Organized Violence Research Articles

The Shiners’ War: Social Violence in the Ottawa Valley in the 1830s

By late May of 1835, unrest in Bytown had reached unprecedented proportions. All winter, the people of the town, the entrepôt of the Ottawa timber trade, had been bracing themselves, awaiting the annual visitation, the annual affliction, of the raftsmen who came each spring from high up the Valley to roister and riot in the streets of Bytown. Like the freshets in the streams, the raftsmen and social disorder arrived each April and May. But never before had their coming brought such organized violence as it did in 1835. For the Irish timberers, now had a leader, and a purpose. Peter Aylen, run-away sailor, timber king, ambitious schemer, had set himself at the head of the Irish masses, had moulded them into a powerful weapon. He had given them a purpose: to drive the French Canadians off the river and thus guarantee jobs and high wages in the timber camps to the Irish.

Role of Religious Leaders in Mobilizing Communities to Counter Violent Extremism

Swat and Dir valleys in Pakistan have seen the brunt of post 9/11 violent extremism in the recent past. Because this extremism was generated and exploited by a few religiously motivated violent organizations, a popular perception emerged that all religious leaders of the society were involved in terrorism. Therefore, this research focuses on the role played by those religious leaders who involved themselves in mobilizing local communities against violent extremism. Employing a mixed-method research approach and sequential analysis strategy our data shows that most of the common local religious leaders played positive role in building community resilience to countering violent extremism during the early phase of the War on Terrorism in these two valleys.

Introducing the Deadly Electoral Conflict Dataset (DECO)

This article introduces the Deadly Electoral Conflict dataset (DECO): a global, georeferenced event dataset on electoral violence with lethal outcomes from 1989 to 2017. DECO allows for empirical evaluation of theories relating to the timing, location, and dynamics of deadly electoral violence. By clearly distinguishing electoral violence from related (and sometimes concurrent) instances of organized violence, DECO is particularly suitable for investigating how election-related violence is connected to other forms of violent political contention. In the article, we present the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the data collection and discuss empirical patterns that emerge in DECO. We also demonstrate one potential use of DECO by examining the association between United Nations peacekeeping forces and the prevalence of deadly electoral violence in conflict-affected countries.

Colonial Lives of the Carceral Archipelago: Rethinking the Neoliberal Security State

AbstractMass incarceration, police brutality, and border controls are part and parcel of the everyday experiences of marginalized and racialized communities across the world. Recent scholarship in international relations, sociology, and geography has examined the prevalence of these coercive practices through the prism of “disciplinary,” “penal,” or “authoritarian” neoliberalism. In this collective discussion, we argue that although this literature has brought to the fore neoliberalism's reliance on state violence, it has yet to interrogate how these carceral measures are linked to previous forms of global racial ordering. To rectify this moment of “colonial unknowing,” the collective discussion draws on decolonial approaches, Indigenous studies, and theories of racial capitalism. It demonstrates that “new” and “neoliberal” forms of domestic control must be situated within the global longue durée of racialized and colonial accumulation by dispossession. By mapping contemporary modes of policing, incarceration, migration control, and surveillance onto earlier forms of racial–colonial subjugation, we argue that countering the violence of neoliberalism requires more than nostalgic appeals for a return to Keynesianism. What is needed is abolition—not just of the carceral archipelago, but of the very system of racial capitalism that produces and depends on these global vectors of organized violence and abandonment.

СОЦІАЛЬНО-ПОЛІТИЧНИЙ КОНТЕКСТ ВІЙНИ НА СХОДІ УКРАЇНИ ТА ОСНОВНІ НАПРЯМИ ПРОТИДІЇ НЕГАТИВНИМ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНИМ ВПЛИВАМ

