History Of Violence Research Articles

Welcome Home, Yukun: A Family’s Spiritual and Emotional Healing Through the Repatriation of Their Ancestor

ABSTRACT The repatriation of human remains has gained significant momentum in recent decades; however, little attention has been given to the experiences of recipient groups through these repatriations. This paper is centred on Central Australia, where repatriations have become a regular occurrence against a backdrop of strong social and racial tensions. These tensions wax and wane, lessening around regular cultural events and heightening with the summer heat and the strain of frequent sorry business (mourning). In this context, this paper follows the repatriation of an Anangu man, Yukun, to his close family who reburied him at Uluru in October 2022. The land council anthropologist who mediated the repatriation wrote this piece collaboratively with two senior descendants of Yukun. In 1934, police officer Bill McKinnon unjustifiably killed Yukun. Without the community’s knowledge, his remains were later exhumed during a Commonwealth Inquiry. Yukun’s death was well-known to Anangu and well-documented; his repatriation has not been examined in the same depth. Throughout the truth-telling process, the family was confronted with acts of historical violence, but this culminated in Yukun being finally laid to rest. This paper explores how processing this information conveyed emotional challenges that ultimately resulted in the family finding closure. The reburial enabled the constructive reintegration of Yukun into their lives. Finally, this paper considers the role of the anthropologist in supporting the family or community throughout the process. The aim of this is to provide insights encouraging a more humane approach which prioritises the recipients’ emotional needs in reconciling past injustices.

Impact of Trauma on the Lives of Black Men With Multiple Arrests

A mixed-methods study was carried out to better characterize the life course experiences, with a focus on trauma, of men who had perpetrated gun violence and other violent crime, and who had multiple arrests and incarcerations. A small sample of 13 men with a history of a minimum of 12 arrests each as well as histories of gun violence, other violent crime, and incarceration was drawn from a social program providing cognitive therapy and job skills training in a major urban center. Participants completed the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist for DSM-5 and completed an in-depth interview. Results demonstrated that the participants had extraordinarily significant levels of trauma exposure but that they had minimal avowed trauma symptoms. The exception is that every participant demonstrated a clinically relevant score on the Arousal subscale (Criterion E). Participants in interviews discussed a number of characteristics of their developmental years. They described near constant exposure to traumatic events, in some cases starting from very young ages. Most participants described a personal experience of numbing or desensitization to their experiences. They described the impact of gangs on both protecting them from trauma and exposing them to trauma, and they described their subsequent experiences of incarceration. They offered recommendations for strategies to minimize violent crime in communities.

Family: cornerstone for young people to be victims of violence in the university stage

Abstract Introduction Violence is a pervasive issue that wreaks havoc within communities, with the family serving as a cornerstone for the development of individuals, thereby influencing their behavior within society. Objectives To determine the association between a history of family violence and being a victim of violence among university students. Methodology This is a cross-sectional, prospective study that included university students of both sexes. Family function was measured using the Family APGAR test, while the dependent variable was experiencing any type of violence during the university stage. Results A total of 1148 participants were included, with an average age of 20.47 (±3.3) years, 63.9% were women, 94.9% were cisgender, and 77.3% were heterosexual; 45.3% of participants identified with family dysfunction, 45.3% had witnessed a violent act in their family, and 46% of participants experienced violence at university. When evaluating factors associated with experiencing violence, a positive association (OR/CI95%) was identified for attending a private school (1.4/1.1-1.9), alcohol consumption (2.4/1.7-3.5), having family disfunction (1.5/1.2-1.9) living in a family with violence (2.3/1.8-2.9), knowing friends who experienced partner violence (2.1/1.6-2.7) or family violence (1.9/1.4-2.5). Conversely, a negative association was found for being heterosexual (0.6/0.4-0.8), never witnessing sexual (0.3-0.2-2.5), physical (0.5/0.4-0.65), or psychological (0.3/0.2-0.4) violence in the family, nor experiencing violence during childhood (0.4/0.3-0.5), middle school (0.4/0.3-0.5), or high school (0.4/0.3-0.5) (p < 0.001), likewise, not exercising physical, psychological, sexual, digital or other types of violence during college presents OR = 0 (p < 0.001) in each of these items. Conclusions The social environment, alcohol consumption, a history of witnessing violence in family and friends, as well as the perpetration of violence are associated with receiving violence. Key messages • Evidence indicates the importance of the family for the development of its members, since, just by witnessing behaviors, they favor the development of social roles. • The first contact physician must return to his essence, focusing on the care of the patient in a comprehensive manner, including the environment in which he develops.

