Act Of Violence Research Articles

Deciphering the Socio-Ecological Determinants of Contemporary Collective Action in China: Insights from 2010–2016 Panel Data Analysis

The current study delves into the macro-level driving forces behind collective action in contemporary China, advancing beyond the constraints of previous narrower perspectives by adopting an all-encompassing socio-ecological and cultural approach. Utilizing the CASM-China database and analyzing 2454 socio-ecological indicators, we scrutinize the incidence of conventional, disruptive, and violent collective actions, alongside 11 manually coded triggers. Furthermore, employing panel data spanning from 2010 to 2016 enhances the robustness of our predictor selection, while a principal component analysis reveals a four–factor structure. Significantly, the Modernization dimension (factor 1) predicts both conventional and violent collective actions, correlating with issues such as “education” and “homeowner/property”. The Secondary and Tertiary Industries dimension (factor 2) forecasts disruptive collective action, associated with “pension/welfare” problems. In contrast, the Primary Industry dimension (factor 3) shows a negative correlation with violent and disruptive collective actions, particularly affecting “medical dispute” issues. The Living Condition dimension (factor 4) positively correlates with conventional collective action with various social issues. These findings deepen our comprehension of the intricate interplay between socio-cultural and ecological factors and collective action in China, offering new pathways for future research.

“Todos pagan” (Everybody pays): SMEs and urban violence in Medellín, Colombia

Medellín, a bustling city of 2.5 million, is marked by convivial relations between formal and informal economic activity, and between legal and criminal actors. This article examines what this context means for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and how they respond to it. In Medellín and elsewhere, SMEs are more numerous than large firms but operate at a smaller scale. They are organizationally more informal, less mobile (i.e., more dependent on specific contexts), more accountable to customers and legal authorities, and less prominent in public debate. Their need to act collectively to counter violence may be greater than that of larger companies, yet they may also find it more challenging to organize collective action. As a result, they face possibilities that are different from those of large companies in the context of violence. The article suggests that most SMEs in Medellín have adapted to, or navigate, the multiple, intersecting layers of legality and illegality, of formality and informality, and of actual or threatened violence. Only very few respond by deliberately seeking to change the external environment. Based on a review of official documents, academic literature, and our own observations during several field trips and 39 interviews, we develop a three-part typology of SME responses to violent actors: acquiescence, avoidance, and mitigation. The implications of our findings will be relevant to managers interested in understanding business conditions in the presence of organized criminal activity and the ways in which SMEs have adapted their own practices to those conditions. The findings suggest that some SME strategies are more effective than others in supporting the survival and growth of SMEs in violent contexts. But while cooperation with illegal actors for the purpose of safeguarding economic activities may be conducive to keeping the peace and ensuring enterprise viability in the short run, it also poses challenges to outcomes that would be more beneficial to communities in the long run: empowerment, institutional strengthening, and inclusive economic development.

Exploring the Nexus: Personality Disorders and Their Impact on Violent Extremism, Radicalism, and Activism.

The escalating global concerns surrounding radicalization and violent extremism necessitate a comprehensive understanding and explanation. Identifying the risk factors associated with radicalism and violent extremism is critical to the development of risk assessment, prevention, and intervention strategies. It is imperative to distinguish these risks from civic responsibilities (i.e., activism) to safeguard individual rights. This study aims to examine the association between well-established risk factors for violence-personality disorder symptoms-and violent extremist attitudes, radicalism, and activism. Findings indicate that antisocial personality disorder symptoms were linked to violent extremist attitudes and radicalism, whereas obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms were related to activism. This suggests that obsessive-compulsive personality disorder may signify a readiness for legal and nonviolent political action; in contrast, antisocial personality disorder symptoms signify a readiness for extremist violence and illegal political action.

Online Signals of Extremist Mobilization.