У доповіді розкрито сутність «нової війни» в умовах військової агресії РФ проти України, що відображає безпрецедентну постбіполярну дійсність, пов’язану з політикою ідентичності, не лише ідеологічно чи геополітично обґрунтованим інтересом; ерозію монополії на легітимне організоване насильство; зміну образу ведення бойових дій, метою яких є мобілізація політики екстремізму; глобалізовану воєнну економіку з появою відповідних кластерів. Доведено, що одним із успішних шляхів захисту є створення мережевої безпеки, що ґрунтується на співпраці всіх громадян щодо захисту власних суспільств, держав і міжнародної безпекової мережі. Представлено, що ключовим ціннісним пріоритетом, який спроможний витримувати негативні впливи й швидко відновлюватися та визначений центральним у концепціях усталеного розвитку ООН, ЄС і НАТО, є «стійкість». Стійкість через усталений розвиток суспільства, держави, Збройних Сил тлумачиться у дусі новітніх міжнародних підходів — як стрижень всеохоплюючої оборони. Обґрунтовано основні напрями протидії пропаганді для вибудовування на основі наративів єднання своєї картини світу, що дасть змогу приєднатися до глобального співтовариства.

Punishment of the collaborationists in Vichy and other French regions (1944 – 1945)

The goal of this article lies in examination of the process of preventing collaborationism in the former capital of the French state, as well as in determination of whether the process of suppressing cooperation with the German occupier has any peculiarities associated with the special position of Vichy in relation to other departments. The author examines such aspects of the topic as spontaneous and organized violence in Vichy and other French regions during the postwar period (1944 – 1945). Special attention is given to reprisal against the collaborationists in Vichy and the formation of representation on the unity of France during the occupation imbued by the Gaullist state. The main conclusions of this research consists in the two interpretations of the purges that took place in the postwar years in France. The situation in the agglomeration has several similarities with the situation in multiple departments: shaving of women; government branches responsible for repressions; urgent purges. However, the fact that namely Vichy was the seat of the French government has its own peculiarities:  weak first phase of the extrajudicial purge due to the presence of law enforcement forces during the occupation and opposition, and on the other hand, the cruelty of spontaneous violence in June of 1945,  numerous arrests in the first two weeks after the liberation, excessive city residents representation in the Court and  Civil Chamber, as well as severity of the sentences.

Artificial Intelligence Models for Crime Prediction in Urban Spaces

This work presents research based on evidence with neural networks for the development of predictive crime models, finding the data sets used are focused on historical crime data, crime classification, types of theft at different scales of space and time, counting crime and conflict points in urban areas. Among some results, 81% precision is observed in the prediction of the Neural Network algorithm and ranges in the prediction of crime occurrence at a space-time point between 75% and 90% using LSTM (Long-ShortSpace-Time). It is also observed in this review, that in the field of justice, systems based on intelligent technologies have been incorporated, to carry out activities such as legal advice, prediction and decisionmaking, national and international cooperation in the fight against crime, police and intelligence services, control systems with facial recognition, search and processing of legal information, predictive surveillance, the definition of criminal models under the criteria of criminal records, history of incidents in different regions of the city, location of the police force, established businesses, etc., that is, they make predictions in the urban context of public security and justice. Finally, the ethical considerations and principles related to predictive developments based on artificial intelligence are presented, which seek to guarantee aspects such as privacy, privacy and the impartiality of the algorithms, as well as avoid the processing of data under biases or distinctions. Therefore, it is concluded that the scenario for the development, research, and operation of predictive crime solutions with neural networks and artificial intelligence in urban contexts, is viable and necessary in Mexico, representing an innovative and effective alternative that contributes to the attention of insecurity, since according to the indices of intentional homicides, the crime rates of organized crime and violence with firearms, according to statistics from INEGI, the Global Peace Index and the Government of Mexico, remain in increase.

Evidential Analysis of Terrorism and I-VEO Knowledge Matrix in the Context of Security as Pure Public Good: The case of Pakistan from 1990 to 2010

The case of Pakistan has presented if security provision is a pure public good in the light of the I-VEO Knowledge Matrix hypotheses. Evidential analysis of the data from 1990 to 2010 from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) suggests that terrorism incidents are not reduced with the increase of public expenditure on defence, and instead, more fatalities and injuries are witnessed during the years. The analysis is based in isolation to terrorist attacks, defence expenditure and relating hypotheses of Influential Violent Extremists Organization Knowledge Matrix (I- VEO Knowledge Matrix) and counterterrorism operations, at ceteris paribus. The I-VEO Knowledge Matrix shows there is a lack of a comprehensive set of strategy based on the collection of relevant hypotheses more productive than the existing and likely less effective counterterrorism strategies to ensure security provision as a pure public good in the case of Pakistan

