Violence In Extreme Conditions

As an organization operating under extreme conditions, the military is often confronted with destructive behavior from individuals, organizations, and societies. Written by experts from a variety of disciplines, this open access book reflects on confrontations with violence under extreme conditions and the various challenges that arise. By examining real first-hand accounts of soldiers’ deployments, the contributions shed new light on the multifaceted and sometimes hidden dynamics of destructive violent behavior and offer an ethical reflection on military practices. In addition, they address topics such as moral decision-making in violent contexts, military trauma, organizational change, and military ethics education. The interdisciplinary exploration of these topics has been the primary focus of Désirée Verweij, who was the Chair of Military Ethics at the Netherlands Defence Academy from 2008 to 2021. The contributions in this book are written in honor of her scholarly achievements and help to ensure that these important issues continue to receive attention. The book will appeal to scholars of military studies, organizational studies and military ethics, and to professionals and decisionmakers in military organizations.

Featuring a unique overview of the different forms of extreme violence, this book considers the psychology of extreme violence alongside a variety of contributing factors, such as brain abnormalities in homicide offenders. Featuring several contemporary real-world case studies, this book offers insight into the psychology of serial homicide offenders, mass shooters, school shooters and lone-actor terrorists. The main purpose of this book is not to glorify or condemn the actions of these individuals, but to attempt to explain the motivations and circumstances that inspire such acts of extreme violence. By adopting a detailed case study approach, it aims to increase our understanding of the specific motivations and psychological factors underlying extreme violence. Using nontechnical language, this book is the ideal companion for students, researchers, and forensic practitioners interested in the multidisciplinary nature of extreme violence. This book will also be of interest to students taking courses on homicide, mass shooting, school shooting, terrorism, forensic psychology and criminology and criminal justice.

"This was several times with that damn cribbage board. I hate cribbage boards to this very day. They never beat us on the arms or legs or stuff, it was always on the bottom of the feet, I couldn't figure it out." Brian L., Huronia Regional Centre Survivor Over the past two decades, the public has borne witness to ongoing revelations of shocking, intense, and even sadistic forms of violence in spaces meant to provide care. This has been particularly true in institutions designed to care for people with disabilities. In this work, the authors not only describe institutional violence, but work to make sense of how and why institutional violence within care settings is both so pervasive and so profound. Drawing on a wide range of primary data, including oral histories of institutional survivors and staff, ethnographic observation, legal proceedings and archival data, this book asks: What does institutional violence look like in practice and how might it be usefully categorized? How have extreme forms violence and neglect come to be the cultural norm across institutions? What organizational strategies in institutions foster the abdication of personal morality and therefore violence? How is institutional care the crucial "first step" in creating a culture that accepts violence as the norm? This highly interdisciplinary work develops scholarly analysis of the history and importance of institutional violence and, as such, is of particular interest to scholars whose work engages with issues of disability, health care law and policy, violence, incarceration, organizational behaviour, and critical theory.

The Oklahoma City bombing, intentional crashing of airliners on September 11, 2001, and anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001 have made Americans acutely aware of the impacts of terrorism. These events and continued threats of terrorism have raised questions about the impact on the psychological health of the nation and how well the public health infrastructure is able to meet the psychological needs that will likely result. Preparing for the Psychological Consequences of Terrorism highlights some of the critical issues in responding to the psychological needs that result from terrorism and provides possible options for intervention. The committee offers an example for a public health strategy that may serve as a base from which plans to prevent and respond to the psychological consequences of a variety of terrorism events can be formulated. The report includes recommendations for the training and education of service providers, ensuring appropriate guidelines for the protection of service providers, and developing public health surveillance for preevent, event, and postevent factors related to psychological consequences.

A human rights lawyer travels to hot zones around the globe, before and after the September 11 attacks, to document abuses committed by warlords, terrorist groups, and government counterterrorism forces. Whether reporting on al Qaeda safe houses, the mechanics of the Pentagon’s smartest bombs, his interviews with politicians and ordinary civilians, or his own brush with death outside Kabul, John Sifton wants to help us understand violence—what it is, and how we think and speak about it. For the human rights community, the global war on terror brought unprecedented challenges. Of special concern were the secret detention centers operated by the CIA as it expanded into a paramilitary force, and the harsh treatment of prisoners throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. In drafting legal memoranda that made domestic prosecution for these crimes impossible, Sifton argues, the United States possessed not only the detainees but the law itself. Sifton recounts his efforts to locate secret prisons and reflects on the historical development of sanctioned military or police violence—from hand-to-hand combat to the use of drones—and the likelihood that technology will soon enable completely automated killing. Sifton is equally concerned to examine what people have meant by nonviolent social change, and he asks whether pure nonviolence is ever possible. To invoke rights is to invoke the force to uphold them, he reminds us. Ultimately, advocates for human rights can only shame the world into better behavior, and their work may involve advocating the very violence they deplore.

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.