Production Of Violence Research Articles

Captagon and conflict: Drugs and war on the border between Jordan and Syria

ABSTRACT Captagon is an illegal amphetamine that is widely used in the Middle East. Since the civil war started in 2011, Syria has become an international hub for Captagon production. A main Captagon trafficking route runs from Syria to the Arabian peninsula via Jordan. This has caused increasing domestic consumption of Captagon in Jordan. This article asks how Captagon trafficking and use in Jordan intersects with war in Syria and its wider impact. It illustrates how drug trafficking can be the product of violence and can also become a conduit for further violence. The article firstly analyses the drugs-conflict nexus in Syria and emphasizes Captagon trafficking as a new case study to this literature. It unpacks the role of the state in the crime-conflict nexus. The second half of the article draws on critical border studies literature to illustrate how the illegal Captagon trade has increased violence by contributing to an increasingly militarized border, with significant consequences for the communities who live and work there. The study concludes by considering the implications of Captagon trafficking for peace and stability in Syria and the region.

Contestation, Governance, and the Production of Violence Against Civilians: Coercive Political Order in Rural Colombia

What explains civilian victimization during civil war? Existing scholarship claims that violence against civilians is driven primarily by competition between armed actors. We argue that this explanation neglects a crucial cause of civilian victimization: in communities they rule, armed groups employ systematic violence against civilians to establish and sustain social order. Drawing on original microlevel quantitative data from Colombia, we show that areas controlled by a sole armed actor experience high levels of victimization, while places where multiple actors jointly govern exhibit significantly less violence. To explain this pattern, we draw on evidence from original interviews, focus groups, and secondary sources. We show that armed groups employ violence to govern areas they control and enact social order. But this violence is checked when multiple groups rule jointly: the factors that sustain pacted rule disincentivize victimization. These results have implications for theories of political order, violence, and governance by non-state actors.

White Material: Ivory tiles, white womanhood, and white supremacy in Jean-Marc Vallée’s Sharp Objects

Jean-Marc Vallée’s HBO miniseries, Sharp Objects (2018), follows Camille Preaker (Amy Adams) as she returns to her childhood home in Wind Gap, Missouri, to investigate the murders of two young girls. This article explores a specific type of object related to the systems of violence that reveal themselves over the course of the miniseries: ivory tiles. Here, the ivory tiles affixed to the floor of Camille’s mother’s, Adora Crellin’s (Patricia Clarkson), master bedroom both reveal and influence sinister behaviours of the household’s women. In employing concepts inspired from Thing Theory and Object-Oriented Ontology, as well as critical theory, this article examines how the ivory tiles possess multilayered excesses that constitute an object’s thingness. The foremost excess that informs the ivory tiles’ thingness, I contend, is its relationship to white supremacy. It is not only the tiles’ material history that informs its relationship to white supremacy, but how, through outlining the forms of agency things possess under Thing Theory, the tiles are able to reveal the forms of violence that are structured within the domestic sphere of the Crellin home. A product of violence, the ivory tiles as things speak back to the design of white supremacy.

The supply side determinants of territory

This article introduces a simple application of contest theory that neatly captures how Boulding’s ‘loss of strength gradient’ determines the geographic extent of territory. We focus on the ‘supply side’ of territorial conflict, showing how the costs of initiating and escalating conflict over spatially dispersed resources shape the nature and scope of territory. We show that economies of scale in the production of violence and varying costs of projecting power at a distance combine to affect the intensive and extensive margins of conflict, and ultimately the geographic distribution of territory. Comparative statics analysis shows how the distribution of conflict and territory change as costs change, helping shed light on, for example, why new transportation technologies have historically led to a redrawing of territorial boundaries. We test and probe the boundaries of this model in two experiments varying the marginal costs of conflict over space and the fixed costs of entry. Increases in both costs interact to increase the probability of exclusive territories. The first experiment directly tests the theory in a static, one-shot setting that strictly matches the information conditions studied in the theory. The second experiment examines conflict behavior under conditions analogous to those in conflicts outside the lab: where no contestant knows the probability of winning, let alone the function determining that probability, and parties interact repeatedly. Median behavior closely tracks equilibrium predictions in all treatments.

Adolescents, poverty areas, violence, and public health: an intersectional perspective.

to discuss the influence of urban poverty on the context of violence among adolescents from an intersectional perspective. the original research, of the action research type, analyzed data from 13 workshops. The participants were adolescents from both sexes, from 15 to 17 years old, from a public school in a peripheral neighborhood of São Paulo, SP. The methodological proposition of intersectional analysis guided the interpretation of the empirical material. the intersection of class and gender may increase the (re)production of violence in some men. The intersection of race/color, social class, and territory contributes to the construction of narratives that naturalize inequality and, thus, justify discrimination. there is necessity of new public policies that consider the social contexts and experiences of the subjects that stem from the articulation of social markers.