Labeling of groups and events (Terrorism Coverage)

Labeling of groups and events describes how groups connected to religious, political or other forms of violence as well as their acts are labeled or evaluated. These labels might vary from more nominal descriptions (e.g., “gunmen”) to more judgmental descriptions (e.g., “terrorist”), leading to different perceptions of these groups and acts by the public. Field of application/theoretical foundation: Labels for groups and events are of interest in journalism research, political communication, research on terrorism and violence as well as stereotyping. These measurements are often based on “Social Identity Theory” (Brown, 2000) as a theoretical foundation for why some groups and events connected to violence are described in a negative way – i.e., as an out-group –, whilst others are described in a neutral way or even positively, i.e., as an in-group. References/combination with other methods of data collection: A study by Huff and Kertzer (2017) for example combines a conjoint experiment with an “Automated Content Analysis” of media coverage to understand how the public would label different acts of violence in comparison to the media. Two studies that have been particularly influential in studying the labeling of violent acts and perpetrators will be discussed in more detail in the following sections. Example studies: Nagar (2010); Weimann (1985) Information on Nagar, 2010 Author: Nagar Research question: How did American news media cover politically violent organizations that are not linked to Al Qaeda or the events of 9/11? Object of analysis: News coverage by two American newspapers (The New York Times, The Washington Post) Time frame of analysis: 1998–2004 Info about variables Variable name/definition: Media frame: “First, the labels that describe political violence were coded separately for each segment. Second, the article frame was determined based on the most frequent label.” (Nagar, 2010, p. 537) Level of analysis: Headline, lead paragraph, text Variables and values: four different label categories for labels in text: neutral (“rebel”, “rebellion”, “insurgent”, “insurgency”, “guerrilla”, “militant”, “combatants”, “revolt”, “uprising”, “revolutionary”, “paramilitaries”, “insurrection”, “separatist”), negative (“terror”, “terrorize”, “terrorist”, “terrorism”), positive (“freedom fighter”, “liberation movement”, “independence movement”), no label mentioned Reliability: Krippendorff’s alpha: .82 Information on Weimann, 1985 Authors: Weimann Research question: Which labels did the press use in referring to terrorists when covering terrorist attacks? Object of analysis: Israel’s major newspapers Time frame of analysis: 1979–1981 Info about variables Variable name/definition: Label Variables and values: three different labels categories for labels in text: negative (“murderers”, “saboteurs”, “assassins”, “separatists”), neutral (“guerillas”, “army”, “front”, “nationalists”, “underground”, “separatists”) and positive (“patriots”, “freedom fighters”, “liberation movement”, “liberation organization”) Reliability: not applicable Table 1. Measurement of “Labeling of Groups and Events” in terrorism coverage. Author(s) Sample Manifestations Reliability Codebook Boyle & Mower (2018) Newspaper articles Computer-assisted key-word search, looking up labels such as “terror” Not applicable Not available De Veen & Thomas (2020) Newspaper articles 3 different label categories: negative (“terrorist”, “racist”, “extremist”, “fundamentalist” and clear links to terrorist organizations such as ISIS), neutral (“perpetrator”, “shooter”, “attacker” or other labels emphasizing race and ethnicity, for example “Muslim” or “American”), or positive (family- or work-related labels such as “father” or “colleagues”) Not reported Not available Nagar (2010) Newspaper articles 4 different label categories: neutral (“rebel”, “rebellion”, “insurgent”, “insurgency”, “guerrilla”, “militant”, “combatants”, “revolt”, “uprising”, “revolutionary”, “paramilitaries”, “insurrection”, “separatist”), negative (“terror”, “terrorize”, “terrorist”, “terrorism”), positive (“freedom fighter”, “liberation movement”, “independence movement”), or no label mentioned Krippendorf’s alpha: .82 Available Picard & Adams (1987) Newspaper articles 2 different label categories: nominal (e.g., “attacker”) or descriptive (e.g., “radical”) Holsti: .98 Not available Samuel-Azran et al. (2015) Newspaper articles 7 different labels for perpetrators: “terrorist/Jewish terrorist”, “the Jewish terrorist”, “terror-accused”, “killer”, “mass murderer”, “serial stabber/criminal”, “other”; 9 different labels for act: “terror”, “massacre/mass murders”, “bombing/shooting”, “right wing crime”, “description assault (stabbing etc.)”, “criminal”, “attack”, “insanity”, “other” Scott’s pi indicating lowest value for any variable in the study: .86 Not available Simmons & Lowry (1990) Magazine articles 13 different labels for perpetrators: “terrorist”, “gunman”, “guerilla”, “attacker”, “extremist”, “radical”, “hijacker”, “revolutionary”, “nationalist”, “armed man/men”, “leftist”, “rightist”, “militiaman/militiamen” Not reported Available Weimann (1985) Newspaper articles 3 different labels categories for perpetrators: negative (“murderers”, “saboteurs”, “assassins”, “separatists”), neutral (“guerillas”, “army”, “front”, “nationalists”, “underground”, “separatists”), or positive (“patriots”, “freedom fighters”, “liberation movement”, “liberation organization”) Not applicable Not available

