Deadly Violence Research Articles

Tactics of Political Violence in the 2019 Bolivian Crisis

During Bolivia’s 2019 political crisis, reactivated modes of political violence occurred within and alongside familiar forms of mass mobilization. In Bolivia’s recent history, this period is most comparable to the 2006–2009 partisan conflict over constitutional reform and departmental autonomy known by the Gramscian term empate catastrófico, or catastrophic stalemate. Although there are many similarities between the two periods, both social movement and institutional norms limiting violence were weakened between the two, resulting in more rapid deployment of destructive tactics and deadlier violence by security forces. As Gramsci’s model argues, greater deployment of force was no guarantee of political success in either crisis. This article examines three extraordinary and destructive tactics: partisan street clashes, sometimes involving firearms; arson attacks on electoral authorities, party offices, politicians’ homes, and police stations; and mass shootings of demonstrators. I describe these three tactics as part of Bolivia’s repertoire of contention—that is, as routinized forms of political action with commonly understood meanings—and compare their use in both the 2006–2009 stalemate and the 2019 crisis. Quantitatively, I analyze the deadly violence in 2019 by drawing on Ultimate Consequences, a comprehensive database of nearly six hundred deaths in Bolivian political conflict since 1982. In the final weeks of Morales’s presidency, violence between opposed civilian groups accounted for all four deaths, whereas several incidents of partisan street clashes involved potentially lethal force. Following Morales’s ouster, however, the security forces became the central violent actor, perpetrating at least twenty-nine of the thirty-four violent deaths.

Psychopathy and Gender in Three Faces of Homicide

ABSTRACT Few existing studies have explored the relationship between facet-levels of psychopathy and different types of homicide. This study analyzed Korean homicide offenders’ psychopathic traits that were assessed by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) and compared family homicide offenders to those who killed complete strangers, and to those who killed nonfamily acquaintance victims. The study used the four psychopathy facet scores, age, education, and gender as predictors to postdict the three types of homicide. Multinomial logistic regression as well as Somer’s d tests revealed that psychopathic traits differentially contributed to the different forms of deadly violence. Compared to family homicide, stranger homicide scored higher on facet 2 (affective), facet 3 (lifestyle), and facet 4 (antisocial), but lower on facet 1 (interpersonal). In the similar sense, nonfamily homicide scored higher on facets 3 and 4, but lower on facet 1, when compared to family homicide. Family homicide offenders’ higher deficit in interpersonal traits (higher scores on facet 1) has been discussed, but merits further analysis. In addition, homicides by men tended to be extrafamilial, whereas killings by women were more likely to be intrafamilial. The study suggests interesting insights on differences in psychopathy and gender in the typology of homicide.

In the Bowels of the Volcano. Lethal violence in the dissemination of AMAZIGH groups to the Canary islands

The island of Lanzarote is marked by a scarce preservation of skeletal remains of the Libyan-Berber populations that inhabited there between the beginnings of the Common Era and the Norman Conquest in the 15th century. This is an anomalous situation for people that lived uninterruptedly on the island for about 1400 years. The recent study of the few available human bones is providing transcendental data for the knowledge of the ways and conditions of life and, especially, of conflicts involving physical violence. The aim of this paper is to analyse the evidence of bone trauma in two individuals, male and female respectively, and to discuss the cause of their deaths. The results indicate the male was repeatedly stabbed, with a kind of dagger that could not be manufactured in the Canary Islands due to the absence of metal ores. This suggests a form of deadly violence unknown among the indigenous population. In contrast, the traces observed in the female individual, consisting of several energetic blows to the skull, are in line with the lethal violence practices of the Canarian indigenous populations, albeit executed to an extreme degree. Both cases display patterns of lesions revealing different forms of violence of significant interest for the comprehension of the conflicts and historical contexts in which they occurred. Apart from the lethal injuries themselves, the early chronology of the remains and the type of weapons used provide new data to explore the initial stages of the island's stable colonisation. For this same reason, it is a good opportunity to reflect on the expressions of violence among mainland Amazigh populations, scarcely known from an archaeological perspective, based on the behavioural models they bring to the islands.

