Violence In Society books

We live in a globalized world in which children live in extreme poverty, experience stunted growth, are denied access to education, live as refugees, are subjected to violence, are employed as unskilled workers and even face threats from terror organizations. Drawing attention to these critical challenges, this edited collection develops holistic solutions towards achieving improved conditions and rights of children globally. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective spanning disciplines such as psychology, geography, history, philosophy, theology, education, social law and literature, Being a Child in a Global World includes over twenty chapters which delve into the concept and place of the child in the social order, as well as economic, humanitarian, and political dimensions. Featuring authorship from around the world, and combining the perspectives and knowledge of different disciplines, this edited collection is a truly ground-breaking and comprehensive multidisciplinary study. Providing answers to an urgent challenge of our time, the collection is a must-read for scholars who are interested in the global condition of childhood.

This Special Issue of Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change reflects upon global student and youth activism 50 years after the infamous May 4, 1970 National Guard shootings of student activists demonstrating against the US wars in Vietnam and Cambodia at Kent State University in Ohio, USA. That incident drew attention to state violence and youth attempts to build peace. However, it was neither the first nor last time student movements faced violent opposition during protests for peace, equity, democracy, and structural change. This volume examines how youths mobilized for change, faced repression, and were commemorated. The first section focuses on how society views and responds to youth and student political engagement. Chapters assess mobilizing a global movements; how fear of and constraints on youth undermine activism, and the construction student peace programming. The second section highlights how violent repression of students and youth occurs around the world, with chapters addressing how student movements evolve in response to violence. The final section of this volume examines the contestation and commemoration of activism and violence. Taken together, this volume provides much needed space for the narratives of those youths and students who have fought, and continue to fight, for change.

Gang violence is a concern being debated by academics, politicians, and communities around the world. Yet effective solutions are still in short supply, partly because too little research concentrates on understanding how people can escape the trap of violent street culture. Responding to that need, this book provides a detailed qualitative account of what it is like to join and then disengage from gangs in Africa’s deadliest city. Through the life histories of twenty-four former Capetonian gang members, alongside hundreds of hours of additional interviews and observation from five years of ethnographic research, Dariusz Dziewanski reimagines gangsterism in a way that pays heed to the overwhelming force of street culture, but also confirms the possibility of overcoming crime and violence amid disenfranchisement and disadvantage. Rather than simply reproducing the poverty-crime-violence narrative, this book demonstrates how gang members can – and have – transformed their lives, challenging the pessimistic conclusions commonly associated with gang entry; even gang scholars studying street culture usually portray the end point to gang life as either prison or a body bag. By presenting evidence about successful gang exit, Dziewanski showcases a practical starting point for changing how criminologists think about gangs and street culture – offering hope to those trying exit gang life, as well as those trying to help them do so

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access, thanks to Knowledge Unlatched funding, and freely available to read online. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies, Gender and the Violence(s) of War and Armed Conflict delves into visual as well as text-based materials to unpack gender-based violence(s) perpetrated and experienced by both genders within and beyond the conflict zone.  Considering examples of old and new wars ranging from the Holocaust, the 1971 Liberation War in Bangladesh; and the armed conflicts in the DRC, Iraq, Syria and Darfur, this book uncovers sexualised, genocidal and reproductive violence against both genders. Crucially, the author showcases examples of male victimisation, and thus redresses gaps within the literature. In particular, as part of an original gendered analysis of the war on terror, Banwell unpacks women’s involvement in sexual violence against male prisoners at Abu Ghraib.  By going beyond instances of interpersonal violence, and looking additionally at structural forms of gender-based violence, state violence, institutional violence and climate variability, this book broadens our understanding of both the causes and consequences of modern conflicts. Through her critique of gender essentialism, the author challenges gendered notions of who ‘is dangerous’ and who is ‘in danger’ during war/armed conflict. Eclectic in its approach, and multi-disciplinary in scope, Banwell’s text is illuminating reading for academics, students and professionals working with war-affected populations.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. The international strategy of criminalising the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and use of certain psychoactive substances has failed to achieve a ‘drug free world’. Examining the impact of drug criminalisation and enforcement on a previously overlooked demographic, this edited collection argues that women are negatively and disproportionately affected by this flawed policy approach.  Addressing the lack of attention on the experience of women, this collection details the challenges women face in accessing appropriate treatment and services, the stigmatisation and marginalisation resulting from engagement in illegal drug markets, the violence that women are exposed to, and the punitive sentences imposed on women for drug related offences. Bringing together an international group of academics, advocates, activists and those with lived experience, the editors offer a rounded and realistic view from women’s perspectives. In doing so, they facilitate a call for feminist and women’s organisations to embrace drug policy reform, and for international and national level drug control authorities to better engage women as stakeholders.

This book investigates how governance at different levels can improve access to education for excluded communities.  It conceptualises turbulence, empowerment, and marginalisation in international educational governance systems, and presents a comparative analysis of five nation states (England, Arabs in Israel, Northern Ireland, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States). From these carefully-selected case studies, readers are shown how Senior Level Leaders describe turbulence in their systems - and how they articulate both the kind of support they want, and the support they actually get at the infrastructural, resources and agency level. It shows how the Senior Leaders hope to put their track records in school improvement into action in order to mobilise school communities for Empowering Young Societal Innovators for Equity and Renewal.  Based on research that is world leading in terms of originality, significance, and rigour, Turbulence, Empowerment and Marginalisation in International Education Governance Systems is both a comprehensive investigation of the question of how systems empower key agents of change in school communities, and a practical guide to how these communities can become societal innovators for equity, peace and renewal.

Do witches and witchcraft represent our understanding of how women who threaten the patriarchy are demonised? If to be born female is to be born deviant, how deviant is a body transformed to be female? There are few explorations of whether power exercised by women is as robust as that exercised by men, and therefore whether it is more open to abusive use. This fascinating anthology examines these questions through the lens of literary critique, history, criminology, and psychology to explore another representation of women - in relation to how they abuse power, or how they react when they are the victims of that abuse.  With themes ranging from the personal consideration of female bodies, to the supernatural hidden realm, to the public condemnation of women who fall foul of either the law or of a male-dominated world, this collection of interdisciplinary essays provides an in-depth look at the fate of women who abuse or are abused by power.