Psychological theories of mobilization tend to focus on explaining people's motivations for action, rather than mobilization ("activation") processes. To investigate the online behaviors associated with mobilization, we compared the online communications data of 26 people who subsequently mobilized to right-wing extremist action and 48 people who held similar extremist views but did not mobilize (N = 119,473 social media posts). In a three-part analysis, involving content analysis (Part 1), topic modeling (Part 2), and machine learning (Part 3), we showed that communicating ideological or hateful content was not related to mobilization, but rather mobilization was positively related to talking about violent action, operational planning, and logistics. Our findings imply that to explain mobilization to extremist action, rather than the motivations for action, theories of collective action should extend beyond how individuals express grievances and anger, to how they equip themselves with the "know-how" and capability to act.

“Nothing anti-state was said”: jews and anti-semites in interwar Latvia through the eyes of the local security service, 1924–1940

ABSTRACT Since its establishment in the mid-1920s, Latvia’s national security service paid close attention to the country’s Jewish community and its haters among local nationalists. Some Jews were considered a security threat after becoming pro-Soviet communists; others boycotted German goods and defied British anti-Zionist policy, thereby de facto damaging Latvia’s foreign relations. Latvian far-right activists were deemed dangerous not only due to their preparations for an uprising but also because of their readiness to harass Jews, destabilizing the fragile ethnopolitical balance in Latvian society. The work of Latvian secret agents against these threats is described in the current article in unprecedented detail. Evidence suggests that it was quite successful and free of expressions of anti-Semitic sentiment. While preventing Jews from joining the communists and publicly protesting the anti-Jewish behaviour of Berlin and London, the Latvian security service also protected the local Jewish community from possible violent actions of homegrown Nazis.

Creepypasta and “the Fabrègues Affair”: Imitation and aggression in a recent case of youth violence

This article offers a critical analysis of “the Fabrègues Affair” (2022), a case of youth violence in which two twelve-year-old girls carried out a series of stabbings, resulting in the death of one of their fathers. What was initially viewed as a simple “family tragedy [ drame intrafamilial]” ballooned into a national conversation when the girls claimed, after their arrest, that their violent act had been inspired by “creepypasta,” crowdsourced online horror fictions and videos. While the crime, in its purported relation to digital forms of storytelling, appears eminently specific to the present moment, and while news coverage consistently emphasized the girls’ femininity and sexual orientation in an apparent attempt to further sensationalize their act, the conventional wisdom, as it appears in media coverage of the case, exposes a striking reliance among commentators on outdated psychoanalytic models that do not attend to the specificities of the moment, or to questions of gender and sexuality. This article explores how theories of the relationship between imitation and aggression have been applied in “the Fabrègues Affair” before proposing alternative feminist approaches to understanding the social phenomenon of violent behaviors among girls who appear to draw inspiration from imaginary monsters. In doing so, it aims to contribute new perspectives, drawn from feminist theory and horror studies, to girlhood and childhood studies in the contemporary French context.

Non-state armed groups as food system actors in Somalia and Haiti

ABSTRACT Violent conflict is the primary driver of food crises worldwide. However, our understanding of the specific role non-state armed groups (NSAGs) play in food systems remains incomplete. There is limited evidence on how NSAGs shape food systems, including through forms of (non-)violent regulation; where NSAGs intersect with different stages of the food value chain, beyond production alone; and comparative analysis of NSAGs across diverse contexts, security environments and food systems. This study addresses these gaps through comparative analysis of NSAG food system engagement in Haiti and South-Central Somalia, drawing on primary qualitative data. We find that i) NSAGs are active at every stage of the food system; ii) this activity is often systematic in nature; and iii) NSAG engagement shares several commonalities across Haiti and Somalia, despite very different contexts. In identifying this, we make several contributions, including advancing research on conflict and hunger to highlight precise mechanisms by which violent actors disrupt and shape food systems; and contributing to research on rebel and criminal governance by highlighting a heretofore neglected domain of armed actor governance (food systems).