An Incomplete Recognition: An Analysis of Political Science Department Statements after the Murder of George Floyd

As a discipline centered on power, political science provides an important window into potential responses to episodes of heightened attention to long-standing racial violence and inequality in the United States. During the summer of 2020, political science departments, like many other entities, issued public statements in response to the brutal murder of George Floyd and the long and ongoing history of deadly violence against Black people at the hands of law enforcement. This paper examines these statements, providing a descriptive analysis of themes raised and types of commitments to action. Rhetorical responses to racism constitute important sites for understanding how discursive power is deployed. Ultimately, we observe that proposed solutions contained in statements are not commensurate with the structural understanding of racism encapsulated in statements. These statements suggest that the status quo prevails even among those who study power. We document limited commitments to addressing racism in political statements.

Prehospital and emergency department airway management of severe penetrating trauma in Sweden during the past decade

BackgroundPrehospital tracheal intubation (TI) is associated with increased mortality in patients with penetrating trauma, and the utility of prehospital advanced airway management is debated. The increased incidence of deadly violence in Sweden warrants a comprehensive evaluation of current airway management for patients with penetrating trauma in the Swedish prehospital environment and on arrival in the emergency department (ED).MethodsThis was an observational, multicenter study of all patients with penetrating trauma and injury severity scores (ISSs) ≥ 15 included in the Swedish national trauma register (SweTrau) between 2011 and 2019. We investigated the frequency and characteristics of prehospital and ED TI, including 30-day mortality and patient characteristics associated with TI.ResultOf 816 included patients, 118 (14.5%) were intubated prehospitally, and 248 (30.4%) were intubated in the ED. Patients who were intubated prehospitally had a higher ISS, 33 (interquartile range [IQR] 25, 75), than those intubated in the ED, 25 (IQR 18, 34). Prehospital TI was associated with a higher associated mortality, OR 4.26 (CI 2.57, 7.27, p < 0.001) than TI in the ED, even when adjusted for ISS (OR 2.88 [CI 1.64, 5.14, p < 0.001]). Hemodynamic collapse (≤ 40 mmHg) and low GCS score (≤ 8) were the characteristics most associated with prehospital TI. Traumatic cardiac arrests (TCAs) occurred in 154 (18.9%) patients, of whom 77 (50%) were intubated prehospitally and 56 (36.4%) were intubated in the ED. A subgroup analysis excluding TCA showed that patients with prehospital TI did not have a higher mortality rate than those with ED TI, OR 2.07 (CI 0.93, 4.51, p = 0.068), with OR 1.39 (0.56, 3.26, p = 0.5) when adjusted for ISS.ConclusionPrehospital TI was associated with a higher mortality rate than those with ED TI, which was specifically related to TCA; intubation did not affect mortality in patients without cardiac arrest. Mortality was high when airway management was needed, regardless of cardiac arrest, thereby emphasizing the challenges posed when anesthesia is needed. Several interventions, including whole blood transfusions, the implementation of second-tier EMS units and measures to shorten scene times, have been initiated in Sweden to counteract these challenges.

‘The Jews of Ceylon’: Antisemitism, prejudice, and the Moors of Ceylon

Abstract In the early twentieth century, economic and religious antagonism between Sinhalese and Moors in Ceylon escalated into widespread, deadly violence. In the immediate aftermath of the 1915 pogrom, which involved the targeting of Moors and their property, the Sinhalese nationalist Anagarika Dharmapala observed that ‘Muhammadans’ had accumulated wealth through ‘Shylockian methods’. Even prior to Dharmapala’s claim, Moors were repeatedly depicted as the ‘Jews of Ceylon’ by both influential Sinhalese actors and colonial state actors. As Ceylon did not have a local Jewish population, this article investigates the use of a rhetorical device that was familiar within the broader networks of empire to ‘other’ a non-Jewish mercantile minority. The article accordingly enquires into how and why antisemitic epithets came to be used in prejudicial speech against Moors. It also explores propaganda portraying Moors in terms of ‘hostile’ Jewish stereotypes and the way in which such stereotypes were deployed in Sinhalese interactions with Moors. By tracing the connections between antisemitism and anti-capitalism, this article aims to contribute to a broader discourse on the positions of Semitic groups in British imperial ideology.

Reporting of conflict fatalities in the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset: insights from Kosovo

Many studies rest on the assumption that Uppsala Conflict Data Program data allow for an unbiased approximation to the temporal and spatial variation of deadly violence across cases. This research note compares fatality data in the program’s Georeferenced Event Dataset with the name-by-name compilation of victims in the Kosovo Memory Book for the period 1 January 1998–30 June 1999. The extent of underreporting of fatalities in the Georeferenced Event Dataset increases with conflict intensity. Events outside Kosovo and events with many fatalities are disproportionally covered. The Georeferenced Event Dataset is more likely to ignore an event when many other events occur on the same day. Surprisingly, international observer missions do not make an event more likely to be reported. Despite the mentioned problems, the dataset’s high estimates of conflict deaths mirror the temporal and spatial variation of violence fairly well. Some of the inconsistencies and biases identified in the selected case plausibly also occur in other conflicts. Events that span several months or lack specific location data impede analysis and are more prominent in the dataset’s entries for Kosovo than in the entire Georeferenced Event Dataset.

