Extremely Violent Societies

Extremely Violent Societies
Author: Christian Gerlach
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2010-10-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139493515

In this groundbreaking book Christian Gerlach traces the social roots of the extraordinary processes of human destruction involved in mass violence throughout the twentieth century. He argues that terms such as 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing' are too narrow to explain the diverse motives and interests that cause violence to spread in varying forms and intensities. From killings and expulsions to enforced hunger, collective rape, strategic bombing, forced labour and imprisonment he explores what happened before, during, and after periods of widespread bloodshed in countries such as Armenia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nazi-occupied Greece and in anti-guerilla wars worldwide in order to highlight the crucial role of socio-economic pressures in the generation of group conflicts. By focussing on why so many different people participated in or supported mass violence, and why different groups were victimized, he offers us a new way of understanding one of the most disturbing phenomena of our times.

A Savage Order

A Savage Order
Author: Rachel Kleinfeld
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2018-11-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1524746878

The most violent places in the world today are not at war. More people have died in Mexico in recent years than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. These parts of the world are instead buckling under a maelstrom of gangs, organized crime, political conflict, corruption, and state brutality. Such devastating violence can feel hopeless, yet some places—from Colombia to the Republic of Georgia—have been able to recover. In this powerfully argued and urgent book, Rachel Kleinfeld examines why some democracies, including our own, are crippled by extreme violence and how they can regain security. Drawing on fifteen years of study and firsthand field research—interviewing generals, former guerrillas, activists, politicians, mobsters, and law enforcement in countries around the world—Kleinfeld tells the stories of societies that successfully fought seemingly ingrained violence and offers penetrating conclusions about what must be done to build governments that are able to protect the lives of their citizens. Taking on existing literature and popular theories about war, crime, and foreign intervention, A Savage Order is a blistering yet inspiring investigation into what makes some countries peaceful and others war zones, and a blueprint for what we can do to help.

Children in a Violent Society

Children in a Violent Society
Author: Joy D. Osofsky
Publisher: Guilford Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 1997-03-28
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9781572301832

Today's children are bombarded with images of violence in cartoons, news reports, television shows, computer games, movies, and other media. In growing numbers, they are also exposed to real-life violence in their own homes and communities--as witnesses, victims, and, increasingly, perpetrators. Too often, children learn that violence is an acceptable way to resolve conflict. Yet even as the problem escalates, our society spends little effort finding viable solutions beyond incarceration-an after-the-problem approach. Emphasizing the need for early intervention and prevention, this timely book examines the impact of violence exposure on children and youth, discusses several existing programs, and proposes new approaches to the problem.

Between Good and Evil

Between Good and Evil
Author: Roger L. Depue
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2005-02-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0759513279

He was a pioneer in modern law enforcement, a trailblazing leader in the hunt for serial killers. But after decades of staring deep into the darkness, he entered a seminary to search for the good... BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL No one gets closer to evil than a criminal profiler, trained to penetrate the hearts and minds of society's most vicious psychopaths. And no one is a more towering figure in the world of criminal profilers than Roger L. Depue. Chief of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit at a time when its innovative work first came to prominence, he headed a renowned team of mind hunters that included John Douglas, Robert Ressler, and Roy Hazelwood. In a subbasement sixty feet under the Academy gun vault in Quantico, he broke new ground with analytical techniques and training programs that are still used today. After retiring from the FBI, he founded an elite forensics group that consulted on high-profile cases, including the Martha Moxley and JonBenet Ramsey murders, and the Columbine school shootings. But coming face-to-face with the darkest deeds human beings are capable of took a horrific toll. After suffering a devastating personal loss, Depue, on the brink of despair, walked away from the outside world and joined a seminary. For three years this was his safe haven, a place where he exorcised personal demons and found a refuge from terrifying memories of real-life monsters. And it was there, while counseling maximum security inmates, that he rediscovered the capacity for goodness in people, and made the decision to return to the world to resume his work. Here is Depue's extraordinary personal account, from growing up as a police officer's son to tracking down some of today's most brutal murderers. With its harrowing descriptions of human depravity and passionate call to fight against evil, BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL is both a riveting dispatch from the front lines of a war against human predators...and the powerful story of one man's journey between darkness and redemption.

Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor

Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Author: Rob Nixon
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2011-06-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 067424799X

The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of "slow violence" to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today. Slow violence, because it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode. In a book of extraordinary scope, Nixon examines a cluster of writer-activists affiliated with the environmentalism of the poor in the global South. By approaching environmental justice literature from this transnational perspective, he exposes the limitations of the national and local frames that dominate environmental writing. And by skillfully illuminating the strategies these writer-activists deploy to give dramatic visibility to environmental emergencies, Nixon invites his readers to engage with some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

Violence and Social Orders

Violence and Social Orders
Author: Douglass Cecil North
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2009-02-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0521761735

This book integrates the problem of violence into a larger framework, showing how economic and political behavior are closely linked.

The Better Angels of Our Nature

The Better Angels of Our Nature
Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Penguin Books
Total Pages: 834
Release: 2012-09-25
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0143122010

Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think this is the most violent age ever seen. Yet as bestselling author Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true.

How Children Become Violent

How Children Become Violent
Author: Kathryn Seifert
Publisher: Kathryn Seifert
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2006
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9781933631486

Argues that children who are exposed to violence and are neglected and abused in their early years are more prone to commit violent acts.

Contagion of Violence

Contagion of Violence
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2013-03-06
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309263646

The past 25 years have seen a major paradigm shift in the field of violence prevention, from the assumption that violence is inevitable to the recognition that violence is preventable. Part of this shift has occurred in thinking about why violence occurs, and where intervention points might lie. In exploring the occurrence of violence, researchers have recognized the tendency for violent acts to cluster, to spread from place to place, and to mutate from one type to another. Furthermore, violent acts are often preceded or followed by other violent acts. In the field of public health, such a process has also been seen in the infectious disease model, in which an agent or vector initiates a specific biological pathway leading to symptoms of disease and infectivity. The agent transmits from individual to individual, and levels of the disease in the population above the baseline constitute an epidemic. Although violence does not have a readily observable biological agent as an initiator, it can follow similar epidemiological pathways. On April 30-May 1, 2012, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Forum on Global Violence Prevention convened a workshop to explore the contagious nature of violence. Part of the Forum's mandate is to engage in multisectoral, multidirectional dialogue that explores crosscutting, evidence-based approaches to violence prevention, and the Forum has convened four workshops to this point exploring various elements of violence prevention. The workshops are designed to examine such approaches from multiple perspectives and at multiple levels of society. In particular, the workshop on the contagion of violence focused on exploring the epidemiology of the contagion, describing possible processes and mechanisms by which violence is transmitted, examining how contextual factors mitigate or exacerbate the issue. Contagion of Violence: Workshop Summary covers the major topics that arose during the 2-day workshop. It is organized by important elements of the infectious disease model so as to present the contagion of violence in a larger context and in a more compelling and comprehensive way.

An American Summer

An American Summer
Author: Alex Kotlowitz
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0385538812

2020 J. ANTHONY LUKAS PRIZE WINNER From the bestselling author of There Are No Children Here, a richly textured, heartrending portrait of love and death in Chicago's most turbulent neighborhoods. The numbers are staggering: over the past twenty years in Chicago, 14,033 people have been killed and another roughly 60,000 wounded by gunfire. What does that do to the spirit of individuals and community? Drawing on his decades of experience, Alex Kotlowitz set out to chronicle one summer in the city, writing about individuals who have emerged from the violence and whose stories capture the capacity--and the breaking point--of the human heart and soul. The result is a spellbinding collection of deeply intimate profiles that upend what we think we know about gun violence in America. Among others, we meet a man who as a teenager killed a rival gang member and twenty years later is still trying to come to terms with what he's done; a devoted school social worker struggling with her favorite student, who refuses to give evidence in the shooting death of his best friend; the witness to a wrongful police shooting who can't shake what he has seen; and an aging former gang leader who builds a place of refuge for himself and his friends. Applying the close-up, empathic reporting that made There Are No Children Here a modern classic, Kotlowitz offers a piercingly honest portrait of a city in turmoil. These sketches of those left standing will get into your bones. This one summer will stay with you.