This volume brings together leading sociologists and anthropologists to break new ground in the study of cultural violence. First sketched in Raphael Lemkin's seminal writings on genocide, and later systematically defined by peace studies scholar Johan Galtung, the concept of cultural violence seeks to explain why and how language, symbols, rituals, practices, and objects are so frequently in the crosshairs of socio-political change. Recent conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia, along with renewed public interest in the repertoire of violence applied to the control and erasure of indigenous populations, highlights the gaps in our understanding of why cultural violence occurs, what it consists of, and how it relates to other forms of collective violence.

Sexual violence against men is an under-theorised and under-noticed topic, though it is becoming increasingly apparent that this form of violence is widespread. Yet despite emerging evidence documenting its incidence, especially in conflict and post-conflict zones, efforts to understand its causes and develop strategies to reduce it are hampered by a dearth of theoretical engagement. One of the reasons that might explain its empirical invisibility and theoretical vacuity is its complicated relationship with sexual violence against women. The latter is evident empirically, theoretically, and politically, but the relationship between these violences conjures a range of complex and controversial questions about the ways they might be different, and why and how these differences matter. It is the case that sexual violence (when noticed at all) has historically been understood to happen largely, if not only, to women, allegedly because of their gender and their ensuing place in gender orders. This begs important questions regarding the impact of increasing knowledge about sexual violence against men, including the impact on resources, on understandings about, and experiences of masculinity, and whether the idea and practice of gender hierarchy is outdated. This book engages this diverse set of questions and offers fresh analysis on the incidences of sexual violence against men using both new and existing data. Additionally, the authors pay close attention to some of the controversial debates in the context of sexual violence against men, revisiting and asking new questions about the vexed issue of masculinities and related theories of gender hierarchy. The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sex, gender, masculinities, corporeality, violence, and global politics, as well as to practitioners and activists.

The Geography of Genocide offers a unique analysis of over sixty genocides in world history, explaining why genocides only occur in territorial interiors and never originate from cosmopolitan urban centers. This study explores why genocides tend to result from emasculating political defeats experienced by perpetrator groups and examines whether such extreme political violence is the product of a masculine identity crisis. Author Allan D. Cooper notes that genocides are most often organized and implemented by individuals who have experienced traumatic childhood events involving the abandonment or abuse by their father. Although genocides target religious groups, nations, races or ethnic groups, these identity structures are rarely at the heart of the war crimes that ensue. Cooper integrates research derived from the study of serial killing and rape to show certain commonalities with the phenomenon of genocide. The Geography of Genocide presents various strategies for responding to genocide and introduces Cooper's groundbreaking alternatives for ultimately inhibiting the occurrence of genocide.

Using in-depth field research and analysis of case studies, Mafia Violence: Political, Symbolic, and Economic Forms of Violence in Camorra Clans focuses attention on the phenomenon of violence performed by Italian organised crime groups, devoting specific attention to the Camorra, which has been responsible since the mid-1980s for almost half of all mafia homicides documented in Italy. The Camorra has acquired increased visibility at an international level due to its intense use of violence and high level of dangerousness, but until now, the study of the different forms of violence implemented by mafias has not received systematic attention at the scientific level. Hence, this book fills this gap by providing a both theoretical and empirical contribution toward the analysis of one of the most unknown - although highly visible and dangerous - dimension of mafias' action. This collection of work by distinguished scholars provides a unique overview of the multifaceted characteristics of violence currently performed by mafia groups in Italy by focusing on specific actors - i.e., Camorra clans - but also other traditional mafia organisations such as Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta; specific contexts - i.e., different territories and different markets, both legal and illegal; and specific practices and performances. Part I takes a diachronic and comparative perspective to provide an overview of mafias' violence during the past 30 years, focusing on the three most prominent criminal organisations active in Italy: Camorra, Cosa Nostra, and 'Ndrangheta. Based on the outcomes of a major project carried out by a research group at the University of Naples Federico II from 2015 to 2017, Part II looks at the use of violence by Camorra clans, incorporating information from case studies, judicial files, law enforcement investigations, wiretappings, interviews with privileged observers, firsthand empirical data, and historical documents and social sciences literature. Using a multi-disciplinary approach drawing from criminology, sociology, history, anthropology, economics, political science, and geography, this book is essential reading for international researchers and practitioners interested in piecing together the full picture of modern organised crime.

