Exercise Of Violence Research Articles

Need of belonging, Mexican men's normative socialization, and machismo as the root of couple problems, the role of alcohol use, and intimate partner violence

This research aims to understand and describe the etiology and mechanisms that maintain the association between alcohol consumption and violence perpetrated by Mexican men against their female partners. An exploratory qualitative study was conducted using the focus group technique, with the participation of 14 men recruited through a marketing campaign in social networks, all with a history of intimate partner violence and alcohol consumption (assessed using the AUDIT and a semi-structured questionnaire). The data analysis was done manually, based on grounded theory, and subjected to three triangulation types. According to the results, the etiology of the association between alcohol consumption and intimate partner violence is the inadequate satisfaction of the need for bonding (attachment), imposed by the normative socialization of being a man, culturally known as machismo; an association that is maintained mainly by emotional dysregulation, lack of cohabitation skills in couples and poor management of the family economy. The results bring to the table a well-known, but little-considered fact: both alcohol consumption and the exercise of violence are strongly influenced by culture, which makes it necessary to investigate the phenomenon, emphasizing the peculiarities of the population under study. These results can be considered an indicator of the components necessary to develop an intervention that addresses both variables in the Mexican population

Sonoridades de posguerra en Baile con serpientes (1996) de Horacio Castellanos Moya

Abstract: Baile con serpientes (1996) by Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya narrates a symptomatic violence due to the emerging economic order of neoliberalism during the official transition to peace. The present study attends to the novel's sonic register to show how silence, noise, and music reinscribe the memory of the civil war in a tumultuous present. Fueled by neoliberal rationality, the main character attunes to a hyper-masculine voice as a means of participating in Central America's emerging consumerist, post-conflict society. The following draws on Sayak Valencia's concept of the endriago subject—a masculine subjectivity rooted in the exercise of violence as necroempowerment—to signal the violent transformation of the main character into a celebrity due to media attention. Sound—whether unpleasant noise or melodious music—becomes a fulcrum upon which protagonist Eduardo Sosa's neoliberal subjectivity alternately emerges and is repressed by a reactionary state. The following will demonstrate how the sonorously gory scenes described in the novel resonate with the unresolved social corruption which facilitates the persistence of violence in the neoliberal present. The textual representation of silence, noise, and music recasts Sosa's violent disruption to incorporate himself into a masculine and violent postwar era.

Need of belonging, Mexican men's normative socialization, and machismo as the root of couple problems, the role of alcohol use, and intimate partner violence

This research aims to understand and describe the etiology and mechanisms that maintain the association between alcohol consumption and violence perpetrated by Mexican men against their female partners. An exploratory qualitative study was conducted using the focus group technique, with the participation of 14 men recruited through a marketing campaign in social networks, all with a history of intimate partner violence and alcohol consumption (assessed using the AUDIT and a semi-structured questionnaire). The data analysis was done manually, based on grounded theory, and subjected to three triangulation types. According to the results, the etiology of the association between alcohol consumption and intimate partner violence is the inadequate satisfaction of the need for bonding (attachment), imposed by the normative socialization of being a man, culturally known as machismo; an association that is maintained mainly by emotional dysregulation, lack of cohabitation skills in couples and poor management of the family economy. The results bring to the table a well-known, but little-considered fact: both alcohol consumption and the exercise of violence are strongly influenced by culture, which makes it necessary to investigate the phenomenon, emphasizing the peculiarities of the population under study. These results can be considered an indicator of the components necessary to develop an intervention that addresses both variables in the Mexican population

Transnacionalización de la violencia en el trayecto de mujeres solicitantes de asilo en México

This article aims to analyze how the manifestations and effects caused by the exercise of violence do not disappear when women leave their country of origin but follows them during their transit and stay in the host country. Using a qualitative methodological design, this article analyzes testimonies from in-depth interviews with asylum-seeking women and lawyers who work in civil society organizations (CSOs). The findings highlight that, although asylum seekers left their country of origin fleeing violence, in Mexico they have found an occasionally more violent context where both governmental and organized crime actors intervene, promoting the transnationalization of violence. This implies seeing violence as a cycle that forces the authorities to generate comprehensive protection mechanisms for women in mobility.