Colonial enquiry, pathology and the making of the ‘Afghan crisis’ (c. 1857–1878)

ABSTRACT Two powerful and intersecting themes continue to bear on the framing of Afghanistan in international politics: Afghanistan’s rendering as a place of pathology and continuing crisis, uncertainty, and transition – and ‘our’ ability to intervene, articulate strategy (politically, militarily, economically or otherwise), or retaliate at will. Conventionally, the idea of inquiry is understood as a state-led process of investigation, often undertaken after intervention or the departure of occupying militaries. The article attempts to widen the notion of inquiry by approaching it from a historical perspective and in a historicizing manner, focusing on colonial enquiry as the making of interventionist rationales that underpinned the unleashing of colonial military violence in the service of empire in history. The paper affords colonial enquiry a place in thinking about modern, state-led, public inquiry. The article’s chronology is roughly bookended by the two Anglo-Afghan Wars of the nineteenth century (ca. 1839–1843 and 1878–1881, respectively). In the ideational build-up of imperial intervention prior to 1878, discourses of medicine in the broadest sense provided an important enrichment of the vocabulary and intellectual thought frameworks of colonial intervention. As a result, the entanglement of medicine and politics resulted in a quasi-humanitarian argument for military violence. The pathologization of Afghanistan undergirds a broader objectification of Afghanistan that is colonial enquiry. Concluding the article are sections on the manifold legacies of the Second Anglo-Afghan war and on ‘our’ approaches to inquiry.

Associations Between Perceived Threats and Firearm Behaviors Among U.S. Adults

IntroductionThe number of US adults who own and carry a firearm for self-defense is rising. Research has established that owning or carrying a firearm increases the risk of injury and death for firearm owners and the people in their lives. The present study sought to better understand this paradox by estimating associations of perceived specific and diffuse threats with firearm behaviors among US adults. MethodsThe team used data from the 2023 National Firearm Attitudes and Behaviors Study, a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of US adults. Binary and ordinal logistic regression estimated associations of perceived specific (fear of attack in the community, fear of someone breaking into the home) and diffuse threats (belief in a dangerous world) with firearm ownership and carriage frequency, overall and stratified by gender. Adjusted models controlled for violence exposures and demographic characteristics. The team conducted analyses in 2024. ResultsAmong all US adults, the perceived specific threat of someone breaking into the home was associated with firearm ownership (aORs: 1.09[0.98, 1.23]). Among firearm-owning adults, the diffuse threat of belief in a dangerous world was associated with firearm carriage frequency (1.11[0.98, 1.25]). Both associations persisted among men (aORs=1.27[1.05-1.52] and 1.15[1.01-1.31], respectively), and analyses found no associations between perceived threats and firearm behaviors among women. ConclusionsPerceived threats are associated with firearm behaviors among US men, even after accounting for the actual violence they report experiencing or witnessing.

Social Media, Psychological Distance, and Environmental Collective Action in Peru

This research aims to analyze the chain-mediated effect of the different types of psychological distances (social, temporal, spatial, and probability) and the variables of the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA) on the relationship between the use of social media and violent environmental collective action. The study sample consisted of 650 university students ( M = 20.8, SD = 2.74) aged 18–35 years from Lima. Analyses were conducted by means of structural equation modeling (SEM) using the AMOS SPSS software, where a statistical model was performed for each type of psychological distance. The findings revealed two statistically significant paths that go from social media to violent environmental collective action, mediated, first, by each of the psychological distances and, second, by social identity and negative emotions (anger and fear). In addition, it was observed that only probability distance on its own acted as a mediator in the relationship between social media and violent environmental collective action. It was also observed that a path from social media to violent environmental collective action was mediated, first, by three types of distances (probability, spatial, and temporal) and, second, by participative efficacy.

