By any standard, the United States is the most violent nation in the industrialized world. To find comparable levels of interpersonal violence, one must look to nations in the midst of civil war.

Most observers of modern American violence do not consider the historical roots of current levels of violence, preferring to criticize American liberalism, permissive child-rearing practices, and excessive greed and individualism as the sources of the problem.

This collection of original essays examines the role of violence in America's past, exploring its history and development, from slave patrols in the Colonial South to gun ownership in the twentieth century.

Contributors examine both individual acts, such as domestic violence, murder, dueling, frontier vigilantism, and rape, and group and state-led acts such as lynchings, slave uprisings, rifle clubs, legal sanctions of heterosexual aggression, and invasive medical experiments on women's bodies.

Contributors include Jeff Adler, Bruce Baird, Robert Dykstra, Lee Chambers-Schiller, Philip J. Cook, Laura Edwards, Uche Egemonye, Nicole Etcheson, Evan Haefeli, Sally Hadden, Paula Hinton, Arthur L. Kellermann, Laura McCall, Kate Nickerson, Mary Odem, Craig Pascoe, John C. Pettegrew, Junius P. Rodriguez, and Andrea Tone, Christopher Waldrep.

""Wounds of the Spirit" is a complex book about a complex and difficult topic."
-- "Hypatia"

In Wounds of the Spirit, Traci West employs first person accounts-from slave narratives to contemporary interviews to Tina Turner's autobiography-to document a historical legacy of violence against black women in the United States. West, a black feminist Christian ethicist, situates spiritual matters within a discussion of the psycho-social impact of intimate assault against African American women.

Distinctive for its treatment of the role of the church in response to violence against African American women, the book identifies specific social mechanisms which contribute to the reproduction of intimate violence. West insists that cultural beliefs as well as institutional practices must be altered if we are to combat the reproduction of violence, and suggests methods of resistance which can be utilized by victim-survivors, those in the helping professions, and the church.

Interrogating the dynamics of black women's experiences of emotional and spiritual trauma through the diverse disciplines of psychology, sociology, and theology, this important work will be of interest and practical use to those in women's studies, African American studies, Christian ethics, feminist and womanist theology, women's health, family counseling, and pastoral care.

This collection adopts an interdisciplinary approach in order to understand the various factors at work in genocidal processes and their aftermath. The strong emphasis on legal norms, legal concepts and legal measures in other studies fails to consider further significant issues in relation to genocide. This book aims to redress this balance exploring social dynamics and human behaviour as well as the interplay of various psychological, political, sociological, anthropological and historical factors at work in genocidal processes.With contributions from top international scholars, this volume provides an integrated perspective on risk and resilience, acknowledging the importance of mitigating factors in understanding and preventing genocide. It explores a range of issues including the conceptual definition of genocide, the notion of intent, preventive measures, transitional justice, the importance of property, the role of memory, self or national interest and principles of social existence.Genocide, Risk and Resilience aims to cross conceptual, disciplinary and temporal boundaries and in doing so, provides rich insights for scholars from across political science, history, law, philosophy, anthropology and theology.

Examining violence against women in the name of honor in Iraqi Kurdistan, this study renders a unique contribution by offering an intersectional perspective. Minoo Alinia reveals the links between destructive, state-sanctioned honor discourse and notions of manhood as they are shaped by a resistance culture dedicated to the struggle against ethnic oppression. Supplying socioeconomic, historical, and political contexts, this book challenges explanations rooted in ideas of individual or cultural pathology. It demonstrates that, in Iraqi Kurdistan, women's bodies have become the battleground for clashes between different masculinities, identity politics, and political projects.

The Economic Roots of Conflict and Cooperation in Africa explores how the development strategies of African nations shape the nature and dynamics of inter-group violence. The overview chapter assesses development doctrines, patterns of development, and levels and nature of violence in both North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. Focusing on eleven countries, the case-study contributions explore the immediate and long-term impacts of development initiatives on reducing or increasing inter-group conflict and violence. They demonstrate the importance of evolving identities as economic roles and conditions change. These insights can guide policymakers, development professionals, and activists committed to conflict-sensitive development.