Frontiers’ violence: The interplay of state of exception, frontier habitus, and organized violence

As global capitalism is expanding to the most remote areas of the world, the notion of “frontier”, where competing social orders are contesting each other, is gaining traction in academic analyses. Contemporary frontiers are associated with resource exploitation in marginalized spaces and processes of socioecological transformation, which are characterized as particularly violent. This article offers a conceptual contribution to the frontier debate by putting violence in the center of a frontier concept. Building on a sociology of violence, this approach assumes that every social order comes with some form of organized violence. We argue that the frontier is characterized by a tidal passage: Existing orders and their institutions, which socially embed and constrain a particular use of violence, are challenged by an expansive order which comes along with new formations of violence, leading to a reorganization of violence. Thus the frontier describes a momentum in which the interplay of social order and organized violence becomes highly disputed. Representatives of the expansive order refuse to recognize existing orders and favour a state of exception, in which law is set aside to impose the new order.

Patterns of Intentional Dismemberment in Florida Medicolegal Death Investigations

This study identifies broad patterns of intentional dismemberment in Florida as observed in cases accessioned over a 15-year period at the University of Florida C. A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory. A review of all case files dating from July 2003 through June 2018 (N = 959) found 28 individuals with indications of intentional dismemberment. Decedents ranged from neonatal to 76 years in age at death; half were female, and 91.7% were identified by the medical examiner as White. Transection via sawing was the most common dismemberment mode (50%), followed by disarticulation of joints (19%). The most common implement was a saw, and electric reciprocating saws were the most common saw type. These data are compared to multiple U.S.-based dismemberment samples, positioned within a larger U.S. framework, and assessed against international data. Combined U.S. data suggest female homicide victims are more likely to be dismembered than male homicide victims. The use of three different modes of dismemberment, with transection by sawing more common than transection by chopping and transection by any means more common than disarticulation, is noted across the Eastern U.S. However, selection of implement and mode may be influenced by sub-regional factors such as population density. This is in contrast to available Latin American data, which indicate dismemberments—commonly in the context of organized violence and used as a means of symbolic communication—occur primarily to males and overwhelmingly by chopping. The discrepancies in dismemberment patterns between the U.S. and Latin American contexts illustrate the importance of sociopolitical circumstance when making broad comparisons across geographic samples.

