In this collection, leading international scholars examine riots and protest in a range of countries and contexts, exploring the major social transformations of rioting and the changing dynamics, interpretation and potency of unrest in a globalised era.

The first of its kind, The Handbook of Collective Violence covers a range of contexts in which collective violence occurs, bringing together international perspectives from psychology, criminology and sociology into one complete volume. There have been significant advances made in the last 25 years regarding how collective violence is conceptualised and understood, with a move away from focusing on solely individual forms of violence toward examining and understanding violence that can occur within groups. This handbook presents some of the most interesting topics within the area of collective violence, drawing upon international expertise and including some of the most well-known academics and practitioners of our generation. Structured into four parts: understanding war; terrorism; public order and organized violent crime; and gang and multiple offender groups, this volume provides academics and practitioners with an up-to-date resource that covers core areas of interest and application. Accessibly written, it is ideal for both academics and policymakers alike, capturing developments in the field and offering a deep theoretical insight to enhance our understanding of how such collective violence evolves, alongside practical suggestions for management, prevention and intervention.

This extensively researched book addresses sports fan violence sociologically, using both theoretical models and empirical data. Lewis draws from the theoretical approaches based on the collective behavior models of Neil J. Smelser and Clark McPhail in order to show how to study fan violence using the intensive case history method. This method is then applied to an in-depth analysis of the Ohio State-Michigan football celebration riot in 2002 and the Boston Red Sox celebration riot in 2004. The book concludes by proposing solutions for the prevention and control of sports fan violence.

Violence is a serious public health problem. The number of violent deaths tells only part of the story, and many more survive violence and are left with permanent physical and emotional scars. Violence also erodes communities by reducing productivity, decreasing property values, and disrupting social services. In recent years, scholars have broadened their definitions of violence beyond the realm of interpersonal harms such as murder, armed robbery, and male-to-female physical and sexual assaults in intimate relationships, to include behaviors often ignored by the criminal justice system, such as human rights violations, racism, psychological abuse, state terrorism, environmental violations, and war. Guided by this broader definition of violence, this handbook offers state of the art research in the field and brings together international experts to discuss empirical, theoretical, and policy issues.

The nature of human security is changing globally: interstate conflict and even intrastate conflict may be diminishing worldwide, yet threats to individuals and communities persist. Large-scale violence by formal and informal armed forces intersects with interpersonal and domestic forms of violence in mutually reinforcing ways. Gender, Violence, and Human Security takes a critical look at notions of human security and violence through a feminist lens, drawing on both theoretical perspectives and empirical examinations through case studies from a variety of contexts around the globe. This fascinating volume goes beyond existing feminist international relations engagements with security studies to identify not only limitations of the human security approach, but also possible synergies between feminist and human security approaches. Noted scholars Aili Mari Tripp, Myra Marx Ferree, and Christina Ewig, along with their distinguished group of contributors, analyze specific case studies from around the globe, ranging from post-conflict security in Croatia to the relationship between state policy and gender-based crime in the United States. Shifting the focus of the term "human security" from its defensive emphasis to a more proactive notion of peace, the book ultimately calls for addressing the structural issues that give rise to violence. A hard-hitting critique of the ways in which global inequalities are often overlooked by human security theorists, Gender, Violence, and Human Security presents a much-needed intervention into the study of power relations throughout the world.

This study exmines peace processes in Israel/Palestine, South Africa, the Basque Region, Sri Lanka, and Northern Ireland for over two years. It identifies factors that facilitate or block political movement in deeply divided societies, and highlights issues of negotiation and constitutional change, political violence, economics, external influences, public opinion, and symbolism to challenge accepted notions about peace processes.

