Violent Ways Research Articles

From Book to Bludgeon: A Closer Look at Unsolicited Malevolent Responses on The Alternate Uses Task

The alternate uses task (AUT) is one of the most commonly utilized measures of divergent thinking within the creativity research literature. Some participants respond to the AUT by describing the possibility of using various common objects in a violent way (e.g., beat someone with a book), and this unsolicited inclination is termed malevolent creativity. In this study, participant responses on the AUT were systematically coded for malevolent uses, and the relations among malevolence and various individual differences including sex, ideational fluency, and originality, were examined. Results revealed that male participants generated significantly more malevolent responses to the AUT than did women, despite no significant sex differences on originality or fluency. In addition, participant originality significantly predicted malevolence, although ideational fluency did not. Taken together, these findings suggest that malevolent responses on the AUT do not arise simply when very many uses are generated (i.e., when fluency is high) but may represent a particular inclination, disproportionately displayed by males, toward utilizing divergent thinking in a potentially violent way.

Challenging violence against women: a Scottish critical health literacy initiative.

Violence against women constitutes a significant public health problem affecting an estimated 35% of women worldwide (WHO, 2013); the scale of the problem and its ongoing intransigence indicate the need for critical and transformative approaches that confront the cultures that support gender violence and lead to change. The present paper analyses a program run in Scottish primary schools for 10-12 year olds called RESPECT that was successful in making pupils alert to and critical of gendering norms and practices. Analysis reveals that the teaching plans and activities of RESPECT are highly consistent with a critical pedagogical approach (Freire, 2005; Matthews, 2014), and indicates the value of combining the theoretical approaches of critical pedagogy, feminism and critical health literacy in public health campaign materials aimed at challenging the cultural bases of gender violence in ways that promote health in an educational setting.

Nagorno-Karabakh: obstacles to the resolution of the frozen conflict

The enduring deadlock in peace negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh has created a special, “frozen” phase in the conflict cycle. Several cases of skirmishes, escalating in 2016 during the Four-Day War, demonstrate the security threat the conflict represents. Simultaneously, ongoing unsuccessful peace talks and escalations and de-escalations of violence at the line of contact indicate the failure to transform the conflict in either a peaceful or a violent way. This paper seeks to identify conditions contributing to the stalemate of the conflict. The key actors contributing to the conflict’s “frozenness” are the political leadership of Armenia and Azerbaijan and third parties represented by the Minsk Group. The failure to achieve a peaceful transformation is given by political hostilities carried out through negative labelling, uncompromising statements and the self-victimisation of the belligerents. Such activities deepen the grievances within the Azerbaijani and Armenian populaces, which in response to such behaviour does not support any concessions in negotiations. At the same time, the Minsk Group does not provide any concrete model for a peaceful settlement nor does it apply pressure on the belligerents to grant concessions. A violent transformation of the conflict is not possible due to the presence of third parties in the region which deter the belligerents from full-scale war. These findings indicate that in order to avoid the future failure of negotiations and violent escalations at the line of contact, the political leaderships of Armenia and Azerbaijan need to withdraw from mutual hostilities, the negotiation agenda and framework need to be changed and the third parties involved have to actively participate in the peace process.

The magic of guns:

ABSTRACTWhen urban Haitians recounted stories of gun violence, they infused the gun with transformative effects on subjectivity and agency. Touching a gun was said to magically change people and what they were capable of in the world. The magic of the gun was predicated on its ability to provide “scripts” for violent ways of being and acting in the world. These gun stories inspire a novel theorization of the gun as a scriptive technology. The gun's technological design and how it has been used in previous scenarios of political authority and violence lead people to act and be recognized as chèfs (chiefs), a model of black masculine popular sovereignty born in the life worlds of young men on the margins of Port‐au‐Prince. [guns, magic, violence, technology, performativity, human‐gun composite, Haiti]

Ital. ammazzare (con considerazioni su stramazzare, mattare, mazzare)

AbstractThe Italian verb ammazzare ‘to kill (someone), usually in a violent way’ is explained by Italian historical and etymological lexicography as a verb originally indicating a homicide committed with a club (Italian mazza). On the basis of historical linguistic examples it is instead here ascribed to the act of striking animals with a club during slaughter, where the verb would then assume (for the immediate correspondence between the action and its purpose) the general meaning of ‘killing (an animal)’ (subsequently being referred to people). The article then briefly discusses the etymology of the Italian verb stramazzare ‘to strike down to the ground violently’, which may also be ascribed to animal slaughter, and finally the origin of the ancient Italian verbs mattare and mazzare ‘to kill’, as well as their possible Latin bases *mattare/*mattiare.

