This book offers both a conceptual and an empirical analysis of how violence is normalized. In its conceptual analysis, Irm Haleem offers a framework of explanation that she argues is universal in its narratives, which she submits is premised on moralizing, legalizing, and popularizing violence. Haleem engages Stathis Kalyvas’s notion of the two stages of violence (process and outcome), and proposes the notion of "metaphysical" violence as distinct from physical violence. Through drawing upon works of scholars such as Hannah Arendt, Noam Chomsky, W.J.T. Mitchell, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, George Kateb, and others, she illustrates why these distinctions (of stages and types of violence) are critical in understanding how violence is normalized. In its empirical analysis, Naoko Kumada argues that the contemporary changes in narratives and educational curriculum in Japan are intended to moralize the historic glory days of imperial Japan, which, she argues, may subsequently normalize militarism. Stefanie Kam focuses on how China has normalized violence in Xinjiang through narratives of the imperatives of security, thereby both legalizing and moralizing violence. Jennifer Dhanaraj argues how the denial of citizenship to the Rohingya community in Myanmar has provided both the moral and legal justifications for Buddhist extremists and the military to wage a brutal and unbridled war against the Rohingyas. Finally, Abdul Basit examines how the ex-communication of the Ahmadi sectarian minority in Pakistan has criminalized the minority, thus paving the way for unbridled violence against them from extremist mobs that have justified their violence in moral and legal terms. In all the cases in this book, we see how violence is popularized as being either a matter of the will of the people, or as being for the greater good of the people.

This book offers both a conceptual and an empirical analysis of how violence is normalized. In its conceptual analysis, Irm Haleem offers a framework of explanation that she argues is universal in its narratives, which she submits is premised on moralizing, legalizing, and popularizing violence. Haleem engages Stathis Kalyvas's notion of the two stages of violence (process and outcome), and proposes the notion of "metaphysical" violence as distinct from physical violence. Through drawing upon works of scholars such as Hannah Arendt, Noam Chomsky, W.J.T. Mitchell, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, George Kateb, and others, she illustrates why these distinctions (of stages and types of violence) are critical in understanding how violence is normalized. In its empirical analysis, Naoko Kumada argues that the contemporary changes in narratives and educational curriculum in Japan are intended to moralize the historic glory days of imperial Japan, which, she argues, may subsequently normalize militarism. Stefanie Kam focuses on how China has normalized violence in Xinjiang through narratives of the imperatives of security, thereby both legalizing and moralizing violence. Jennifer Dhanaraj argues how the denial of citizenship to the Rohingya community in Myanmar has provided both the moral and legal justifications for Buddhist extremists and the military to wage a brutal and unbridled war against the Rohingyas. Finally, Abdul Basit examines how the ex-communication of the Ahmadi sectarian minority in Pakistan has criminalized the minority, thus paving the way for unbridled violence against them from extremist mobs that have justified their violence in moral and legal terms. In all the cases in this book, we see how violence is popularized as being either a matter of the will of the people, or as being for the greater good of the people.

This compelling volume analyzes the wide-scale societal impact of neoliberal economic policy on contemporary life and behavior. Synthesizing perspectives from politics and economics with insights from psychology and linguistics, it argues that market-driven public institutions promote antisocial thinking, discourage critical reflection, and inure individuals to inequity and cruelty. Chapters cite the ubiquity of violence in modern society, from the marketing of the military to impersonal mass upheavals in the job market, as devaluing human worth and thus self-worth. But the editors also assert that these currents are not terminal, and the book concludes by identifying conditions potentially leading to a more civil and egalitarian future. Included in the coverage: The language of current economics: social theory, the market, and the disappearance of relationships. Neoliberalism and education: the disfiguration of students. Slicing up societies: commercial media and the destruction of social environments. Neoliberalism and the transformation of work. Economics, the network society, and the ontology of violence. A new economic order without violence. Given the centrality of economic events on the global stage, Neoliberalism, Economic Radicalism, and the Normalization of Violence stands out as both a springboard for discussion and a call to action, to be read by political and cultural economists, political scientists, and sociologists.

