Critical thinkers like Foucault, Benjamin, Derrida and Žižek have long challenged the liberal separation of violence and politics by highlighting the implicit violence within political and economic structures. But in an era of international terrorism and counter-terrorism, should we not also reverse the question to ask ‘what is political about violence?’ Using interviews with ex-militants from Italian leftist struggle of the 1970s and the Cypriot anti-colonial militancy of the 1950s, Heath-Kelly explores the political utility of violence. Studies of conflict and international politics rarely address how killing and injuring function to win wars or overturn regimes. But by rejecting conceptions of violence as a means-to-an-end found in the works of Clausewitz and Arendt, this book draws upon studies of pain to explore the ways in which armed struggle produces new political subjects and regimes, and discredits others, through experiences of violence. Using Elaine Scarry’s conception of pain as ‘world-destroying’ and Walter Benjamin’s delineation of violence as either lawmaking or law-preserving to frame ex-militant discussions of participation in armed struggle, the book contributes a pathbreaking empirical exploration of violence to international politics literatures - moving the study of political violence away from an understanding of violence as just a means-to-an-end. Drawing out insights that have a far wider resonance and significance for the analysis of the ‘politicality’ of political violence, this work will be of interest to students and scholars in areas such as international relations, security studies and international relations theory.

Are there any commonalities between such phenomena as soccer hooliganism, sabotage by peasants of landlords' property, incidents of road rage, and even the events of September 11? With striking historical scope and command of the literature of many disciplines, this book, first published in 2003, seeks the common causes of these events in collective violence. In collective violence, social interaction immediately inflicts physical damage, involves at least two perpetrators of damage, and results in part from coordination among the persons who perform the damaging acts. Professor Tilly argues that collective violence is complicated, changeable, and unpredictable in some regards, yet that it also results from similar causes variously combined in different times and places. Pinpointing the causes, combinations, and settings helps to explain collective violence and its variations, and also helps to identify the best ways to mitigate violence and create democracies with a minimum of damage to persons and property.

Medellín, Colombia, used to be the most violent city on earth, but in recent years, allegedly thanks to its 'social urbanism' approach to regeneration, it has experienced a sharp decline in violence. The author explores the politics behind this decline and the complex transformations in terms of urban development policies in Medellín.

This book explains how political control of economic privileges is used to limit violence and coordinate coalitions of powerful organizations.

Communal Intimacy and the Violence of Politics explores the notoriously brutal Philippine war on drugs from below. Steffen Bo Jensen and Karl Hapal examine how the war on drugs folded itself into communal and intimate spheres in one Manila neighborhood, Bagong Silang. Police killings have been regular occurrences since the birth of Bagong Silang. Communal Intimacy and the Violence of Politics shows that although the drug war was introduced from the outside, it fit into and perpetuated already existing gendered and generational structures. In Bagong Silang, the war on drugs implicated local structures of authority, including a justice system that had always been deeply integrated into communal relations. The ways in which the war on drugs transformed these intimate relations between the state and its citizens, and between neighbors, may turn out to be the most lasting impact of Duterte's infamously violent policies.

This study of Fatah's institutionalisation reveals an ongoing interplay of intra-organisational considerations, relations between the organisation and its national constituency, and environmental opportunities and pressures.

Latin America is one of the most violent regions in the world. It has suffered waves of repressive authoritarian rule, organized armed insurgency and civil war, violent protest, and ballooning rates of criminal violence. But is violence hard wired into Latin America? This is a critical reassessment of the ways in which violence in Latin America is addressed and understood. Previous approaches have relied on structural perspectives, attributing the problem of violence to Latin America's colonial past or its conflictual contemporary politics. Bringing together scholars and practitioners, this volume argues that violence is often rooted more in contingent outcomes than in deeply embedded structures. Addressing topics ranging from the root sources of violence in Haiti to kidnapping in Colombia, from the role of property rights in patterns of violence to the challenges of peacebuilding, The Politics of Violence in Latin America is an essential step towards understanding the causes and contexts of violence-and changing the mechanisms that produce it.