Public and academic interest in youth and community violence has grown with school shootings, horrific cases of child abuse, and reports of domestic abuse becoming regular news features. Research on interpersonal violence has had a corresponding progression, but there is a tendency by researchers to examine these issues at the individual level, rather than considering the micro- and macro-level causes, correlates, and outcomes for those affected directly and indirectly by violence.
Edited by four leading violence researchers, Violence in Context takes the more systemic view, offering a critical appraisal of research and theory that focuses on violence in youth, families, and communities. Authors investigate the ways in which violence is defined and understood, how risk and protective factors promote and inhibit violence in the groups most responsible for the socialization of youth, and how violence and related behaviors differ by gender, race, and ethnicity. A rich analysis of the field familiarizes readers with some of the most compelling approaches to violence prevention, including interventions that begin at infancy with families at risk. Every chapter examines the latest research on violence prevention, with a goal of moving towards the multi-system, integrated intervention models and approaches that will incorporate the social context of violence across settings and population subgroups.
The result is a valuable interdisciplinary book for scholars, practitioners, and students that provides a comprehensive overview of published studies, limitations of research findings, and a thoughtful discussion of the ways in which future research can build on what is currently known about the causes, consequences, and prevention of violence in different settings.

The profession of social work in the United States has a complex history of upholding White supremacy alongside a goal of achieving racial justice. Moreover, the profession simultaneously practices within racist institutions and systems and works to dismantle them. While there are many ways that the profession of social work has improved quality of life for minoritized groups, there are numerous missed opportunities where we have failed to uphold our values. In the wake of national movements to stop state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism and the knowledge of persistent racial disparities in key social welfare institutions (i.e., child welfare, criminal justice, health, housing, and mental health), these paradoxes remain the forefront of discussion in academia, social media, and social work practice. The aftermath of these national efforts provided an opportunity to appraise our profession's relationship to White supremacy and racial justice in order to reimagine and work to achieve an anti-racist future. In this edited volume, the authors critically examine social work's history, values, and mission, offer innovative strategies for education and practice, and make a call-to-action for social work to eliminate structural racism in education, research, practice, and social service institutions and systems. A collection of 40 chapters using diverse voices, theories, and methods challenges us to conceptualize and enact an anti-racist future through reckoning with our past histories of oppression and resistance, de-centering whiteness, and forging new practices, policies, and pedagogies that can lead to an anti-racist future.