Literary form and historicised relationality: theorising the city as text in Teju Cole’s novels

ABSTRACT This essay explores the representation and theorisation of the city in Teju Cole’s novels – Every Day Is for the Thief (2007), Open City (2011), and Tremor (2023). It argues that Cole’s writing articulates a new grammar of city-ness premised on historicised relationality and comparative thinking, thus challenging paradigms of urban representation that universalise the Western city. In particular, I propose that Cole’s novels offer a rewriting of Lagos and New York as specifically textual constructions, in which histories of modernity and colonisation get crystallised into their social geographies and cultural infrastructures. By close reading these texts and by drawing from the insights of postcolonial and literary urban studies, I analyse the formal devices – from variations in perspective to restricted focalisation – that Cole employs to textualise the city and its political histories. Through form, Cole’s novels raise crucial questions, both ethical and narrative, about representability, language, and historical violence in urban settings.

Settler militarism: Affective colonial pursuits and the militarized atmosphere of war commemoration

This article examines settler militarism and how it is mobilized through affective practices that ultimately bolster the settler colonial project. With this intent, it develops the concept of ‘militarized atmosphere’ defined as a staged environment where war is positioned outside politics and critical scrutiny through a series of affective manoeuvres and aesthetics. A militarized atmosphere operates through military aesthetics to attune people’s bodies to a position of uncritical validation of a given discourse of war. This article argues that a militarized atmosphere crucially sustains the settler colonial project by removing or reducing contestation around the theme of war, which is a pillar of settler colonialism. In settler societies, numerous Indigenous individuals perceive themselves as embattled and seek acknowledgement of the history and legacy of colonial violence and warfare. In contrast, settler governments have a vested interest in concealing this history and its enduring legacy, and they do so by exalting military warfare as the foundation of the modern nation and creating affective attachments to the military. The article uses the case of Australia to elucidate the argument. It examines how the aesthetics of war commemoration at the Dawn Service, Australia’s major commemorative event, contributes to producing a militarized atmosphere that sustains the Australian settler colonial project. It proposes a framework that links the feminist concept of affective militarism to settler colonialism and contributes to the emerging literature on settler colonialism and militarism.

Eutrophicated: Tracking colonial histories of phosphate matter and the Plantationocene inheritances of the River Wye

This article examines the River Wye in the southwest UK as a political ecology marked by relations of colonial inheritance. A controversial case of contemporary British river pollution, the Wye is suffering from increasingly dramatic eutrophication events, with nutrient pollution from mineral phosphate fertilisers used in industrial agriculture causing algal blooms that destroy the river's ecology. This paper complicates dominant framings of the Wye's eutrophication as a local event and future crisis, instead arguing that eutrophication is structured by over a century of colonial histories of phosphate. Motivated by recent debates in geography and other cognate disciplines on decolonial ecology and the Plantationocene that point to the colonial origins of ecological crisis, this paper develops a theoretical framework of inheritance/transmission to articulate the situated histories of violence and dispossession shaping phosphate matter. It then empirically tracks the phosphate inheritances of the Wye by analysing the archives of the British Phosphate Commissioners (1873–1983), a 20th century governmental company that procured fertiliser for the British Empire by intensively mining phosphates on the Pacific Islands of Nauru and Banaba. Through this archive emerges a history in which, on a national and local level, the Wye is connected to the people, corporations, and institutions responsible for the emergence of the mineral phosphates industry that has spread ecological devastation across the globe. Through theoretically and empirically examining the Wye's phosphate inheritances, this paper foregrounds ethical obligations to think systematically and historically about phosphates as a prerequisite for bringing about deep structural changes needed to repair phosphate's harms.