A Global History of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism, 1600–1850

A Global History of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism, 1600–1850

Forgiveness as a technology of the state

Forgiveness as a technology of the state

Demonizing Africa: A Bend in the River and Naipaul’s Comprador Intellectuality

This paper establishes V.S. Naipaul’s position as a comprador intellectual for his essentialist representation of Africa in A Bend in the River. The position (of comprador intellectual) has been ascribed by Hamid Dabashi to the array of highly feted non-Western writers who justify the Western orientalist (mis)appropriation of the East. The unrelenting orientalist bashing of the imperialized world (Africa in this case) legitimizes the civilizational responsibility of the West to mend the situation of the supposedly inferior Africans. The violent colonial intervention to provide order and stability to the place shows Naipaul’s orientalist world view regarding the colonized Africans. The alleged, all-pervading darkness of Africans can thus be illuminated by the White colonizer’s masterful exercise of power. Naipaul, as an author, functions as a comprador intellectual who appears serving the colonial commercial interest. The West needs to destroy all the cultures that may be potential sites of resistance, so, Naipaul offers a systematic denigration of African culture to sabotage the potential culture of resistance. The narrative of African demonization justifies the colonial machinery and its exercise of violence against the natives. The paper, therefore, calls into question Naipaul’s role as a cultural intermediary, since his 'point of enunciation' (a concept given by Stuart Hall) seems to be resting on an overtly colonial trajectory of the West.

Dodgeball: Inadvertently teaching oppression in physical and health education

Though students can learn a great deal about ethics as they play sport, the authors of this article ask what, exactly, they learn from playing dodgeball. As they look beyond the usual arguments offered for and against the teaching of the game, they view it through three ethical lenses: the ethic of care, the ethic of anti-oppressive education, and the ethics of virtue. They conclude that in terms of modelling, confirming, and practising caring behaviours, or offering opportunities to discuss and process what might be considered fair, dodgeball can be considered miseducative. They further argue that the hidden curriculum of dodgeball reinforces the five faces of oppression defined by the feminist theorist Iris Young as marginalization, powerlessness, and the helplessness of those perceived as weaker individuals through the exercise of violence and dominance by those who are considered more powerful. They conclude that the playing of dodgeball habituates the practice of aggression and fails to contribute positively to an ethical education.

The Real Winner's Curse

AbstractTraditional theories of democracy suggest that political representation of excluded groups can reduce their incentives to engage in conflict and lead to lower violence. However, this argument ignores the response of established elites when (1) their interests are threatened by the policy stance of new political actors and (2) elites have a comparative advantage in the exercise of violence. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we show that the narrow election of previously excluded left‐wing parties to local executive office in Colombia results in a one standard deviation increase in violent events by right‐wing paramilitaries. We interpret this surge in violence as a reaction of traditional elites to offset the increase in outsiders' access to formal political power. Consistent with this interpretation, we find that violence by left‐wing guerrillas and other actors is unaffected and that violence is not influenced by the victory of right‐wing or other new parties in close elections.

La OCDE: un perfil crítico

En este artículo se propone realizar una caracterización crítica de la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos (ocde) a partir de su orientación general, tareas y medios empleados en el cumplimiento de sus funciones. Del mismo modo, se presenta una aproximación a la labor de esa Organización a partir de la utilización que hace de evidencia empírica y conocimiento experto en la identificación de las mejores prácticas de gobierno, en la precisión de estándares con vocación normativa, en la promoción de marcos regulatorios y en el impulso que ofrece a la formación de convergencias en políticas públicas. Esta contribución concluye con un análisis del compromiso de la ocde con una determinada racionalidad rectora de política económica, así como con la promoción de un ideal de Estado y de sujeto.

