Sociology of Violence

The Virtues of Dockside Dalliance: Why Maritime Sugar Girls are Safer then Urban Streetwalkers in South Africa's Prostitution Industry

by Henry Trotter

in Susan Dewey & Patty Kelly (Eds.), Policing Pleasure: Sex Work, Policy and the State in Global Perspective (New York: NYU Press, 2011), pp. 86-99

South African sex workers are exposed to different amounts of violence depending on the prostitution sector that they... more South African sex workers are exposed to different amounts of violence depending on the prostitution sector that they work in, such as the street, truck stop, hotel, agency, brothel, and dockside trades. By comparing the structural features of these sectors, we can not only gauge the likelihood of violence within each, but also devise more precise policy instruments to reduce violence at an industry-wide level. I focus here on the neglected dockside prostitution sector, showing how its structural characteristics enhance the women’s power vis-à-vis their clients. Detailed policy recommendations conclude the article.

Navigating Risk: Lessons From the Dockside Sex Trade for Reducing Violence in South Africa's Prostitution Industry

by Henry Trotter

Sexuality Research & Social Policy: Journal of NSRC, 4/4 (Dec 2007): 106-119

The diversity of South Africa's prostitution industry exposes sex workers to varying levels of violence. The street,... more The diversity of South Africa's prostitution industry exposes sex workers to varying levels of violence. The street, truck stop, hotel, agency, brothel, and dockside trades are characterized by different structural features that determine the prevalence of client, police, and third-party abuse against prostitutes. Comparing the structural elements of each sector allows not only gauging the likelihood of violence within a given niche but also devising more precise policy instruments to reduce violence at an industry-wide level.

This article, "Navigating Risk," focuses on the dockside prostitution sector in Cape Town and Durban, showing how its structural features enhance the women's power vis-à-vis their clients and the police. It discusses 5 key variables that influence the likelihood of violence within each prostitution sector:

* the social and legal status of the client
* the location of the negotiation
* the location of the sexual act
* the level of discretion in the solicitation process
* and the role of third-party involvement

Detailed policy recommendations conclude the argument.

De la readaptación posible al hacinamiento extremo. Breve historia de las cárceles salvadoreñas

by Amparo Marroquín Parducci

La situación de las cárceles salvadoreñas es una de las peores en América Latina, con un 300% de hacinamiento y con... more La situación de las cárceles salvadoreñas es una de las peores en América Latina, con un 300% de hacinamiento y con condenas que pueden llegar a cientos de años de prisión. ¿En algún momento el Estado Salvadoreño apostó a la posibilidad de la rehabilitación y la reinserción de los reos en la vida social? El artículo indaga en la historia de las cárceles de inicios del s. XX para echar luces acerca de los momentos y decisiones que nos llevaron a ser lo que hoy somos.

Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia. Journal of Agrarian Change.

The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of... more The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of landholding, which are entrenched in notions of community consensus and existing occupation. The discrepancy between such orally recognized antecedents and the written word of law have been at the heart of the recent wave of dispossessions that have swept across the country. Contra the standard critique that corruption has set the tone, this paper argues that evictions in Cambodia are often literally underwritten by the articles of law. Whereas ‘possession’ is a well-understood and accepted concept in Cambodia, a cultural basis rooted in what James C. Scott refers to as ‘orality’, coupled with a long history of subsistence agriculture, semi-nomadic lifestyles, barter economies, and–until recently–widespread land availability have all ensured that notions of ‘property’ are vague among the country’s majority rural poor. In drawing a firm distinction between possessions and property, where the former is premised upon actual use and the latter is embedded in exploitation, this article examines how proprietorship is inextricably bound to the violence of law.

The construction of the South African tsotsi: challenging myths and a challenging reality.

by ellen hurst

2011 Safety & Violence Initiative, University of Cape Town 8th & 9th September

The South African popular imagination has birthed the figure of the tsotsi. This persona has been reproduced in, inter... more The South African popular imagination has birthed the figure of the tsotsi. This persona has been reproduced in, inter alia, films, newspapers, everyday language, soap operas, and music. The tsotsi identity construct is linked to a masculinity that condones violence, that lives for material gain and that has no respect for human life. But what is this construction based on? Foucault’s (1979) work identifies the ‘delinquent’ as a scapegoat of structural power; in this research I suggest the discourse of the apartheid system may have been responsible for the tsotsi construct.
What proclaims a tsotsi? The boundaries between the stereotype of tsotsi ‘delinquents’ and ‘normal’ youth are blurry and often misunderstood by community members. Tsotsis were often referred to during my research on tsotsitaal (the slang language attributed to tsotsis but spoken widely in townships around South Africa), yet participants in my research who were speakers themselves would never self-identify as a tsotsi, even those who claimed an involvement in crime. These characters of tsotsis seem to at once exist and not exist.
A recent report has outlined a ‘culture of violence’ in South Africa. The report states that ‘…the greater part of the problem of stranger violent crime in the metros… is associated with young men who tend to be invested in some kind of criminal identity and associate with other like-minded people’ (CSVR 2010: 31).
To what extent is the figure of the tsotsi linked to this ‘culture of violence’ and constructions of masculinity? Are violence and crime romanticized or normalized by this figure? On the other hand, to what extent are young men criminalized and stereotyped by the perception within communities of tsotsi youth? And what work is being done by youth particularly through the media to resist these stereotypes?