Sexual Victimization History and Emotion Regulation in Daily Life: A Role for Stress Sensitization.

Relative to other types of traumatic experiences, a lifetime history of sexual violence (SV) has been linked with more persistent and severe mental health outcomes, but the reasons for this discrepancy have not been clearly established. Stress sensitization, or the amplification of responses to daily stressors as a function of trauma history, offers one possible explanation. Using ecological momentary assessment, the current study tested stress sensitization effects in daily life for individuals with a history of SV, focusing on emotion regulation as an outcome. Smartphone surveys were delivered four times per day over a 2-week period to assess relationships between prior SV exposure, daily stressors, and emotion regulation in an undergraduate sample (N = 122). As expected, individuals with lifetime exposure to SV evidenced increased emotion dysregulation and maladaptive emotion regulation in response to daily stressors relative to nonexposed peers, even after accounting for cumulative trauma. However, the SV and non-SV groups did not differ significantly on state adaptive emotion regulation. Instead, experiencing daily stressors was associated with increased adaptive emotion regulation for individuals in both groups. Broadly, results suggest that SV is uniquely associated with increased sensitivity to daily stressors, manifested as emotion dysregulation and use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies to regulate emotions. These findings are consistent with emerging research on the neurobiology of trauma and with an emphasis on emotion regulation skills in leading interventions for SV-exposed individuals. Stress sensitization warrants additional attention as a factor linking SV and mental health problems.

Political organization and gender predict violence in the Andean archaeological record

The relationship between sociopolitical organization and violence remains an enduring question in anthropological research. Less studied is the articulation of gender with violence in societies of different sociopolitical organization. We investigate the frequency and type of violence experienced by adult males and females in pre-Hispanic Andean archaeological contexts, comparing exposure to antemortem (nonlethal) and perimortem (potentially lethal) violence across three categories of sociopolitical organization: autonomous communities, regional cultural formations, and states. Using a database of 8,607 adults from 169 publications and over 155 sites, we construct a multinomial logistic regression using Bayesian Hamiltonian Monte Carlo methods to fit our model. The odds of antemortem and perimortem trauma were low for both sexes. However, the odds of antemortem trauma were consistently higher for males than females in all categories of sociopolitical organization, suggesting that men were more frequently exposed to violence. Males display similar odds of cranial trauma across all forms of sociopolitical organization, while females display slightly reduced odds of cranial trauma in states compared to autonomous communities. Perimortem trauma is especially strongly patterned by sex. In autonomous communities, the odds of potentially lethal cranial trauma are equivalent between the sexes; in states, they are consistent for males, but depressed for females. In the pre-Hispanic Andes, living in states dramatically reduced the chances of encountering lethal violence for females, but not males. Our study complicates the notion that increasing sociopolitical complexity leads to decreasing interpersonal violence and highlights the importance of gender in understanding the human history of violence.

Perceived Ethnic Discrimination Scale: Research Progress on Ethnic Discrimination with Urban Mapuche Youth in Chile

The present study is framed in the context of historical violence in the central-south zone of our country, as a result of the conflict between the State, the Chilean society and the Mapuche people. The study presents an advance of a larger research, which aims to contribute to the understanding of the impact on mental and physical health of ethnic discrimination in Mapuche and non-Mapuche young people, high school and college students, who live in urban areas of the Metropolitan, Biobío and Araucanía regions. This paper shows the preliminary results obtained from the validation of a scale of perceived ethnic discrimination, which was obtained with the participation of 246 young students, who declared to be part of the Mapuche people. The findings suggest schools and justice centers are the places where the highest level of discrimination is perceived.