Based on a series of international workshops sponsored by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundations, this cutting-edge volume advances theories, methodologies, and policy analyses relating to various forms of violence against women. Under the skillful editorship of Rebecca Emerson and Russell P. Dobash, Rethinking Violence Against Women is the joint effort of recognized anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, and historians in the field. Divided in three parts, this text takes a comprehensive examination of the following topics: +

Slaps in the face, kicks, beatings, and other forms of run-of-the-mill violence were a quotidian part of life in German Southwest Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unearthing this culture of normalized violence in a settler colony, Violence as Usual uncovers the workings of a powerful state that was built in an improvised fashion by low-level state representatives. Marie A. Muschalek's fascinating portrayal of the daily deeds of African and German men enrolled in the colonial police force called the Landespolizei is a historical anthropology of police practice and the normalization of imperial power. Replete with anecdotes of everyday experiences both of the policemen and of colonized people and settlers, Violence as Usual re-examines fundamental questions about the relationship between power and violence. Muschalek gives us a new perspective on violence beyond the solely destructive and the instrumental. She overcomes, too, the notion that modern states operate exclusively according to modes of rationalized functionality. Violence as Usual offers an unusual assessment of the history of rule in settler colonialism and an alternative to dominant narratives of an ostensibly weak colonial state.

The Rwandan genocide has become a touchstone for debates about the causes of mass violence and the responsibilities of the international community. Yet a number of key questions about this tragedy remain unanswered: How did the violence spread from community to community and so rapidly engulf the nation? Why did individuals make decisions that led them to take up machetes against their neighbors? And what was the logic that drove the campaign of extermination? According to Scott Straus, a social scientist and former journalist in East Africa for several years (who received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his reporting for the Houston Chronicle), many of the widely held beliefs about the causes and course of genocide in Rwanda are incomplete. They focus largely on the actions of the ruling elite or the inaction of the international community. Considerably less is known about how and why elite decisions became widespread exterminatory violence. Challenging the prevailing wisdom, Straus provides substantial new evidence about local patterns of violence, using original research—including the most comprehensive surveys yet undertaken among convicted perpetrators—to assess competing theories about the causes and dynamics of the genocide. Current interpretations stress three main causes for the genocide: ethnic identity, ideology, and mass-media indoctrination (in particular the influence of hate radio). Straus's research does not deny the importance of ethnicity, but he finds that it operated more as a background condition. Instead, Straus emphasizes fear and intra-ethnic intimidation as the primary drivers of the violence. A defensive civil war and the assassination of a president created a feeling of acute insecurity. Rwanda's unusually effective state was also central, as was the country's geography and population density, which limited the number of exit options for both victims and perpetrators. In conclusion, Straus steps back from the particulars of the Rwandan genocide to offer a new, dynamic model for understanding other instances of genocide in recent history—the Holocaust, Armenia, Cambodia, the Balkans—and assessing the future likelihood of such events.

Violence Expressed explores the diverse expressions and manifestations through which the meaning of violent experiences and events is (re)produced. As language alone does not always suffice for the description of violence, this book focuses not only on the verbal and discursive expressions of violence, but also on the performative acts, material culture and the spaces that constitute these expressions. Such an approach provides a method of more comprehensively registering and understanding the manifestations and long-lasting effects of violence, whilst exploring violence both as an extreme subjective experience, and the ’ultimate truth’, thus overcoming a common epistemological antagonism in researching violence. Offering a variety of analytical approaches and methodological perspectives, Violence Expressed presents the latest empirical studies, ranging from the 'everyday' violence experienced by children, stories of rape, social memory and the discrepancy between private and public narratives, to rumours and silences or the iconography of violence. A compelling contribution to ongoing discussions on anthropological writing, this book will be of interest to anthropologists and social scientists working on violence, gender, collective representations and memory.