A Complete 16 μm Selected Galaxy Sample at z ∼ 1. II. Morphological Analysis

We present a morphological analysis of the 16 μm flux-density-limited galaxy sample at 0.8 < z < 1.3 from Huang et al. (2021). At the targeted redshift, the 16 μm emission corresponds to the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon feature from intense star formation, or dust heated by active galactic nuclei (AGN). Our sample of 479 galaxies are dominated by luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs; 67%) in three CANDLES fields (Extended Groth Strip, ​​​​Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey North and South fields), and are further divided into AGN-dominated, star-forming dominated, composite, and blue compact galaxies by their spectral energy distribution types. The majority of our sample (71%) have disk morphologies, with the few AGN-dominated galaxies being more bulge-dominated than the star-forming-dominated and composite galaxies. The distribution of our sample on the Gini versus M 20 plane is consistent with previous studies, where the Sérsic index n shows an increasing trend toward the smaller M 20 and higher Gini region below the dividing line for mergers. The subsample of ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) follows a steep size–mass relation that is closer to the early-type galaxies. In addition, as the 4.5 μm luminosity excess ( L4.5exc , proxy for AGN strength) increases, our sample appears to be more bulge dominated (i.e., higher n). Based on the specific star formation rate and compactness ( log10Σ1.5,Σ1.5=M*/Re1.5 ) diagram, the majority of our LIRG-dominated galaxy sample follows a secular evolution track, and their distribution can be explained without involving any merging activities. Out of the 16 ULIRGs in our sample, six are compact with strong AGN contributions, likely evolving along the fast track from more violent activities.

The Influence of Mental Health Education on Adolescents Knowledge in Preventing Bullying Based on Behavioristic Theory

Adolescence is a period that is vulnerable to experiencing negative behavior in friendships, especially at school. One of the bad behaviors that often occurs during adolescence is bullying. Bullying is a violent activity that has a negative impact, especially on mental health. To overcome the problem of bullying among teenagers, education is needed about the impact of bullying on mental health, using a behaviorist theory approach. Therefore, this research aims to determine the effect of mental health education on teenagers' knowledge of preventing bullying using a behaviorist theory approach. This research uses quantitative methods with a quasi-experimental approach and a one-group pretest-posttest design. The results of this study show that there is a significant influence of mental health educational interventions on teenagers' knowledge of preventing bullying.

ISLAMIC APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE AND EXTREMISM: CONTEXTUAL READING OF HADITHS ON THE MAHDI WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SRI LANKA

Like any other religious community, the apocalyptic literature in Muslim society has become a source of pessimism instead of optimism. The extremists who conducted a series of suicide attacks on religious places and hotels in Sri Lanka in 2019 justified their violent activities, referring to apocalyptic literature that prophesied the advance of Mahdi. These extremists misunderstood the hadiths on the Mahdi and intended to create instability in the world to accelerate his coming to resolve the present issues of Muslims. This research studied the relevant hadiths quoted by the extremists to kill innocent people and explored their meaning. The contextual analysis method has been employed to extract the meaning of these hadiths. This research shows that the extremists have misinterpreted these hadiths and used the Islamic apocalyptic literature out of context. The socio-political context of the usage of these hadiths further elaborates the change that has taken place in the understanding of their purpose throughout history. Therefore, this research recommends that Muslim religious and social leaders review interpretation traditions and educate young people to adopt socio-political and historical contexts to understand Islamic apocalyptic literature, mainly hadiths, to protect young people from extremism and radicalism.