"This was several times with that damn cribbage board. I hate cribbage boards to this very day. They never beat us on the arms or legs or stuff, it was always on the bottom of the feet, I couldn't figure it out." Brian L., Huronia Regional Centre Survivor Over the past two decades, the public has borne witness to ongoing revelations of shocking, intense, and even sadistic forms of violence in spaces meant to provide care. This has been particularly true in institutions designed to care for people with disabilities. In this work, the authors not only describe institutional violence, but work to make sense of how and why institutional violence within care settings is both so pervasive and so profound. Drawing on a wide range of primary data, including oral histories of institutional survivors and staff, ethnographic observation, legal proceedings and archival data, this book asks: What does institutional violence look like in practice and how might it be usefully categorized? How have extreme forms violence and neglect come to be the cultural norm across institutions? What organizational strategies in institutions foster the abdication of personal morality and therefore violence? How is institutional care the crucial "first step" in creating a culture that accepts violence as the norm? This highly interdisciplinary work develops scholarly analysis of the history and importance of institutional violence and, as such, is of particular interest to scholars whose work engages with issues of disability, health care law and policy, violence, incarceration, organizational behaviour, and critical theory.

Multiple killings by serial or spree killers and the mass violence seen in war crimes and other atrocities have typically been understood as discrete category types, which can foster the view that there are fundamentally different kinds of human beings, including "deviants" who are born evil and innately given to sadism or a callous lack of empathy. In contrast, this book considers the violence of these "deviants" in terms of larger questions about human violence. Therefore, in addition to describing the life histories of a sample of individual serial and spree murderers, the book includes analysis of macro-level phenomena such as genocide, mass rape and killing, and torture occurring under conditions of war, state authorization, or political upheaval. The chief claim of the book is that, given the "right" combination of factors occurring at different levels of analysis, virtually anyone can emerge as a killer or perpetrator of atrocities. While it is crucial to understand individual killers in terms of the details of their biographies, it is equally crucial to understand political atrocities in terms of the details of their histories; and to see that persons and groups are always the product of complexly interacting assemblage processes.

Drawing on data from three different insurgent groups within the Cambodian conflict, the book shows how the social backgrounds of combatants and commanders cause them to pursue different strategies during a decade-long transition into various postconflict settings, thereby creating different "pathways to peace." By highlighting different vertical and horizontal ranks within the insurgent groups and the role of belligerents' resources and networks, this qualitative study tackles an imbalance in the current research on Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR), which tends to focus on top-down planning and the technicalities of reintegration programs. It helps explain why conflict dynamics and path-dependencies differ among various social groups within the field of insurgency. By analyzing the social position, life courses and postconflict trajectories of various groups within the insurgency, the book emphasizes the diversity of transitions to peace and "brings the social back in." The study is grounded in in-depth fieldwork conducted in Cambodia and its diaspora, including 168 firsthand interviews with ex-combatants from groups as diverse as Buddhist monks and Christian converts, intellectuals, powerful warlords, civil servants, and female communist soldiers. Using these details, the book not only builds a theory of the social structure and internal logic of armed groups, but also emphasizes the crucial importance of fighters' own narratives about their roles in society. Therefore, in addition to advancing a sociological perspective on post-conflict transitions, the study also provides the most detailed treatment to date of the social fields of the insurgents who fought in the civil war that followed the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979. These social fields continue to have a profound influence on Cambodian politics, even today.

This book investigates the causes and consequences of image-based sexual abuse in a digital era. Image-based sexual abuse refers to the taking or sharing of nude or sexual photographs or videos of another person without their consent. It includes a diversity of behaviours beyond that of "revenge porn", such as the secret trading of nude or sexual images online; "upskirting", "downblousing" and other "creepshots"; blackmail or "sextortion" scams; the use of artificial intelligence to construct "deepfake" pornographic videos; threats to distribute photographs and videos without consent; and the taking or sharing of sexual assault imagery. This book investigates the pervasiveness and experiences of these harms, as well as the raft of legal and non-legal measures that have been introduced to better respond to and prevent image-based sexual abuse. The book draws on groundbreaking empirical research, including surveys in three countries with over 6,000 respondents and over 100 victim-survivor and stakeholder interviews. Guided by theoretical frameworks from gender studies, sociology, criminology, law and psychology, the authors argue that image-based sexual abuse is more commonly perpetrated by men than women, and that perpetration is higher among some groups, including younger and sexuality minority men. Although the motivations of perpetrators vary, a dominant theme to emerge was that of power and control. The gendered nature of the abuse means that it is best understood as a "continuum of sexual violence" because victim-survivors often experience it as part of a broader pattern of gendered harassment, violence and abuse. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, law and psychology. Image-based Sexual Abuse is also an essential resource for activists, legal and policy practitioners, technology companies and victim-survivors seeking to understand the deeply complex nature of intimate-image sharing in a digital era.

