Violence as a Generative Force

Violence as a Generative Force PDF Author: Max Bergholz
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501706438
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
During two terrifying days and nights in early September 1941, the lives of nearly two thousand men, women, and children were taken savagely by their neighbors in Kulen Vakuf, a small rural community straddling today’s border between northwest Bosnia and Croatia. This frenzy—in which victims were butchered with farm tools, drowned in rivers, and thrown into deep vertical caves—was the culmination of a chain of local massacres that began earlier in the summer. In Violence as a Generative Force, Max Bergholz tells the story of the sudden and perplexing descent of this once peaceful multiethnic community into extreme violence. This deeply researched microhistory provides provocative insights to questions of global significance: What causes intercommunal violence? How does such violence between neighbors affect their identities and relations? Contrary to a widely held view that sees nationalism leading to violence, Bergholz reveals how the upheavals wrought by local killing actually created dramatically new perceptions of ethnicity—of oneself, supposed "brothers," and those perceived as "others." As a consequence, the violence forged new communities, new forms and configurations of power, and new practices of nationalism. The history of this community was marked by an unexpected explosion of locally executed violence by the few, which functioned as a generative force in transforming the identities, relations, and lives of the many. The story of this largely unknown Balkan community in 1941 provides a powerful means through which to rethink fundamental assumptions about the interrelationships among ethnicity, nationalism, and violence, both during World War II and more broadly throughout the world.

Violence as a Generative Force

Violence as a Generative Force PDF Author: Max Bergholz
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501706438
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
During two terrifying days and nights in early September 1941, the lives of nearly two thousand men, women, and children were taken savagely by their neighbors in Kulen Vakuf, a small rural community straddling today’s border between northwest Bosnia and Croatia. This frenzy—in which victims were butchered with farm tools, drowned in rivers, and thrown into deep vertical caves—was the culmination of a chain of local massacres that began earlier in the summer. In Violence as a Generative Force, Max Bergholz tells the story of the sudden and perplexing descent of this once peaceful multiethnic community into extreme violence. This deeply researched microhistory provides provocative insights to questions of global significance: What causes intercommunal violence? How does such violence between neighbors affect their identities and relations? Contrary to a widely held view that sees nationalism leading to violence, Bergholz reveals how the upheavals wrought by local killing actually created dramatically new perceptions of ethnicity—of oneself, supposed "brothers," and those perceived as "others." As a consequence, the violence forged new communities, new forms and configurations of power, and new practices of nationalism. The history of this community was marked by an unexpected explosion of locally executed violence by the few, which functioned as a generative force in transforming the identities, relations, and lives of the many. The story of this largely unknown Balkan community in 1941 provides a powerful means through which to rethink fundamental assumptions about the interrelationships among ethnicity, nationalism, and violence, both during World War II and more broadly throughout the world.

Evaluating Police Uses of Force

Evaluating Police Uses of Force PDF Author: Seth W. Stoughton
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479810169
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Provides a critical understanding and evaluation of police tactics and the use of force Police violence has historically played an important role in shaping public attitudes toward the government. Community trust and confidence in policing have been undermined by the perception that officers are using force unnecessarily, too frequently, or in problematic ways. The use of force, or harm suffered by a community as a result of such force, can also serve as a flashpoint, a spark that ignites long-simmering community hostility. In Evaluating Police Uses of Force, legal scholar Seth W. Stoughton, former deputy chief of police Jeffrey J. Noble, and distinguished criminologist Geoffrey P. Alpert explore a critical but largely overlooked facet of the difficult and controversial issues of police violence and accountability: how does society evaluate use-of-force incidents? By leading readers through answers to this question from four different perspectives—constitutional law, state law, administrative regulation, and community expectations—and by providing critical information about police tactics and force options that are implicated within those frameworks, Evaluating Police Uses of Force helps situate readers within broader conversations about governmental accountability, the role that police play in modern society, and how officers should go about fulfilling their duties.

The Rising Tide of Color

The Rising Tide of Color PDF Author: Moon-Ho Jung
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 029580503X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
The Rising Tide of Color challenges familiar narratives of race in American history that all too often present the U.S. state as a benevolent force in struggles against white supremacy, especially in the South. Featuring a wide range of scholars specializing in American history and ethnic studies, this powerful collection of essays highlights historical moments and movements on the Pacific Coast and across the Pacific to reveal a different story of race and politics. From labor and anticolonial activists around World War I and multiracial campaigns by anarchists and communists in the 1930s to the policing of race and sexuality after World War II and transpacific movements against the Vietnam War, The Rising Tide of Color brings to light histories of race, state violence, and radical movements that continue to shape our world in the twenty-first century.

Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town

Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town PDF Author: Rogers Brubaker
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691187797
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Situated on the geographic margins of two nations, yet imagined as central to each, Transylvania has long been a site of nationalist struggles. Since the fall of communism, these struggles have been particularly intense in Cluj, Transylvania's cultural and political center. Yet heated nationalist rhetoric has evoked only muted popular response. The citizens of Cluj--the Romanian-speaking majority and the Hungarian-speaking minority--have been largely indifferent to the nationalist claims made in their names. Based on seven years of field research, this book examines not only the sharply polarized fields of nationalist politics--in Cluj, Transylvania, and the wider region--but also the more fluid terrain on which ethnicity and nationhood are experienced, enacted, and understood in everyday life. In doing so the book addresses fundamental questions about ethnicity: where it is, when it matters, and how it works. Bridging conventional divisions of academic labor, Rogers Brubaker and his collaborators employ perspectives seldom found together: historical and ethnographic, institutional and interactional, political and experiential. Further developing the argument of Brubaker's groundbreaking Ethnicity without Groups, the book demonstrates that it is ultimately in and through everyday experience--as much as in political contestation or cultural articulation--that ethnicity and nationhood are produced and reproduced as basic categories of social and political life.