The divisive and malleable nature of history is at its most palpable in situations of intractable conflict between nations or peoples. In these circumstances, how each party interprets or appropriates historical accounts informs their understanding of the roots of the conflict as well as how they relate to and interact with their adversaries. This book aims to advance our understanding of the significance of history in informing the relationship between parties involved in intractable conflicts through the concept of thick recognition and by exploring its relevance specifically in relation to Israel. It suggests that the recognition of crucial identity elements, such as widely shared understandings of history, might increase the potential for relationship transformation in intractable conflicts. More widely, the book discusses how the Israeli debates over New History can be understood as related to processes of conflict transformation as well as seeking answers to what can be seen as facilitating and inhibiting circumstances for the introduction of new understandings of history in the debates on Israeli New History.

The state monopoly of force has increasingly been challenged by non-state actors, seemingly resulting in a loss of control and resources needed to guarantee security. Yet, non-state actors are not only a cause of problems; they can also contribute to guarantee security. The contributors examine the role of non-state actors in the governance of violence and crime. Current research on non-state actors in security points to the fact that the state monopoly of force has increasingly been challenged, seemingly resulting in a loss of control and resources. In contrast, this volume shows how non-state actors are involved in supporting governmental aims, what they contribute and where the limits are or should be. It demonstrates that even in a core area of the state, transnational governance is possible through the activities of a diverse group of actors, including warlords, rebel groups, criminals, non-governmental organizations and businesses.

This unique study offers a political analysis of the relationship between visual representations and the politics of violence both nationally and internationally. It emphasizes the spectator and his or her own involvement in, responsibility for, and potential responses to the conditions depicted in given images.Through a series of case studies which engage with visual representations of the politics of violence, such as the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the visualization of colonial memory, it analyzes the relationship between visibility and political agency and elaborates the extent to which people who have normally been subjects of the image production of others can become agents of their own image.This book's comprehensive analysis of different genres including photography, graphic novels, comics and paintings introduces a new research agenda for the emerging field of visual peace.

This book engages with debates on ethnic minority and Muslim young people showing, beyond apathy and violent political extremism, the diverse forms of political engagement in which young people engage. It situates its analysis of ethnic minority young people's politics in relation to four areas of social and political change: changing patterns of citizens' democratic participation manifested in a shift towards more informal and everyday activism; the emergence of more decentred and participatory forms of governance that have pluralized the sites of political participation; shifting conceptions of identities and ethnicity and their implications for identity politics; and the significance of different scales of activism enabled by new information communication technologies. In so doing, the book identifies 'new grammars of action' among ethnic minority young people that help to explain their disaffection with mainstream politics and through which they creatively politically participate to make a difference.

The gang today is seen as Britain's public enemy number one. This book tackles this gangland thesis head-on and refutes it, questioning how we think about and interpret violent street worlds and how and why we need to think about them in very different ways, pushing the boundaries of critical enquiry and providing a range of new ways of looking at disturbing realities. Through the novel use of authoethnography, the book contests the widely held thesis that urban gangs today represent a serious, novel and developing threat. In this guise, they have been blamed for causing the riots of 2011, most gun related crime, the sexual violation of women, and outbreaks of dangerous dogs. Hallsworth argues that when subject to critical scrutiny, there is always an excess to the violence blamed on gangs that is not gang related and explanations for problems blamed on gangs can be advanced without needing to evoke the gang as an explanatory factor. In light of this, the book considers how best we might understand the nature of violent street worlds without falling into the pitfalls of the discourse of gang talk, exploring questions such as 'How do we have a gang problem?' and 'How best do we avoid one?'This book is provocative, polemical and theoretical and one that seeks to make a significant intervention into both gangs studies and studies of urban violence more generally, commanding significant social attention in the academy and beyond.