“Hear Me Talking to You”: Improvisation and the Auricular Imperative in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Students of August Wilson’s play have heretofore focused almost exclusively on the title song and have thus not heard that the plot actually revolves around an auricular imperative set forth by another tune recorded at the session, “Hear Me Talking to You.” Its rehearsal and recording augur that the deadly violence is ultimately propelled by a failure to listen much more so than by the racial exigencies of America’s Jazz Age. Unlike the solitary act of writing, collective music-making depends crucially on aural connectivity—just as actors on stage must also listen to each other. This auricular imperative, then, is also an ethical one as it demands an openness and receptiveness to the story of the other. In music, especially in improvised music, self-actualization is subject to an ethics of responsible listening: successful music-making therefore comes with an interpersonal accountability to the sonorities of the others’ stories. Combining the two defining blues tropes of travel and of love gone wrong, the auricular imperative issued by “Hear Me Talking to You” applies to Ma Rainey, the Mother of the Blues, as much as to Levee Green, the young, upstart jazz modernist. Hence, Wilson’s play dramatizes listening as a profoundly ethical act, a paramount act whose obviation can bring tragic consequences. Ironically, George C. Wolfe’s cinematographic transposition of the play mutes the auricular imperative, returning the characters to the same old spiraling groove of the American race “record” instead of ending, as Wilson’s script does, on the self-actualizing potential inherent in musical improvisation.

The consumption of disinformation as a health crisis.

Disinformation continues to wreak havoc on individuals, institutions and societies unabated. In public health, spreading false and misleading information1 related to coronavirus disease of 2019 has significantly affected the roll-out of vaccines.2 Fake news is often accompanied by hate posts and online threats encouraging extreme behavior resulting in deadly violence. The signs of the times call for governments and institutions to look at the impact of the consumption of disinformation on people’s health and create concrete steps beyond educational campaigns and fact-checking. Initially, the common understanding among academics and pundits is that the success of disinformation is an issue of lack of critical thinking and reflection.3 The solution was logically directed at education, information campaigns and fact-checking.4 Unfortunately, the problem remained because disinformation is not just an instructional or learning issue. What seems to have been largely ignored is how disinformation affects people’s thought processes, decision-making, behavior, tolerance for individual differences and well-being.5 The events of the attack on Capitol Hill6 in the USA in January 2021 and the killing of a former government official by a social media influencer in the Philippines7 in July 2022 are cases in point. Both events have tragically common characteristics: fake news, hate posts, online threats, deadly violence and justification of the violence. In these cases, extreme behavior is not only normalized, but it is also apparently celebrated online.8 Given all of these, it now appears that disinformation or, more specifically, its consumption is a public health issue in so much as it dramatically affects the wellbeing of individuals and social order.

Analysis of “Stand Your Ground” Self-defense Laws and Statewide Rates of Homicides and Firearm Homicides

Most US states have amended self-defense laws to enhance legal immunities for individuals using deadly force in public. Despite concerns that "stand your ground" (SYG) laws unnecessarily encourage the use of deadly violence, their impact on violent deaths and how this varies across states and demographic groups remains unclear. To evaluate the association of SYG laws with homicide and firearm homicide, nationally and by state, while considering variation by the race, age, and sex of individuals who died by homicide. This cohort study used a controlled, multiple-baseline and -location interrupted time series design, using natural variation in the timings and locations of SYG laws to assess associations. Changes in homicide and firearm homicide were modeled using Poisson regression analyses within a generalized additive model framework. Analyses included all US states that enacted SYG laws between 2000 and 2016 and states that did not have SYG laws enacted during the full study period, 1999 to 2017. Data were analyzed from November 2019 to December 2020. SYG self-defense laws enacted by statute between January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2016. The main outcomes were statewide monthly rates of homicide and firearm-related homicide (per 100 000 persons) from January 1, 1999, to December 31, 2017, grouped by characteristics (ie, race, age, sex) of individuals who died by homicide. Forty-one states were analyzed, including 23 states that enacted SYG laws during the study period and 18 states that did not have SYG laws, with 248 358 homicides (43.7% individuals aged 20-34 years; 77.9% men and 22.1% women), including 170 659 firearm homicides. SYG laws were associated with a mean national increase of 7.8% in monthly homicide rates (incidence rate ratio [IRR],1.08; 95% CI, 1.04-1.12; P < .001) and 8.0% in monthly firearm homicide rates (IRR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.03-1.13; P = .002). SYG laws were not associated with changes in the negative controls of suicide (IRR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.98-1.01) or firearm suicide (IRR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.98-1.02). Increases in violent deaths varied across states, with the largest increases (16.2% to 33.5%) clustering in the South (eg, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana). There were no differential associations of SYG laws by demographic group. These findings suggest that adoption of SYG laws across the US was associated with increases in violent deaths, deaths that could potentially have been avoided.

