Retaliatory Violence Research Articles

Fronts and Friends: Social Contingencies in the Management of Drug Debt

ABSTRACT Illicit drug markets have long been associated with violence as a mode of regulating market behavior, especially regarding debts linked to drug purchase. While a growing literature examines violent and nonviolent modes of ensuring repayment by dealers and lenders, little research has focused on strategies of buyers and borrowers in navigating drug debt. Drawing on interviews with 75 people who use drugs within a materially disadvantaged neighborhood, we explore experiences in managing debt to dealers and within social networks adjacent to drug markets. Findings describe complex strategies to protect reputation, foster relationships with dealers, and employ cooperative, assertive, or coercive tactics to negotiate credit arrangements that sustain and stabilize the drug market while mitigating violent retaliation for unpaid debt. Findings also elucidate informal credit arrangements within social networks, identifying reciprocity and self-control as constitutive of social capital within friendship groups that serve as financial and social safety nets. This research considers socially embedded, boundedly rational decisions of marginalized drug market actors, highlighting diverse financial management practices among structurally vulnerable borrowers that serve economic and social goals while seeking to mitigate the risk of violence.

The Right Man and the Wrong Man: Similarities with a Difference in Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition

ABSTRACT: The ironic juxtapositions of similar scenes and characters in The Marrow of Tradition show that people in comparable life situations will experience different outcomes depending on their race. For example, whether a person is Black or White determines the consequences that ensue if that person resorts to violence, even if it can be justified as self-defense. This novel, by Charles W. Chesnutt, is based on the political insurrection of 1898 in which White supremacists overthrew the municipal government of Wilmington, North Carolina. The workings of the plot suggest an endorsement of the viewpoint of Josh Green, a Black dock worker who believes in the need for retaliatory violence. Green's position is contrasted with, and in novelistic terms gets the better of, the pacifist and more intellectual view of William Miller, the town's prominent Black doctor. Though less explicitly so, Green's and Miller's views may also be interpreted as representative of a contest between the merits of race consciousness and assimilation, respectively. In his essays, Chesnutt speaks clearly in favor of "sameness" and color-blindness as a principle, so he is closer to Miller on this issue. However, in his later literary career and even in certain aspects of this novel, one can see sympathy for characters who define themselves in part by their membership in the Black community.

Conflict and social control among cannabis growers

AimsIllegal drug markets are often assumed to be violent and predatory due to the absence of third-party enforcement. While cannabis markets are generally considered to be relatively more peaceful, there has been little investigation of the levels of conflict and victimization among small-scale cannabis growers, particularly under different cannabis policy and enforcement settings. This paper explores prevalence and predictors of conflict and social control among small-scale cannabis growers. MethodsThe data were obtained from an online convenience survey of small-scale cannabis growers from 13 countries (Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, Portugal, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay) from August 2020 to September 2021 (N = 5667). Key measures collected included the types of victimization due to cannabis growing, the perpetrators of these predatory actions, reasons for the conflict, and the grower's response to being victimized. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to identify predictors of different types of victimization and social control responses among cannabis cultivators. ResultsMost growers (76 %) never directly experienced violence or other victimization related to their cannabis cultivation. However, about one-quarter of growers had been victimized at some point, mostly involving theft, with physical violence rare. Growing outdoors, growing with others, growing more plants, and being a more seasoned grower increased the risk of victimization. Growers who were motivated by profit were more susceptible to theft. Surprisingly, growers in legal recreational jurisdictions experienced greater levels of theft and violent victimization than growers in illegal jurisdictions. Nonviolent social control responses predominated among the growers, mostly characterized by toleration but also avoidance and negotiation. ConclusionWhile most growers reported no victimization, a substantial minority did so, largely theft rather than violence, and typically did not report employing retaliatory violence. Social control responses were mostly nonviolent. These findings varied under different cannabis policy and enforcement environments. Cannabis legalization does not eliminate opportunities for theft and violence related to cannabis cultivation.