Captives of Liberty: Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance in the American Revolution by T. Cole Jones

Reviewed by: Captives of Liberty: Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance in the American Revolution by T. Cole Jones Lauren Duval (bio) Prisoners of war, American Revolution, Vengeance, Violence Captives of Liberty: Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance in the American Revolution. By T. Cole Jones. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Pp. 336. Cloth, $39.95.) During the War for Independence, captive American soldiers starved in British jails and languished aboard disease-ridden prison ships. Denied standing as legitimate combatants, these soldiers and their sufferings occupy a prominent place in the histories of the war. Less familiar, but no less tragic, was the plight of their enemy counterparts, the British and allied German, Native, and loyalist prisoners of war. T. Cole Jones asserts that this oversight is no accident. In his superb new book, Captives of Liberty, he shows this absence to be the consequence of postwar efforts to "shroud the conflict in a haze of patriotic lore" (248) in the aftermath of "a brutal war of vengeance" (3) in which, as a response to the alleged mistreatment of American prisoners, revolutionaries gradually abandoned their commitment to limited warfare. "The siren call of vengeance" (5), as Jones terms it, led Americans to flout prevailing European military norms and adopt brutal retaliatory [End Page 302] measures against British and allied prisoners. In Connecticut in July 1776, for example, revolutionaries confined over one hundred loyalists to an underground mine. The Convention Army, as the nearly six thousand British and allied prisoners defeated at Saratoga would come to be known, was held captive for five and a half years, during which time they and their families marched 1,100 miles and were confined in eight different states. Nearly 85 percent of the group succumbed to disease, starvation, desertion, and fatigue. As the war drew to close in May 1782, Congress approved a plan to sell German soldiers who surrendered at Yorktown into indentured servitude, a punishment typically reserved for non-Christian enemies. To American revolutionaries, Jones argues, these measures did not seem overly harsh; rather, they were "the just vengeance of a wronged people" (142). How Americans arrived at this conception of wartime conduct is the guiding question of Captives of Liberty. In examining the debates over and treatment of enemy prisoners of war, Jones persuasively demonstrates how "the democratization of war" (11) had disastrous consequences for enemy prisoners and combatants. In one of the book's most innovative contributions, Jones locates the origin of this transformation in the very nature of the American republican political experiment and Congress's failure to secure "a legitimate monopoly on organized violence" (6). Unlike European armies, directed by elite officers and diplomats, the American war effort was overseen by Congress and dependent on cooperation from state governments and American civilians. Unable to raise revenue through taxes, Congress lacked the funds to support prisoners and "outsource[d] prisoner management to individual states" (6). States routinely flouted Congressional directives by prioritizing the needs of their own citizens; they sought to exchange enemy captives for their own soldiers—not those imprisoned longest, as ordered by Washington. Thwarting efforts to implement national policies, this decentralized system, Jones argues, also shifted unparalleled authority into the hands of ordinary people, many of whom were eager for revenge. Elected officials had little power to restrain these impulses. Independence intensified fears that traitorous enemies resided in their midst, sparking a rampage of "Tory hunting" (109) and civil war that engulfed American communities. Responding to constituents' clamors for vengeance, and seeking leverage in their negotiations with the British, Congress adopted punitive tactics against enemy captives as a strategic necessity after 1776—a reversal of their earlier commitment to humane warfare. The [End Page 303] emergence of this policy of retributive justice, Jones concludes in one of his most important insights, reshapes our understanding of wartime conduct; the unremitting brutality and suffering of the Southern Campaign was not an "abberation" (189) but rather a defining characteristic of the American war effort. Vengeance, Jones proves, permeated the revolutionary cause and provides a cohesive framework for understanding the military and political elements of the conflict at both the local and national levels. Enemy...

¿Borrón sin cuenta nueva? La injusticia transicional en guerras civiles económicas

Ante la persistencia de la violencia criminal organizada en México, se ha discutido la posibilidad de superarla usando medidas de justicia transicional. ¿Qué tan viable sería su aplicación? Tratamos de responder a esta pregunta en dos pasos. Primero, trazamos un mapa conceptual de la violencia societal organizada que nos permite identificar la llamada narcoviolencia como una guerra civil económica y distinguirla de las guerras civiles políticas. Después, discutimos la aplicabilidad de la justicia transicional al contexto mexicano. Aunque identificamos analogías importantes, terminamos resaltando un obstáculo infranqueable: la justicia transicional solo puede servir como vía pacificadora si el Estado que recurre a ella para desarmar a las bandas criminales tuviera la capacidad de garantizar que ese desarme sea permanente.