Many people have experienced or witnessed situations in which people drinking alcohol get aggressive, obnoxious, and violent. Scientific research has shown evidence of a relationship between alcohol and violence, and even evidence that alcohol plays a role in causing violent and aggressive responses. The book explores a number of aspects of this relationship. If you have been drinking are you more likely to be a victim of crime? If victimized, does drinking alcohol make you more likely to be injured? How does availability of alcohol in the community influence rates of violence among Mexican American youth? Does advertising that links sex and alcohol result in higher rates of sexual assault in Latino neighborhoods? How do elementary school children react to experimentation with drugs, alcohol, and aggression? Do countries outside the United States have alcohol and violence problems, and do these impact men and women differently? We presents original research that shows the depths and conditions under which alcohol and violence are linked, further strengthening the evidence that alcohol use and availability is an important factor in violence in our cities, neighborhoods, school, and homes. The good news is that we regulate alcohol use and availability effectively, with a body of established laws and procedures. We can, therefore, find ways using this existing system to develop new ways to prevent the alcohol related violence studied here. The second half of the book begins this task by laying out the principles of environmental prevention, a strategy that has been very successful in a number of health and safety related domains. The next four chapters show just how environmental prevention strategies have worked, and worked very effectively, to lower rates of violence by reducing alcohol availability and alcohol consumption. The research reported here shows communities different approaches and mechanisms to achieve reductions in violence, and they provide a road map for communities everywhere to follow suit and reduce alcohol related violence. Reducing violence can be accomplished, everyone can do it if they work together, and the result is a safer and better society.

Capital punishment, serial killings, war, terrorism, abortion, honour killings, euthanasia, suicide bombings, war, and genocide: all involve the taking of life. Put most simply, all involve killing other people. However, cultural context heavily influences heavily how people perceive these acts, and most people reading this paragraph will likely disagree on the extent to which these "count" as killing. For such an evolved species, humans can be violent far beyond the point of humanity. Why We Kill examines this violence in its many forms, exploring how culture plays a role in people's understanding and definition of violent action. From the first chapter, which examines "conventional" homicide, to the final chapter's bone-chilling account of the Rwandan genocide, this fascinating book makes compelling reading.

Why violence in the Congo has continued despite decades of international intervention Well into its third decade, the military conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been dubbed a "forever war"-a perpetual cycle of war, civil unrest, and local feuds over power and identity. Millions have died in one of the worst humanitarian calamities of our time. The War That Doesn't Say Its Name investigates the most recent phase of this conflict, asking why the peace deal of 2003-accompanied by the largest United Nations peacekeeping mission in the world and tens of billions in international aid-has failed to stop the violence. Jason Stearns argues that the fighting has become an end in itself, carried forward in substantial part through the apathy and complicity of local and international actors. Stearns shows that regardless of the suffering, there has emerged a narrow military bourgeoisie of commanders and politicians for whom the conflict is a source of survival, dignity, and profit. Foreign donors provide food and urgent health care for millions, preventing the Congolese state from collapsing, but this involvement has not yielded transformational change. Stearns gives a detailed historical account of this period, focusing on the main players-Congolese and Rwandan states and the main armed groups. He extrapolates from these dynamics to other conflicts across Africa and presents a theory of conflict that highlights the interests of the belligerents and the social structures from which they arise. Exploring how violence in the Congo has become preoccupied with its own reproduction, The War That Doesn't Say Its Name sheds light on why certain military feuds persist without resolution.

Interpersonal Violence Against Children and Youth uses empirical research to provide an overview of the risk factors, different types of violence against children and youth, their victimizations (online and offline), as well as prevention practices and strategies. Pulling together researchers, practitioners, and educators from around the world, this book addresses the various practices and efforts different countries use to protect children and prevent interpersonal violence. These forms of violence include parental or caregiver initiated, actions of peers, intimate partner-related, or that among strangers and are not limited to maltreatment, bullying, emotional strife, sexual assault, or homicidal violence. This book would be of interest to those studying criminology, criminal justice, sociology, social work, law, forensic pathology and others.

Cadre deployment means that the ANC and the state are inextricably intertwined. In KwaZulu-Natal, which has long been the powder keg of South Africa, it’s a monster that means people of competing patronage networks are killing each other for a place at the trough –  for jobs and tenders –  and the taxi industry provides the hitmen, guns and the transport.

Travel with journalist Greg Ardé across KwaZulu-Natal into the dark heart of South Africa and the ANC’s ‘culture of blood’.  

The twentieth century witnessed genocides, ethnic cleansing, forced population expulsions, shifting borders, and other disruptions on an unprecedented scale. This book examines the work of memory and the ethics of healing in post authoritarian societies that have experienced state-perpetrated violence. Focusing on global memorialization practices and local specificities, the contributors explore trans-generational encounters, performances, rituals, and diverse forms of remembrance and reconciliation in the aftermath of violent historical events: WWII, the Holocaust and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Stalinism in post-Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe, collaboration in Vichy France, the Civil War in Spain, and apartheid in South Africa.

