Violence All Around

A human rights lawyer travels to hot zones around the globe before and after 9/11 to document abuses by warlords, terrorists, and counterterrorism forces. John Sifton reminds us that human rights advocates can only shame the world into better behavior; to invoke rights is to invoke the force to uphold them, including the very violence they deplore.

In this book, we make space to interrogate obstetric violence; from its historical and legal roots and contemporary realities, to responses of advocacy and resistance. Through the lens of obstetric violence, we are able to see overlap in structural vulnerability across continents as well as recognize the ways in which obstetric violence is symptomatic of larger global problems including systemic injustices related to reproductive health. Combining the perspectives of care providers, birthing people, advocates and researchers, our volume seeks to include both a systematic and structural understanding of obstetric violence. We bring together diverse voices, from practitioners, to activists, to academics, and provide a global perspective on obstetric violence with research from around the world, including indigenous communities from North America (Canada and Hawaii), examples from Latin American and Caribbean countries as well as country-specific cases from Argentina, Australia, Egypt, Mexico, Portugal, and the United States. The range of disciplinary perspectives and global experiences presented in this book demonstrates that obstetric violence is neither bound to one discipline, nor

Graphic Violence provides an innovative introduction to the relationship between violence and visual media, discussing how media consumers and producers can think critically about and interact with violent visual content. It comprehensively surveys predominant theories of media violence and the research supporting and challenging them, addressing issues ranging from social learning, to representations of war and terrorism, to gender and hyper-masculinity. Each chapter features original artwork presenting a story in the style of a graphic novel to demonstrate the concepts at hand. Truly unique in its approach to the subject and medium, this volume is an excellent resource for undergraduate students of communication and media theory as well as anyone interested in understanding the causes and effects of violence in media.

This international collection examines violence and abuse in and around organisations. The collection documents the causes, specifically from the perspective of human relations and of the workplace conditions. It also highlights the specific risks associated with high-risk professions or working environments. The first section considers types of violence and abuse, their relative frequencies, potential individual and workplace antecedents, costs to individuals, family’s organisations and societies, the fact both are increasing in frequency with new types (e.g., terrorism) appearing, and why addressing these has become increasingly important for individuals and organisations. The second section considers violence in interpersonal relationships such as bullying, incivility, bias and harassment, and toxic leadership. The third section examines unsafe workplaces, accidents, injuries, and deaths. The fourth section considers exploitive work conditions and arrangements such as precarious employment, the exploitation of immigrants, and human slavery. The final section offers suggestions on ways to address violence and abuse in and around organisations. These include aggression preventative supervisor behaviours in health care, suicide prevention in the workplace, dealing with disgruntled employees and former employees, and workplace interventions that address stress reduction more broadly. As with other titles in the Psychological and Behavioural Aspects of Risk Series, this research-based collection is firmly grounded in the boundary between work and society and offers important insights into how social and cultural problems are manifest in the workplace and how poor and abusive workplace practice, in turn, spills out into wider life.

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.

What impels human beings to harm others -- family members or strangers? And how can these impulses and actions be prevented or controlled? Heightened public awareness of, and concern about, what is widely perceived as a recent explosion of violence -- on a spectrum from domestic abuse to street crime -- has motivated behavioral and social scientists to cast new light on old questions. Many hypotheses have been offered. This volume sorts, structures, and evaluates them.The author draws on contemporary research and theory in varied fields--sociology, clinical psychology, psychiatry, social work, neuropsychology, behavioral genetics, child development, and education--to present a uniquely balanced, integrated, and readable summary of what we currently know about the causes and effects of violence. Throughout, she emphasizes the necessity of distinguishing among different types of violent behavior and of realizing that nature and nurture interact in human development. Controversial issues such as physical punishment and violent television programming receive special attention making this volume an important resource for all those concerned with violent offenders and their victims -- and for their students and trainees.In this third edition of Understanding Violence, author Elizabeth Kandel Englander draws on contemporary research and theory in varied fields to present a uniquely balanced, integrated, and readable summary of what we currently know about the causes and effects of violence, particularly its effect on children. The goal of this textbook is to give a critical review of the most relevant and important areas of research on street and family violence, examining why it is that people become violent. Between 1994 and 2004 the United States benefited from a dramatic decline in rates of violent crime. However, as the economy has weakened in recent years and tougher times have returned, the crime rate has shown signs of a modest

The five-and six-year-olds in my class have invented a new game they call suicide. I have never seen a game I hate so much in which all the children involved are so happy. So begins Under Deadman's Skin, a deceptively simple-and compellingly readable-teachers' tale. Jane Katch, in the tradition of Vivian Paley and Jonathan Kozol, uses her student's own vocabulary and storytelling to set the scene: a class of five-and six-year-olds obsessed with what is to their teacher hatefully violent fantasy play. Katch asks, 'Can I make a place in school for understanding these fantasies, instead of shutting them out?' Over the course of the year she holds group discussions to determine what kind of play creates or calms turmoil; she illustrates (or rather the children illustrate) the phenomenon of very young children needing to make sense of exceptionally violent imagery; and she consults with older grade-school boys who remember what it was like to be obsessed by violence and tell Katch what she can do to help. Katch's classroom journey-one that leads her to rules and limits that keep children secure-is an enabling blueprint for any teacher or parent disturbed by violent children's play.

Using discourses from across the conceptual and geographical board, Toby Miller argues for a different way of understanding violence, one that goes beyond supposedly universal human traits to focus instead on the specificities of history, place, and population as explanations for it. Violence engages these issues in a wide-ranging interdisciplinary form, examining definitions and data, psychology and ideology, gender, nation-states, and the media by covering several foundational questions: how has violence been defined, historically and geographically? has it decreased or increased over time? which regions of the world are the most violent? does violence correlate with economies, political systems, and religions? what is the relationship of gender and violence? what role do the media play? This book is a powerful introduction to the study of violence, ideal for students and researchers across the human sciences, most notably sociology, American and area studies, history, media and communication studies, politics, literature, and cultural studies.