The "Gaze" Defect Behind Revenge: On the Ways of Female Revenge and Redemption in Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

In today's film and television genres that show women fighting against the powerful, women's revenge films are gaining more and more attention. These films have some positive significance in showing women's sense of independence. However, the problems behind most female revenge films are still under consideration. This article will take "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance," one of "The Vengeance Trilogy" by the famous Korean director Park Chan-wook, as an example and use the theory of gaze to analyze the otherness of the female gaze embodied in the film; from the way the female protagonist, Geum-ja Lee, takes revenge, it will analyze the otherness of the third-world female culture behind the violent revenge in the film; the similarity of women's revenge dilemma, that is, the inevitable self-alienation or self-destruction of excellent and weak women, is discussed by analyzing Geum-ja's revenge and redemption at the end of the film. Ultimately, the film tries to raise the discourse of the other and present a genuinely feminist perspective and voice.

The nature, detection, and avoidance of harmful discrimination in criminal justice

AbstractWe provide a selective survey of the literature on discrimination by criminal justice agents, and argue for a taxonomy of harms that differs from conventional approaches. Discrimination can be self‐defeating if it reduces welfare among targets of discrimination while serving no legitimate purpose for the discriminating party. Even if a legitimate purpose is served, discrimination can be deliberative or demeaning, resulting in welfare losses that need to be accounted for. Deliberative and demeaning discrimination can also be self‐defeating through general equilibrium effects on witness cooperation, clearance rates, and preemptive and retaliatory violence. We consider how harmful discrimination can be detected and avoided, as well as changes in our understanding of discrimination resulting from the proliferation of predictive algorithms.

Honor in the Wild

“Culture of honor” means that individuals deter others by signaling their commitment to violent retaliation. We develop a multilevel explanation of cross-level interdependence of honor and violence. According to our concept of system-level honor, a social system is loaded with deterrence signaling if culture of honor is highly prevalent in the system. In line with the Smith and Price (1973, in Nature,https://www.nature.com/articles/246015a0) model, we argue that high system-level honor discourages Prober-Retaliator behavior: some individuals might tend to challenge others they assume to be inferior to increase their own reputation. Both individual culture of honor and system-level honor contribute to an increase in violence (H1; H2). However, as system-level honor and deterrence become more prevalent, the impact of individual honor diminishes because engaging in violent behavior becomes increasingly expensive within such a system (H3). As a second contextual effect, inequality in culture of honor should therefore increase violent behavior because it encourages Prober-Retaliator behavior (H4). We analyze the effect of culture of honor on school violence among 15-year-old adolescents. Disentangling the micro- and context-level effects of culture of honor on violent behavior in a multilevel analysis framework allows the estimation of a cross-level interaction using a large data set from more than 25,000 adolescents in more than 1,300 schoolroom contexts. Results are in line with our H3, but not with H4. Model-based predictions show that the deterrent effect must be unrealistically high to generate an equilibrium of average violence.

“An Occupational Hazard”: Former Elite Male Professional Players’ Experiences of On-Field Violence in Australian Football (1970 to 1995)

This oral history research explores the experience of ten retired elite Australian football players during their careers in the period from 1970 to 1995. The ex-players were interviewed about their careers by sports journalist, Mike Sheahan, in the long-running Australia Fox Sports Open Mike television series. The particular focus of this historical research is ex-players’ experience of on-field violence. Findings indicated that ex-players were willing to break the Australian football rules and engage in on-field violence either as intimidation or retaliation against opponents. When ex-players did engage in violent intimidatory behavior, they were cool and callous, and anger rarely played a role. Violent retaliation to opposition player transgressions was either immediate or delayed until a future opportunity presented itself. For one Indigenous ex-player, violent responses during games were often sparked by opponents’ verbal racial abuse. In retrospect, he considered this a form of intimidation aimed at putting him off his game that was just part of Australian football at the time. Some ex-players did feel remorse about their violent acts, but others were adamant that they had no regrets about their behavior. Violence was almost expected as an everyday aspect of their football experience and was accepted as an occupational hazard.