War leads not just to widespread death but also to extensive displacement, overwhelming fear, and economic devastation. It weakens social ties, threatens household survival and undermines the family's capacity to care for its most vulnerable members. Every year it kills and maims countless numbers of young people, undermines thousands of others psychologically and deprives many of the economic, educational, health and social opportunities which most of us consider essential for children's effective growth and well being. Based on detailed ethnographic description and on young people's own accounts, this volume provides insights into children's experiences as both survivors and perpetrators of violence. It focuses on girls who have been exposed to sexual exploitation and abuse, children who head households or are separated from their families, displaced children and young former combatants who are attempting to adjust to their changed circumstances following the cessation of conflict. In this sense, the volume bears witness to the grim effects of warfare and displacement on the young. Nevertheless, despite the abundant evidence of suffering, it maintains that children are not the passive victims of conflict but engage actively with the conditions of war, an outlook that challenges orthodox research perspectives that rely heavily on medicalized notions of 'victim' and 'trauma.'

This book brings research-based attention to the problem of increasing violence, abuse

There is tremendous controversy across the United States (and beyond) when a police officer uses deadly force against an unarmed citizen, but often the conversation is devoid of contextual details. These details matter greatly as a matter of law and organizational legitimacy. In this short book, authors Jon Shane and Zoe Swenson offer a comprehensive analysis of the first study to use publicly available data to reveal the context in which an officer used deadly force against an unarmed citizen. Although any police shooting, even a justified shooting, is not a desired outcome-often termed "lawful but awful" in policing circles-it is not necessarily a crime. The results of this study lend support to the notion that being unarmed does not mean "not dangerous," in some ways explaining why most police officers are not indicted when such a shooting occurs. The study's findings show that when police officers used deadly force during an encounter with an unarmed citizen, the officer or a third person was facing imminent threat of death or serious injury in the vast majority of situations. Moreover, when police officers used force, their actions were almost always consistent with the accepted legal and policy principles that govern law enforcement in the overwhelming proportion of encounters (as measured by indictments). Noting the dearth of official data on the context of police shooting fatalities, Shane and Swenson call for the U.S. government to compile comprehensive data so researchers and practitioners can learn from deadly force encounters and improve practices. They further recommend that future research on police shootings should examine the patterns and micro-interactions between the officer, citizen, and environment in relation to the prevailing law. The unique data and analysis in this book will inform discussions of police use of force for researchers, policymakers, and students involved in criminal justice, public policy, and policing.

This book probes the complex interweaving, across time and cultures, of violence and non-violence from the perspective of the present. One of the first of its kind, it offers a comprehensive examination of the interpenetration of violence and non-violence as much in human nature as in human institutions with reference to different continents, cultures and religions over centuries. It points to the present paradox that even as violence of unprecedented lethality threatens the very survival of humankind, non-violence increasingly appears as an unlikely feasible alternative. The essays presented here cover a wide cultural-temporal spectrum - from Vedic sacrifice, early Jewish-Christian polemics, the Crusades, and medieval Japan to contemporary times. They explore aspects of the violence-non-violence dialectic in a coherent frame of analysis across themes such as war, jihad, death, salvation, religious and philosophical traditions including Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, mysticism, monism, and Neoplatonism, texts such as Ramayana, Mahabharata and Quran, as well as issues faced by Dalits and ethical imperatives for clinical trials, among others. Offering thematic width and analytical depth to the treatment of the subject, the contributors bring their disciplinary expertise and cultural insights, ranging from the historical to sociological, theological, philosophical and metaphysical, as well as their sensitive erudition to deepening an understanding of a grave issue. The book will be useful to scholars and researchers of history, peace and conflict studies, political science, political thought and cultural studies, as well as those working on issues of violence and non-violence.

This ethnographic research investigates how adolescents use writing. Deborah M. Alvarez uncovers the hidden abuses and violence that adolescents bore with each school day. In two different research sites, the author follows adolescents through their academic and personal lives to discover how they use writing only to uncover the impact the public and private violence had upon their ability to learn. The author details the writing classroom practices; assignments; and how adolescents adapt, reconstruct and appropriate the lessons of the classroom for their purpose and needs. For the adolescents in the book, writing was a way to address the stresses that plagued the adolescents each day, especially when they had no other way to communicate or tell about their lived experiences. Alvarez outlines an alternative Expressivist plan for teaching writing to adolescents. This writing program builds upon the evidence from the case studies, brain theory and research on traumatic stresses to offer teachers and thereby their students a more effective way to teach writing with greater impact for those who need it most.