"Caso Bombas": discursos sobre el anarquismo en Chile

Este artículo analiza el tratamiento que los diarios La Segunda, El Ciudadano y el Poder Ejecutivo y Legislativo de Chile, le otorgaron a la relación entre el “Caso Bombas” y los grupos anarquistas desde agosto del 2010 a junio del 2012. La hipótesis sostiene que visibilizar un tipo de ejercicio de violencia, relacionado con la utilización de explosivos para manifestar una crítica por parte de grupos asistémicos, ha generado una respuesta estatal y de los medios de opinión que cataloga a estos grupos como anarquistas con orientaciones terroristas, negando sus especificidades. Desde la perspectiva metodológica del análisis crítico del discurso de Norman Fairclough, se busca distinguir un sesgo criminalizador de ciertos actores sociales hacia grupos marginales.

La violencia Masculina en la Pareja como Proceso Relacional: Un Desafío de Superación Cultural

The present essay tries to understand the dynamics of domestic violence from the three following angles: masculinity, identity and power relationships as socio-cultural expressions. The first two are approaches to masculinity as a culture construct, its relationship with the process of culture identities and the exercise of violence against the intimate partner as a mechanism of cohesion. The third angle is based upon Bourdieu’s (2000) concept of power and domination, in dialogue with Ramirez's explanatory proposal of power relationships (2005), to finally criticize the approach of the victim / aggressor dichotomy from changes within the gender relationships where the role of men and women take new nuances. From the analysis of these components we reflect on the phenomenon of intimate violence as part of a relational process within globalization's growth, in which both men and women are capable of transcending the “social destiny” by contributing to their generic practices new meanings for its overcoming.

Usos y debates en la Argentina sobre la categoría del Estado terrorista

Nos proponemos reflexionar acerca del uso por parte de diferentes actores de una de las categorías del análisis socio-histórico que ha marcado las formas de pensar al Estado nacional en los años de la última dictadura militar en la Argentina: la de Estado terrorista. Se ha señalado, críticamente, que quienes abordan la cuestión estatal en términos históricos reflexionan poco sobre las implicancias teóricas de esta categoría a la hora de pensar, por ejemplo, el diseño e implementación de los dispositivos represivos. En este sentido en los últimos años se ha trabajado sobre la legitimidad y utilidad de la noción de Estado terrorista para entender las formas específicas que adoptó el ejercicio de la violencia por parte del último gobierno militar. Mientras que algunos la retomaron considerándola productiva, otras investigaciones se apropiaron de conceptualizaciones como la de genocidio o poder concentracionario para abordar la comprensión de esta experiencia histórica singular. Asimismo, otros análisis han contrapuesto el conocimiento surgido del movimiento social de aquel originado en los ámbitos científicos, mostrando una preocupación por el uso de estas nociones a las que consideran “contaminadas” por lo político. De conjunto, apuntamos en este texto a examinar distintos elementos que explican cómo se llega a esta teorización sobre el Estado, y en tal sentido, deseamos contribuir al debate sobre el uso de categorías teóricas específicas para el análisis histórico, delimitando y situando su contexto de creación.