The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe

The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe PDF Author: Daniel Chirot
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520076402
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Reaching back centuries, this study makes a convincing case for very deep roots of current Eastern European backwardness. Its conclusions are suggestive for comparativists studying other parts of the world, and useful to those who want to understand contemporary Eastern Europe's past. Like the rest of the world except for that unique part of the West which has given us a false model of what was "normal," Eastern Europe developed slowly. The weight of established class relations, geography, lack of technological innovation, and wars kept the area from growing richer. In the nineteenth century the West exerted a powerful influence, but it was political more than economic. Nationalism and the creation of newly independent aspiring nation-states then began to shape national economies, often in unfavorable ways. One of this book's most important lessons is that while economics may limit the freedom of action of political players, it does not determine political outcomes. The authors offer no simple explanations but rather a theoretically complex synthesis that demonstrates the interaction of politics and economics.

The Force of Nonviolence

The Force of Nonviolence PDF Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788732774
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
“The most creative and courageous social theorist working today” examines the ethical binds that emerge within the force field of violence (Cornel West). “ . . . nonviolence is often seen as passive and resolutely individual. Butler’s philosophical inquiry argues that it is in fact a shrewd and even aggressive collective political tactic.” —New York Times Judith Butler shows how an ethic of nonviolence must be connected to a broader political struggle for social equality. While many think of nonviolence as passive or individualist, Butler argues nonviolence is an ethical position found in the midst of the political field. She champions an ‘aggressive’ nonviolence, which accepts hostility as part of our psychic constitution—but values ambivalence as a way of checking the conversion of aggression into violence. Some challengers say a politics of nonviolence is subjective: What qualifies as violence versus nonviolence? This distinction is often mobilized in the service of ratifying the state’s monopoly on violence. Considering nonviolence as an ethical problem within a political philosophy requires two things: a critique of individualism and an understanding of the psychosocial dimensions of violence. Butler draws upon Foucault, Fanon, Freud, and Benjamin to consider how the interdiction against violence fails to include lives regarded as ‘ungrievable’. By considering how “racial phantasms” inform justifications of state and administrative violence, Butler tracks how violence is often attributed to those who are most severely exposed to its lethal effects. Ultimately, the struggle for nonviolence is found in modes of resistance and social movements that separate aggression from its destructive aims to affirm the living potentials of radical egalitarian politics.

Peace at Any Price

Peace at Any Price PDF Author: Iain King
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801459729
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
In June 1999, after three months of NATO air strikes had driven Serbian forces back from the province of Kosovo, the United Nations Security Council authorized creation of an interim civilian administration. Under this mandate, the UN was empowered to coordinate reconstruction, maintain law and order, protect human rights, and create democratic institutions. Six years later, the UN's special envoy to Kosovo, Kai Eide, described the state of Kosovo: "The current economic situation remains bleak.... respect for rule of law is inadequately entrenched and the mechanisms to enforce it are not sufficiently developed.... with regard to the foundation of a multiethnic society, the situation is grim."In Peace at Any Price, Iain King and Whit Mason describe why, despite an unprecedented commitment of resources, the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), supported militarily by NATO, has failed to achieve its goals. Their in-depth account is personal and passionate yet analytical and tightly argued. Both authors served with UNMIK and believe that the international community has a duty to intervene in regional conflicts, but they suggest that Kosovo reveals the difficult challenges inherent in such interventions. They also identify avoidable mistakes made at nearly every juncture by the UN and NATO. We can be sure that the international community will be called on to intervene again to restore the peace of shattered countries. The lessons of Kosovo, cogently presented in Peace at Any Price, will be critically important to those charged with future missions.

Guilt

Guilt PDF Author: Katharina von Kellenbach
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197557430
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
"The book investigates the role of guilt in the global discussion over locally specific legacies of mass violence and injustice. Guilt is an indispensable element in human social and emotional life that surfaces as a central phenomenon in the cultural politics of memory, transitional justice, and the aftermath of violence. The nuances and complexities of various national and historical guilt configurations fosters insight into guilt's transformative possibilities. The book interweaves specific case studies with broader theoretical reflections on the conditions that turn the emotional, legal, and cultural phenomenon of guilt into a culturally transformative dynamic that repairs relationships, equalizes power dynamics, demands new social orders, and creates literary, artistic, and religious productions and performances. The authors examine different case studies on the basis of discipline-specific definitions of guilt, ranging from psychology to law, philosophy to literature, religion, history and anthropology. The contributors generally approach guilt less as a personal emotion than as a socio-legal, moral and culturally ambivalent force that mandates ritual performance, political negotiation, legal adjudication, artistic and literary representation, as well as intergenerational transmission. The book calls for a more nuanced understanding of the world's-and of history's-diversity of guilt concepts and the cultivation of cultural strategies to negotiate guilt relations in specific religious, cultural, and local ways"--

Rivalry and Revenge

Rivalry and Revenge PDF Author: Laia Balcells
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107118697
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
This book explores the motives of local political elites and armed groups in carrying out violence against civilians during civil war.

Borderline Americans

Borderline Americans PDF Author: Katherine Benton-Cohen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674053559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
“Are you an American, or are you not?” This is the question at the heart of Katherine Benton-Cohen’s provocative history, which ties that seemingly remote corner of the country to one of America’s central concerns: the historical creation of racial boundaries. By showing the multiple possibilities for racial meanings in America, Benton-Cohen’s insightful and informative work challenges our assumptions about race and national identity.