Juvenile Delinquency and Psychopathic Behavior: About a Case in Abidjan

Violent and murderous juvenile delinquency born of the phenomenon of young people organized in gangs commonly called “microbes”, has become a real security problem for Ivorian society. It is in this context that this study has set itself the main objective of depicting the psychopathic behavior of a young “microbe” delinquent who has committed several violent crimes. It was a monographic study of the correlational-explanatory type that mobilized observation and semi-directive interviews for the production of data. The method of phenomenological analysis permits to detect traits of psychopathy in a 21-year-old youth through family history and accounts of criminal acts committed. The results of the study showed, on the one hand, a family dysfunction that gave the bed of behaviors such as the lack of empathy, the absence of remorse and the superficiality of the affects, thus translating a deficit on the level of the affective dimension. We also noted the presence of antisocial behavior such as living on the streets or in smoking rooms consuming and selling drugs. There were further implications such as theft, physical aggression and intentional homicide. According to the psychopathy literature, emotional insensitivity juxtaposed with behavior disorder was a primary combination of characteristics that help identify adolescents who exhibit psychopathic traits. Faced with this reality, this study pleads for the establishment of a special aid program to better control the deadly violence of these people.

She/Her/Hers

Gender is a catastrophic oppressive imposition. Gender structures and is structured by settler colonialism, just as it marks and is marked by ongoing investments in anti-blackness. Not only is gender a violent erasure of Indigenous ways of being, but as Spillers (1987) detailed, gender—specifically femininity and womanness—are foreclosed to Black women as an ongoing effect of chattel slavery. In this article, we focus on the pronouns she, her and hers as an artifact of white womanness. In so doing, we trace how white women not only articulate gender as a site of possession—here we specifically draw on Harris’s (1993) notion of the absolute right to exclude—but consume gender in a move toward necrocapitalism. Put another way, white women consume gender to further their presumed goodness, at the same time as—and indeed as a function of—desiring the death of trans women. As a result, trans women are rendered killable subjects, with their killability acting as a necessity for the furtherance of the catastrophe of gender itself. Through the commodification of the pronoun as a signifier of gender (e.g. pronoun stickers and pins, the performative nature of bringing trans women to speak without any resulting transformative change), we argue this acts to further necrocapitalism, especially in the notion “economy of deadly violence”, as it “ensures the maintenance of authority’s spread and permanence” (Sheehi in conversation with Shalhoub-Kevorkian; see Introduction to this special issue for further details).

Dispatches from Nigeria: the actions of Royal Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco in the Warri Crisis, 2003–2004

ABSTRACT Royal Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco played central roles in the Warri Crisis, a period of deadly violence in the Nigerian oil town of Warri in 2003 and 2004. Scholars have portrayed the crisis as a resource war between local ethnic groups, but US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks show that Shell and ChevronTexaco shaped the main events of the crisis. The two oil companies pressured the Nigerian government to intervene in Warri when violence between local ethnic groups disrupted oil production. Shell worked closely with the Nigerian government to fund, plan and implement a military intervention, and provided Nigerian security forces with cash, equipment and logistical support. Offering an unprecedented look into the secret actions of the oil companies, the WikiLeaks cables reveal that Shell and ChevronTexaco were dominant actors in the Warri Crisis. Both companies acted in ways that contributed to the violence.