How cities are planned and designed has a major impact on individuals' mobility and safety. If individuals feel unsafe in public transportation or on the way to it, they may avoid certain routes or particular times of the day. This is problematic, since research has also found that, in some cities, especially those in the Global South, a large percentage of women are "transit captives". Namely, they have relatively less access to non-public forms of transportation and are, therefore, especially reliant on public transport. This issue is important not only because it affects people's safety but also because it influences the long-term sustainability of a city. In a sustainable city, safety guarantees the ability to move freely for everyone and provides a wider sense of place attachment. Transit Crime and Sexual Violence in Cities examines the evidence of victimization in transit environments in countries around the world, exploring individuals' feelings of perceived safety or lack thereof and the necessary improvements that can make transit safer and, hence, cities more sustainable. The book's contributions are grounded in theories at the crossroads of several disciplines such as environmental criminology, architecture and design, urban planning, geography, psychology, gender and LGBTQI studies, transportation, and law enforcement. International case studies include Los Angeles, Vancouver, Stockholm, London, Paris, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Bogota, Tokyo, Guangzho, Melbourne, and Lagos, among others.

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.

Transforming Cities examines the profound changes that have characterised cities of the advanced capitalist societies in the final decades of the twentieth century. It analyses ways in which relationships of contest, conflict and co-operation are realised in and through the social and spatial forms of contemporary urban life. This book focuses on the impact of economic restructuring and changing forms of urban deprivation and social exclusion. It contends that these processes are creating new patterns of social division and new forms of regulation and control.

How do economic conditions such as poverty, unemployment, inflation, and economic growth impact youth violence? Economics and Youth Violence provides a much-needed new perspective on this crucial issue. Pinpointing the economic factors that are most important, the editors and contributors in this volume explore how different kinds of economic issues impact children, adolescents, and their families, schools, and communities.Offering new and important insights regarding the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and youth violence across a variety of times and places, chapters cover such issues as the effect of inflation on youth violence; new quantitative analysis of the connection between race, economic opportunity, and violence; and the cyclical nature of criminal backgrounds and economic disadvantage among families. Highlighting the complexities in the relationship between economic conditions, juvenile offenses, and the community and situational contexts in which their connections are forged, Economics and Youth Violence prompts important questions that will guide future research on the causes and prevention of youth violence. Contributors: Sarah Beth Barnett, Eric P. Baumer, Philippe Bourgois, Shawn Bushway, Philip J. Cook, Robert D. Crutchfield, Linda L. Dahlberg, Mark Edberg, Jeffrey Fagan, Xiangming Fang, Curtis S. Florence, Ekaterina Gorislavsky, Nancy G. Guerra, Karen Heimer, Janet L. Lauritsen, Jennifer L. Matjasko, James A. Mercy, Matthew Phillips, Richard Rosenfeld, Tim Wadsworth, Valerie West, Kevin T. Wolff

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.

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.

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.

What are the causes of violence in women?

What can be done to help these women and their victims?

Why does society deny the fact of female violence?

This book explores the nature and causes of female violence from the perspectives of psychodynamic theory and forensic psychology. This fully updated and expanded second edition explores developments in research and services for violent women. Recent high profile cases of female violence are discussed alongside clinical material and theory. New topics include: the Victoria Climbi, Inquiry, the controversy related to the diagnosis of Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy, Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder in women, and the impact of pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia websites. New chapters address central clinical issues of working with women who kill and designing therapeutic services for women in secure mental health settings.

Other major topics include:

Women who sexually and physically abuse children

Infanticide

Fabricated and induced illness

Self Harm

The Psychology of Female Violence will be valuable to trainees and practitioners working in the fields of clinical and forensic psychology, women's studies, sociology, psychiatric nursing, social work, probation, counselling, psychoanalysis, the criminal justice system and criminology.

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.