СОЦІАЛЬНО-ПСИХОЛОГІЧНІ ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ДІТЕЙ, ПОСТРАЖДАЛИХ ВІД СІМЕЙНОГО НАСИЛЬСТВА

Purpose. The article reveals the problem of family violence in psychology and the study of socio-psychological characteristics of children affected by family violence. Methods. In order to achieve the goal, the following methods were used in the study: Lazarus coping test, personality orientation method" V. Smekala, M. Kuchera; personal questionnaire FPI (modified form B), method of diagnosis of indicators and forms of aggression by A. Bass and A. Darka; methods of mathematical statistics, in particular (determination of average values, percentage and correlation analysis, Fisher's φ-angle transformation). Results. According to the results of the interviewed teenagers using the selected methods, it was established that teenagers who have experienced family violence or witnessed it: are task- and self-oriented, in difficult life circumstances they are more likely to demonstrate coping behavior: distancing, seeking social support, and escape-avoidance; they are characterized by a high level of: neuroticism, depression, irritability, shyness, openness and emotional lability, verbal aggression, suspiciousness, offensiveness, indirect and physical aggressiveness. On the other hand, adolescents who were not subjected to illegal actions by their parents/guardians and generally did not experience any violent actions (bullying) in social groups were found to be: focused on themselves and on building interpersonal relationships; in difficult situations, they resort to confrontational coping, social support and positive reassessment of the situation; on the one hand, they are more balanced, on the other hand, they demonstrate irritability, emotional lability, negativism, irritation, suspicion, and verbal aggression. Also, a certain level of spontaneous aggressiveness, sociability, reactive aggressiveness, ambiversion and androgynous gender identity was determined in both groups of teenagers. Conclusions. Socio-psychological features of children affected by family violence are characterized by a certain connection among the interviewed teenagers. Namely, in adolescents who have experienced violence, a connection was determined: distancing with depression, escape-avoidance with neuroticism and reactive aggressiveness; self-directedness with coping seeking social support and negative association with shyness. In adolescents who did not experience violence in the family, connections were established: coping, problem solving planning with a focus on interaction, positive reevaluation with sociability; a negative relationship between the search for social support and neuroticism and depression.

ECONOMIC-INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS OF EUROPEAN REMILITARIZATION

This article is dedicated to the examination of the economic-institutional problems and prerequisites for the reconstruction of the European military-industrial complex. During the consideration of this issue, the following tasks were set and addressed: – to find out the economic factors determining the ability of European economies to provide the Ukrainian army with a sufficient amount of weapons and ammunition; – to identify barriers to capital involvement in the military-industrial complex; – to study the institutional prerequisites for changing motivations for investing in the military-industrial complex. On one hand, the remilitarization of Europe appears inevitable due to the formation of an anti-Western axis of evil, consisting of Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran. On the other hand, remilitarization for formerly pacifist Europeans is not an easy matter. We believe that the problem of remilitarization has at least three aspects: price, investment, and civilization. If we were to depict the problem of European remilitarization as an iceberg, the price aspect would be the most superficial, obvious part of the problem, while the civilization aspect would be its foundation. Price aspect: This has manifested, in particular, in the rapid increase in procurement prices for weapons. The anomaly is that even with a fourfold increase in prices, which apparently promises manufacturers profits in the hundreds (!) of percent, demand saturation through increased supply does not occur. Investment aspect: It is evident in the relatively insufficient investment activity in the European military-industrial complex compared to what it should be. The issue lies in the unacceptably high risks of possible investment projects in the defense sector, namely, the risk of a decrease in demand for manufactured goods. Considering the normal profitability of production assets in developed countries, successful remilitarization could involve guarantees of extensive and stable state purchases of weapons and ammunition from producers for the next ten to fifteen years. Civilization aspect: Maintaining consistently high demand for military goods for one to two decades requires a fundamentally different approach from European societies and states to issues of war and peace than is currently the case. It turns out that for the remilitarization of Europe, a series of colonial wars is needed. Colonialism, in any of its manifestations, involves the institutionalization of inequality between Europeans and those outside Europe. Remilitarization means that the “flower generation,” the people who tried to “love, not war,” must acknowledge their defeat, and more than half a century of conscious rejection of making military violence a significant political instrument, which has always been reckless, is regarded as a terrible mistake that must not be repeated. European elites see and understand the consequences of this choice. Therefore, we can argue that the million shells for Ukraine cost Europeans significantly more than a few pitiful billion euros. It costs dreams of humanism, of a bright communist future, dreams of a time when the bright, rational, human will ultimately overcome all that is dark, primitive, and bestial.