Mujeres en pandillas salvadoreñas y las paradojas de una agencia precaria

El fenómeno de las maras o pandillas en El Salvador se ha constituido en objeto de estudio frecuente al haber devenido, a lo largo de los últimos años, en una brutal manifestación de las violencias salvadoreñas de posguerra. Sin embargo, las aproximaciones al fenómeno suelen conceder menos centralidad a las mujeres que las han integrado. En este texto avanzo, a partir de teorías feministas, sobre la hipótesis de que esta omisión no solo se relaciona con su situación minoritaria en esos grupos, sino con las formas en que suele abordarse el vínculo entre mujeres, transgresión y violencia, al asociar pasividad o agencia limitada con feminidad en contextos de vulnerabilidad y daño. Propongo que la complejidad del abordaje de estas figuras descansa en las tensiones y paradojas que conlleva su acción violenta, puesto que su incorporación a un grupo como las pandillas salvadoreñas —que busca la homologación en/de la identidad a través del ejercicio de la violencia— supone que la agencia solo puede producirse a través de su sujeción y simultánea desviación del marco (masculino) de producción del pandillero-prototipo. A partir de investigación bibliográfica y del análisis de entrevistas biográficas realizadas con mujeres que han sido miembros de pandillas, propongo que la agencia que éstas pueden desarrollar es precaria al construirse a partir de la sujeción a la norma del grupo. En tanto mujeres, han de mostrar y reiterar constantemente esa identidad pandillera (masculina) de la que dependerá no solo la construcción laboriosa de una reputación, sino su superviviencia en entornos hostiles, imprevisibles y violentos.

Bidirectional Violence among Male and Female University Students: Comparison of Observations and Results between Two Countries

This paper presents the results of a research project that included the application of a survey in 597 university students in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and Tijuana, México, whose central aim was to examine the degree of violence in intimate couples, including that of men towards women and women against men, in different countries. It also explores the level of knowledge and analyzes the degree of awareness that the samples have about existing abuse. The results show similarity in the exercise of violence by both sexes; aspects of hegemonic masculinity that still permeates both, and the need for studies that have a real impact on education against this problem. This, irrespectively of age and socio-economic stratum to which both sexes belong.

Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood in France during the Hundred Years War. By Craig Taylor.

Craig Taylor’s new study offers a thoughtful corrective to dominant narratives of ‘chivalry’ that have either emphasized decline, or have suggested a naïve focus on individual honour that is unconcerned with broader military encounters or outcomes. Taylor defines chivalry with respect to a class or category of people, not in connection to norms or culture, and shows the degree to which the values associated with chivalry were complex and dynamic, subject to debate and change. Taylor’s opening chapter on texts and contexts emphasizes the near-ubiquity of military conflict of one sort or another in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century France, which produced abundant reflection on questions largely centred on the legitimate use of force: Who may rightfully exercise violence? In what circumstances? With what objectives and with respect to whom? Taylor argues that the ‘chivalric’ texts that have often been read as normative or descriptive were actually prescriptive and aspirational efforts to reshape military culture; they sought to limit violence and to inculcate in their readers a sense of obligation to the weak as well as service to king and kingdom. The remaining chapters focus on the qualities that defined knighthood — honour, prowess, loyalty, courage, mercy, wisdom, and prudence — and illuminate the tensions within each of these putative virtues. With respect to prowess, for instance, the ‘cornerstone of medieval chivalric culture’ (p. 91) founded upon force and competition, Taylor shows that while certain types of violence (for example, crusade) were justified and praiseworthy, and other types (for example, popular violence) were categorically condemned, a great many encounters fell into a grey area in which the right to exercise or authorize violence was potentially at issue. Similarly, with respect to courage, Taylor demonstrates that this quality ought not be understood in absolute or strictly individual terms, but pragmatically, as a kind of Aristotelian juste milieu situated between cowardice and rashness that is operative on a collective level. Taylor also highlights the increasing prominence of wisdom and prudence. Strategic thinking and effective leadership were explored and promoted not only in clerical milieux, but in texts owned and sometimes written by knights and nobles. The practical quality of prudence, largely the product of experience, might also be acquired through reading about the experiences of exemplary figures. In short, ‘chivalry’ was never monolithic or static, and Taylor’s book effectively highlights the debates that accompanied and produced changes in the role of the knight, and of military culture, in late medieval France. Because France was the site of so much warfare and violence, writers were thinking a lot and in very practical terms about warfare, its effects, its aims, and how and by whom it might best be prosecuted. Taylor shows how texts sought to circumscribe violence by asserting royal monopoly over the exercise of violence, defining the laws governing military encounters and the treatment of non-combatants, prisoners, and enemies, and emphasizing a Roman military model (derived largely from Vegetius) with a focus on discipline, self-control, and dedication to the common good.

