Over the past three decades, the American criminal justice system has become unapologetically punitive. High rates of incarceration and frequent use of long-term segregation have become commonplace, with little concern for evidence that such practices make the public safer - and as the editors of this groundbreaking volume assert, they do not.
Bringing together experts in the fields of social science, forensic psychology and criminal justice, Using Social Science to Reduce Violent Offending addresses what truly works in reducing violent offending. Promoting an approach to correctional policy grounded in an evidence-based and nuanced understanding of human behavior, leading authorities from the United States, Canada, and Great Britain offer specific and practical strategies for improving the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Beginning by covering the history and scope of violent crime and incarceration in the U.S., this pioneering volume offers clear and practical recommendations for implementing approaches focused on behavioral change of even the most particular offender groups, such as juvenile offenders, sexual offenders, and offenders with mental illnesses. The authors argue for a more scientifically informed justice system, one where offenders-through correctional approaches such as community-based treatments and cognitive behavioral interventions-can be expected to learn the skills they will need to succeed in avoiding crime upon release. Authors also highlight methods for overcoming system inertia in order to implement these recommendations. Drawing on the science of human behavior to inform correctional practice, this book is an invaluable resource for policymakers, practitioners, mental health and criminal justice professionals, and anyone interested in the science behind the policies surrounding criminal punishment.

Violence and Nonviolence: an Introduction critiques five dominant societal views about violence and nonviolence. Using evidence from scientific studies as well as anecdotal evidence and news reports, esteemed scholar and editor Barry L. Gan shows readers that these widely adopted and violent views are largely mistaken, and require a fundamental rethinking and adjustment. By synthesizing new research with old philosophies, Gan introduces readers to an alternative paradigm of nonviolence through which we can begin to build a more peaceful world. Nonviolent strategic action - a kind of selective nonviolence - is the first of the two alternative paradigms that provides a concrete approach to addressing social and political problems arising from violence. Nonviolence as a way of life is the second of the paradigms that expands upon (and in some respects critiques) the first, preferring a comprehensive and radical response to the scourges of violence that have plagued human history.

Drawing on one of the most comprehensive and representative studies of school violence ever conducted, Benbenishty and Astor explore and differentiate the many manifestations of victimization in schools, providing a new model for understanding school violence in context. The authors make striking use of the geopolitical climate of the Middle East to model school violence in terms of its context within as well as outside of the school site. This pioneering new work is unique in that it uses empirical data to show which variables and factors are similar across different cultures and which variables appear unique to different cultures. This empirical contrast of universal with culturally specific patterns is sorely needed in the school violence literature. The authors' innovative research maps the contours of verbal, social, physical, and sexual victimization and weapons possession, as well as staff-initiated violence against students, presenting some startling findings along the way. When comparing schools in Israel with schools in California, the authors demonstrate for the first time that for most violent events the patterns of violent behaviors have the same relationship for different age groups, genders, and nations. Conversely, they highlight specific kinds of violence that are strongly influenced by culture. They reveal, for example, how Arab boys encounter much more boy-to-boy sexual harassment than their Jewish peers, and that teacher-initiated victimization of students constitutes a significant and often overlooked type of school violence, especially among certain cultural groups. Crucially, the authors expand the paradigm of understanding school violence to encompass theintersection of cultural, ethnic, neighborhood, and family characteristics with intra-school factors such as teacher-student dynamics, anti-violence policies, student participation, grade level, and religious and gender divisions. It is only by understanding the multiple contexts of school violence, they argue, that truly effective prevention programs, interventions, research agendas, and policies can be implemented. In an age of heightened concern over school security, this study has enormous implications for school violence theory, research, and policy throughout the world. The patterns that emerge from the authors' analysis form a blueprint for the research agenda needed to address new and exciting theoretical and practical questions regarding the intersections of context and school victimization. The unique perspective on school violence will undoubtedly strike a chord with all readers, informing scholars and students across the fields of social work, psychology, education, sociology, public health, and peace/conflict studies. Its clearly written and accessible style will appeal to teachers, principals, policy makers and parents interested in the authors' practical discussion of policy and intervention implications, making this an invaluable tool for understanding, preventing, and handling violence in schools throughout the world.