Neoliberalising violence: of the exceptional and the exemplary in coalescing moments

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2012. Neoliberalising violence: of the exceptional and the exemplary in coalescing moments. Area 44 (2), 136-143.

This paper sets out to develop two related ideas. First, it seeks to identify how both violence and neoliberalism can... more This paper sets out to develop two related ideas. First, it seeks to identify how both violence and neoliberalism can be considered as moments. From this shared conceptualisation of process and fluidity, I argue that it becomes easier to recognise how these two phenomena actually converge. Building upon this conceived coalescence of neoliberalism and violence, the second aim is to recognise how the hegemony of neoliberalism positions it as an abuser, which facilitates the abandonment of those ‘Others’ who fall outside of neoliberal normativity. I argue that the widespread banishment of ‘Others’ under neoliberalism produces a ‘state of exception’, wherein because of its inherently dialectic nature, exceptional violence is transformed into exemplary violence. This metamorphosis occurs as aversion for alterity intensifies under neoliberalism and its associated violence against ‘Others’ comes to form the rule.

New challenges to empower international norms and practices in preventing mass atrocities and crimes? An analysis about violence and hate speech through media.

by Enzo Maria Le Fevre Cervini

Co-authored by Prof. Cristiana Carletti (Professor of International Organization and Human Rights' Protection at the University "Roma Tre", Faculty of Political Sciences, Rome, Italy) and Enzo Maria Le Fevre Cervini (Associate at the Center for International Conflict Resolution, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University in the City of New York), Submitted to IPRA global conference ‘COMMUNICATING PEACE’, University of Sydney, Australia 6-10 July 2010

The capacity to communicate hate and anger has contributed enormously to the deployment of massive violent measures... more The capacity to communicate hate and anger has contributed enormously to the deployment of massive violent measures during conflict that often leaded to genocide and mass atrocities. The memory of Radio Mille Collines in Rwanda contributes to the argument of experts of how media and communication does lead to social reaction and, in the specific case, to social anger, revenge and “willingness to kill” the “enemy”.
The necessity of international law mechanisms to deploy a concrete message for the prevention of such crimes has not yet come to force. The path for the construction of a preventive framework to avoid future genocide and mass atrocities requires the empowerment of international regulations for the enforcement of hate speeches, messages and signs. A research approach that visualize this problematic in the overall framework of the emerging norm of the Responsibility to Protect, and in particular with the evolution of a institutionalization of the preventive action pillar that empowers in particular the UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, will try to cope with an existing dilemma in the field of communication between the freedom of speech and the necessity to avoid hate and violence through the media. The result of the research, conducted through the international norms of communication and the acknowledgement of new characteristics of the global community in the field of media will contribute to the evolution of a preventing genocide and mass atrocities.

Conceptualizing Terrorist Violence and Suicide Bombing

by Murad Ismayilov

Journal of Strategic Security, vol. 3 (2010), no. 3, pp. 15-26.

Procedures in human heart extraction and ritual meaning: A taphonomic assessment of anthropogenic marks in Classic Maya skeletons

by Vera Tiesler

El sacrificio humano por extracción de corazón. Una evaluación osteotafonómica de violencia ritual entre los mayas del Clásico

by Vera Tiesler

Después de la violencia

by Gabriel Gatti

Introducción al monográfico "Después de la violencia", Política y Sociedad 48/3

Violent accumulation: a postanarchist critique of property, dispossession, and the state of exception in neoliberalizing Cambodia

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Violent accumulation: a postanarchist critique of property, dispossession, and the state of exception in neoliberalizing Cambodia. Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

Employing a poststructuralist-meets-anarchist stance that advances conceptual insight into the nature of sovereign... more Employing a poststructuralist-meets-anarchist stance that advances conceptual insight into the nature of sovereign power, this article examines the dialectics of capitalism/primitive accumulation, civilization/savagery, and law/violence, which are argued to exist in a mutually reinforcing 'trilateral of logics'. In deciphering this triadic system, this article offers a radical (re)appraisal of capitalism, its legal process, and its civilizing effects, which together serve to mask the originary and ongoing violences of primitive accumulation and the property system. Such obfuscation suggests that wherever the trilateral of logics is enacted, so too is the state of exception called into being, exposing us all as potential homo sacer (life that does not count). Proceeding as a diagnostic assessment of sovereign power, where although signposted by Cambodia's contemporary experiences of violent land conflict, this article is not intended as a fine-grained empirical analysis. Instead, it forwards a theoretical dialogue where Cambodia's neoliberalizing processes offer a window on how sovereign power configures itself around the three discursive-institutional constellations (i.e., capitalism, civilization, and law) that form the trilateral of logics. Rather than formulating prescriptive solutions, the intention here is critique, where in particular it is argued that the preoccupation with strengthening Cambodia's legal system should not be read as a panacea for contemporary social ills, but as an imposition that serves to legitimize the violences of property.