The “war on cops,” retaliatory violence, and the murder of George Floyd*

AbstractThe police murder of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests in the summer of 2020 and revived claims that public outcry over such high‐profile police killings perpetuated a violent “war on cops.” Using data collected by the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) on firearm assaults of U.S. police officers, we use Bayesian structural time series (BSTS) modeling to empirically assess if and how patterns of firearm assault on police officers in the United States were influenced by the police murder of George Floyd. Our analysis finds that the murder of George Floyd was associated with a 3‐week spike in firearm assaults on police, after which the trend in firearms assaults dropped to levels only slightly above that which were predicted by pre‐Floyd data. We discuss potential explanations for these findings and consider their relevance to the contemporary discussion of a “war on cops,” violence, and officer safety.

Civilian Protection Payment and the Escalation of Violence against Civilians in Northwestern Nigeria

AbstractHow do civilian protection payments to militias affect the dynamics of communal conflict? Building on the literature on communal conflict, civilian agency, rebel taxation, and criminal extortion, I argue that civilian protection payment is not a sustainable self-protection strategy. Civilian protection payment refers to an arrangement whereby communities pay levies to militias for protection against attacks, often buying temporary safety. Drawing on fieldwork in Nigeria’s conflict-ridden northwest region, I inductively build a theory that identifies two pathways that explain how protection payments transform into extortion and contribute to the escalation of militia violence: acquiescence or resistance. The acquiescence pathway shows how militias increase predation by demanding ever higher payments. The resistance pathway theorizes militias’ violent retaliation to punish communities that refuse to pay, instilling fear in communities that may be considering resisting and justifying their protection role for those communities that pay. The article improves our understanding of the unintended negative consequences of civilian self-protection and changing dynamics of conflict in northwestern Nigeria.

Review: Religious Violence in the Ancient World: From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity, edited by Jitse H. F. Dijkstra and Christian R. Raschle

Review: <i>Religious Violence in the Ancient World: From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity</i>, edited by Jitse H. F. Dijkstra and Christian R. Raschle

The Bluest Sky by Christina Diaz Gonzalez

Reviewed by: The Bluest Sky by Christina Diaz Gonzalez Wesley Jacques Gonzalez, Christina Diaz The Bluest Sky. Knopf, 2022 [320p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780593372791 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780593372814 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 5-8 Bookish, baseball-loving sixth grader Héctor has no interest in giving up his beloved Cuba, his twin best friends and neighbors Teo and Isabel, or his dreams of proudly representing his country in the upcoming International Math Olympiad. Circumstances in the Caribbean nation, however, are changing rapidly in 1980 and his mother is determined to reunite with Héctor and his older brother's dissident gusano father in the United States. While he may not fully grasp the dangers and anxieties of the political climate, Héctor thoughtfully narrates a seemingly sudden shift from being a proud child of the revolution as his family becomes targets of actos de repudio, peppering Cuban Spanish idioms and phrases throughout. It is an acto de repudio that leads to Teo's untimely death as a violent mob falls upon Héctor's home when rumors of his mother's plan to expatriate spread. As Héctor, his mother, and brother abandon all they know for the precarious journey to the U.S., they face violent retaliation and bureaucratic challenges, including a Sophie's Choice of a decision at the port that may split the family apart indefinitely. A bittersweet ending poignantly recontextualizes the importance of family in the face of political divisions. [End Page 49] Copyright © 2022 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

“Unable to Defend Him”: Conflicting Views of Female Violence in Swedish Medieval Law

“Unable to Defend Him”: Conflicting Views of Female Violence in Swedish Medieval Law

The Belfast Boycott: consumerism and gender in revolutionary Ireland (1920–1922)

AbstractThe Belfast Boycott was a protest designed to dislodge loyalism in Northern Ireland, punish its adherents for perceived intolerance toward Catholics and end Irish partition. The boycott was set off by the expulsion of several thousand Catholic workers from employment in Belfast in July 1920. A total boycott of all goods coming from Belfast was implemented by the Dáil in September 1920. Boycotting provided Irish nationalists with an alternative to violent retaliation that allowed for the participation of a wider segment of the Irish population and diaspora in the revolutionary movement. However, such mass mobilisation meant that nationalists had to entrust their plan for an independent Ireland to a segment of the population that they overwhelmingly viewed as politically and economically uninformed: Irish women. The boycott offers a new vantage point from which to view the actions of and attitudes towards women and the role of mass mobilisation during the revolution. This article explores nationalists’ conceptions of Irish identity, the intersection between consumerism and patriotism, and the role that women played as both political and economic actors throughout the Irish revolutionary period.