Drawing primarily upon oral history interviews, this study presents a woman-centred history of the Indonesian occupation. It reveals the pervasiveness of violence as well as its gendered and gendering dynamics within the social and cultural everyday of life in occupied East Timor. The violence experienced by East Timorese women ranged from torture, rape, and interrogation, to various forms of surveillance and social control, and the structural imposition of particular feminine ideals upon their lives and bodies. Through women, East Timorese familial culture was also targeted via programmes to develop and modernise the territory by transforming the feminine and the domestic sphere. Women experienced the occupation differently to men, not just because they were vulnerable to sexual violence, but also because they endured proxy violence as the militarys means of targeting male relatives and the resistance at large. In Womens Words tells a story of survival and perseverance by highlighting the strength, initiative, and negotiating skills of East Timorese women. Many women lived in circumstances of constant negotiation and attempts to maintain order and normality, as well as to provide for themselves and their families, in a society where everyday life was characterised by violence and uncertainty. This study demonstrates the capacity of people to survive, to endure, and to resist, even amid the most difficult of circumstances. It provides insights into the social and cultural elements of territorial control, as well as the locally-grounded strategies that are often used for negotiating and resisting an occupying power.

This book frames several historical incidents of violent movement-countermovement conflicts within the concept of 'cumulative extremism'- the mutually reinforcing dynamic of radicalisation that can develop between two or more antagonistic groups. Drawing on several in-depth case studies, including the contests between British fascist and anti-fascist groups in the interwar period and from 1967 to 1979 and 1980 to 2000; the Troubles in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s to mid-1970s; and Islamist extremists and the far-right counter-jihad movement in Britain since 2009, this book presents the first in-depth academic analysis of the concept of 'cumulative extremism' and constructs a theoretical framework through which to assess its development. This is a groundbreaking volume which will be of particular relevance to scholars with an interest in the extreme right, social movements, political violence and criminology. It will also be of interest to policy makers and to practitioners dealing with extremism and radicalisation, including youth workers, prevent coordinators, community support officers and police officers.

From early modernity to today, society has encountered various forms of interpersonal violence. Through exploration of particular areas within Europe and Russia to Africa, America and Asia, this collection presents both differences and connections among various forms of interpersonal violence in different times, places, institutional orders and relationships. Interpersonal Violence introduces research results from studies in various disciplines, such as history, sociology, social policy social work, cultural studies, and gender studies. In focusing on the diverse and often ignored social locations and cultural backgrounds of interpersonal violence, the book demonstrates 1) how the specificity of temporality and spatiality affect the manifestation of violence, 2) how the dynamics of intersectional and institutional differences are located in social space and time, and 3) how the different forms of violence in different times are affectively, conceptually and discursively connected. With its comprehensive and integrative approach, this book is a key tool book for understanding the phenomenon and cultural conceptions of interpersonal violence. It would be most suitable for upper level undergraduates, graduates doctoral students interested in social sciences, history, criminology, psychology, cultural studies, education, gender studies and public health.

Understanding and Reducing Prison Violence considers both the individual and prison characteristics associated with violence perpetration and violent victimization among both prison inmates and staff. Prison violence is not a random process; rates of violence vary across prisons and the odds of perpetrating violence or experiencing violent victimization vary across inmates and staff. A comprehensive understanding of the causes of prison violence therefore requires consideration of both individual and prison characteristics. Building on large dataset comprising 5,500 inmates and 1,800 officers across 45 prisons located across two of the United States (Ohio and Kentucky), this book showcases one of the largest and most comprehensive studies of prisons carried out to date. It considers both the implications of the study for theories of prison violence and the implications of the study for preventing violence in prisons. It will be of interest to academics, practitioners, and policy makers alike.