The Role of Shame in Associations with PTSD and Depression Symptoms and Hazardous Drinking Among Bisexual Women Who Experienced Sexual Violence

ABSTRACT Bisexual (i.e. those with attraction to multiple genders) women experience disparities in sexual violence and mental health outcomes, including PTSD, depression, and hazardous drinking, compared to lesbian and heterosexual women. Unique stigma due to bisexual identity (antibisexual stigma), negative reactions to sexual violence (SV) disclosure (e.g. victim blaming), and prior child sexual abuse (CSA) may all contribute to shame. We tested whether shame explained the associations of antibisexual stigma, negative reactions to SV disclosure, and CSA severity with PTSD symptoms, depression, and hazardous drinking among young bisexual women. Participants who self-identified as bisexual women, between the ages of 18–35, residing in the US were recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and completed online questionnaires. Women who reported SV since age 18 that they disclosed to someone were included in the current study, yielding a sample of 156 bisexual women (Mage = 25.7; 98.1% cisgender, 86.5% White). Path analysis with bias-corrected bootstrapping was conducted. There were significant direct effects of negative reactions on hazardous drinking and CSA on PTSD, and direct effects of shame on PTSD and depression symptoms. Shame explained the associations of antibisexual stigma, negative reactions, and CSA with PTSD symptoms, depression symptoms, and hazardous drinking. Shame may explain why stigmatizing experiences related to bisexual identity, sexual violence, and CSA history relate to distress among bisexual women. Shame is an important treatment target among bisexual survivors of SV.

Asymmetrische Gegenbegriffe in Laktanz’ ‚Politischer Theologie‘

Abstract Lactantius’ theology is a ‚political theology‘ containing numerous asymmetrical counter-concepts. These are used to establish contradictory group constellations in whose negative part the negative others – the ‚out-group‘ – cannot necessarily recognise themselves. Among these counter-concepts, the moral-anthropological opposition of ‚the good‘ (boni) and ‚the evil‘ (mali) is of particular importance. Lactantius’ counter-concepts are politicised because they convey extremely polarised determinations of the degree of association and dissociation of human beings. These counter-concepts are also religious, because they are related to aspects of salvation history, natural law, soteriology, and eschatology. Due to their references to salvation history, Lactantius’ political group terminologies fit into the history of the radicalisation of asymmetrical counter-concepts, which stretches from antiquity to modernity and was identified by Reinhart Koselleck. Lactantius’ ‘political theology’, however, plays a special role in this history of radicalisation and violence, because, on the one hand, it marks the point at which distinctive political semantics became theologically charged. On the other hand, Lactantius did not unchain the potential for violence that was inherent in the counter-concepts. Therefore, his ‘political theology’ did not contain any praxeology or justification of violence from the Christian side.

When I say … haunted curriculum.

As medical and health professions education (HPE) fields shift towards frameworks of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI), there has been an increased focus on addressing the environments of learning to understand hierarchies of power and create better learning experiences for students who have historically been marginalised in these fields. We propose the haunted curriculum as an evocative conceptual framing to engage with the aspects of medical and HPE that are toxic and troubling to learners and to understand how violent histories continue to loom large and permeate the present. The haunted curriculum examines how forms of oppression and injustice, such as racism and ableism, are always ever-present and often arise in unexpected ways during training. The haunted curriculum also helps to uncover how environments of training and professionalisation may themselves inflict these forms of oppression and injustice and may be ideal spaces to counter them.

Queer Narratives and Colonial Injustice: Tropical Landscape in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

This paper explores the intersection of colonialism, masculinity, and queerness in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Through a decolonial lens, it examines how Díaz critiques the lingering effects of colonialism and dictatorship on Dominican identity, particularly through the ‘fukú’ curse—a symbol of intergenerational trauma. The paper argues that the queering of heterosexuality in the novel challenges rigid gender norms, where Oscar’s nonconformity and Yunior’s conflicted hypermasculinity expose the limitations of Dominican masculinity shaped by colonial rule. Set against the backdrop of the Dominican Republic’s tropical landscapes and violent history, Oscar’s and Yunior’s narratives highlight the broader struggle between individual authenticity and societal conformity. Díaz’s use of magical realism and transcultural storytelling amplifies this decolonial critique, revealing how colonial legacies continue to shape gender and identity in the post-colonial world. By analyzing the characters’ resistance to heteronormative pressures and their individual journeys, the paper situates The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao as a significant exploration of queering as a form of decolonial resistance, reconsidering the lasting impact of colonial oppression on cultural and gender identities.