The applicability of international humanitarian law to acts of violence perpetrated by unidentified armed individuals in the Sahel: The case of Burkina Faso

AbstractBurkina Faso has suffered attacks most often attributed to unidentified armed individuals. These attacks occur in an area which is under the influence of terrorist groups as well as criminal groups. Instability does not stem from a prior armed conflict, but from a continuous deterioration resulting from unclaimed attacks. The challenge then is to know whether international humanitarian law (IHL) can apply in a context where the perpetrators of violence are not identified. This requires visiting the conditions of applicability of IHL in non-international armed conflict to assess their relevance in a context of production of violence without identification of the perpetrators.

“The carnage in the woods”: Queerness and Interspecies Violence in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy

ABSTRACT Considerations of the queer thematics of McCarthy's work remain scant, and interpretations of the novels of the Border Trilogy—All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain—commonly elide the presence of queer affect. At the same time, theorizations of violence in McCarthy's novels are abundant. Through reading interspecies violence as an expression of queer desire, this article exposes the centrality of queerness to the function and production of violence in the Border Trilogy. I contend that the queer presences in the Border Trilogy produce new insights into our reading of interspecies violence and creates nuance in our understanding of the relationship between transgressive desire and violence in McCarthy's wider corpus.

Remendar lo social: Espíritus testimoniantes, árboles dolidos y otras epistemologías del dolor en Colombia

Este texto explora, en el marco de un proceso de restitución de tierras en Colombia2, la importancia que el vínculo con los antepasados (con los “espíritus”, con los “invisibles”, o con “lo fantasmal”, en tanto entidades actuantes) tiene para remendar lo social -es decir, para reconocer corporalmente el territorio/cuerpo dañado por la violencia, para retornar a los espacios del terror y la desaparición y para rehabitar la fractura producto de la violencia-. Se sitúa concretamente en el Caribe Colombiano, alrededor del trabajo de una red donde participan miembros, hombres y mujeres de organizaciones afrocolombianas, raizales, campesinas e indígenas regionales. En su momento, una red de apoyo y acompañamiento colectivo que surge como parte de un proceso de cuidado mutuo de sus integrantes en tiempos de desplazamientos forzados y amenazas, hace dos décadas.

Социальные практики конфуцианства начала ХХ в.: Кан Ю-вэй и «Небесный народ». Кан Ю-вэй. Книга о Великом единении (Да тун шу). Из части 6. Уничтожение границ семьи и создание «Небесного народа». Пер. с китайского и прим. Д.Е. Мартынова.

Readers are invited to the first Russian translation of extracts from the first chap­ter of the sixth part Datong shu(“The Book of the Great Unity”) by Kang Youwei (1858–1927). Kang Youwei proposed an original project for the radical liberation of humanity, in which the traditional mechanisms of family, marriage and gender inequality and coercion will be eliminated, and the state will take care of each person at every stage of his life. Kang Youwei adhered to the view that the main goal of a person's life is to achieve a state of happiness and satisfy all emerging needs. Congenital hedonism is in conflict with the need to reproduce. According to Kang Youwei, the institution of the family was created in ancient times and is the product of violence and suppression. In the future, free partnership will be re­lieved of the burdens of raising and educating future generations.

Class struggle and the spatial politics of violence: The picket line in 1970s Britain

The late 1960s to the mid‐1980s in Britain was a period of intense industrial struggle, with strike levels at their highest since the 1920s. Concerns surrounding trade union power became central to broader anxieties about British “decline” and “crisis.” These issues took a spatial form in conflicts around the nature of the picket line. This paper discusses the picket line in 1970s Britain in the context of recent debates on the geographies of violence, particularly in relation to questions of class and property, and the mutually constitutive temporalities of structural and direct violence. Rather than focusing on the diffuse processes of an abstract capitalism, I argue for greater attention to be paid to class conflict in shaping experiences and epistemologies of violence. This paper therefore places more emphasis on agency in the production of violence than has been prevalent in recent debates in geography. Drawing on extensive archival research, the paper focuses on three key disputes in this period. Building on work in labour geography, it explores how the assertive working‐class presence of mass pickets were portrayed as violent through an account of the miners' strike in 1972. It then considers a similar process in relation to flying pickets during the 1972 builders' dispute, emphasising the threat of a politicised working‐class mobility. Finally, the paper considers the coercive state response in the violent policing of the picket line during the 1976–8 Grunwick dispute. The radical right‐wing project of neoliberalism emerged in part as a solution to the perceived threat of the labour movement; critical to its success and consolidation was challenging the “enemy within” of militant trade unionism. These violent class struggles around picketing in the 1970s, I argue, are crucial for understanding the long‐term, structural violence of neoliberalism.