The Siren’s Children: Rethinking Postcolonial Naples

This essay repositions Naples as a postcolonial city through the lens of criminality in two literary texts: Il libro napoletano dei morti (2012) by Francesco Palmieri and L’abusivo (2001) by Antonio Franchini. As a crossroads of global cultural and economic intersections, Naples sits “in a space that extends both from Southern Europe and from North Africa” [Cavallo, Vincenzo, and Iain Chambers. 2014. Neapolitan Nights: From Vesuvian Blues to Planetary Vibes. https://www.academia.edu/5599503/Neapolitan_nights_from_Vesuvian_blues_to_planetary_vibes]. While locating the city geographically, this statement also has an ideological connotation which casts Naples as Europe’s “Other”, the place where an “Arabic exercise of violence” is arbitrarily associated with the “endemic state of lawlessness” typical of colonial and postcolonial societies [Dickie, John. 1998. Darkest Italy: The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860–1900. Basingstoke: Palgrave]. Criminal narratives of the city act as a magnifying lens to expose the hidden connections between the “underworld” and conventional power structures that both disrupt and reinforce the rhetoric of western-centric modernity and state–society relations in Italy. As the protagonist of Il libro napoletano dei morti puts it, a narrativization of Naples’ criminal organization, the Camorra, allows for a “discovery of the city from its forgotten corners” [Palmieri, Francesco. 2012. Il libro napoletano dei morti. Milan: Mondadori.]. By locating the city within the geographical and historical situatedness of the Mediterranean as a land of cultural crossings and intersections [Cassano, Franco. 2012. Southern Thought and Other Essays on the Mediterranean. New York: Fordham University Press.], this essay investigates the “grey areas” occupied by criminals; it offers a new perspective on the city that goes beyond the accommodational space negotiated between the “oppressor” and the “resister”. The case of postcolonial Naples constitutes a paradigmatic example of the uneven spatial dynamics affecting cities in the Global South, which encompasses and extends spatial dyads of power (colonizer/colonized, hegemony/subalternity).

Power, command and violence in von Trier’s Manderlay. A political and philosophical analysis of pseudo-democracies.

Alabama, 1933. A caravan of limousines carrying gangsters arrives in Manderlay, a small village where slavery still exists as an institution. Mam (Lauren Bacall) rules the plantation assisted by her foreman Wilhelm (Danny Glover), a slave who believes his people are not ready for the responsibilities of freedom. Driving up to the gates of the plantation, Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) declares that the slaves must be informed how to enjoy freedom and thus becoming good citizens. Drawing on a textual and visual analysis of Manderlay, the article explores how democracy arises from the exercise of violence and power, as well as the inability of Western societies to deal with the dogma of difference.

Korb, Alexander Im Schatten des Weltkriegs: Massengewalt der Ustaša gegen Serben, Juden und Roma in Kroatien 1941–1945 (review)