Clinical and Legal Considerations When Optimizing Trauma Narratives in Immigration Law Evaluations.

Asylum seekers in the United States face complex legal processes that require the construction of coherent and credible narratives to establish eligibility for legal status or immigration relief. In this article, we review clinical and legal considerations involved in optimizing trauma narratives in forensic psychiatric evaluations for immigration courts. We highlight significant challenges faced by asylum seekers, including the emotional impact of trauma and cultural factors affecting their ability to disclose their experiences, including the roles of symptoms and cultural and situational elements in disclosure and narrative development. We emphasize the importance of creating a therapeutic and empathetic environment to facilitate disclosure and partnering with interpreters across multiple culturally sensitive evaluations. We address the roles of common traumatic stressors in narrative development, including cultural challenges related to histories of torture, abduction, sexual violence, and human trafficking prevalent among asylum seekers, providing insights and guidance on each. Further, we address specific potential challenges to the forensic psychiatric evaluator during the narrative development process, such as transference, countertransference, malingering, and vicarious traumatization. We aim to provide guidance on the development of trauma narratives of asylees developed for both therapeutic and medico-legal effectiveness.

‘Inhospitable it would be’: rivers of unbelonging in Willie Doherty’s Secretion

ABSTRACT In Ghost Story and Secretion, the Northern Irish artist Willie Doherty depicts landscape as haunted. Both films register the presence of ghosts through a malodorous ooze: a residue of repressed secrets whose return disturbs the living. These miasmic flows literalize the seepage between ‘concentrationary histories': the interrelation between particular histories of institutional violence. Doherty's haunted topographies explicitly connect the Breitenau and Dachau camps with Northern Ireland's Troubles and Abu Ghraib. Haunting, understood here through the uncanny, and Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok's theory of encryption, embodies concentrationary memory's focus on narrating the seepage between histories and the camp’s continued threat.

Uptake of gynecological consultation following domestic or sexual violence: A case-control study in the context of induced abortion

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of domestic and sexual violence and to characterize the association between exposure to domestic and sexual violence and low uptake of gynecological care, in the context of induced abortion.Study design.We conducted a case-control study among women seeking abortion care, in mother and child centers and sexual health centers in the Paris, France area (April 2022-March 2023). ResultsA total of 103 women were included in the study during induced abortion care. Physical, psychological or sexual domestic violence was reported by 48.5 % and sexual violence, whoever the perpetrator, was reported by 23.3 %. In the bivariate analysis, a history of physical, psychological or sexual domestic violence was not associated with the absence of a gynecological consultation in the past two years, compared with no history of intimate partner violence (p = 0.09). After adjustment for regular pelvic pain, dysmenorrhea, vulvodynia and dyspareunia, there was no association between a history of sexual violence and the absence of a gynecological consultation in the past two years (OR 1.05; CI95% 0.27–4.13, p = 0.93). ConclusionViolence was a common finding among women seeking abortion care. We did not find any association between a history of sexual violence and the absence of a gynecological consultation in the past two years. We suggest investigating multiple or frequent use of gynecological care following violence. The combination of ethical, moral, and psychological constraints associated with violence screening and abortion care is a challenge to patient recruitment in future studies.

Demanding Images and Memories of Colonial Violence in Tanzania

This article analyses the complex histories and contemporary uses of a colonial-era photograph of Nduna Songea Mbano Lwafu, a sub-chief in Tanzania, taken before his execution during the Majimaji War (1904–1908). The photograph, initially used for colonial anthropological purposes, has been repurposed in postcolonial Tanzania to memorialise and honour national heroes. The study traces the photograph’s journey from its creation by German colonial forces to its current role in Tanzanian museums, textbooks and artistic expressions. By analysing its use in various contexts, the article addresses the broader implications of addressing colonial visual materials that resonate with violent histories. The article highlights how the photograph’s materiality allowed it to be transformed and reinterpreted in Tanzanian cultural forms such as carvings, sculptures and calendars. It discusses the methodological approach of using oral history to provide context to the photograph, underscoring the importance of understanding the colonial violence that accompanied its creation. The article argues for the need to critically engage with colonial photographs to prevent the erasure or misrepresentation of historical figures and events. Through this case study, the article contributes to broader discussions on the politics of memory, the decolonisation of visual archives and the dynamic nature of photographic meanings in postcolonial settings.

