This edited volume examines theoretical and empirical issues relating to violence and war and its implications for media, culture and society. Over the last two decades there has been a proliferation of books, films and art on the subject of violence and war. However, this is the first volume that offers a varied analysis which has wider implications for several disciplines, thus providing the reader with a text that is both multi-faceted and accessible. This book introduces the current debates surrounding this topic through five particular lenses: the historical involves an examination of historical patterns of the communication of violence and war through a variety sources the cultural utilises the cultural studies perspective to engage with issues of violence, visibility and spectatorship the sociological focuses on how terrorism, violence and war are remembered and negotiated in the public sphere the political offers an exploration into the politics of assigning blame for war, the influence of psychology on media actors, and new media political communication issues in relation to the state and the media the gender-studies perspective provides an analysis of violence and war from a gender studies viewpoint. Violence and War in Culture and the Media will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, media and communications studies, sociology, security studies and political science.

This volume describes a variety of public mental health and psychosocial programs in conflict and post-conflict situations in Africa and Asia. Each chapter details the psychosocial and mental health aspects of specific conflicts and examines them within their sociopolitical and historical contexts. This volume will be of great interest to psychologists, social workers, anthropologists, historians, human rights experts, and psychiatrists working or interested in the field of psychotrauma.

Savage wars in Bosnia, Rwanda, Liberia, Iraq and many other places continue to fill our television screens and newspapers with terrible images of conflict. Despite the optimism about world peace, brought about by the collapse of super-power hostilities in the early 1990s, we seem to be encountering more wars, or at least wars that are more socially traumatic. All too often, the media suggest that these conflicts are caused by the return of primordial loyalties and hatreds after the collapse of the Cold War, or that mass slaughter can be explained by reference to the inherently evil nature of individuals or groups. This book counters this kind of nonsense, and asks why such views have gained a currency. It examines the role of the media in inciting conflicts within nations, as well as the adverse impacts of news reporting on international perceptions - and on policy-making. But it also reveals how valuable informed journalism can be. Above all, it highlights the dangers of basing analysis on vague assertions about deep human motivation, or on mythologies of the past and the present promoted by the protagonists themselves.

When photographs documenting the torture and humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib came to the attention of a horrified public, national and international voices were raised in shock, asking how this happened. At War with Metaphor offers an answer, arguing that the abuses of Abu Ghraib were part of a systemic continuum of dehumanization. This continuum has its roots in our public discussions of the war on terror and the metaphors through which they are repeatedly framed. Arguing earnestly and incisively that these metaphors, if left unexamined, bind us into a cycle of violence that will only be intensified by a responsive violence of metaphor, Steuter and Wills examine compelling examples of the images of animal, insect, and disease that inform, shape, and limit our understanding of the war on terror. Tying these images to historical and contemporary uses of propaganda through a readable, accessible analysis of media filters, At War with Metaphor vividly explores how news media, including political cartoons and talk radio, are enmeshed in these damaging, dehumanizing metaphors. Analyzing media through the lenses of race and Orientalism, it invites us to hold our media and ourselves accountable for the choices we make in talking war and making enemies.

By analytically decoupling war and violence, this book explores the causes and dynamics of violence in civil war. Against the prevailing view that such violence is an instance of impenetrable madness, the book demonstrates that there is logic to it and that it has much less to do with collective emotions, ideologies, and cultures than currently believed. Kalyvas specifies a novel theory of selective violence: it is jointly produced by political actors seeking information and individual civilians trying to avoid the worst but also grabbing what opportunities their predicament affords them. Violence, he finds, is never a simple reflection of the optimal strategy of its users; its profoundly interactive character defeats simple maximization logics while producing surprising outcomes, such as relative nonviolence in the 'frontlines' of civil war.

What links the interviews with Saddam Hussein and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on British and American TV, the chase of journalists following mega-terrorists, and the new status conferred on ordinary people at war? Transforming Media Coverage of Violent Conflicts offers a timely and original discussion on the shift in war journalism in recent years.