are unable to function as a parent in circumstances dictated by the place and time in which they live. Scholars of legal studies, family studies, criminology, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.