Butchers, Bakers, and Jewish Strong-Arm Men: Organized Crime in the Kosher Food Trades During the Age of Mass Jewish Migration, 1900–1917

Abstract Throughout the era of Jewish mass migration to the United States, organized crime played a central role in stabilizing the business practices and union affairs in the kosher food industries of the New York metropolitan area. Two key sectors of New York’s kosher foods trades, kosher poultry and Jewish baked goods, demonstrate the various ways in which underworld leaders came to informally police chaotic business sectors upended by laissez-faire capitalism and the large-scale relocation of European Jews to urban America. In kosher poultry, a cartel of butchers, teamsters, and various other workers mobilized organized crime and violence to remove the threat posed by Barnett Baff, an ambitious Jewish immigrant entrepreneur who aimed to vertically integrate the industry. In Jewish baked goods, the labor chieftain Max Kazimirsky managed a brutal and corrupt regime in the Hebrew bakers ’unions. But despite his widely documented use of violence and coercion, Kazimirsky succeeded in maintaining a closed shop system among New York’s bakeries and union control over production and distribution. The domineering role of organized crime in kosher foods during this period conveys the ways immigrants to Gilded Age and Progressive Era America forged their own methods of imposing order over ethnic capitalist marketplaces, ones not approved by city authorities but which, nevertheless, provided a modicum of industrial stability.

Rethinking Political Repression in the Tatar Republic, 1917–41

Rethinking Political Repression in the Tatar Republic, 1917–41 John M. Romero (bio) Nikolai Frolov, Tragediia naroda (Iz istorii repressii Cheremshanskogo raiona Tatarstana) (The People's Tragedy [From the History of Repression in Tatarstan's Cheremshanskii Raion]). 320 pp. Kazan: Pamiat´, 1999. ISBN-10 5852471183. A. L. Litvin, Zapret na zhizn´ (Prohibition against Life). 224 pp. Kazan: Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1993. ISBN-10 5298002838. A. F. Stepanov, Rasstrel po limitu: Iz istorii politicheskikh repressii v TASSR v gody "ezhovshchiny" (Shooting by Quota: From the History of Political Repression in the TASSR during the Ezhovshchina). 311 pp. Kazan: Novoe znanie, 1999. ISBN-10 5893470370. B. F. Sultanbekov and R. G. Khakimzianov, Politicheskie repressii v Tatarstane: Zakony, ispolniteli, reabilitatsiia zhertv (Political Repression in Tatarstan: The Laws, the Perpetrators, and the Rehabilitation of Victims). 145 pp. Kazan: Pravozashchitnyi tsentr goroda Kazani, 2002. No ISBN. B. F. Sultanbekov and S. Iu. Malysheva, Tragicheskie sud´by (nauchnopopuliarnye ocherki) (Tragic Fates [Academic and Popular Essays]). 285 pp. Kazan: Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1996. ISBN-10 5298006531. Bulat Sultanbekov, Istoriia Tatarstana: Stranitsy sekretnykh arkhivov (The History of Tatarstan: Pages from the Secret Archives). 253 pp. Kazan: Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1994. ISBN-10 5298004849. Ramzi Valeev, Poslednii vrag naroda (The Last Enemy of the People). 303 pp. Kazan: Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 2013. ISBN-13 978-5298025553. [End Page 841] In early 2019, an English-language translation of Guzel Yakhina's Zuleikha otkryvaet glaza (Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes) was first published in the West.1 The novel, recipient of the Iasnaia Poliana and Bol´shaia Kniga literary awards, has become, practically overnight, perhaps the best-known nonacademic work about ethnic Tatars to ever appear in English. The story's protagonist is the titular Zuleikha, a young Tatar widow exiled from her village to far-off Siberia during collectivization and dekulakization. The novel is notable for its vivid but accessible portrayal of the nature and consequences of Soviet political violence. Yakhina's novel highlights this violence in a way that is particularly relevant for scholars of the Soviet Union. Although Zuleikha experiences a general sort of violence also visited on ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, and others, Yakhina is careful to never let Zuleikha's Tatarness slip away from the reader.2 The translation of Yakhina's novel into English, as well as its recent television adaptation on Rossiia-1 in April 2020, provides historians an opportunity to shift our attention toward Tatars in general and their experience of Soviet state violence in particular. Indeed, there is almost a total lack of English-language scholarship investigating state repression of ethnic Tatars or of other inhabitants of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (TASSR or Tatar Republic).3 [End Page 842] Scholars of the Soviet Union have long debated the nature of organized state violence against the country's non-Russian minorities. Did the Soviet state pursue "racial politics" in the 1930s and 1940s akin to those of Nazi Germany, or was the targeting of ethnic groups during this period "a reaction to the threat of nationalism"?4 Were ethnic groups suspect because of inherent biological traits or due to temporary geopolitical considerations? I agree with Francine Hirsch and other scholars that the latter explanation better conforms to the situation in the Soviet Union during this period.5 However, based on an investigation of the fate of members of the Tatar intelligentsia in the 1920s and 1930s, in this essay I make two major interventions into this debate. The first is to shift our attention backward in time into the 1920s. Members of the Tatar intelligentsia were targeted as early as 1923, and violence against them continued in several waves throughout the following decade and a half. Many ethnic Tatars who were arrested, imprisoned, or executed in 1937–38 had already been caught up in these earlier waves and subsequently released or paroled. Second, I nuance Hirsch's discussion of "diaspora nationalities" by emphasizing that Soviet authorities targeted Tatars even though there was no external Tatar state that could claim Tatars' allegiance.6 It was instead the short-lived Tatar-Bashkir Idel-Ural state of March 1918 that attracted the loyalty of both Tatar nationalists abroad and, allegedly, so-called...