A Geodetically Constrained Petrogenetic Model for Evolved Lavas from the January 1997 Fissure Eruption of Kīlauea Volcano

Abstract Magmatic systems below volcanoes are often dominated by partially crystalline magma over the long term. Rejuvenation of these systems during eruptive events can impact lava composition and eruption style—sometimes resulting in more violent or explosive activity than would be expected, as was the case at Fissure 17 during Kīlauea’s 2018 eruption. Here, we explore how the crystallinity of unerupted intrusion magmas affect hybrid magma compositions and petrological signatures by constructing phase-equilibria models to evaluate mineral and melt compositions of low-MgO lavas erupted along the East Rift Zone of Kīlauea volcano on 30 to 31 January 1997 (Episode 54, Fissures A-F). We then compare calculated mixing proportions and petrologically derived magma volumes to GPS-based geodetic inversions of ground deformation and intrusion growth in an attempt to reconcile geodetic and petrologically estimated magma volumes. Open-system phase-equilibria thermodynamic models were used to constrain the composition, degree of differentiation, and thermodynamic state of a rift-stored, two pyroxene + plagioclase saturated low-MgO magma body immediately preceding its mixing with high-MgO recharge and degassed drainback (lava lake) magma from Pu‘u‘ō‘ō‘, shortly before fissure activity within Nāpau Crater began on 29 January 1997. Mixing models constructed using the Magma Chamber Simulator reproduce the mineralogy and compositions of Episode 54 lavas within uncertainties and suggest that the identity of the low-MgO magma body may be either variably differentiated remnants of un-erupted magmas intruded into Nāpau Crater in October 1968, or another spatially and compositionally similar magma body. We find that magmas derived from a single, compositionally stratified magma emplaced beneath Nāpau Crater in 1968 can mix with mafic Kīlauea magmas to reproduce average Episode 54 bulk lava, mineralogy and mineral compositions without necessitating the interaction of multiple, low-MgO rift-stored magma bodies to produce Episode 54 lava compositions. Further, by constructing phase equilibria-based mixing models of Episode 54, we can better define the pre-eruptive state of the magmatic system. The resultant mineral assemblages and compositions are consistent with the possibility that the now-fractionated, rift-stored magma body was compositionally stratified and ~ 40% to 50% crystalline at the time of mixing. Finally, we estimate the volume of the low-MgO magma body to be ~7.51 Mm3. Phase-equilibria model results corroborate field and geochemical relationships demonstrating how shallow intrusions at intraplate shield volcanoes can crystallize, evolve, and then be remobilized by new, later batches of mafic magma. Most notably, our MCS models demonstrate that the pre-eruptive conditions of an intrusive body may be recovered by examining mineral compositions within mixed lavas. Discrepancies between the geodetic constraints on volumes of stored rift versus newly intruded (recharge) magma and our best-fit results produced by MCS mixing models (which respectively are mmafic:mlow-MgO ≈ 2 vs. mmafic:mlow-MgO ≈ 0.75) are interpreted to highlight the complex nature of incomplete mixing on more localized scales as reflected in erupted lavas, compared to geodetically constrained volumes that likely reflect large spatial scale contributions to a magmatic system. These dissimilar volume relationships may also help to constrain eruptive versus unerupted volumes in magmatic systems undergoing mixing. By demonstrating the usefulness of MCS in modeling past eruptions, we highlight the potential to use it as a tool to aid in petrologic monitoring of ongoing activity.

Head Injury and Associated Sequelae in Individuals Seeking Asylum in the United States: A Retrospective Mixed-Methods Review of Medico-Legal Affidavits.