Myanmar’s military and the garrison state: State-military relations in Myanmar and their influence in the [re]production of violence against minorities

The article examines the relationship between the state and military in Myanmar to understand the country’s policies regarding persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in the context of the Rohingya population of Arakan. The article applies the idea of the garrison state, a concept originally developed by Harold J Lasswell. It applies a process-tracing approach to understand the relations between the state and military of Myanmar, by examining primary documents and secondary literature on the subject. The article argues that Myanmar is a state which is compulsively concerned about perceived threats to its sovereignty. This real or imagined anxiety translates into cultural, social and economic attributes, and its policies to [re]produce violence against the Rohingya minorities of Arakan. These features endorse the idea that militarism is habitually developed by a garrison state, such as Myanmar, which is reflected in the policies of citizenship and the construction of minorities. Therefore, violence becomes a continuous tool that is applied by the state, particularly against the peripheral minorities and other marginalised groups.

Quello che le mapp (non) dicono. Uno sguardo ai metodi geografici per lo studio della violenza del territorio

The phenomenon of violence, in some specific forms and modalities, requires a contextualized territorial study that can reveal the spatial distribution, the functioning, the relationships between the actors involved, being the State, parastatals and extrastatal actors. Starting from a critical review of geographical research methods, which include territorial analysis, context analysis and geospatial analysis, I discuss the relationships that weave the map of production and reproduction of patriarchal and mafia violence as a means and end of the exercise of political power in the territory. Maps are a political-aesthetic tool historically used to create the world and its relationships, rather than 'simply' representing it. In the official speech, the nation-state has built organized crime as a territorial competitor, a 'parallel' actor-association that challenges the monopoly of violence: a discourse that is geo-graphically converted, in the Mexican case, as a reworking of administrative units local with borders -polygons, in cartography- of the so-called cartels. What are the problems of this reading, of this point of view? How does geography, and the methodology that suggests, contribute to critically address the responsibilities of the narrative and material (re)production of violence? The (re)production the map of actors involved in violent phenomena?

Crimmigration, imprisonment and racist violence: Narratives of people seeking asylum in Great Britain

The past five decades have witnessed a dramatic growth in immigration controls. The external controls have expanded, but at the same time, there has been a proliferation of internal control measures. The British state has increasingly resorted to using penal machinery to punish people who violate immigration laws. Individuals can now be prosecuted under the criminal law and receive custodial sentences for immigration crimes. This article draws upon narratives, interviews and experiences of asylum seekers who were imprisoned for such crimes, in order to understand how their trauma is exacerbated and ways in which injuries are strategically and deliberately inflicted by the state and built within legal and policy frameworks. It draws attention to the racist nature of the crimmigration system and production of violence.

No Safe Space: Neoliberalism and the Production of Violence in the Lives of Central American Migrants

AbstractThis paper explores the ways in which neoliberal policies enacted by elites across the Northern Triangle have led to increased violence in Central America, a lived experience that continues as individuals migrate to Mexico and the United States. In this work, I examine how neoliberal polices in the region have created limited economic opportunities and means of subsistence for the poor in Central America, as well as the rise of extra-legal actors and criminal enterprises. Together these conditions leave Central Americans with no choice but to migrate north. This paper then explores the violence migrants experience as they move through Mexico. In this stage of the journey, migrant bodies are objectified and then commodified as cheap labor for the global market as well as local economies of violence. Lastly, I discuss the multiple zones of violence that migrants experience at Mexico's border with the United States. This project relies on in-depth, semi-structured interviews (n= 99) with Central American migrants over the course of 4 years (2014–18). Ultimately, I find that for Central American migrants, violence can be a seemingly inescapable reality as neoliberal forces maintain and normalize violence in order to preserve an established social order at the expense of these migrants.

Teachers as informants: countering extremism and promoting violence

ABSTRACT This article is a response to Muslim students reporting that they had been silenced by fear of the PREVENT Counter-Terrorism Strategy. By adopting a Critical Realist stance, real generative mechanisms of this actual phenomenon are investigated and theorised. Recognition of changing definitions of both ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ in different versions of PREVENT results in the discursive aspect of these real generative mechanisms being investigated using critical discourse analysis (CDA). This analysis identifies the emergence of a violent discourse of ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ (RadEx) that it is theorised has the capacity to promote rather than prevent violence. Finally, a process by which this production of violence in the classroom might have been avoided is explored and this indicates that critique of government efforts to counter ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ is a vital aspect of pedagogy in the context of PREVENT and the War on Terror.

