Interactions With A Violent Past

There has been little research on the lasting impact of the violence of Second and Third Indochina Wars on local societies and populations, in Vietnam as well as in Laos and Cambodia. Today's Lao, Vietnamese and Cambodian landscapes bear the imprint of competing violent ideologies and their perilous material manifestations. From battlefields and massively bombed terrain to reeducation camps and resettled villages, the past lingers on in the physical environment. The nine essays in this volume discuss post-conflict landscapes as contested spaces imbued with memory-work conveying differing interpretations of the recent past, expressed through material (even, monumental) objects, ritual performances, and oral narratives (or silences). While Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese landscapes are filled with tenacious traces of a violent past, creating an unsolicited and malevolent sense of place among their inhabitants, they can in turn be transformed by actions of resilient and resourceful local communities.

The Second and Third Indochina Wars are the subject of important ongoing scholarship, but there has been little research on the lasting impact of wartime violence on local societies and populations, in Vietnam as well as in Laos and Cambodia. Today's Lao, Vietnamese and Cambodian landscapes bear the imprint of competing violent ideologies and their perilous material manifestations. From battlefields and massively bombed terrain to reeducation camps and resettled villages, the past lingers on in the physical environment. The nine essays in this volume discuss post-conflict landscapes as contested spaces imbued with memory-work conveying differing interpretations of the recent past, expressed through material (even, monumental) objects, ritual performances, and oral narratives (or silences). While Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese landscapes are filled with tenacious traces of a violent past, creating an unsolicited and malevolent sense of place among their inhabitants, they can in turn be transformed by actions of resilient and resourceful local communities.

With the fate of humankind resting on their shoulders, the PATH team, along with the mortal Keepers and Guides around the world are sent on various quests. Each individual test will push them all to their limits as time slowly ticks down towards Armageddon and their destiny.

A Violent History of Benevolence traces how normative histories of liberalism, progress, and social work enact and obscure systemic violences. Chris Chapman and A.J. Withers explore how normative social work history is structured in such a way that contemporary social workers can know many details about social work's violences, without ever imagining that they may also be complicit in these violences. Framings of social work history actively create present-day political and ethical irresponsibility, even among those who imagine themselves to be anti-oppressive, liberal, or radical. The authors document many histories usually left out of social work discourse, including communities of Black social workers (who, among other things, never removed children from their homes involuntarily), the role of early social workers in advancing eugenics and mass confinement, and the resonant emergence of colonial education, psychiatry, and the penitentiary in the same decade. Ultimately, A Violent History of Benevolence aims to invite contemporary social workers and others to reflect on the complex nature of contemporary social work, and specifically on the present-day structural violences that social work enacts in the name of benevolence.

This book brings together a diverse range of international voices from academia, policymaking and civil society to address the failure to connect historical dialogue with atrocity prevention discourse and provide insight into how conflict histories and historical memory act as dynamic forces, actively facilitating or deterring current and future conflict. Established on a variety of international case studies combining theoretical and practical points of view, the book envisions an integrated understanding of how historical dialogue can inform policy, education, and the practice of atrocity prevention. In doing so, it provides a vital basis for the development of preventive policies sensitive to the importance of conflict histories and for further academic study on the topic. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of history, psychology, peace studies, international relations and political science.

Winner, 2023 Charles Tilly Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award, Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section, American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, 2023 Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section Outstanding Book Award, Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section, American Sociological Association Many years after the fall of Franco’s regime, Spanish human rights activists have turned to new methods to keep the memory of state terror alive. By excavating mass graves, exhuming remains, and employing forensic analysis and DNA testing, they seek to provide direct evidence of repression and break through the silence about the dictatorship’s atrocities that persisted well into Spain’s transition to democracy. Nicole Iturriaga offers an ethnographic examination of how Spanish human rights activists use forensic methods to challenge dominant histories, reshape collective memory, and create new forms of transitional justice. She argues that by grounding their claims in science, activists can present themselves as credible and impartial, helping them intervene in fraught public disputes about the remembrance of the past. The perceived legitimacy and authenticity of scientific techniques allows their users to contest the state’s historical claims and offer new narratives of violence in pursuit of long-delayed justice. Iturriaga draws on interviews with technicians and forensics experts and provides a detailed case study of Spain’s best-known forensic human rights organization, the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory. She also considers how the tools and tactics used in Spain can be adopted by human rights and civil society groups pursuing transitional justice in other parts of the world. An ethnographically rich account, Exhuming Violent Histories sheds new light on how science and technology intersect with human rights and collective memory.

How can we use psychology and the behavioural sciences to aid law enforcement to better identify violent extremists? What can we learn from past attacks to ensure that our society is more prepared? How can societies deal with tension after these attacks?Violent extremists are evolving, constantly honing their strategies to out-manuever the 'good guys'. Faced with the quandary, challenges, and responsibilities of ensuring the safety of the society, practitioners and policymakers have to take decisive steps to respond and mitigate the impact of an attack. However, the daunting task of countering violent extremism is still plagued by the lack of basic understanding of the phenomenon.This book, Learning from Violent Extremist Attacks: Behavioural Sciences Insights for Practitioners and Policymakers, attempts to fill a gap in the extant literature by offering a behavioural sciences approach to integrate our understanding of the threat of violent extremism, with knowledge drawn from diverse fields, such as psychology, sociology, history, political science, technology, and communications to identify the lessons learned and provide scientifically defensible interventions and approaches for both the practitioners and policymakers.

Violent video games are successfully marketed to and easily obtained by children and adolescents. Even the U.S. government distributes one such game, America's Army, through both the internet and its recruiting offices. Is there any scientific evidence to support the claims that violent games contribute to aggressive and violent behavior? As the first book to unite empirical research on and public policy options for violent video games, Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents will be an invaluable resource for student and professional researchers in social and developmental psychology and media studies.