“Women of ill repute”: Pariah femininities, retaliatory violence, and the negotiation of rebel identities among women bartenders

AbstractIn the United States, work is a central institution that reflects and reproduces gender hierarchies that organize social institutions, interactions, and ideologies across social life. Through an ethnographic study of New Orleans‐area bartenders, this paper analyzes the everyday/every‐night experiences of women bartenders to understand how gender relations map onto women’s identity construction projects through their occupational role. I argue that women’s identity negotiation is constructed in relationship to gender hegemonies that produce female bartenders as pariah femininities outside the protections of respectable femininity. Sexual harassment, fetishization, and double standards are systematic forms of heteronormative punishment that ensure women bartenders remain feminized workers in masculinized workplaces. While women actively refashion retaliatory punishment into an affirmative self‐identity: the rebel barmaid, this study finds that through gender essentialist and individualist frames, the rebel barmaid falls short of revolutionary potential.

The State against the Rohingya: Root Causes of the Expulsion of Rohingya from Myanmar

ABSTRACT The Rohingya crisis of Myanmar is a longstanding geopolitical predicament that has remained unresolved for 42 years, since 1978. Many of the stateless, and now stranded, Rohingya have been driven out of Myanmar to take refuge in other countries or forced to live in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps within the state of Rakhine. ARSA (Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army) attacks became an automatic excuse for genocidal activities against Rohingyas at the hands of the Myanmar government. ARSA attacks and communal violence in Rakhine both served the Myanmar government’s objective, providing justification for acts of violent retaliation. This paper examines root causes of Rohingya exile and displacement. The researcher collected data from 20 expert participants in Bangladesh and 71 displaced Rohingya victims living in the Kutupalong Rohingya Refugee Camp within Bangladesh. These data indicate the interaction of various factors, including historical legacy of conflict, religious dissension, racism, lack of social integration of Rohingyas into the mainstream Burmese community, geo-economic factors, discriminatory state policy and conflict politics of ARSA, all of which contribute to what has become the Rohingya crisis. The paper discusses theoretical and practical implications of these interacting influences.

Fatal blow: Urbicidal geographies, pax colonial and black sovereignty in the Colombian city

This article gives ethnographic form to Fanon’s warning that in the colonial world, “zombies are more terrifying than settlers,” by analyzing how racial mythologies produce spatial classifications of Black urban communities as unruly places and how Black individuals challenge their wretched condition by embracing a “program of complete disorder.” To do so, the article analyzes the short(ened) life of Paco, a young Black man under house arrest whose retaliatory violence against, and territorial dispute with, the police is an entry point for exploring resistance to urban coloniality in Santiago de Cali/Colombia. The article engages with the field of Black geography to propose a Fanonian reading of contemporary cityscapes as colonial spaces. Such colonial spatialities, it is argued, are not defined merely by subjugation to death but also, as Paco’s refusal to be killed may reveal, by an insurgent spatial praxis that might reposition the Black subject in relation to the city and the regime of Law.

Barriers to help-seeking among intimate partner violence survivors with opioid use disorder

Intimate partner violence is common among people with opioid use disorder (OUD), but little research has focussed on identifying barriers survivors with OUD face when trying to leave an abusive relationship. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 40 postpartum women with OUD. Interview questions were designed to identify barriers to help-seeking and facilitators and supports that have helped survivors make positive changes. Qualitative data were coded and analyzed, using a phenomenological approach to develop emerging themes. Most participants were white, 24–29 years old, single, unemployed, Medicaid insured, and used medications for OUD. All participants (n = 40, 100%) shared that a current or past partner physically, sexually, emotionally, or verbally abused them. Participants identified multiple barriers to help-seeking including abusive partner control of money and resources, fear of retaliatory violence, and concerns related to police and child welfare. Participants also described supports that helped them make positive changes, including being treated with care and support from domestic violence shelters and treatment programs. Finally, survivors offered suggestions for ways providers can better meet survivors’ needs. Clinicians and policymakers should prioritize overcoming multiple barriers to service access and engagement faced by survivors and their children.

