Routine Violence

This book investigates the ideological and political conditions that allow, and sanction, the undisguised political violence of our times. It is concerned with the regnant demands of nationalism and of history writing, and the unity and uniformity upon which these insist.

Contributed articles with reference to the state of Kerala, India.

Criminology Explains Police Violence offers a concise and targeted overview of criminological theory applied to the phenomenon of police violence. In this engaging and accessible book, Philip M. Stinson, Sr. highlights the similarities and differences among criminological theories, and provides linkages across explanatory levels and across time and geography to explain police violence. This book is appropriate as a resource in criminology, policing, and criminal justice special topic courses, as well as a variety of violence and police courses such as policing, policing administration, police-community relations, police misconduct, and violence in society. Stinson uses examples from his own research to explore police violence, acknowledging the difficulty in studying the topic because violence is often seen as a normal part of policing.

Drawing on revealing, in-depth interviews, Cecilia Menjívar investigates the role that violence plays in the lives of Ladina women in eastern Guatemala, a little-visited and little-studied region. While much has been written on the subject of political violence in Guatemala, Menjívar turns to a different form of suffering—the violence embedded in institutions and in everyday life so familiar and routine that it is often not recognized as such. Rather than painting Guatemala (or even Latin America) as having a cultural propensity for normalizing and accepting violence, Menjívar aims to develop an approach to examining structures of violence—profound inequality, exploitation and poverty, and gender ideologies that position women in vulnerable situations— grounded in women’s experiences. In this way, her study provides a glimpse into the root causes of the increasing wave of feminicide in Guatemala, as well as in other Latin American countries, and offers observations relevant for understanding violence against women around the world today.

In the current information age, Americans are bombarded daily with stories and images portraying a rising tide of violence. Drawing on media that includes television, newspaper, fiction, film, painting and photography, as well as interviews and focus groups, Karen Cerulo explores the ways in which individuals think about, depict and evaluate violence. Moving beyond typical studies that focus on violent story content, Deciphering Violence decodes the role of story structure itself and how the sequencing of facts can systematically influence our moral judgements of violent acts. The book identifies institutionalized forms of violent storytelling and raises new possibilities both for decreasing public tolerance of violence and increasing social control of the phenomenon.

Violence against women is recognized by WHO as a serious global public health issue (WHO, 2005). In the U.S., approximately 1.5 million women are physically or sexually assaulted each year by an intimate partner.

Why does religion inspire hatred? Why do people in one religion sometimes hate people of another religion, and also why do some religions inspire hatred from others? This book shows how scholarly studies of prejudice, identity formation, and genocide studies can shed light on global examples of religious hatred. The book is divided into four parts, focusing respectively on: theories of prejudice and violence; historical developments of Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and race; contemporary Western Antisemitism and Islamophobia; and, prejudices beyond the West in the Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions. Each part ends with a special focus section. Key features include: - A compelling synthesis of theories of prejudice, identity, and hatred to explain Islamophobia and Antisemitism. - An innovative theory of human violence and genocide which explains the link to prejudice. - Case studies of both Western Antisemitism and Islamophobia in history and today, alongside global studies of Islamic Antisemitism and Hindu and Buddhist Islamophobia - Integrates discussion of race and racialisation as aspects of Islamophobic and Antisemitic prejudice in relation to their framing in religious discourses. - Accessible for general readers and students, it can be employed as a textbook for students or read with benefit by scholars for its novel synthesis and theories. The book focuses on Antisemitism and Islamophobia, both in the West and beyond, including examples of prejudices and hatred in the Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions. Drawing on examples from Europe, North America, MENA, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa, Paul Hedges points to common patterns, while identifying the specifics of local context. Religious Hatred is an essential guide for understanding the historical origins of religious hatred, the manifestations of this hatred across diverse religious and cultural contexts, and the strategies employed by activists and peacemakers to overcome this hatred.