This book takes a quantitative look at ICT-generated event data to highlight current trends and issues in Nigeria at the local, state and national levels. Without emphasizing a specific policy or agenda, it provides context and perspective on the relative spatial-temporal distribution of conflict factors in Nigeria. The analysis of violence at state and local levels reveals a fractal pattern of overlapping ecosystems of conflict risk that must be understood for effective, conflict-sensitive approaches to development and direct conflict mitigation efforts. Moving beyond analyses that use a broad religious, ethnic or historical lens, this book focuses on the country's 774 local government areas and incorporates over 10,000 incidents coded by location, date and indicator to identify patterns in conflict risk between 2009 and 2013. It is the first book to track conflict in Nigeria during this period, which covers the Amnesty Agreement in the Niger Delta and the birth of Boko Haram in the North. It also includes conflict risk heat maps of each state and trend-lines of violence. The authors conclude with a discussion of the nuanced factors that lead to escalating violence, such as resource competition and trends in terrorism during this critical point in Nigeria's history. Violence in Nigeria is designed as a reference for researchers and practitioners working in security, peacebuilding and development, including policy makers, intelligence experts, diplomats, national defense and homeland security experts. Advanced-level students studying public policy, international relations or computer science will also find this book useful as a secondary textbook or reference.

While gender-based violence occurs in all societies irrespective of the level of development or cultural setting, whether in conflict or peacetime, the challenges for legal responses to gender-based violence are particularly acute in Asia. This book addresses the lack of academic discourse on gender-based violence in Asia beyond domestic violence, by demonstrating that gendered violence exists within many different contexts and is perpetuated by multiple actors. Bringing together scholars, legal practitioners and human rights advocates, the book examines the intersections between gender, violence and the state in Asian contexts. It considers the role of state institutions in perpetuating and preventing violence based on gender and identity, and thus contributes to growing scholarship around due diligence standards under international law. Analyzing both physical and structural gender-based violence, it scrutinizes how such violence exists within a landscape shaped by distinct cultural norms, laws and policies, and grapples with how to practically translate international human rights standards about state responsibility into these complex domestic environments. Contributors from diverse backgrounds draw on case studies and empirical research to ground this academic scholarship in lived experiences of individuals and their communities in Asia. By bridging the divide between policy, laws and practice to offer a unique insight into both theoretical and practical responses to how gender-based violence is understood within communities and state institutions in Asian countries, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Asian studies, Gender Studies and Law.

Malesevic offers a novel sociological answer to the age-old question: 'Why do humans fight?'. Instead of focusing on the motivations of solitary individuals, he emphasises the centrality of the social and historical contexts that make fighting possible. He argues that fighting is not an individual attribute, but a social phenomenon shaped by one's relationships with other people. Drawing on recent scholarship across a variety of academic disciplines as well as his own interviews with the former combatants, Malesevic shows that one's willingness to fight is a contextual phenomenon shaped by specific ideological and organisational logic. This book explores the role biology, psychology, economics, ideology, and coercion play in one's experience of fighting, emphasising the cultural and historical variability of combativeness. By drawing from numerous historical and contemporary examples from all over the world, Malesevic demonstrates how social pugnacity is a relational and contextual phenomenon that possesses autonomous features.

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."

While cities often act as the engines of economic growth for developing countries, they are also frequently the site of growing violence, poverty, and inequality. Yet, social theory, largely developed and tested in the Global North, is often inadequate in tackling the realities of life in the dangerous parts of cities in the Global South. Drawing on the findings of an ambitious five-year, 15-project research programme, Social Theories of Urban Violence in the Global South offers a uniquely Southern perspective on the violence-poverty-inequalities dynamics in cities of the Global South. Through their research, urban violence experts based in low- and middle-income countries demonstrate how "urban violence" means different things to different people in different places. While some researchers adopt or adapt existing theoretical and conceptual frameworks, others develop and test new theories, each interpreting and operationalizing the concept of urban violence in the particular context in which they work. In particular, the book highlights the links between urban violence, poverty, and inequalities based on income, class, gender, and other social cleavages. Providing important new perspectives from the Global South, this book will be of interest to policymakers, academics, and students with an interest in violence and exclusion in the cities of developing countries.