Challenging the widely held conjecture that gangs represent 'the new face of youth crime' this book repudiates claims which situate the gang at the heart of sexual violence, mass shooting and control of the illegal drugs trade. It pushes the epistemological, methodological and ontological borders of cultural criminology in order to understand violent street worlds and the informal organisations that operate within them. In part polemic, in part theoretical treatise, the book deciphers the gang talk now mediated by a developing industry of gang-talkers and explores how street realities have become lost in a collectively induced fantasy where gangs are regarded as public enemy number one.

Children are recruited to fight in conflicts around the world and violent cruelty characterizes many of the conflicts in which children participate. Some children are perpetrators of some of the worst acts of depraved murder, disfigurement, and terrorism imaginable. They then struggle to reintegrate into communities that were victims of the violence. Taking into account the interests of children and other victims of conflict, and considering the needs of post-conflict communities, this book examines and offers suggestions for how transitional justice practices should conceptualize and address the involvement of child soldiers in violent collective harm.
This book will appeal to a wide range of scholars from International Relations, Criminal Justice, Law, Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology, Development and African Studies.

A startling look at the unexpected places where violent hate groups recruit young people Hate crimes. Misinformation and conspiracy theories. Foiled white-supremacist plots. The signs of growing far-right extremism are all around us, and communities across America and around the globe are struggling to understand how so many people are being radicalized and why they are increasingly attracted to violent movements. Hate in the Homeland shows how tomorrow's far-right nationalists are being recruited in surprising places, from college campuses and mixed martial arts gyms to clothing stores, online gaming chat rooms, and YouTube cooking channels. Instead of focusing on the how and why of far-right radicalization, Cynthia Miller-Idriss seeks answers in the physical and virtual spaces where hate is cultivated. Where does the far right do its recruiting? When do young people encounter extremist messaging in their everyday lives? Miller-Idriss shows how far-right groups are swelling their ranks and developing their cultural, intellectual, and financial capacities in a variety of mainstream settings. She demonstrates how young people on the margins of our communities are targeted in these settings, and how the path to radicalization is a nuanced process of moving in and out of far-right scenes throughout adolescence and adulthood. Hate in the Homeland is essential for understanding the tactics and underlying ideas of modern far-right extremism. This eye-opening book takes readers into the mainstream places and spaces where today's far right is engaging and ensnaring young people, and reveals innovative strategies we can use to combat extremist radicalization.

This survey of various African and Asian conflicts examines people's experiences on territorial borders and the ways they affect political configurations. By focusing on individuals' routines and daily life, these contributions treat borderland dynamics as actual political units with their own actions and outcomes.

In an original dialogue between philosophy and psychoanalytic theory, this book reflects upon a variety of social formations and their logics of exclusion and inclusion that characterize different relations to otherness. Analysing disobedience, anxiety, and a variety of forms of violence, trauma and witnessing, Radical Sociality explores the possibilities and vicissitudes of contemporary forms of belonging and the limits and challenges of democracy.

What are the psychical mechanisms that underlie a given social formation? (Post)apartheid Conditions investigates this question by exploring a series of psychosocial topics - the body, space-identity, whiteness, racism and nostalgia - within a specific socio-historical context. The South African situation, one of both social transformation and historical stasis, provides the opportunity to explore how a number of psychoanalytic concepts - the uncanny, fantasy, melancholia, working through, retroaction - function at a societal level, at turns impeding and facilitating political change. Drawing on material collected by the Apartheid Archive Project, and the writings of Sara Ahmed, Steve Biko, Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Zižek, this book is of interest both to a general Psychosocial Studies audience and to readers interested in the cultural history of South Africa.