Cardboard Indians: Playing History in the American West

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, board game makers depicted the West as a dangerous place and portrayed Native Americans as both violent savages and children of nature. Early game companies marketed their games by playing up the excitement of the Wild West to appeal to children, while emphasizing the historic, educational, and patriotic aspects of their games to appeal to parents. In this context, games provided a means to simplify complex ideas about manifest destiny, frontiers, identity, and violence in ways that young children could understand. The rise of Civil Rights activism in the 1960s and 1970s splintered the ways game companies portrayed Native Americans and the West. After the 1970s, game manufacturers attempted to appeal to a diverse set of markets in North America and Europe by portraying the West as a place of savage spectacles, as a place of historic interactions, and as a place devoid of conflict or violence. These competing portrayals emphasize the continued importance of the West to American conceptions of identity and the importance of game makers in creating meaningful arguments about the past that help to bridge the world of adults with the world of children.

The Terrorist and his Jailor: The Conundrum of Friendship and Intimacy

Through the framework of “friendship” defined by Judith Butler, Leela Gandhi, and Vanessa Smith, this essay tracks the relationship between Trailokya Nath Chakrabarty, a Bengali revolutionary terrorist who spent three decades in British jails in colonial India and Francis Lowman, a police officer who was responsible for his imprisonment. Informed by Chakrabarty’s autobiography, the essay shows that terrorism and intimacy were closely linked. Even though the revolutionary terrorist and jailor opposed one another in violent ways, these relationships were grounded in mutual recognition and built on what (following Butler) is called the “fundamental sociality of colonialism.”

Sexual coercion in adolescence: From non-consensual sexuality to sexuality under constraint

Summary Introduction Adolescence is a crucial period of psycho-sexual development during which sexuality may express in a violent way. Objectives Our study analyzes the conducts of sexual coercion acted and experienced by adolescents, implying two distinct samples of teenagers (n1 = 301/40% girls; n2 = 355/65% girls). The first study focuses on evaluation by means of self-reported measures of conducts of sexual coercion, delinquency and experiences of sexual victimization. The second study evaluates conducts of sexual coercion acted and experienced in romantic relationship and attitudes relating to these conducts. Results For both studies, it emerges that adolescents perpetrating severe sexual coercion (using threat and/or physical force) are mostly male and display violent conducts in other areas than sexuality. They report more experiences of sexual victimization than non-coercive adolescents. Although prevalence rates of sexual coercion in romantic relationships are low, phenomena of polyperpetration and polyvictimization have been pointed out. Boys are more often perpetrators of sexual fondling without consent and girls are more often victims. The potential of escalation from minor sexually coercive conducts (non-consensual kissing) to severe sexually coercive conducts is noted for boys and not for girls. Finally, boys exhibit more tolerant attitudes towards sexual coercion than girls and both are more tolerant towards sexual coercion perpetrated by girls than by boys.

Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Enigma: Riddles, Rhetoric, and Theology

Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Enigma: Riddles, Rhetoric, and Theology

Double-Edged: The Meaning of the Two Swords in Luke 22:35–38

Luke 22:38 often functions in a symbiotic relationship with Luke 22:51 to reinforce the picture of Jesus as a principled pacifist. If Jesus is countenancing some sort of violent action, his rebuke at his arrest makes it clear that he rejects the way of violence altogether. Some interpreters go so far as to suggest that Jesus commands the use of swords earlier precisely to rebuke their use later. Both verses, however, contain ambiguous Greek expressions, neither of which supports the contention that Jesus is rejecting violence per se. As with Luke 22:51, it is misguided to push Luke 22:38 in a pacifistic direction. The ambiguous ἱκανόν ἐστιν (“It is enough”) is not a rhetorical ploy to cut the conversation short, nor does it mark out violence-prone disciples as the “lawless ones” of Isa 53. Rather, once released from the neutralizing effects of Luke 22:51 as an interpretive control, Luke 22:38 offers an altogether different picture of Jesus’s stance toward violence.

Double-Edged: The Meaning of the Two Swords in Luke 22:35–38

Luke 22:38 often functions in a symbiotic relationship with Luke 22:51 to reinforce the picture of Jesus as a principled pacifist. If Jesus is countenancing some sort of violent action, his rebuke at his arrest makes it clear that he rejects the way of violence altogether. Some interpreters go so far as to suggest that Jesus commands the use of swords earlier precisely to rebuke their use later. Both verses, however, contain ambiguous Greek expressions, neither of which supports the contention that Jesus is rejecting violence per se. As with Luke 22:51, it is misguided to push Luke 22:38 in a pacifistic direction. The ambiguous ἱκανόν ἐστιν ("It is enough") is not a rhetorical ploy to cut the conversation short, nor does it mark out violence-prone disciples as the "lawless ones" of Isa 53. Rather, once released from the neutralizing effects of Luke 22:51 as an interpretive control, Luke 22:38 offers an altogether different picture of Jesus's stance toward violence.