This international collection examines violence and abuse in and around organisations. The collection documents the causes, specifically from the perspective of human relations and of the workplace conditions. It also highlights the specific risks associated with high-risk professions or working environments. The first section considers types of violence and abuse, their relative frequencies, potential individual and workplace antecedents, costs to individuals, family's organisations and societies, the fact both are increasing in frequency with new types (e.g., terrorism) appearing, and why addressing these has become increasingly important for individuals and organisations. The second section considers violence in interpersonal relationships such as bullying, incivility, bias and harassment, and toxic leadership. The third section examines unsafe workplaces, accidents, injuries, and deaths. The fourth section considers exploitive work conditions and arrangements such as precarious employment, the exploitation of immigrants, and human slavery. The final section offers suggestions on ways to address violence and abuse in and around organisations. These include aggression preventative supervisor behaviours in health care, suicide prevention in the workplace, dealing with disgruntled employees and former employees, and workplace interventions that address stress reduction more broadly. As with other titles in the Psychological and Behavioural Aspects of Risk Series, this research-based collection is firmly grounded in the boundary between work and society and offers important insights into how social and cultural problems are manifest in the workplace and how poor and abusive workplace practice, in turn, spills out into wider life.

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.

An instant national best seller A persuasive primer on police abolition from two veteran organizers "One of the world's most prominent advocates, organizers and political educators of the [abolitionist] framework." -NBCNews.com on Mariame Kaba In this powerful call to action, New York Times bestselling author Mariame Kaba and attorney and organizer Andrea J. Ritchie detail why policing doesn't stop violence, instead perpetuating widespread harm; outline the many failures of contemporary police reforms; and explore demands to defund police, divest from policing, and invest in community resources to create greater safety through a Black feminist lens. Centering survivors of state, interpersonal, and community-based violence, and highlighting uprisings, campaigns, and community-based projects, No More Police makes a compelling case for a world where the tools required to prevent, interrupt, and transform violence in all its forms are abundant. Part handbook, part road map, No More Police calls on us to turn away from systems that perpetrate violence in the name of ending it toward a world where violence is the exception, and safe, well-resourced and thriving communities are the rule.

Conflict and trauma remain among the most prevalent themes in film and literature. Comics has never avoided such narratives, and comics artists are writing them in waysthat are both different from and complementary to literature and film. In Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War, Harriet E. H. Earle brings together two distinct areas of research-trauma studies and comics studies-to provide a new interpretation of a long-standing theme. Focusing on representations of conflict in post-Vietnam War American comics, Earle claims that the comics form is uniquely able to show traumatic experience by representing events as viscerally as possible. Using texts from across the form and placing mainstream superhero comics alongside alternative and art comics, Earle suggests that comics are the ideal artistic representation of trauma.Because comics bridge the gap between the visual and the written, they represent such complicated narratives as loss and trauma in unique ways, particularly through the manipulation of time and experience. Comics can fold time and confront traumatic events, be they personal or shared, through a myriad of both literary andvisual devices. As a result, comics can represent trauma in ways that are unavailable to other narrative and artistic forms. With themes such as dreams and mourning, Earle concentrates on trauma in American comics after the Vietnam War. These works include Alissa Torres's American Widow, Doug Murray's The'Nam, and Art Spiegelman's much lauded Maus. These works pair with ideas from a wide range of thinkers, including Sigmund Freud, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Fredric Jameson, as well as contemporary trauma theory and clinical psychology. Through these examples and others, Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War proves that comics open up new avenues to explore personal and public trauma in extraordinary, necessary ways.