This book is the first to consider the intersection between mafia power and deviant masonic lodges within the political sphere of the contemporary Italian state. At its core, it offers an analysis of the shifting interactions across powerful actors and the ways in which they balance reciprocal obedience, and a unique insight into the political processes where mafia actors and deviant lodges play a significant role in the allocation of resources. Mafia, Deviant Masons and Corruption draws on a wealth of literature from across criminology and political science and a range of primary data sources including judicial files indictments, arrest warrants, intercepted materials and sentences for key cases, official documentation from Parliamentary commissions and special committees of inquiry, rituals of affiliation and codes of initiation, and interviews with prosecutors, journalists and experts. In doing so it redefines how we have come to understand the relationship between mafias and power in Italy. It considers how criminal groups are defined and enriched by a relational capital in shifty environments where every actor assumes often a double nature: the mafia boss acts as an entrepreneur; the entrepreneur acts as a politician; the politician mixes with masons; a deviant mason supports mafia organisations. This book is a major contribution to the literature on mafias and organised crime across criminology, sociology and political science, and will be of great interest to students, researchers, scholars and engaged general readers.

This volume will explore the specific role which war has played in the constitution of a modern mentality. It will be divided into three parts: one dealing with issues of conceptualizing war, violence, and modernity/ modernism, one devoted to issues of the First World War as an exemplary experience in the 20th century; and one concerned with issues of violence and its representation in the aftermath of the first modern war.

It's not just the bully in the schoolyard that we should be worried about. The one-on-one bullying that dominates the national conversation, this timely book suggests, is actually part of a larger problem- a natural outcome of the bullying nature of our national institutions. And as long as the United States embraces militarism and aggressive capitalism, systemic bullying and all its impacts-at home and abroad-will persist as a major crisis. Bullying looks very similar on the personal and institutional levels: it involves an imbalance of power and behavior that consistently undermines its victim, securing compliance and submission and reinforcing the bully's sense of superiority and legitimacy. The similarity, this book tells us, is not a coincidence. Authors Charles Derber and Yale Magrass argue that individual bullying is an outgrowth-and a necessary function-of a larger social phenomenon.Bullying is seen here as a structural problem arising from systems organized around steep power hierarchies-from the halls of the Pentagon, Congress, and corporate offices to classrooms and playing fields and the environment. Dominant people and institutions need to create a culture in which violence and aggression are seen asnatural and just: one where individuals compete over who will be bully or victim, and each is seen as deserving their fatewithin this hierarchy. The larger the inequalities of power in society, or among nations, or even across species, the morelikely it is that both institutional and personal bullying will become commonplace. The authors see the life-long psychologicalscars interpersonal bullying can bring, but believe it is almost impossible to reduce such bullying without first challenging theinstitutions that breed and encourage it. In the United States a system of intertwined corporations, governments, and military institutions carries out "systemic bullying" to create profits and sustain its own power. While acknowledging the diversity and savagery of many other bully nations, the authors contend that America, as the most powerful nation in the world-and one that aggressively promotes its system as a model-merits special attention. It is only by recognizing the bullying built into this model that we can address the real problem, and in this, Bully Nation makes a hopeful beginning.

Suicide attacks have become the defining act of political violence of our age. From New York City to Baghdad, from Sri Lanka to Israel, few can doubt that they are a terrifying feature of an increasing number of violent conflicts. Since 1981, around 30 organizations throughout the world - some of them secular and others affiliated to radical Islam - have carried out more than 600 suicide missions. Although a tiny fraction of the overall number of guerrilla and terrorist attacks occurring in the same period, the results have proved significantly more lethal. This book is the first to shed real light on these extraordinary acts, and provide answers to the questions we all ask. Are these the actions of aggressive religious zealots and unbridled, irrational radicals or is there a logic driving those behind them? Are their motivations religious or has Islam provided a language to express essentially political causes? How can the perpetrators remain so lucidly effective in the face of certain death? And do these disparate attacks have something like a common cause? For nearly three years, this team of internationally distinguished scholars has pursued an unprejudiced inquiry, investigating organizers and perpetrators alike of this extraordinary phenomenon. Close comparisons between a whole range of cases raise challenging further questions: if suicide missions are so effective, why are they not more common? If killing is what matters, why not stick to 'ordinary' violent means? Or, if dying is what matters, why kill in the process? Making Sense of Suicide Missions contains a wealth of original information and innovative analysis which further our understanding of this chilling feature of the contemporary world in radically new and unexpected ways.