People seeking asylum are susceptible to head injury (HI) due to exposure to various forms of violence including war, torture, or interpersonal violence. Yet, the extents to which clinicians assess HI, and if so, what the associated characteristics are, are not well known. We analyzed 200 U.S.-based medico-legal affidavits using descriptive, multivariate regression, and thematic analysis. Head injury was documented in 38% of affidavits. Those who experienced physical violence were eight times likelier to experience HI than those who did not experience physical violence. Five themes emerged: (1) HI occurred commonly in the context of interpersonal violence (44%), followed by militarized violence (33%); (2) mechanisms of HI included direct blows to the head and asphyxiation, suggesting potential for both traumatic brain injury and brain injury from oxygen deprivation; (3) HI was often recurrent and concurrent with other physical injuries; (4) co-morbid psychiatric and post-concussive symptoms made it challenging to assess neurological and psychiatric etiologies; and (5) overall, there was a paucity of assessments and documentation of HI and sequelae. Among individuals assessed for asylum claims, HI is common, often recurrent, occurring in the context of interpersonal violence, and concurrent with psychological and other physical trauma. Physical violence is an important risk factor for HI, which should be assessed when physical violence is reported.

Adolescent theology trauma: exploring the relationship between traumatic experiences and juvenile delinquency in ‘the troublemaker: raise your gang’ game

ABSTRACT The gameplay of ‘The Troublemaker: Raise Your Gang’ portrays the stereotypical behavior of Indonesian adolescents, characterized by the use of profanity, violent activities, and participation in gang-related activities. The Theology of Trauma from the perspectives of Karen O'Donnell, Jennifer Baldwin, and Yohanes Krismantyo Susanta used to analyze this reality so that Christianity can view it as a theological issue that needs to be resolved. The author argues that analyzing the theology of trauma in the game Trouble Maker: Raise Your Gang will provide an unexposed perspective on the correlation of trauma experience as a trigger for juvenile delinquency. This analysis aims to assist the Church in effectively ministering to adolescents stigmatized as troublemakers.

Religious Conflict in Central African Republic

One of the challenges facing the world today is the issue of religious conflict. The consequences of the above are unimaginable for a land-locked country like Central African Republic (CAR). Conflicts there have led to the destruction of lives and properties in the last decades of the country's nationhood. There is a strong link between religion and violence, and this link has a long genealogy in Western scholarship. It is against this background that this research addresses the political and economic effects of the religious conflict in CAR. More than half of the respondents in this study agreed that the use of religion as an instrument to acquire political power led to the conflict in CAR. Since religion is a major source of soft power, it is used and misused by religious and governmental organizations to pursue their interests. Religion is not inherently violent; instead, it is how people choose to interpret religion that provides justification for violent actions. The study recommends that the government should emphasize the secularity and supremacy of the constitution and religious leaders should establish inter-faith platforms to curb religious crises.

The architecture of dispossession: On the dark side of architecture and art in transforming original spaces and displacing people

This paper interrogates and problematizes the intimate role of architecture in the dispossession and displacement of people. It explores the case of Ayn Hawd, a dispossessed Palestinian village that was transformed into an Israeli Artists colony in 1951. It found that architecture is deeply involved in executing, facilitating, legitimizing, and aestheticizing the violent act of dispossessing people. I theorize this as architecture of dispossession, a coherent aesthetic, economic, and political regime of practices, in which a social reality is manipulated and transformed spatially to construct a new, spectacular and imaginary, reality in the dispossessed space. The architecture of dispossession involves three distinct yet interrelated logics: political, economic, and aesthetic. The logic of accumulation by dispossession involves the seizure of the dispossessed’s property as assets used for the purpose of profit. It can take place in various ways, including privatization, the commodification of cultural forms, and dispossession. The logic of the exclusion of presence focuses on both the actual exclusion of a group of persons and the subjective or “existential” effects, intended or not, on the dispossessed, experienced as a loss not just of property and belonging but of their identity, form of life, or “being” as such; a kind of existential or ontological negation. Finally, an aesthetic logic of dispossession is a use of art and architecture to describe the dispossession in ways that legitimize it by representing or dissimulating it so that it can be advertised and appreciated as something more and other than the violence it involves. There is an important role for architectural criticism in showing not only that some population has been excluded, but how this is rationalized and legitimated in the ways the new forms and uses are constructed, described, represented, or advertised.