"Confesar o morir": Faith and Ocular Proof in the Silk Merchant Episode (I.4) of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha

The world that Don Quijote attempts to navigate in the Ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha is one in which vows are flawed, unsustainable, or completely absent, and where the dastardly effects of broken vows become both the cause and the product of violence. Chapter 4, with its incisive portrayal of the protagonist's systematic misunderstanding of promises and antipathy towards ocular proof, offers an early example of the Quijote's continual representation of the fallibility of vows and Don Quijote's attempts to overcome or overlook them. In particular, the silk merchant episode in the second half of the chapter engages questions exploring the foundation of faith. This episode dramatizes Don Quijote's problematic assumption that his chivalric code is one that all others must obey, while charting the etiology of violence associated with demanding visual evidence and exacting pledges of faith in the Quijote.

The Logic of Insurgent Electoral Violence

Competitive elections are essential to establishing the political legitimacy of democratizing regimes. We argue that insurgents undermine the state’s mandate through electoral violence. We study insurgent violence during elections using newly declassified microdata on the conflict in Afghanistan. Our data track insurgent activity by hour to within meters of attack locations. Our results suggest that insurgents carefully calibrate their production of violence during elections to avoid harming civilians. Leveraging a novel instrumental variables approach, we find that violence depresses voting. Collectively, the results suggest insurgents try to depress turnout while avoiding backlash from harming civilians. Counterfactual exercises provide potentially actionable insights for safeguarding at-risk elections and enhancing electoral legitimacy in emerging democracies. (JEL D72, D74, O17)

The Supply Side Determinants of Territory and Conflict

This paper introduces a simple application of contest theory that neatly captures how Boulding’s “Loss of Strength Gradient” determines the geographic extent of territory. We focus on the “supply side” of territorial conflict, showing how the costs of initiating and escalating conflict over spatially dispersed resources shape the nature and scope of territory. We show that economies of scale in the production of violence and varying costs of projecting power at a distance combine to affect the intensive and extensive margins of conflict, and ultimately the geographic distribution of territory. Comparative statics analysis shows how the distribution of conflict and territory change as costs change, helping shed light on, e.g., why new transportation technologies have historically led to a redrawing of territorial boundaries. We test and probe the boundaries of this model in two experiments varying the marginal costs of conflict over space and the fixed costs of entry. Increases in both costs interact to increase the probability of exclusive territories. The first experiment directly tests the theory in a static, one-shot setting that strictly matches the information conditions studied in the theory. The second experiment examines conflict behavior under conditions analogous to those in conflicts outside the lab: where no contestant knows the probability of winning, let alone the function determining that probability, and parties interact repeatedly. Median behavior closely tracks equilibrium predictions in all treatments.

Professores e Alunos: o engendramento da violência da escola

Resumo: Analisa-se o engendramento de uma face da violência da escola, tendo em vista a produção da violência em espaço escolar. Pesquisa bibliográfica quanti-qualitativa. Fontes: 77 dissertações e 15 teses produzidas no Brasil (2007 a 2012). Coleta e organização dos dados: Análise de Conteúdo. Fundamentação base: Bernard Charlot e Pierre Bourdieu. Resultados: as fontes apontaram que professores brasileiros são protagonistas na constituição da violência da escola, contribuindo para a produção da violência em espaço escolar. Os alunos são as principais vítimas dessa violência. O professor sofre menos violência física e verbal do que o aluno. A violência simbólica é a mais usada pelo professor contra o aluno. A escola também usa desse expediente.

Genocide Discourses: American and Russian Strategic Narratives of Conflict in Iraq and Ukraine

This paper presents the concept of “genocide discourses”, defined as a type of strategic narrative that shapes the way individuals and groups position themselves and others and act, playing a critical role in the production of violence and efforts to reduce it. Genocide discourses tend to present genocide as fundamentally a-political, and hold that genocidal systems are dislodged only when they are swept away through external violence. Secondly, genocide discourses are built on an assumption that the victims of genocide are necessarily moral innocents, not parties in conflict. These two factors make genocide discourses highly effective in conferring moral capital upon certain actors in a conflict. The two principles converge to produce strategic narratives that direct political and military actions in certain ways in the context of contentious conflicts and political violence, motivating humanitarian responses in defense of certain groups, or sustaining popular support for foreign wars. The paper illustrates the argument by examining two case studies between 2014 and 2017: the debates in the United States over Islamic State genocides, and the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.