War of Lies: Protecting Civilians from Disinformation during Armed Conflict

Disinformation in armed conflict may pose several distinctive forms of harm to civilians: exposure to retaliatory violence, distortion of information vital to securing human needs, and severe mental suffering. The gravity of these harms, along with the modern nature of wartime disinformation, is out of keeping with its traditional classification in international humanitarian law (IHL) as a permissible ruse of war. Instead, a patchwork set of protections drawn from IHL, international human rights law (IHRL), and international criminal law (ICL) may limit disinformation operations during armed conflict. However, numerous gaps and ambiguities undermine the force of this legal framework, calling for further scholarly attention and clarification.

“A Human Being Like Other Victims”: The Media Framing of Trans Homicide in the United States

A growing awareness of violence against LGBTQ + individuals has led to an increase in media coverage of the homicides of trans people in the United States. Media accounts involve powerful narratives which are subjective, biased, and imbued with meaning. These narratives employ “frames” that impact public perception of populations. Studies have demonstrated differences in the ways that trans victims of homicide are framed compared to cis victims, specifically regarding responsibility for the violence inflicted upon them. Trans victims are more likely to be constructed as “deviants” or criminals who are deserving of or responsible for their own homicides. In addition, these victims are framed as deceivers who deliberately obscure their gender modality from offenders, thus facilitating violent retaliation. The present study employs a mixed methods approach to analyze articles published in news media outlets about the twenty-six trans people killed in 2018. Our analysis identified more positive frames than negative frames employed by agents of social control, such as media and law enforcement, that inform narratives surrounding this unique form of violence. Yet, efforts still need to be undertaken to involve trans voices, to humanize those who have lost their lives, and most importantly, to prevent this violence. This article discusses implications for how these organizations can begin to transform these narratives to describe accurately trans victims of homicide.

‘If you prick me, do I not bleed?’: Antisemitism, racism and group analysis —some thoughts

The Merchant of Venice contains some of the most powerful depictions of Jewish–Christian relations in an era when Christian antisemitism dominated European life. It is one of the most difficult plays for Jews to watch: not only for Shylock’s torment at the treatment he is subjected to, particularly in the Christian characters’ relentless contempt for him, but for the depiction of his gradual descent into violent revenge, as a result of which he himself is crushed.The revenge part of Shylock’s speech is crucial. The anti-Semites in the play unconsciously fear their victim, especially after treating Shylock with cruelty and contempt. The racists then project hatred, consequently fearing that Shylock will hate them, that he will be filled with rage and seek a revenge even more cruel than that which has been perpetrated upon him. Shylock speaks the racist’s fear and then wants to carry it out. In Shakespeare’s play, Shylock becomes a justification for hatred. If we look at this as the unconscious of antisemitism, then Shakespeare is personifying this unconscious in the character of Shylock. Seen in this way, The Merchant of Venice is a dramatic depiction of the violent effects of antisemitism on the subjectivity and identity of both victims and perpetrators.We know that racism creates trauma. Sue Lieberman’s work on transmitted trauma (Lieberman, 2015) and Earl Hopper’s work on massification and aggregation both explored unprocessed trauma (Hopper, 2003). However, the permeating trauma of both racism and antisemitism has festered without being addressed adequately. Our purpose in this article is to begin to look at this disturbing truth. We will address the historical relationship between antisemitism and racism. We will make links to the development of psychoanalysis and group analysis. That Foulkes, himself was a victim of racism has always been present but largely unspoken. Unspoken, it has created blind spots, including our own racism.