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.

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.

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

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.'

Victimisation provides an accessible but critical review of the study of victims and victimization, particularly in the areas of theory, research, policy, and practice. It provides an introduction and overview of the core areas relating to victimization including: the causes; its nature, extent, and impact; methods of research; issues of class, age, race, gender, and community; the policy context; mechanisms for tackling victimization; and the comparative context. Each contributor to the volume explores a range of historical and contemporary debates and developments surrounding particular aspects of the victimological enterprise, and by doing so outlines their own agenda for the futures of the discipline.

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.

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.

'Studies on the Nature of War' aims to place in perspective the sociocultural variables that make outbreaks of war probable, and identify for policy-makers steps that can be taken to control these variables. This first volume of the series is designed to show the many effects that war produces on the societies that are addicted to them. Twelve papers describe the evolution from antiquity to modern times of the interpretation of the causes of war and of its effects; the causes of war among pre-industrial societies; war in an ancient empire, the Roman, in a modern one, the Austro-Hungarian, and in the Soviet empire; and the various aspects of the impact of war on society, for instance, the correlation between war and personal violence, the manipulation of public communication, and the costs of war. CONTRIBUTORS: G. AUSENDA, R. POZZO, C. DANDEKER, R. B. FERGUSON, R. L. CARNEIRO, J. A. TAINTER, T. J. CORNELL, N. RUDENSKY, A. AKLAEV, D. LESTER, P.M. TAYLOR, W. R. THOMPSON. BR> CONTENTS: The evolution of learned thinking on the significance of war from classical Greece to the Renaissance: A survey. G. AUSENDA and R. POZZO; The causes of war and the history of modern sociological theory. C. DANDEKER; The general consequences of war: An Amazonian perspective. R. B. FERGUSON; The role of warfare in political evolution: Past results and future projections. R. L. CARNEIRO; Evolutionary consequences of war. J. A. TAINTER; The effects of war on the society of ancient Rome. T. J. CORNELL; War and nationalities problems: The end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. G. AUSENDA; War as a factor of ethnic conflict and stability in the U.S.S.R. N. RUDENSKY; War and social stress and their effects on the nationalities in the U.S.S.R. A. AKLAEV; War and personal violence. D. LESTER; The effects of war on communications. P.M. TAYLOR; Assessing the costs of war: A preliminary cut. W. R. THOMPSON.

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.

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.

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.

Organized Crime, Drug Trafficking, and Violence in Mexico: The Transition from Felipe Calderon to Enrique Pena Nieto examines the major trends in organized crime and drug trafficking in Mexico. The book provides an exhaustive analysis of drug-related violence in the country. This work highlights the transition from the Felipe Calderon administration to the Enrique Pena Nieto government, focusing on differences and continuities in counternarcotics policies as well as other trends such as violence and drug trafficking.

This book argues that we have been mistaken about the fundamental assumption that Christianity is the key to understanding the "Christian" martyr. Examining martyrdom in early Christian history, Matt Recla argues that the violent deaths of martyrs, real and imagined, were appropriated for Christian institutional life. Through deconstructing martyrdom and appreciating the complexity of the martyr, we recognize martyrdom not as a socio-historical phenomenon inherent to particular ideologies, and not as a religious "identity" but as the institutional co-optation of violence. The Christian apologist Tertullian argued that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church, but while the seed may be the key to martyrdom, the blood is the key to the martyr. The book shows how martyrs exceed the bounds of institutional narrative. Centering analysis of martyrdom first around the martyr's existential difference and the complex biological, psychological, and socio-cultural factors that lead to willing death, this book sheds new light on the motivations of martyrs, our fascination with them, and the parasitic relationship of religion to violent death. In challenging long-held beliefs about the praiseworthiness of martyrdom, this book is of interest to scholars of religion as well as those concerned about the relationship between religion and violence.

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.