Turkey’s Response to International Terrorism Eastern

The article analyzes the interconnection between the direction of Turkey's struggle against terrorism with modern Islamist and nationalist ideas of Turkey. A majority of Turkish citizens following the Hanafi school of Islam, have historically opposed the purist religious doctrine of the Salafists. The author emphasizes that neither Turkey’s secular tradition nor its predominant, moderate Islamic theology has made Turkish citizens immune to radicalization. Modern Turkish history has produced several violent Islamist organizations advocating Salafi views in line with the Islamic State’s ideology. Turkish jihadists have been found among the ranks of foreign fighters in several recent conflict zones abroad. The article proves that when the uprisings began in Syria in 2011, Turkey threw its full support behind the opposition – harboring and mobilizing dissidents, arming rebels, and allowing free passage along the Syrian-Turkish border. Jihadists began to exploit the security vacuum, including ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra (now Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda. The article also addresses the problems of Ankara’s indifference at the first stage towards the ISIL’s activities within and across Turkish territory. While the crossings between Turkey and ISIL territory officially were closed in 2014, smuggling through the frontier continued apace and Ankara only later started to engage ISIL militarily. The author concludes that the period of active struggle against al-Qaeda in Turkey (2003-2011) gave way after 2012 to a reduction in counterterrorism operations and now supporters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham thank Turkey for protecting them against Syrian government forces, Russia and Iran.

Outlaw motorcycle gangs and their members’ crime: Examining the social organization of crime and its relationship to formal club hierarchy

In recent years, many European countries have taken far-reaching measures to combat the criminal activities of outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMCGs). Meanwhile, empirical research into the ways OMCGs are involved in and influence the crimes of their members is largely lacking. This study presents the main findings of research based on police files of cases that were filed against members of Dutch OMCGs. We apply a criminological scenario approach to analyse to what extent and in which ways OMCGs are involved in the crimes of their members. The results show that OMCG membership particularly plays an indirect role in the criminal behaviour of OMCG members. Board members, for example, give permission for criminal acts, regulate mutual relationships between members, non-members and rival OMCGs during conflict situations, and forbid (criminal) behaviour of members that is harmful to the OMCG. OMCGs function as a pool of co-offenders and as a market for criminal enterprises. Members also use the violent reputation of OMCGs in specific criminal activities. OMCGs are less frequently directly involved in crimes. Direct involvement of OMCGs is most apparent in organized inter-gang violence and violence against their own members.