Including a Foreword by Former U.S. Ambassador for Global Women's Issues, Melanne Verveer. How can transitional justice institutions provide due diligence to the lived experiences of women during war and violent political upheaval? How can transitional justice help transform unequal gender relations? These are just some of the difficult but urgent questions addressed in this unique study. Providing a compelling case for greater gender sensitivity in transitional justice institutions, Alam considers the under-researched nature of gender issues in transitional justice, offering theoretical and conceptual analysis alongside revealing lived experiences with case studies from Kenya and Bangladesh. The discussion in this study offers descriptive, normative and prescriptive value to the efforts of improving transitional justice institutions and elevating the status of women in post-conflict societies. This is a timely new resource in the field of women, peace and security, especially in light of the forthcoming fifteenth anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, and will appeal to a wide range of scholars in International Relations, Security, Peace and Conflict Studies, Criminal Justice and Gender Studies.

Since 9/11 interest in Islamophobia has steadily increased - as has the number of academic publications discussing the phenomenon. However, theoretical expositions have dominated the field. Lived experiences of Islamophobia, by contrast, have received little attention. In recognition of the importance of addressing this imbalance, this book provides theoretically-informed analyses alongside everyday testimonies of anti-Muslim racism, set comparatively in an international context. Carr argues that the failure of the neoliberal state to collect data on anti-Muslim racism highlights the perpetuation of 'race' blindness within governance. Not only does this mean that the salience of racism is denied in the lives of those who experience it, but this also enables the state to absolve itself from challenging the issue and providing the necessary supports to Muslim communities. Offering original empirical research and theoretical engagement with the concept of 'race'-blind neoliberal governance, this book will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, in addition to policymakers and activists working in this topical area.

"Understanding and Addressing Girls' Aggressive Behaviour Problems" reflects a major shift in understanding aggressive behaviour problems among children. Researchers used to study what went wrong with a troubled child and needed to be fixed; we now aim to understand what is going wrong in children's relationships that might create, exacerbate, and maintain aggressive behaviour problems in childhood and adolescence. In this volume, leading researchers in the aggression field examine, with a particular focus on girls, how problems develop for children in relationships and how we can help them develop healthy relationships.

Individual chapters explore biological and social contexts, including physical health and relationship problems that might underlie the development of aggressive behaviour problems. The impact of relationships on girls' development is shown to be particularly important for Aboriginal girls. Contributors discuss prevention and intervention strategies that help aggressive children build the requisite skills and relationship capacities and also shift dynamics within critical social contexts, such as the family, peer group, classroom, and school.

The support of healthy development not only of children but of their parents and other important adults in their lives, including teachers, has been shown to be effective in reducing the burden of suffering associated with aggression among children and adolescents--for youth themselves as well as their families, peers, schools, communities, and society.

Spotting danger before it happens is a skill that can be developed and may even save your life. Understand the threat Build situational awareness Develop personal defenses A mother dropping her teenager off at the mall, a young man leaving home for college, a family about to head out on their first trip overseas. What do all of these people have in common? They all have a vested interest in their personal security and the wellbeing of those they love. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, there were an estimated 1.25 million violent crimes committed in the United States in 2018. Make no mistake; in a world filled with crime and violence, you are your own last line of defense. Continuing on the path of The Gift of Fear (Gavin deBecker), Spotting Danger Before It Spots You, author Gary Quesenberry breaks down the basic techniques necessary to help you develop good situational awareness and increase your levels of personal safety. Gary calls upon his extensive background as a Federal Air Marshal and defensive tactics instructor to explain these methods in simple terms that will greatly improve your general understanding of how, when and where violence occurs. He will then take the next critical step-providing you with the tools you need to properly identify and evade danger before it ever has a chance to materialize. You will learn The common traits of predatory behavior How to conduct a personal "safety check" How to develop strong awareness skills What to do when you spot potential trouble Staying safe and living life free of worry and fear "Today more than ever, it is imperative that we pay close attention to our surroundings and learn how to interpret what's happening around us. Tragic events can often be both predictable and preventable." - Federal Air Marshal Gary Quesenberry