SEER, 94, 1, JANUARY 2016 186 when he started his job at SSRCI — he was secretary of the commission for the control of oil companies’ shares — which gave him the opportunity to acquire a Jewish house and other assets’ (p. 82). Chapter five focuses on the tensions between the Romanian authorities and German attempts to benefit from the confiscation of Jewish property, while chapter six examines how Antonescu’s policy affected the Roma in general, and those living in Bucharest in particular. Chapter seven and eight uncover the strategies adopted by Jews and gentiles to bypass Romanianization through what the author terms ‘sabotage/camouflage’. Ionescu argues that despite the misery inflicted on Jews and Roma through expropriation, eviction and compulsory sale of businesses to gentiles, Antonescu failed to complete Romanianization. This was due principally to the sabotage — legal and illegal — conducted by Jews and Roma, in several cases with the collusion of gentiles. An example is the refusal of some gentile managers to fire Jewish employees, either out of friendship or because they needed a skilled workforce and Jews were, in general, the only available candidates (many gentiles having been conscripted into the army). The success of such sabotage played a major role in the economic survival of Bucharest Jews. Legal resistance consisted mainly of tens of thousands of contestations against the Romanianization of houses, which led to the reversal of some expropriations, about 10 per cent, by September 1943, and caused delays for others until the 23 August 1944 coup engineered by the young King Michael halted them. Illegal resistance through camouflage saw fictitious transactions of real estate and companies from Jews to gentiles, thus preventing their expropriation. By the time of Antonescu’s overthrow, Ionescu concludes, complete Romanianization was more of a regime fiction than a reality. UCL SSEES and Georgetown University Dennis Deletant Washington, D.C. Korb, Alexander. Im Schatten des Weltkriegs: Massengewalt der Ustaša gegen Serben, Juden und Roma in Kroatien 1941–1945. Studien zur Gewaltgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Institut für Sozialforschung. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2013. 510 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Appendix. Bibliography. Index. €28.00 (paperback). Alexander Korb has named his book very carefully. All the action takes place In the Shadow of the World Wars, with the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) wedged between German and Italian forces and amidst the constant menace of partisans undermining Ustaša control. Korb tells us remarkably little about Ustaša rhetoric or about the prehistory of ethnic relations in interwar Yugoslavia,butthisisbecausehismajorargumentisthatthewaritselfproduced REVIEWS 187 the mass violence against civilian populations in the NDH. Nation-building and ethnic homogenization projects were common throughout Central and South-eastern Europe from the 1870s onward, Korb points out, so why was the violence so much more extreme in the NDH than elsewhere and why did it happen precisely during the early 1940s? Quoting Ustaša propagandists talking about eliminating the Serbs does not explain much either because, as with most fascist movements, Korb says, the Ustaša ‘displayed their program above all through praxis, in the mobilization of emotions and in the exercise of violence’ (p. 56). Rather than looking at either rhetoric or at contingent decisions made in the heat of the moment, Korb suggests that these two approaches, so often polarized in the historiography, interacted with one another in dynamic ways. A functionalist approach that emphasizes the structural and local causes of Ustaša violence nonetheless permeates the book, and Korb assumes that his readers know enough about the Ustaša’s annihilationist rhetoric that he does not need to analyse it once again. As the subtitle suggests, this book is about Ustaša Mass Violence against Serbs, Jews, and Roma in Croatia, 1941–1945. Korb has very few individual characters whose names and personalities enter the text, but his evidence proves convincingly that the major perpetrators were Croatians associated with the Ustaša — not German soldiers or Nazi Stormtroopers. Assigning blame is far from Korb’s mind, however, as he is more interested in explaining why Yugoslav society suddenly become extremely violent. Influenced by Christian Gerlach’s search for multi-causal explanations of mass violence, Korb looks at the creation of ‘violent spaces’, ‘communities of violence...

From “making toast” to “splitting apples”: dissecting “care” in the midst of chronic violence

Scholarship has tended to focus on the deleterious impacts of chronic exposure to violence, to the detriment of understanding how residents living in dangerous contexts care for themselves and one another. Drawing on 30 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines two sets of practices that residents exercise in the name of protecting themselves and their loved ones. The first set (“making toast”) includes the mundane, “small acts,”—often embedded in routine—that residents draw on in an effort to form connections and create order in a fundamentally chaotic and stressful environment. The second set (“splitting apples”) involves the teaching and exercise of violence in the name of protecting daughters and sons from further harm. Using interviews and field notes, we argue that both sets of practices, when viewed in situ, reveal an “ethics of care.” Resisting the urge to either romanticize or sanitize these efforts, we engage with the difficult question of what it means when an expression of “care” involves the (re)production of violence, especially against a loved one.