Power Violence Research Articles

Political Seductions: The Show of War in Byron's Sardanapalus

In the Preface to his play Sardanapalus (1822), Byron claims that he has tempted to preserve . . . the 'unities.'1 has done so, fully aware of the unpopularity of this notion in present English Literature. If the unities are no longer popular in England, they are still so in the more civilized parts of the world. This notion of a barbaric England constitutes a deliberate provocation in the face of frequent contemporary claims about British superiority.2 Patriots stressed that England was a free country in which benevolent monarchy had replaced the coercive violence typical of barbaric states. For many of Byron's contemporaries no state in Europe better exemplified this barbarous condition than Napoleonic France. Rejecting the patriotic view of British political benev olence, Byron claims that the British are seduced by Napoleonic barbarism and the spectacle of martial violence. Although his play is set in ancient Assyria, it references contemporary rep resentations of war, British monarchy and Napoleonic rule.3 British kings, like Byron's fictional ruler, Sardanapalus, attempt to represent themselves as be nevolent figures of the people who respect the freedoms of their subjects. But this claim to an almost democratic disposition only masks the fact that, for Byron, political seductions in England are conducted in Napoleonic and not democratic terms. If British monarchs, like Burke's feeble king in the Reflec tions, appear to hold power at the pleasure of their people, this representation is a useful ruse. For Byron, the people require a warrior leader who represents the national virility by performing acts of spectacular martial violence. Byron, more than any other writer of his time, was well acquainted with the aesthetics of violence and the importance of seduction, having created a series of heroes in his eastern tales who dazzle and enchant their followers by appearing to be endowed with a magical and explosively violent power that compels obedi ence.4 Followers accept their submission to such a leader because he appears to be the embodiment of the community's power.5 As critics have noted re cently, Byron's late writings enact a critique of the popular Byronic hero.6 Wil liam Hazlitt wrote about Byron that: He hallows in order to desecrate; takes

Toward a Broader Conceptual Framework for Research on Social Stratification, Childrearing Patterns, and Media Effects

A theoretical framework describes differences in the social distribution of family childrearing patterns as a primary component in children's preferences for violent media content as well as a component in development of knowledge gaps and citizen participation differentials. The interrelated elements include family childrearing prototypes, attachment theory, authoritarian personality theory, and Kohn's (1976, 1977) theory of childrearing values. The concept of power underlies these elements on the levels of individuals, families, and society, as operationalized in (a) the perceptions of self-efficacy or powerlessness that the attachment process fosters in children; (b) parent-child power relations; and (c) ultimately, social power. Children of parents who feel powerless and who attempt to assert power through authoritarianism often grow up to have the same sense of powerlessness and other authoritarian characteristics, and they may be especially attracted to the portrayal of violent power options in mass media and video games.

The Power of Violence in War and Peace

The Cold War sanitized the author's analysis of political violence among revolutionary peasants in El Salvador during the 1980s. A 20-year retrospective analysis of his fieldnote(s) documents the ways political terror and repression become embedded in daily interactions that normalize interpersonal brutality in a dynamic of everyday violence. Furthermore, the structural, symbolic and interpersonal violence that accompanies both revolutionary mobilization and also labor migration to the US inner city follows gendered fault lines. The snares of symbolic violence in counter-insurgency war spawn mutual recrimination and shame, obfuscating the role of an oppressive power structure. Similarly, everyday violence in a neo-liberal version of peacetime facilitates the administration of the subordination of the poor who blame themselves for character failings. Ethnography's challenge is to elucidate the causal chains and gendered linkages in the continuum of violence that buttresses inequality in the post-Cold War era.

The Child and the Beast: Fighting Violence in Ancient Christianity

Popular nature programs, such as the cable-television programWild Discovery, are both appealing and frightening because they confront the audience with acts of pure violence that follow the natural law of the jungle and the harsh imperative of nature's food chain. Viewers are enthralled watching the leopard catch its prey: such is the power of violence.

Death and transformation: The reparative power of violence in the lives of young black inner‐city gang members

This paper discusses the role of violent perpetration for transforming death anxiety in the lives of young Black inner‐city gang members. The endangerment of young Black men in the ghetto, as well as the unique feelings andfantasies which arise from such endangerment over the course of development, give rise to fervent efforts at self‐repair. Given its power to transfigure subjective life, to supplant dread, helplessness, and passivity with omnipotence and mastery, the enactment of violence can contain immense recuperative potential for the mortally vulnerable child and can, as such, be considered a potent medium of adaptation.