Savage Economy: The Returns of Middle English Romance by Walter Wadiak

Reviewed by: Savage Economy: The Returns of Middle English Romance by Walter Wadiak Maia Farrar Walter Wadiak, Savage Economy: The Returns of Middle English Romance (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 2017) 210 pp. Wadiak opens his monograph with the invitation to read romances "backwards"—retrospectively appreciating the ways the tales' endings return us to the initial problems of their openings. Such retrospection becomes the impetus for Wadiak's inspiring intervention, which argues for reading the genre "as a mirror of the ways" the medieval commercial and social economy similarly "reconstituted itself" (3). Specifically, Wadiak looks at the "symbolic violence" of the noble gift and the ways chivalric gifting becomes currency within the metaphorical mercantile economy of romance. The noble gift expresses violence by introducing a dependent relationship between the receiver and giver, one which might "secure peace" while simultaneously revealing the "latent aggressivity" of competitive giving (8). Opening with the "returns" of romance, Wadiak offers his theoretical framework to his study—using gift theory to ask "what kind of violence a gift can do" (9) and astutely links this question to romance, asking why "romance keep[s] coming back to medieval England" (15). The first chapter is a strong introduction to the symbolic violence of the gift and romance, using Floris and Blancheflour to demonstrate romance as the "time of the gift" and the genre's nostalgic demand for a return to "proper feudality" while simultaneously acknowledging the "utter artificiality" of its own nostalgia. In a condensed but remarkable reading of Floris, Wadiak sees the romance as using procedures of exchange to constitute itself as a cultural object where "the survival of these modes of value" seems to radically call into question "its own logic of commodification" (22). In this romance, the investment in the gift (as the lovers themselves become commodities and gifts) is both more marked and more fraught than primarily martial texts, highlighting for Wadiak the ways the gift reproduces violence. The second chapter turns to the gift as the aggressive currency of romance, arguing that the late-fourteenth-century "spendthrift romances," such as Sir Cleges, Launfal, and Sir Amadace, were responding to aristocratic "excessive giving." Gift giving has material limitations, which these spendthrift romances disastrously encounter. These texts position themselves through mercantile [End Page 281] culture—even divine intervention (such as Cleges' miraculous cherries) is economized—but rather than celebrating feudal violence, Cleges "sublimates this violence, economizing it as noble exchange" (49). Cleges' request for blows in exchange for the cherries equates violence with material gifts, but Wadiak importantly notes the role violence plays in proving Cleges' chivalric past and reestablishing him within the courtly culture. Even as Cleges' status as Uther's "paramour" is proven by his violence, it "paradoxically" demonstrates the ways both gifting and the violence of the gift are "inadequate" to sustain the system (35). Chapter three suggests that in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, gifts serve not only to "impose order precisely by the means of violence" but also to limit its destructiveness (77). For Chaucer, "literature itself is commodified," but it also seems to assert that the aristocratic economy of chivalry and noble gifting is a "distraction" from the "profitable business of bourgeois romance" (69). In The Knight's Tale, Theseus draws attention to the dual nature of gifts as a source of peace and a source of violence—encouraging aristocratic allegiance as well as power struggles. Perhaps slightly less compelling than the other chapters, this analysis focuses on Theseus' "symbolically violent" amphitheater without unpacking the ways Emilye (or women in romance more generally) acts as a gift, easily exchanged and commodified in frequently violent ways. Chaucer's romance fantasizes that the profits of violence can "be appropriated to the community at large" while simultaneously mourning the death of chivalry as the community is only brought together by their "common mortality" (86). Chapter four, on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, suggests the ways violence can be appropriated to unite the community. Wadiak persuasively articulates that Gawain's girdle, which both "stands for and wards off violence" (104), is simultaneously the paradigmatic gift and the embodiment of romance itself. However, Gawain's story evolved to become "popular" beyond...

