The book examines, among other issues, the emergence of civil war as a result of political struggles. The construction of Africa as the 'other' has meant that factors commonly used to explain war elsewhere have been neglected in SubSaharan Africa. The political power struggle which evolved around the state is at the forefront of the analysis of civil war and societal conflict.
Killing the Black Body remains a rallying cry for education, awareness, and action on extending reproductive justice to all women. It is as crucial as ever, even two decades after its original publication. "A must-read for all those who claim to care about racial and gender justice in America." —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow In 1997, this groundbreaking book made a powerful entrance into the national conversation on race. In a media landscape dominated by racially biased images of welfare queens and crack babies, Killing the Black Body exposed America’s systemic abuse of Black women’s bodies. From slave masters’ economic stake in bonded women’s fertility to government programs that coerced thousands of poor Black women into being sterilized as late as the 1970s, these abuses pointed to the degradation of Black motherhood—and the exclusion of Black women’s reproductive needs in mainstream feminist and civil rights agendas. “Compelling. . . . Deftly shows how distorted and racist constructions of black motherhood have affected politics, law, and policy in the United States.” —Ms.
This second edition of Ethnic Conflict in World Politics is an introduction to a new era in which civil society, states, and international actors attempt to channel ethnic challenges to world order and security into conventional politics. From Africa's post-colonial rebellions in the 1960s and 1970s to anti-immigrant violence in the 1990s the authors survey the historical, geographic, and cultural diversity of ethnopolitical conflict. Using an analytical model to elucidate four well-chosen case studies?the Kurds, the Miskitos, the Chinese in Malaysia, and the Turks in Germany?the authors give students tools for analyzing emerging conflicts based on the demands of nationalists, indigenous peoples, and immigrant minorities throughout the world. The international community has begun to respond more quickly and constructively to these conflicts than it did to civil wars in divided Yugoslavia and genocide in Rwanda by using the emerging doctrines of proactive peacemaking and peace enforcement that are detailed in this book. Concludes by identifying five principles of international doctrine for managing conflict in ethnically diverse societies. The text is illustrated with maps, tables, and figures.
This volume attempts to critically analyze Chaim Kaufman's ideas from various methodological perspectives, with the view of further understanding how stable states may arise after violent ethnic conflict and to generate important debate in the area. After the Cold War, the West became optimistic of their ability to intervene effectively in instances of humanitarian disasters and civil war. Unfortunately, in the light of Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda, questions of the appropriate course of action in situations of large scale violence became hotly contested. A wave of analysis considered the traditional approach of third parties attempting to ensure that the nation was built on the basis of a ruling power-share between the opposing sides of the conflict to be overwhelmingly problematic, and perhaps impossible. Within this movement Kaufman wrote a series of articles advocating separation of warring sides in order to provide stability in situations of large scale violence. His theorem provoked extreme responses and polarized opinion, contradicting the established position of promoting power-sharing, democracy and open economies to solve ethnic conflict and had policy implications for the entire international community. This book was previously published as a special issue of Security Studies.
A unique study providing evidence that murder is predictable and the exceptionally high murder rate in the United States is reduceable. Part I examines 50 case histories and an analysis of 912 homicides from an original study made in Erie County (Buffalo), New York. Part II discusses multicide, serial killers, and mass murderers. Part III covers assassinations and executions and a final part presents conclusions.
The existing traditions of inquiry into ethnic conflict can be classified into four categories: essentialism, instrumentalism, constructivism, and institutionalism. All four traditions have a distinguished lineage, but none can really account for the worldwide spread of ethnic violence. We need to move from the local to the macro or global. This book, using methodology from sociology, history, and politics, will present the complexities of ethnic conflict in terms of linguistics, religion, territory, and tribes in various regions. These brilliant essays look at some of the most conflicted sites in the world, where ethnic violence has been created and played out: Burma, Indonesia, Rwanda, Burundi, Nigeria, the Sudan, Mexico, and Guyana. Divided into two parts, Perspectives on Contemporary Ethnic Conflict is a rich text for scholars of conflict studies, focusing on the sources and dynamics of ethnic violence and providing descriptions of ethnic conflict across the globe.
This edited collection addresses a substantial gap in the existing literature on filicide by presenting the latest research from empirical investigations around the world. Despite its low occurrence, little is known about the incidences, causes and circumstances of filicide nationally and globally, and this international volume address the challenges associated with explaining and understanding filicide. Additionally, the authors also outline the role of professionals in assessing risk, and the importance of support for, and advocacy of, families of victims in the aftermath of these tragic events. Exploring a truly diverse range of countries, from various English speaking countries, to Chile, and Japan, this book presents an authoritative look at research on filicide, and crucially, examines the programs currently being developed for both intervention and prevention. An important and well-researched collection, this book will be of particular interest for scholars of do mestic violence and filicide, as well as professionals such as social workers.
Most people could probably tell you that Lizzie Borden “took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks,” but few could say that, when tried, Lizzie Borden was acquitted, and fewer still, why. In Joseph A. Conforti’s engrossing retelling, the case of Lizzie Borden, sensational in itself, also opens a window on a time and place in American history and culture. Surprising for how much it reveals about a legend so ostensibly familiar, Conforti’s account is also fascinating for what it tells us about the world that Lizzie Borden inhabited. As Conforti—himself a native of Fall River, the site of the infamous murders—introduces us to Lizzie and her father and step-mother, he shows us why who they were matters almost as much to the trial’s outcome as the actual events of August 4, 1892. Lizzie, for instance, was an unmarried woman of some privilege, a prominent religious woman who fit the profile of what some characterized as a “Protestant nun.” She was also part of a class of moneyed women emerging in the late 19th century who had the means but did not marry, choosing instead to pursue good works and at times careers in the helping professions. Many of her contemporaries, we learn, particularly those of her class, found it impossible to believe that a woman of her background could commit such a gruesome murder. As he relates the details, known and presumed, of the murder and the subsequent trial, Conforti also fills in that background. His vividly written account creates a complete picture of the Fall River of the time, as Yankee families like the Bordens, made wealthy by textile factories, began to feel the economic and cultural pressures of the teeming population of native and foreign-born who worked at the spindles and bobbins. Conforti situates Lizzie’s austere household, uneasily balanced between the well-to-do and the poor, within this social and cultural milieu—laying the groundwork for the murder and the trial, as well as the outsize reaction that reverberates to our day. As Peter C. Hoffer remarks in his preface, there are many popular and fictional accounts of this still-controversial case, “but none so readable or so well-balanced as this.”
A fascinating profile of female homicide offenders emerges from this analysis of the characteristics of women murderers in six cities in the United States, including the circumstances of the murders, the role of the victims, the role of the perpetrators, and their fates in court.
Parents Killing Children: Crossing the Invisible Line explores hidden forms of violence within the family. This socio-legal study addresses the interactions between the family and the state, focusing on six parent perpetrators and the ways in which child endangerment is concealed within society. Drawing on symbolic interactionism, mythology and a modelling of case study data, this book puts forward a unique conceptualisation of representation and risk, both on familial and state levels. The failure of the state to intervene and neutralise volatile perpetrators also sheds light on the socio-legal status of children – society’s most vulnerable – and the book concludes by discussing means by which the underlying social conditions and maladies symptomatic of child abuse and killing should be addressed.