Terror mandated by god

Religion's renewed political presence on a global scale is often accompanied by violence ‐ in part because of the nature of religion and its claims for power over life in death; in part due to the nature of secular politics, which places its own legitimacy on the currency of weapons and can only be challenged successfully on a military level; and in part due to the nature of political violence. The symbolic power of violence can be a valuable commodity for religious as well as for political forces. Through violence, the proponents of a religious ideology like Aum Shinrikyo remind the populace of the godly power that makes their ideology potent, and at times religious activists create man‐made incidents of terror on God's behalf.

Elite transformation in central and eastern Europe

Changing configurations of national elites are shaping the prospects for democracy in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. There are three broad possibilities: (1) increasingly unchecked and violent power struggles between elites, with regimes oscillating between democratic and authoritarian forms; (2) restrained elite competitions in accordance with democratic game rules and tacit accommodations, with regimes gradually becoming stable democracies; (3) takeovers by ultra‐nationalist elites through coups or plebiscitary victories, with regimes becoming state‐corporatist in form and quasi‐fascist in operation. Crucial questions are the extent and nature of elite unity and differentiation. This article identifies elite configurations and the most likely regime outcomes in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

Violence by Municipal Police in Canada: 1977-1992

In general, three organizations of the modern state exert violent coercive power: the military, national security organizations, and various police agencies. Of all these groups, municipal police engage in the most acts of physical violence. This is largely a result of their function, which brings them into far more frequent contact with other citizens than is the case for employees of the state's other coercive agencies.Police violence has been defined in various ways. Most definitions, however, treat it as a type of misconduct and deviance. The term is used to cover a wide range of phenomena. Depending on the context, violent police behaviors are variously referred to as police abuse, brutality, extra-legal or excessive force, riots, torture, shootings, death squad activity killings and deadly force.The rest of the chapter will briefly survey the literature on the causes of police violence, examine the prevalence of police violence in Canada, review existing controls on police behavior, and make a number of recommendations for the future.

Presidential Address: Can India Be Reported? Journalists, Diplomats, and Scholars in Cross-cultural Communication

Our resources for the analysis and dissemination of information on Asia have expanded greatly since the beginning of World War II. The record reveals an astounding amount of popular and scholarly publication on almost every aspect of the continent's civilizations, with the quality rising over the decades. It is doubtful, however, that these contributions have had a meaningful impact either on public opinion or on the attitudes of those key persons who determine policy. The critical cases of China, Korea, and Indochina are the most vivid examples of recent failures in effective communication. Although in recent times no Asian country has escaped violent power struggles arising from internal or external causes, or their combined effects, in none of these conflicts has professional reporting been adequate. If readily available information and a carefully considered interpretation of that information can ameliorate conditions leading to conflict, we students of Asia, among others, cannot be proud of our achievements. The common academic response that scholarship must be disinterested and thus must bear little or no relationship to public policy is, to my mind, quite unacceptable.

The Exile's Defense: DuBellay's La Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse

Although critics have found La Deffence full of contradictions, they have not seen its conceptual and tonal shifts as defensive strategies reflecting Du Bellay’s ambivalence toward ancient literature. His filial piety conflicts with his desire to rival the ancients by achieving poetic greatness in the vernacular. His ambiguous theory of imitation shows the conflict between reverence and rivalry in its portrayal of imitation both as an organic process and as a violent power struggle in which the French poet devours or rapes ancient models. A similarly equivocal stance toward classical literary power appears in Du Bellay’s Roman sonnets, which illuminate La Deffence by defining a state of exile in which the Renaissance poet is torn between past and future, Rome and France. In La Deffence, the exile’s voice emerges as a dialogue that expresses the paradoxical desire to be both like and unlike the great classical originals.

O aparelho Saltatório do Halticíneo Homophoeta sexnotata Har. (Coleoptera)

Descreveu-se o mecanismo saltatório do Halticíneo Homophoeta sexnotata. O aparelho se encontra localizado no fêmur e consta de uma placa cuticular arqueada, em forma de S, e, de uma placa menor, triangular. Tôdas as placas representam modificações dos tendões do abdutor e flexor da tíbia e mantêm ainda ligação com os mesmos. Pela colaboração das duas placas acumula-se uma forte tensão no tendão do abdutor (músculo saltatório). A tíbia não se pode esticar pois a placa trinagular fica presa numa cavidade da parede do fêmur. Apenas no momento da maior contração do abdutor a placa curvada força a saida da placa triangular do seu ponto de apóio. Desta maneira o forte músculo abdutor da tíbia exerce tôda a sua força, de uma só vez, sôbre a articulação da mesma, dando ao Coleóptero um forte impulso para saltar. O órgão é encontrado em grande número dos Halticíneos. em homenagem ao grande entomólogo brasileiro PROF. DR. ANGELO DA COSTA LIMA dei ao órgão o nome de ÓRGÂO DE COSTA LIMA.