Speaking Of Violence

In the context of ongoing or historical violence, people tell stories about what happened, who did what to whom and why. Yet frequently, the speaking of violence reproduces the social fractures and delegitimizes, again, those that struggle against their own marginalization. This speaking of violence deepens conflict and all too often perpetuates cycles of violence. Alternatively, sometimes people do not speak of the violence and it is erased, buried with the bodies that bear it witness. This reduces the capacity of the public to address issues emerging in the aftermath of violence and repression. This book takes the notion of "narrative" as foundational to conflict analysis and resolution. Distinct from conflict theories that rely on accounts of attitudes or perceptions in the heads of individuals, this narrative perspective presumes that meaning, structured and organized as narrative processes, is the location for both analysis of conflict, as well as intervention. But meaning is political, in that not all stories can be told, or the way they are told delegitimizes and erases others. Thus, the critical narrative theory outlined in this book offers a normative approach to narrative assessment and intervention. It provides a way of evaluating narrative and designing "better-formed" stories: "better" in that they are generative of sustainable relations, creating legitimacy for all parties. In so doing, they function aesthetically and ethically to support the emergence of new histories and new futures. Indeed, critical narrative theory offers a new lens for enabling people to speak of violence in ways that undermine the intractability of conflict

Standing Together is a powerful expression of women's collective and individual strength. It is a collection of personal stories from women who have suffered the horrors of violence and abuse and have made the hardest decision: to stand up, to choose life, to take control, to walk out of the darkness. The disturbing, compelling and inspiring stories were written by women of all ages, professions and ethnicities, from all social and economic backgrounds. Taken together, they form a greater story of hope and inspiration.

Though interpersonal violence is widely studied, much less has been done to understand structural violence, the often-invisible patterns of inequality that reproduce social relations of exclusion and marginalization through ideologies, policies, stigmas, and discourses attendant to gender, race, class, and other markers of social identity. Structural violence normalizes experiences like poverty, ableism, sexual harassment, racism, and colonialism, and erases their social and political origins. The legal structures that provide impunity for those who exploit youth are also part of structural violence’s machinery. Working with Indigenous, queer, immigrant and homeless youth across Canada, this five-year Youth-based Participatory Action Research project used art to explore the many ways that structural violence harms youth, destroying hope, optimism, a sense of belonging and a connection to civil society. However, recognizing that youth are not merely victims, Everyday Violence in the Lives of Youth also examines the various ways youth respond to and resist this violence to preserve their dignity, well-being and inclusion in society.

Over the past 20 years, much work has focused on domestic violence, yet little attention has been paid to the causes, manifestations, and resolutions to marital violence among ethnic minorities, especially recent immigrants. Margaret Abraham's Speaking the Unspeakable is the first book to focus on South Asian women's experiences of domestic violence, defined by the author as physical, sexual, verbal, mental, or economic coercion, power, or control perpetrated on a woman by her spouse or extended kin. Abraham explains how immigration issues, cultural assumptions, and unfamiliarity with American social, legal, economic, and other institutional systems, coupled with stereotyping, make these women especially vulnerable to domestic violence. Abraham lets readers hear the voices of abused South Asian women. Through their stories, we learn of their weaknesses and strengths, and of their experiences of domestic violence within the larger cultural, social, economic, and political context. We see both the individual strategies of resistance against their abusers as well as the pivotal role South Asian organizations play in helping these women escape abusive relationships. Abraham also describes the central role played by South Asian activism as it emerged in the 1980s in the United States, and addresses the ideas and practices both within and outside of the South Asian community that stereotype, discriminate, and oppress South Asians in their everyday lives.

Essays tell the stories of battered lesbians and discuss community organizingctivities, support groups, and the possible causes of this form of domesticiolence.

Drawing on a career-long exploration of 1960s French philosophy, Leonard Lawlor seeks a solution to 'the problem of the worst violence'. The worst violence is the reaction of total apocalypse without remainder; it is the reaction of complete negation and death; it is nihilism. Lawlor argues that it is not just transcendental violence that must be minimised: all violence must itself be reduced to its lowest level. He offers new ways of speaking to best achieve the least violence, which he creatively appropriates from Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze and Guattari as 'speaking-freely', 'speaking-distantly' and 'speaking-in-tongues'.

SPEAK OUT ABOUT VIOLENCE: Learn about some incredible kids who had the courage to speak out about the problems of violence and abuse and what you can do to join them! SOCIAL STUDIES READER FOR CHILDREN: Some people live with violence and abuse every day. What can we do to help? We can speak out! This book provides an introduction to the problems of violence and abuse and highlights youth advocates around the world. INCLUDES: This 24-page book for grades 1 to 4 includes a glossary, after-reading questions, and an extension activity. BENEFITS: As they learn about kids who had the courage to speak out and make a positive difference, readers will be inspired to speak out, too! Each book includes a list of 10 ways for the reader to get involved in these important issues and help change the world. WHY ROURKE: Since 1980, we’ve been committed to bringing out the best non-fiction books to help you bring out the best in your young learners. Our carefully crafted topics encourage all students who are "learning to read" and "reading to learn"!

Attention to the elusiveness of violence opens up a rich landscape of analysis, whereby social scientists can examine the often-overlooked transformative dimensions of violent acts. Theories of violence are numerous today, but because of the mysterious nature of violence, and how each individual or group may endure it uniquely, its study cannot be limited to one specialized and highly restricted field. A Hermeneutics of Violence seeks to remedy this problem by placing in dialogue various theories of violence from the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, international relations, and philosophy. This study uses a four-dimensional lens to examine the many facets of violence, including its instrumental, linguistic, mimetic, and transcendental dimensions. Far from irreconcilable, these positions, when placed within a four-dimensional outlook, open up new avenues for the study of particular cases of violence. Exploring the complex interactions, for instance, of "enemy-siblings," Mark M. Ayyash reveals "postures of incommensurability" that continuously produce conflictual positions across a spectrum of time and space and demand the release of violence. The book concludes that these postures must be understood and deconstructed before we can have a legitimate chance to achieve peace and justice, the conceptions of which must come with the intent of not necessarily opposing violence but rather replacing our conceptions of what the violences have come to constitute as "real."