Jokela and Kauhajoki: Experiencing School Shootings in a Nordic Welfare Society.

by Atte Oksanen

Oksanen, Atte; Räsänen, Pekka & Nurmi, Johanna (2012) Jokela and Kauhajoki: Experiencing School Shootings in a Nordic Welfare Society. In Richard Schwester (ed.) Handbook of Critical Incident Analysis (pp. 252–264). New York: M.E. Sharpe.

Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies. Political Geography. 30 (2), 90-98.

Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that... more Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that violence is 'irrational' marks particular cultures as ‘other’. Neoliberalism exploits such imaginative geographies in constructing itself as the sole providence of nonviolence and the lone bearer of reason. Proceeding as a ‘civilizing’ project, neoliberalism positions the market as salvationary to putatively ‘irrational’ and ‘violent’ peoples. This theology of neoliberalism produces a discourse that binds violence in place. But while violence sits in places in terms of the way in which we perceive its manifestation as a localized and embodied experience, this very idea is challenged when place is reconsidered as a relational assemblage. What this re-theorization does is open up the supposed fixity, separation, and immutability of place to instead recognize it as always co-constituted by, mediated through, and integrated within the wider experiences of space. Such a radical rethinking of place fundamentally transforms the way we understand violence. No longer confined to its material expression as an isolated and localized event, violence can more appropriately be understood as an unfolding process, derived from the broader geographical phenomena and temporal patterns of the social world.

Hand-held Motion-capture Devices in Situations of Violent Confrontation: A Visual Analysis of YouTube Video Clips

by Henrik Fürst

Paper presented at the 10th Conference of the European Sociological Association, 7-10 September, Geneva, Switzerland.

"Drone Porn" and Violence: Comments on YouTube to a Drone Attack

by Henrik Fürst

Co-authored with K. H. Idevall

Paper presented at the 10th Conference of the European Sociological Association, 7-10 September, Geneva, Switzerland.

Capturing, Distributing and Framing the Acts of Violence

by Henrik Fürst

Paper presented at the ERGOMAS conference, 13-17 June, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Articulated neoliberalism: the specificity of patronage, kleptocracy, and violence in Cambodia's neoliberalization

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. Articulated neoliberalism: the specificity of patronage, kleptocracy, and violence in Cambodia's neoliberalization. Environment and Planning A. 43 (11) 2554-2570.

Focusing exclusively on external forces risks producing an over-generalized account of a ubiquitous neoliberalism,... more Focusing exclusively on external forces risks producing an over-generalized account of a ubiquitous neoliberalism, which insufficiently accounts for the profusion of local variegations that currently comprise the neoliberal project as a series of articulations with existing political economic circumstances. Although neoliberal economics were initially promoted in the global south through the auspices of structural adjustment programs designed by the International Financial Institutions, powerful global south elites were only too happy to oblige. Neoliberalism frequently reveals opportunities for well-connected government officials to informally control market and material rewards, allowing them to easily line their own pockets. It is in this sense of the local appropriation of neoliberal ideas that scholars must go beyond conceiving of ‘neoliberalism-in-general’ as a singular and fully realized policy regime, ideological form, or regulatory framework, and work towards conceiving a plurality of ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’ with particular characteristics arising from mutable geohistorical outcomes that are embedded within national, regional, and local process of market-driven socio-spatial transformation. What constitutes ‘actually existing’ neoliberalism in Cambodia as distinctly Cambodian is the ways in which the patronage system has allowed local elites to co-opt, transform, and (re)articulate neoliberal reforms through a framework that ‘asset strips’ public resources, thereby increasing peoples’ exposure to corruption, coercion, and violence. It is to such an 'articulation agenda' that this article attends, as in seeking to provide a more nuanced reading to recent work on neoliberalism in Cambodia by outlining some of its salient characteristics, I reveal a more empirical basis to theorizations of ‘articulated neoliberalism’.

A construção da forma n'A Hora da Estrela, de Clarice Lispector.

by Daniela Spinelli

REFLEXÕES SOBRE MEMÓRIA, ESQUECIMENTO E RECALQUE DO GENOCÍDIO ARMÊNIO1 REFLECTIONS ON MEMORY, FORGETFULNESS AND …

by Daniela Spinelli