Collective experiences in the former Yugoslavia documents and analyses how social representations and practices are shaped by collective violence in a context of ethnic discourse. What are the effects of violence and what are the effects of collectively experienced victimisation on societal norms, attitudes and collective beliefs? This volume stresses that mass violence has a de- and re-structuring role for manifold psychosocial processes. A combined psychosocial approach draws attention to how most people in the former Yugoslavia had to endure and cope with war and dramatic societal changes and how they resisted and overcame ethnic rivalry, violence and segregation. It is a departure from the mindset that depict most people in the former Yugoslavia as either blind followers of ethnic war entrepreneurs or as intrinsically motivated for violence by deep-rooted intra-ethnic loyalties and inter-ethnic animosities.

***Winner of an English PEN Award 2021*** During the 1948 war more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were violently expelled from their homes by Zionist militias. The legacy of the Nakba - which translates to 'disaster' or 'catastrophe' - lays bare the violence of the ongoing Palestinian plight. Voices of the Nakba collects the stories of first-generation Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, documenting a watershed moment in the history of the modern Middle East through the voices of the people who lived through it. The interviews, with commentary from leading scholars of Palestine and the Middle East, offer a vivid journey into the history, politics and culture of Palestine, defining Palestinian popular memory on its own terms in all its plurality and complexity.

With the collapse of the bipolar system of global rivalry that dominated world politics after the Second World War, and in an age that is seeing the return of "ethnic cleansing" and "identity politics," the question of violence, in all of its multiple ramifications, imposes itself with renewed urgency. Rather than concentrating on the socioeconomic or political backgrounds of these historical changes, the contributors to this volume rethink the "concept" of violence, both in itself and in relation to the formation and transformation of identities, whether individual or collective, political or cultural, religious or secular. In particular, they subject the notion of self-determination to stringent scrutiny: is it to be understood as a value that excludes violence, in principle if not always in practice? Or is its relation to violence more complex and, perhaps, more sinister?
Reconsideration of the concepts, the practice, and even the critique of violence requires an exploration of the implications and limitations of the more familiar interpretations of the terms that have dominated in the history of Western thought. To this end, the nineteen contributors address the concept of violence from a variety of perspectives in relation to different forms of cultural representation, and not in Western culture alone; in literature and the arts, as well as in society and politics; in philosophical discourse, psychoanalytic theory, and so-called juridical ideology, as well as in colonial and post-colonial practices and power relations.
The contributors are Giorgio Agamben, Ali Behdad, Cathy Caruth, Jacques Derrida, Michael Dillon, Peter Fenves, Stathis Gourgouris, Werner Hamacher, Beatrice Hanssen, Anselm Haverkamp, Marian Hobson, Peggy Kamuf, M. B. Pranger, Susan M. Shell, Peter van der Veer, Hent de Vries, Cornelia Vismann, and Samuel Weber.

This book aims to provide an up-to-date and comprehensive introduction to the subject of domestic violence and its interaction with the criminal justice system- including agencies such as the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the probation service and Children's Services, the courts and the prison service, as well as voluntary agencies such as Women's Aid. The book also looks at how these various agencies work together at a local level and the coordinating role of the Home Office and the direction provided at a central level. Domestic Violence and Criminal Justice examines the phenomenon of domestic violence, the various forms it takes and the theories that have been put forward to explain it. It takes an historical approach to examine policy and legislative developments over the last forty years and how those developments make themselves manifest today. The authors provide an authoritative and critical account of the different agencies and the work they carry out both independently and jointly; they also consider the limits of a crime centred response to domestic violence. The book provides a conceptual framework in which domestic violence and criminal justice might be better understood. It covers all the current issues in this field and it will be a 'source book' in directing readers to further reading. It will be essential reading for both students and practitioners in the field.