The key reference guide to rural crime and rural justice, this encyclopedia includes 85 concise and informative entries covering rural crime theories, offences and control. It is divided into five complementary sections: * theories of rural crime; * rural crime studies; * rural criminal justice studies; * rural people and groups; * rural criminological research. With contributions from established and emerging international scholars, this authoritative guide offers state-of-the-art synopses of the key issues in rural crime, criminology, offending and victimisation, and both institutional and informal responses to rural crime.

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.

A collection of case studies of terrorist rehabilitation programmes from around the world, this book examines the wide-ranging methodologies of terrorist deradicalisation initiatives adopted by different countries globally. It contextualises these programmes as they were initiated and explains the factors that led to their relative success, failure or continuity. The different typology of rehabilitation modes acts as a guide to establishing a framework and a starting point for any deradicalisation and rehabilitation programme. These case studies demonstrate practical examples of how the theories can be applied to achieve real results. This book is an indispensable resource for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers in the field of Terrorist Deradicalisation and Rehabilitation.

THE EXPLOSIVE DEBUT THRILLER. IF LIES ARE DANGEROUS, THE TRUTH CAN BE CATASTROPHIC . . . 'A hugely exciting new voice in crime fiction' LUCY FOLEY 'The new face of domestic noir' EVENING STANDARD 'One of the most compelling narrators I've ever encountered' SHARI LAPENA 'A protagonist to rival Villanelle' COSMOPOLITAN It all started with one little lie . . . Jane and Marnie have been inseparable since they were eleven years old. They have a lot in common. In their early twenties they both fell in love and married handsome young men. But Jane never liked Marnie's husband. He was always so loud and obnoxious, so much larger than life. Which is rather ironic now, of course. Because if Jane had been honest - if she hadn't lied - then perhaps her best friend's husband might still be alive . . . This is Jane's opportunity to tell the truth. The question is: Do you believe her? 'Chilling and original' CLARE MACKINTOSH 'A tense nerve-shredder' VAL McDERMID 'You NEED to read this one' LESLEY KARA 'Toxic friendships don't get more toxic than this' PRIMA 'Breathtakingly good' T.M. LOGAN 'You won't want to put this one down' CARA HUNTER 'This is going to be the next massive thriller' PANDORA SYKES 'You'll be turning the pages deep into the night' HARLAN COBEN 'Shockingly intimate and scarily insidious' LISA GARDNER 'I read this book with obsession - I loved everything about it' ASHLEY AUDRAIN 'A clever, deliciously dark pageturner' ALICE FEENEY 'Brilliantly plotted' ALI LAND 'Brilliantly twisty' MICHELLE FRANCES 'Takes the idea of the unreliable narrator and spins it on its head' ARAMINTA HALL 'The perfect pscyh thriller - smart, dark and morally ambiguous' TAMMY COHEN 'You won't be able to put it down' CHRISTINA DALCHER

The book deals with the inherent violence of "race relations" in two important countries that remain iconic expressions of white supremacy in the twentieth century. Cultures of Violence does not just reconstruct the era of violence, however. Instead, it convincingly contrasts the "lynch culture" of the South to the "bureaucratic culture of violence" in South Africa. By contrasting mobs of rope-wielding white Southerners to the gun-toting policemen and administrators who formally defended white supremacy in South Africa, Cultures of Violence employs racial killing as an optic for examining the distinctive logic of the racial state in the two contexts. Combining the historian's eye for detail with the sociologist's search for overarching claims, the book explores the systemic connections amongst three substantive areas- agrarian class relations, the rule of law, and the role of Protestant religion-to explain why contrasting traditions of racial violence took such firm root in the American South and South Africa. Thus, departing from accounts that generally underscore the similarities between the two contexts, Cultures of Violence not only makes a convincing case for the differences that distinguished white supremacy but also brings the distinction to bear on the divergent trajectories of "race relations" in the contemporary period. The book shows that a sturdy tradition of explicit state involvement in the management of "race relations" in South Africa was reworked into a remarkably transparent, state-sponsored search for national "truth and reconciliation."