Young Africans' social representations of rape in their HIV-related creative narratives, 2005–2014: Rape myths and alternative narratives

Sexual violence is both a major human rights issue and an important driver of HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa. While quantitative indicators of sexual violence have evolved to facilitate cross-national comparison and country-level decision making, qualitative findings typically remain constrained to single sites and populations. We analyzed social representations of sexual violence, specifically rape, in a sample of 1446 narratives about HIV written by young Africans between 2005 and 2014. The narratives were written at 5 discrete time points (2005, 2008, 2011, 2013 and 2014) by equal numbers of males and females aged 10–24 in urban and rural areas of Swaziland, Kenya, South-East Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Senegal. We combined three analytical approaches: descriptive statistics of quantifiable characteristics of the narratives, thematic data analysis, and a narrative-based approach. Violent rapes by strangers occur in all country samples, but in Nigerian narratives the ‘immoral’ behavior of female characters facilitates these attacks. Swazi narratives, in contrast, often depict familial rapes that include disclosure and service seeking as key components of the rape scenario. The social representations found in the narrative data reflect rape myths, which, at the socio-cultural level, serve to trivialize sexual violence by minimizing or justifying aggression, thus shifting blame to victims and absolving perpetrators of blame. Additionally, these social representations conflict with self-report data from Violence Against Children surveys conducted in Swaziland (2007), Kenya (2010) and Nigeria (2014) in that they depict perpetrators primarily as strangers or family members as opposed to romantic partners; however, social representations and self-report concur regarding barriers to disclosure and service seeking for victims. The Swazi narratives offer potential models for the framing of sexual violence in ways that promote disclosure and support for survivors and counteract harmful rape myths.

MOTHERS IN WAR: “RESPONSIBLE MOTHERING,” CHILDREN, AND THE PREVENTION OF VIOLENCE IN TWENTIETH‐CENTURY WAR

ABSTRACTThe key concern of this article is to explore how the history of twentieth‐century violence forces us to reflect on how we interpret the acts of those who find themselves attempting to prevent violence, as mothers have done in relation to their children, in the context of violence and atrocity. A focus on mothers and maternity redirects our analysis to gendered aspects of a history of violence and war that do not concentrate solely on bodily violent acts or physical inflictions upon women—crucial as these remain to histories of violence—but shifts the attention to examining women and violence within another aspect: that of women as active agents negotiating violent contexts. It builds on the considerable scholarship that argues that mothers in war have invariably been represented only as victims or spectators in war, and yet they have also demonstrated agency both individually and collectively. This is significant because to ignore this dimension of scholarly endeavor misses an opportunity to write women into histories of violence in ways that complicate their role in war and make them central to the story. To marginalize mothers in the broader canvas of war and violence, as scholarship often does, is also to narrow our focus of understandings of agency and the negotiation of violence itself. I explore these wider questions by focusing on the cataclysmic events of war, in the first instance in the context of a total war in the early twentieth century, the First World War, and in the second—the Greek Civil War—a civil war that took place in mid‐century. Although these are vastly different conflicts, they both illuminate the decisions of mothers to attempt to prevent further violence in war, especially in relation to their children, and to highlight the contested notion of “responsible motherhood” in war.

Kekerasan Kolektif di Perkotaan: Konstruksi dan Representasi Maskulinitas dalam Budaya Masyarakat Makassar

The occurrence of violence in South Sulawesi whereever they are, they are usually identified as violence that happen in Makassar. This is due to the fact the frequent of violence happen in Makassar than in other cities in Indonesia. This article aims to explore collective violence in two adjoining locations in Makassar, yakni Pampang dan Sukaria and how this is related to masculinity. The pattern of collective violence between people in both areas based on classification and motivesof conflict between groups. The motive of collective violence, namely yakni seizure of land, this then develop mass coordination established through the process of patronage relations and the formation of strong lokal men. This then lead to establishment of routine violence which hands in hand in hand with siri’ na pacce. The construction of masculinity from male perspective that women are obliged to maintain such values through violent ways. Parenting pattern tends to be permissive towards violence. Such violence is common among male members of society. This violence has become an expression of masculinity. Masculinity is symbolised through four aspects: badik, bow arrow, tatto’ dan ballo (a local drink). Thus, one who can performs these aspects will be considered as rewa.

“Killed Out of Love”: A Frame Analysis of Domestic Violence Coverage in Hong Kong

A frame analysis was conducted on a Hong Kong newspaper to determine whether news coverage of female fatalities at the hands of their intimate partners was reported in conventional domestic violence ways or if there were culture-specific explanations. Overall, most coverage supported known views of domestic violence, justifying the perpetrator and categorizing the issue as isolated crime. However, a few stories highlighted the historical subordination of women under patriarchy in Confucianism as an important cultural factor. Findings have implications for the lack of generalization of the social problem, and the understanding of cultural and political power in Hong Kong society.