Development Strategies, Identities, and Conflict in Asia explores the links between Asian governments' development strategies and the nature and dynamics of inter-group violence. The overview chapters comprehensively assess the development doctrines, patterns of development, and levels and nature of violence in all Asian subregions, while case-study contributions focusing on eight countries explore the often surprising impacts of development initiatives on reducing or increasing inter-group conflict and violence ranging from West Asia to Southeast Asia. The variations in strategies and their impacts on multiple risks of violence can guide policymakers, development professionals, and activists committed to conflict-sensitive development.

"Citizenship and Political Violence in Peru" recounts the hidden history of how local processes of citizen formation in an Andean town were persistently overruled from the nineteenth century on, thereby perpetuating antagonism toward the Peruvian state and political centralism. The analysis points to the importance of two long-term processes. One reflected the memory of earlier municipal citizenship and the possibilities of political change; the other stemmed from the outlawing of political opposition which pushed radical dissent underground and into extremism, creating the conditions for the political violence in the 1980s. The book builds on the detailed study of a unique municipal archive in Tarma and ethnographic research from both before and after the violence.

Play with fire, and you're going to get burned. The unputdownable new Ridpath crime thrillerIn Manchester, a block of flats is burning. The only victim is a middle-aged man, sat watching TV. Are the fire and the man's death an accident or is something more frightening at work? Meanwhile, DI Ridpath is back with his wife and enjoying work at the Coroner's Office, his myeloma still in remission. But the quiet life is soon shattered by a new threat. More corpses start appearing; charred, burnt, silent bodies, strewn in the streets and lodged in buildings. Next to each one is a chilling message sprayed in orange ink. Fighting on all fronts, Ridpath will be drawn into the dark past of his city and the youth football clubs of the 1990s. He must find the link before any more people die. Before the flames come close to home... An absolutely gripping, nerve-shredding crime thriller from master storyteller M J Lee, perfect for fans of Mark Billingham, Robert Bryndza and Patricia Gibney.

"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.

The first decade of the new century proved to be a deadly one for many children and young people in the United States. Despite increased policing on the streets, higher rates of incarceration, harsher sentencing, stricter control of illegal drugs, and attempts to reduce access to firearms, FBI reports show that more than 7,300 young people between the ages of 15 and 29 were murdered in 2008 alone. It's clear that traditional crime reduction strategies have not stemmed the rising tide of homicides perpetrated by and upon one of society's most vulnerable populations. Innovative, practicable solutions are needed to staunch this lethal trend. Based on the findings of a unique longitudinal study, Young Homicide Offenders and Victims: Risk Factors, Prediction, and Prevention from Childhood now provides experts with unprecedented analysis of prospectively collected data on 1,517 boys and young men who grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Following these males from childhood into early adulthood, examining their lives and the conditions under which they grew up in a representative mid-sized American city, the study forms the basis of this unique volume designed to stimulate debate on key questions of prevention and intervention as well as dispel popular myths about the childhood and adolescent features of homicide offenders and homicide victims. Key areas of coverage include: Early childhood risk factors of young homicide offenders and victims. Insights into homicide offenders' lives as told in their own words. The effectiveness of screening for at-risk youth. Risk factor-based prevention and intervention strategies. The impact of interventions on homicide rates. Policy implications at the local, state, and national levels. Young Homicide Offenders and Victims: Risk Factors, Prediction, and Prevention from Childhood is essential reading for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers across the fields of juvenile justice and criminology, developmental psychology, sociology, psychiatry, public health, and policy making. ------- "This book changes the game in violence research ... The analysis is masterful, the prose is readable, and the achievement is nothing short of stunning." Richard Rosenfeld, Ph.D. / Curators Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis "This book will stand the test of time as a landmark homicide study." James C. Howell, Ph.D. / Senior Research Associate, National Gang Center "This is a fascinating, pioneering book ... The authors' sophisticated analyses demonstrate convincingly the considerable value of prospective longitudinal data for enhancing our understanding of the etiology and control of lethal violence." Steven F. Messner, Ph.D. / Distinguished Teacher Professor, Department of Sociology, University at Albany, SUNY / President, American Society of Criminology