Austerity, a response to the aftermath of the financial crisis, continues to devastate contemporary Britain. In The Violence of Austerity, Vickie Cooper and David Whyte bring together the voices of campaigners and academics including Danny Dorling, Mary O'Hara and Rizwaan Sabir to show that rather than stimulating economic growth, austerity policies have led to a dismantling of the social systems that operated as a buffer against economic hardship, exposing austerity to be a form of systematic violence. Covering a range of famous cases of institutional violence in Britain, the book argues that police attacks on the homeless, violent evictions in the rented sector, the risks faced by people on workfare schemes, community violence in Northern Ireland and cuts to the regulation of social protection, are all being driven by reductions in public sector funding. The result is a shocking expose of the myriad ways in which austerity policies harm people in Britain.

Recent years have witnessed a significant growth of interest in the consequences of political violence and displacement for the young. However, when speaking of "children" commentators have often taken the situation of those in early and middle childhood as representative of all young people under eighteen years of age. As a consequence, the specific situation of adolescents negotiating the processes of transition towards social adulthood amidst conditions of violence and displacement is commonly overlooked. Years of Conflict provides a much-needed corrective. Drawing upon perspectives from anthropology, psychology, and media studies as well as the insights of those involved in programmatic interventions, it describes and analyses the experiences of older children facing the challenges of daily life in settings of conflict, post-conflict and refuge. Several authors also reflect upon methodological issues in pursuing research with young people in such settings. The accounts span the globe, taking in Liberia, Afghanistan, South Africa, Peru, Jordan, UK/Western Europe, Eastern Africa, Iran, USA, and Colombia.

This book will be invaluable to those seeking a fuller understanding of conflict and displacement and its effects upon adolescents. It will also be welcomed by practitioners concerned to develop more effective ways of providing support to this group.

Jason Hart is a Senior Research Officer at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford.

In popular perception cultural differences or ethnic affiliation are factors that cause conflict or political fragmentation although this is not borne out by historical evidence. This book puts forward an alternative conflict theory. The author develops a decision theory which explains the conditions under which differing types of identification are preferred. Group identification is linked to competition for resources like water, territory, oil, political charges, or other advantages. Rivalry for resources can cause conflicts but it does not explain who takes whose side in a conflict situation. This book explores possibilities of reducing violent conflicts and ends with a case study, based on personal experience of the author, of conflict resolution.

Gunther Schlee was a Professor at Bielefeld until 1999. He currently is the director of the section Integration and Conflict at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, focusing on Africa, Central Asia, and Europe. His publications include Identities on the Move: Clanship and Pastoralism in Northern Kenya (International African Institute, 1989), How Enemies are Made (Berghahn, 2008), Rendille Proverbs in their Social and legal Context (with Karaba Sahado) and Boran Proverbs in their Cultural Context (with Abdullahi Shongolo) (both Cologne: Rudiger Koppe).

Mass violence and terrorism are a salient phenomenon in the late modern society, showing no sign of decline. Proactive results from the long, ongoing debate of how to address these issues are therefore increasingly necessary - not just in the context of prevention, but also in the context of the aftermath. Shared Experiences of Mass Shootings develops an understanding of the collective experience, consequences and recovery processes after mass shootings. Drawing from in-depth case studies of two mass shootings in Finland and comparing them with other international cases, it explores how communities work through violent tragedies employing social memory and memorialization practices that can be seen as either tools for recovery, or as something that needs to be restricted. Contributing a novel understanding of how experiencing mass violence is deeply gendered through the social patterns and narratives of men's and women's emotions, this timely monograph will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such as: Sociology of Violence, Criminology, Social Work, Memory Studies, Media Studies and Cultural Trauma.