Boone, Black Hawk, and Crockett in 1833: Unsettling the Mythic West

Boone, Black Hawk, and Crockett in 1833: Unsettling the Mythic West

The Domestic Macabre: Devils and Violence on Medieval Tiles

"The present paper analyzes the possible functions of medieval stove tile depictions consisting of violent scenes and images of devils and devilish monsters. The depictions on mold‑made stove tiles can be considered the first mass produced images before print and are thus valuable sources in the research of popular culture, especially in Central and Eastern Europe where print made a later appearance. The focus here is on macabre depictions of tiles (devilish monsters, scenes of deadly violence, demons, and afterlife torments). My hypothesis is that though ‘lighter’ than macabre scenes in other arts, such images on stove tiles might have played an apotropaic function, meant to repel or distract maleficent spirits that could cause people harm through stove malfunctions. Still, one cannot exclude the moralizing, instructive, and purely entertaining functions of such depictions."

Maquinarias de guerra e mortes juvenis nas periferias do Ceará / War machines and juvenile deaths in the peripheries of Ceará

O objetivo deste artigo é problematizar como maquinarias de guerra em territorialidades periferizadas operam na produção de juventudes matáveis no bojo da intensificação da violência letal no Brasil, tomando a cidade de Fortaleza como exemplo empírico e a noções de necropolítica e políticas de inimizade, de Achille Mbembe, como operadores conceituais. Num primeiro momento, traz reflexões teóricas sobre essa própria tecnologia de gestão e produção da morte. Num segundo momento, analisa-se como “maquinarias de guerra” engendram “zonas de morte”, sendo a articulação entre disciplinamento, regulação biopolítica e produção/gestão de um “fazer morrer” característica da ocupação colonial na atualidade. Com isso, apontamos como o recrudescimento da violência letal nas margens urbanas expressa sua condição de colônias contemporâneas, em que processos de racialização maximizam a precarização de corpos juvenis negros, sob o fundamento da perpetuação de relações de inimizade.

Tackling Xenophobia through Dialogue: A Freirean Approach

The deadly violence associated with xenophobia has become a concern in South Africa, a country with historically high levels of violence. This article explores the role that peace education can play in mitigating such conflict. Using Paulo Freire’s theorisation of dialogue in education, it discusses a peace education intervention that developed participatory workshops to foster dialogue between South Africans and their neighbours of foreign origin soon after the second wave of violence in South Africa in 2015. The article discusses the curriculum and pedagogical intent of the workshops through a theoretical framing of dialogue, how participants and facilitators responded to such plans and what learning and action were generated from these workshops. The experiences of participants and facilitators reveal a preliminary stage of deepening understandings in terms of reviewing rigid us/them dichotomies and identities, and reviewing stereotypical understandings of causes of conflict. The final section offers some critical reflections on the workshop design and the role of such interventions in relation to goals of broader social change. Some recommendations for future workshops in light of the need for psychosocial support generated by the workshop process are offered.

The Philosophy of Black Lives Matter

The Philosophy of Black Lives Matter

Deadly violence in Sweden: Profiling offenders through a latent class analysis

BackgroundSweden has in recent years witnessed increasing rates of firearm-related violence and homicide, which has contributed to increased rates of deadly violence. Attempts to profile offenders committing such crimes are of major importance, because such efforts may contribute to better preventive measures. We therefore aimed to study the characteristics of individuals convicted and/or suspected of homicide, attempted homicide, preparation to commit homicide as well as conspiration to commit homicide (for simplicity called homicide+) in Sweden. MethodsBy using information from the Swedish Crime Register and the Swedish Criminal Suspect Register, individuals being 15–60 years old and convicted and/or suspected of homicide+ between 2000 and 2015 were included in the study. Using these registers and also other population and health care registers, information on previous criminality, substance abuse, and psychiatric disorders were added to the Latent Class Analysis (LCA) that was used to identify latent classes of individuals convicted and/or suspected for homicide+. In addition, several individual variables were added for validation purposes. ResultsA total of 14,466 individuals were included in the analysis. The majority were male (n = 12,802; 88.5%) and Swedish-born with Swedish-born parents (n = 8247; 57.0%). The LCA identified three classes where Conviction Class (CC) contained mostly convicted individuals whereas Mixed Class A (MCA) and Mixed Class B (MCB) contained almost equal rates of both convicted and suspected individuals. The CC was characterized by individuals with low rates of previous criminality, substance abuse and psychiatric disorders. The MCA and the MCB were characterized by individuals with higher rates of previous criminality, substance abuse, and psychiatric disorders as well as lower education and worse economy in comparison with the CC. ConclusionWhile MCA and MCB may be constituted by “traditional” criminals often well known by the police and/or the social authorities, the CC was mainly constituted by convicted offenders who may more easily escape the radar of the authorities.

Representing Perpetrators

Representing Perpetrators