Cultural Practices of Victimhood aims to set the agenda for a cultural study of victimhood. Words such as ‘victim’ and ‘victimhood’ represent shifting cultural signifiers, their meaning depending on the cultural context of their usage. Using case studies and through a practice-based approach, questions are asked about how victimhood is defined and constructed, whether in the ritual commemoration of refugees on Lampedusa, the artistic practices of an Aboriginal artist such as Richard Bell, or the media practices associated with police violence. Consisting of contributions by cultural studies experts with an interest in victim studies, this book seeks a double readership. On the one hand, it intends to break new ground with regards to a ‘cultural turn’ in the field of criminology, in particular victimology. On the other hand, it also seeks to open up discussions about a ‘victimological turn’ in culture studies. The volume invites scholars and advanced students active in both domains to reflect on victimhood in cultural practices.

The Rise of Victimhood Culture offers a framework for understanding recent moral conflicts at U.S. universities, which have bled into society at large. These are not the familiar clashes between liberals and conservatives or the religious and the secular: instead, they are clashes between a new moral culture—victimhood culture—and a more traditional culture of dignity. Even as students increasingly demand trigger warnings and “safe spaces,” many young people are quick to police the words and deeds of others, who in turn claim that political correctness has run amok. Interestingly, members of both camps often consider themselves victims of the other. In tracking the rise of victimhood culture, Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning help to decode an often dizzying cultural milieu, from campus riots over conservative speakers and debates around free speech to the election of Donald Trump.

Demonstrates how the campaign against "victim politics" and the "victim mentality" has profoundly altered Americans' understanding of victimhood, and investigates the consequences of this change in politics, law, culture, and the "war against terror."

Female-Perpetrated Sex Abuse is a groundbreaking study into gender, sexuality and victimhood. It examines the cultural conditions of possibility for FSA victimhood as a means to advance contemporary critical understandings of the role of gender and sexuality as instruments of modern power. As the first direct exploration of FSA victimhood, this book analyses: why victims of FSA remain so underexplored and invisible as objects of human science knowledge; the limited and overly rigid discourses in local and global psychological theory and practice that continues to treat particular subjects as ‘victim worthy’ through paradigms that construct victimhood as gendered; and the possibility of new discourses that could disrupt normative understandings of gender, sexuality, and power in sex abuse, and as constitutive to the beginnings of a counter-knowledge on transgressive sexualities. By tracing the historical and cultural conditions of the emergence of FSA broadly and FSA victimhood specifically, Kramer illustrates how deeply engrained constructions of gender and sexuality both produce and constrain the possibilities for reporting, disclosing and self-identifying victimhood. Female-Perpetrated Sex Abuse is essential reading for academics, researchers and students alike, in the areas of psychology, sociology, gender studies, criminology, counselling and social work.

Nils Christie’s (1986) seminal work on the ‘Ideal Victim’ is reproduced in full in this edited collection of vibrant and provocative essays that respond to and update the concept from a range of thematic positions. Each chapter celebrates and commemorates his work by analysing, evaluating and critiquing the current nature and impact of victim identity, experience, policy and practice. The collection expands the focus and remit of ‘victim studies’, addressing key themes around race, gender, faith, ability and age while encompassing new and diverse issues. Examples include sex workers as victims of hate crimes, victims’ experiences of online fraud, and recognising historic child sexual abuse victims in Ireland. With contributions from an array of academics including Vicky Heap (Sheffield Hallam University), Hannah Mason-Bish (University of Sussex) and Pamela Davies (Northumbria University), as well as a Foreword by David Scott (The Open University), this book evaluates the contemporary relevance and applicability of Christie’s ‘Ideal Victim’ concept and creates an important platform for thinking differently about victimhood in the 21st century.

Yakama Rising argues that Indigenous communities themselves have the answers to the persistent social problems they face. This book contributes to discourses of Indigenous social change by articulating a Yakama decolonizing praxis that advances the premise that grassroots activism and cultural revitalization are powerful examples of decolonization.

This book examines the social psychological processes involved in experiences of collective victimization and oppression, as well as the consequences of these experiences for individuals and for relations within and between groups. In twenty chapters, authors explore questions such as: How are experiences of collective victimization passed down and understood? How do people cope with and make sense of these experiences? Who is included and excluded from the category of "victims," and what are the psychological consequences of such denial versus acknowledgment of collective victimization? And finally, what are the ethics of researching collective victimization, especially when these experiences are recent or politically contested?