Accessing Trauma- and Violence-Informed Breastfeeding Support from Primary Care Providers among Women with Histories of Intimate Partner Violence: An Exploratory Interpretive Description Study.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a wicked social problem affecting women of all social strata and geographical location, globally. Pregnancy may be a time of heightened risk of IPV and more deleterious outcomes. Breastfeeding - a protective factor for maternal and child well-being - may be jeopardized or more challenging for women experiencing IPV. This study explored the experiences of postpartum women with histories of IPV who sought trauma- and violence-informed breastfeeding support from primary care providers. Using interpretive description and philosophically underpinned by intersectionality, in-depth semi-structured interviews were completed at 12-weeks postpartum with five breastfeeding mothers with a history of IPV who sought breastfeeding support from a family physician clinic employing a trauma- and violence-informed (TVIC) model of care. Four themes and two sub-themes shed light onto the experience of accessing breastfeeding support for women with a history of IPV and the perceived barriers that they faced when attempting to accesses this support, including: 1) The (demoralizing) navigation of the perinatal system; 2) Fostering trust: i) "It's support, but it's also knowledge"; and ii) TVIC: feeling safe and feeling "I mattered"; 3) Informal support: partners, family, and friends; and 4) Baby in focus: overcoming challenges and building confidence. TVIC may aid in the development of trusting therapeutic relationships, in turn improving access to breastfeeding support, breastfeeding self-efficacy, and breastfeeding success for women who experience violence. Further research on the implementation and evaluation of TVIC for perinatal breastfeeding education and care among women is required.

A Case Study of a Juvenile Offender's Antisocial Actions and Criminal Aspirations

This case study delves into the aggressive conduct and criminal goals of Master B, a 15-year- old adolescent who has been detained in a juvenile facility for five months on murder accusations related to a family property dispute. Master B testifies to deliberately killing another individual 16 times in retribution, motivated by strong resentment and family loyalty. His violent history includes a notable episode of aggressiveness at school, in which he beat an acquaintance for verbally assaulting his girlfriend. Despite his activities, Master B shows no regret and openly professes his desire to become a gangster, claiming that he intends to do more violent acts. His separation from cultural standards, academic failure, alongside lack interest in participating in rehabilitation are evident, despite the fact that he participates in academic endeavours and recreational carrom only sometimes whilst in the juvenile centre. Master B's treatment consists of planned learning opportunities and behavioral interventions; however, his persistent antisocial tendencies indicate the requirement for specific strategies that incorporate Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), anger management, and familial therapy to address his violent impulses and criminal ambitions. Anger management, logotherapy, interpersonal training, and criminal thought treatments are all possible methods for dealing with such conduct.

Alice Seeley Harris: Bringing Horror To Life In Images

This text looks at how, with a camera and her proximity to the population, one woman was able to make a crucial contribution to denouncing the atrocities committed in the Independent State of Congo. She succeeded in humanizing the written word, and better still, putting faces and stories to these crimes. These actions led to a strong international mobilization, culminating in the recapture of the Congo by Belgium. This text also discusses the role of the Congolese resistance, whose actions also contributed to this movement of denunciation. Methods: In this research we used a qualitative methodological approach based on documentary analysis, these methods was very useful to us. Conclusion: We conclude this contribution by insisting on the fact that the atrocities that took place in the Congo during the EIC are a human tragedy on a massive scale that can be qualified as genocide. The actions that led to the denunciation of these acts must not be forgotten, and must be revisited. The people who participated in these denunciations also deserve to be known. A woman who, at the end of the 19th century, took up her camera and decided to document crimes, not without risk, deserves not to be forgotten by history. Alice Seeley Harris, through her actions, remains an enduring part of the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The fact that these accounts and photographs mention the Congolese who came to her to denounce the crimes of which they were victims, so that she could document them, proves that the history of violence in the Congo is still an open field of research in many respects