Psychologists have done a great deal of research on the effects of trauma on the individual, revealing the paradox that violent experiences are often secreted away beyond easy accessibility, becoming impossible to verbalize explicitly. However, comparatively little research has been done on the transgenerational effects of trauma and the means by which experiences are transmitted from person to person across time to become intrinsic parts of the social fabric. With eight contributions covering Africa, Central and South America, China, Europe, and the Middle East, this volume sheds new light on the role of memory in constructing popular histories - or historiographies - of violence in the absence of, or in contradistinction to, authoritative written histories. It brings new ethnographic data to light and presents a truly cross-cultural range of case studies that will greatly enhance the discussion of memory and violence across disciplines.

Approaches to Conflict: Theoretical, Interpersonal, and Discursive Dynamics aims to investigate the role of communication and emotions in conflict contexts. In addition to the fundamental importance of communication in various aspects of conflict, this volume offers a prominent position to the inherent part played by the effects of a wide range of emotions. This multi-disciplinary project draws from communication studies and media, public relations, philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, linguistics, business studies, political science, literature, and cultural studies.

The baby boomer generation grew up in the 1950s when there existed the general belief that the Cold War was the greatest threat to the world order, and a frightening possibility. It was difficult to believe, then, that it could get worse, but the same threat of violence is now a daily occurrence around the globe. People are being shot, slaughtered, maimed, and disappear for a multitude of reasons, none having any connection, most of the time, with the victims. The scale of loss when these tragedies occur is devastating, leaving the public as well as policy makers and legislators scrambling for solutions, clarification, and understanding of how we have become a society where violence is so rampant, so frequent, and so senseless. This book includes contributions by leading experts on violence and its ramifications, who review the devastation, reasons, and consequences of violence which is senseless, cruel, and aims to hurt and destroy anyone in its path. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Psychology.

This volume explores the multiple intersections between rape culture, gender violence, and religion. Each chapter considers the ways that religious texts, theologies, and traditions engage with contemporary cultural discourses of gender, sexuality, gender violence, and rape culture. Particularly, they interrogate the multifaceted roles that religious texts and teachings can have in challenging, confirming, querying, or redefining socio-cultural understandings of rape culture and gender violence. Unique to this volume, authors explore the topic from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, theology, biblical studies, gender and queer studies, politics, modern history, art history, linguistics, religious studies, and English literature. Together, these interdisciplinary approaches resist the tendency to oversimplify the complexity of the connections between religion, gender violence, and rape culture; rather, the volume offers readers a multi-vocal and multi-perspectival view of this crucial subject, inviting readers to think deeply about it in light of the global crisis of gender violence.

In the mid-1970s, a long wave of contentious radicalism swept through Italy. 'Proletarian youth', 'metropolitan Indians', 'the area of Autonomy': a shifting galaxy of groups and movements practised new forms of activism. Factories and universities were occupied; rent and utility payments were withheld; neo-Fascists and drug pushers were attacked on sight. The movements were at once creative and brutal, intransigent and playful. A particular target for mockery was the parliamentary Left, and above all the Italian Communist Party (PCI). An earlier wave of radical activism had culminated in the Hot Autumn of 1969; then, the PCI had managed to 'ride the tiger' of industrial militancy, emerging with its credibility enhanced. Now, however, the PCI was committed to compromise with the ruling Christian Democrats. The second cycle of contention thus ended in a hostile engagement: rather than adopt their policies, the PCI labelled the movements Fascists, criminals and hooligans. By the end of 1977 the movements were broken, while the PCI had moved sharply to the Right. The main beneficiaries were left-wing 'armed struggle' groups such as the Red Brigades. Building on Sidney Tarrow's 'cycle of contention' model and drawing on a wide range of Italian materials, Phil Edwards has told the story of a unique and fascinating group of political movements, and of their disastrous engagement with the mainstream Left. As well as shedding light on a neglected period of twentieth century history, this book offers lessons for understanding today's contentious movements ('No Global', 'Black Bloc') and today's 'armed struggle' groups. -- .