Making meaning from data on school-related gender-based violence by examining discourse and practice: insights from a mixed methodology study in Ghana and Mozambique

Efforts to address school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) globally are hampered by conceptual and methodological difficulties in capturing meaningful data needed to inform policy and practice. Whilst the emphases of influential studies tend to be on measuring practice of violence, the authors investigate whether they can develop a more meaningful analysis that incorporates attention to both discourse and practice. They do this by examining data collected through a five-year mixed-methods study assessing change in SRGBV in Ghana and Mozambique. The analysis reveals how in the two quite different contexts there were different discursive emphases and in turn practices which were invisible in the SRGBV disclosure data. They identify how both quantitative and qualitative data contribute to understanding changing gender violence in ways that can be illuminating. It is by understanding the interplay between discourse and practice that can really help us understand ‘what works’ to address SRGBV.

Le stade anal : fondement du lien d’autorité

The anal stage generates major disruptions in a child's life from 2 to 4 years old. Now seen as a “child”, the former baby is facing a first rule which will lead to many others in the future: the hygiene obligation. Henceforth, he/she must control his/her sphincters to meet adults’ wishes, by having his/her bowel movement in an appropriate place. This potty-training has a considerable impact. As a matter of fact, the pot rule is at the heart of big challenges, both educational and psychological. Nevertheless, these latests do not occur without conflicts as the so said rule is not naturally accepted. During this stage, the child is testing the adults’ limits through desobedience, what implies a relationship disorder. Yet, these transgressive attitudes the child is demonstrating must often been interpreted as the paradoxal expression of a new need: the need for authority. This article focuses on describing the different expressions of this need. It explains the causes by studying the kind of relationship between the child and the adult at this growing stage. The author analyses the authority position function the child is inconsciously asking for. When he/she “pees his/her pants” or in inappropriate places, he/she is defying the adults in order to test the quality of the relationship built with them. Doing so, the child displays some fears he/she cannot express in a different way when testing in the meanwhile his/her living environment. This article shows that if the child is aggressive with his/her parents, it is not on a destructive purpose but to the contrary to ensure their strongness. In this text, this point is illustrated through a little boy dealing with a fragile mother. The accompanying description of this very troublemaking child explains that some children's unpleasant behaviors are inconsciously aiming to a strongness some adults are not capable to demonstrate. It is also shown that the authority relashionship the child is sometimes asking for through a violent way to his/her parents also depends on the social context the family is living in. The difficulties linked to an apparent lack of parental authority are in this way contrasted to a bigger problem regarding a modern social unrest.

Resistencias femeninas. Arte contemporáneo regional desde una perspectiva de género

El presente artículo explora la capacidad de la teoría de género para abordar la producción artística de mujeres de la ciudad de Resistencia (Chaco, Argentina) con el objetivo de analizar sus trabajos a partir de nociones, conceptos y problemáticas que han podido leerse en sus obras. La selección corresponde a producciones de tres autoras que viven y trabajan actualmente en Resistencia y que han planteado a través de sus obras la sexualidad femenina como temática para la problematización de ideas por medio de su compromiso estético y personal. Con el fin de reflexionar sobre la creación estética a partir del tópico de la/s sexualidad/es en diferentes expresiones plásticas, la descripción iconográfica, el análisis de las obras y la lectura en clave de género confluyen en este trabajo para poner en cuestión categorías y conceptos abordados en las obras como el trabajo doméstico, los estereotipos de mujeres, la maternidad, ciertos tabúes que persisten en la cultura, modos de violencia, el deseo y el goce sexual femenino.

Violencias imperiales. Masacres de indios en las pampas del Río de la Plata (siglos XVI-XVIII)

En las pampas del Río de la Plata se registran recurrentes masacres de indígenas iniciadas poco tiempo después de la refundación de Buenos Aires en 1580. En un contexto de múltiples y complejas interacciones, las relaciones entre las naciones indias regionales soberanas y políticamente descentralizadas y las administraciones coloniales oscilaron entre las vías violentas y diplomáticas. Las incursiones nativas produjeron reacciones represivas a cargo de oficiales y milicianos que mantenían intereses en los negocios pecuarios y rurales afectados por los saqueos, y viceversa. Se reiteraron, entonces, periódicas matanzas de naturales de todo sexo y edad, combatientes y no combatientes, y con frecuencia ajenos a los eventos que las motivaban, así como el subsiguiente reparto de las familias sobrevivientes. Las características de estas agresiones, sus modalidades y sus consecuencias sobre agredidos y agresores constituyen el objeto de este artículo, basado principalmente en documentación de los Archivos de Indias y General de la Nación Argentina.