“We'll go back to a system you really do not like!” Organizational norms and structural violence in a British foodbank

PurposeWe explore how neoliberal logic has led to an erosion of social-welfare programs and pervades organizational structures and functions of a third-sector organization. Based upon fieldwork in a foodbank in the North-West of England, we discuss the impact of economic cuts upon organizational norms of the foodbank, and the intersection with the provision of charity support and personal relationships between the staff, volunteers and visitors.Design/methodology/approachThis article analyses pervasiveness of neoliberalism on a foodbank and the impact this has on organizational norms and relationships found within the organization. It integrates themes of structural violence, neoliberal discourse in the charity sector, notions of (un)deservingness and appropriate of time.FindingsOur research finds how a hostile environment transpires in a third-sector organization under increased economic and bureaucratic pressures and from this, organizational rules emerge that ignore the lived experiences of the people it serves. Herein, visitors must learn the organization's norms and garner relationships to be able to navigate the organization to successfully access essential resources.Originality/valueThe findings in this article will be of interest to academics researching poverty and organizational norms, professionals in the charity-sector and policy makers. Rules originating from economic and bureaucratic pressures can establish barriers to accessing essential material resources. It informs the pressures felt in balancing access to support services with personal timetables, and the need to include visitors' voices in establishing norms.

To add insult to injury: Stigmatization reinforces the trauma of rape survivors - Findings from the DR Congo.

Background: Survivors of sexual violence are frequently condemned and socially excluded. Myths about rape may translate into stigmatization, diminish disclosure, prevent help-seeking from support structures and worsen mental health. Areas of conflict or organized violence remain the evident hotspots of sexual victimization. However, little is known about prevalence and predictors of rape myths in these settings or their association with survivors’ disclosure, stigmatization and psychopathology. Method: Between September 2018 and May 2019, we assessed in a representative sample of 1066 individuals from six communities in Eastern DRC traumatic exposure, sexual perpetration, threats to social integrity, perceived stigmatization (perceived lack of social acknowledgement, shame), stigmatizing attitudes towards survivors (negative attitudes and willingness to provide support, rape myths acceptance), and mental illness (PTSD, depression). Results: Survivors of sexual violence (33%, n = 184 of women, 16%, n = 84 of men) reported more traumatic exposure, threats to social integrity, shame, perceived lack of social acknowledgement, PTSD symptoms and depression. Their social environment affirmed various stigmatizing attitudes (5-89% affirmations). Beliefs in rape myths were predicted by its average acceptance in the community, education, and witness of others’ sexual victimization. The rates of cases whose history of sexual victimization was socially disclosed were higher in communities and among survivors with low rape myths acceptance and disclosure showed associations with perceived stigmatization. Rape myths acceptance among individuals without a history of sexual victimization was associated with survivors’ recently experienced threats to social integrity which predicted their stigma perceptions and mental illness. Conclusion: Rape myths acceptance in the community is associated with stigma and trauma-related mental illness of sexual violence survivors. This adds up to the psychic burden of trauma.

ICD-11 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD among organized violence survivors in modern South Korean history of political oppression

ABSTRACT Background and Objectives Construct and discriminant validity of the ICD-11 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD (CPTSD) has been examined worldwide. However, little is known about CPTSD in Korean population who are suffering with long-term responses of organized violence in their context. Design This study conducted a cross-sectional survey to assess the construct and discriminant validity of the ICD-11 PTSD and CPTSD using the Korean International Trauma Questionnaire (ITQ) among organized violence survivors of past political oppression (from 1940s to 2010s) in South Korea. Method A total of 236 survivors and families completed the survey including the ITQ. A confirmatory factor analysis and a multinomial logistic regression were conducted. Results A second-order eight-factor, the ICD-11 CPTSD model, best described the structure of CPTSD. Compared to the non-diagnosed group, having above median score of cumulative trauma was a risk factor for PTSD [Odds ratio (OR) = 3.18] and CPTSD (OR = 3.27). Having above median score of cumulative social stressors increased the risk of CPTSD, relative to PTSD (OR = 4.84), and to the non-diagnosed group (OR = 7.79). Conclusions The ITQ seemed applicable to the Korean culture, showing a valid construct and meaningfully distinguishing ICD-11 PTSD and CPTSD.