Violent Ways Research Articles

Introduction

Violence is a difficult topic to talk about as an isolated issue because it is integral to so many social concerns, from raising and schooling children, to dealing with the day-to-day realities of the streets and schoolyards, to institutionalized economic and racial oppression, to the latest war zone. Despite the enormity and complexity of violence, we, as educators, need to address directly the violence in the lives of young people in U.S. society. More than a year ago, the Harvard Educational Review Editorial Board decided to devote a Special Issue to the subject of violence and youth. From the outset, the Board sought to extend educational debates on violence beyond the reporting of how unsafe schools have become, or the recounting of the often horrific consequences of violence by and against youth. Instead, we invited contributions that would frame questions of violence in ways that make clearer the various dimensions of this issue, and that illustrate what can be and is being done to work with young people around the problem of violence.

The concept of violence

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to give a conceptual analysis of the word violence and to explore some problems related to the normative use of the term. Violence is defined as extreme force wilfully carried against X, which is said to violate X because it does not show respect for the value of X. Examples are given of metaphorical uses of the term violence in psychological and political contexts. The term structural violence is taken as the crucial example and this raises the problem of the justification of violence. In the search for an answer to violence the focus mainly is on the countering of violence in ways that are themselves non‐violent.

Muslim‐European conflict in the Hijaz: the slave trade controversy, 1840–1895

The value placed upon the Hijaz by Muslims made religious sentiments stronger there than elsewhere. Yet in the nineteenth century Muslims anywhere in the world considered themselves to be superior to Christians, irrespective of their physical location. Islam, the Muslims felt, gave the accurate version of God's message, as delivered through the Prophet Muhammad, who had lived in Mecca and Madina in the Hijaz. At the same time, Hijazi Muslims after the restoration of Ottoman control from Egypt in 1841 resented and feared the military and economic superiority of Europe. Especially after British rule was firmly established in India, Arab Muslims resented the Christian nations who gave their subjects, such as the Indian Muslims living in the Hijaz, advantages in tariff treatment, access to consuls who protected them from the rapacious local government, and the international security which permitted large scale credit arrangements. This resentment culminated in massacres of Christians by Muslims in Jidda in 1858 and 1895. The 1858 massacre of Christians by Muslims resulted in the bombardment of Jidda by the English, and the eventual public execution of the Muslim Arab ringleaders. However, generally, Muslim dislike of Christians was shown in less violent ways then massacres. Examples would include contempt demonstrated in personal relations, keeping non-Muslims on the coast far from the interior where the Holy Cities were, and such devices as forbidding Christian foreigners after 1867 to own land in the Hijaz. Another example of the personal contempt in which Christians were held is the treatment of prostitutes who had Christians as customers. Before the 1810s a Muslim prostitute who did this would have been killed, as though guilty of adultery. I One of the major factors in maintaining hostility toward Christian Europeans in the Hijaz was the annual renewal of religious sentiment in connection with the pilgrimage ceremonies. Pilgrims naturally tended to be the most pious and also, frequently, the most xenophobic of Muslims. Even though many of the pilgrims came from lands ruled by Europeans, most lacked knowledge of European civilization. The Hijazis themselves, beyond a small elite, were contemptuous toward the Europeans-not only their religion but also their social mores. According to one source, the Muslims thought the Christians to be' . . . horrible monsters: their pale complexion gives the impression of . . . leprosy: they cannot look up to Heaven, and, so, seldom walk with an upright carriage . . ., men and women sit shamelessly together and quaff wine: they are unclean, for they enter rooms with their dirty shoes . . . they are of coarse manners, for they laugh loud like hyenas . ' 2

BLACK AND WHITE LIBERATION

AbstractSome time ago the department of missiology received a position paper from Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation dealing with "The Churches and Change in Southern Africa". This paper has been an incentive to this review of some (Third World) Christian Literature on Southern Africa, and more particularly on the subject of violence/nonviolence. Chapter 1 deals with the general question "What is violence?" and with the legitimacy of the use of power. Chapter 2 gives an account of the various (violent or nonviolent) ways that people within or outside these Southern African countries are propagating or practising in their struggle to combat violence.

The American Way of Violence.Alphonso Pinkney

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe American Way of Violence. Alphonso Pinkney James D. CockcroftJames D. Cockcroft Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 79, Number 3Nov., 1973 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/225605 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1973 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The American Way of Violence by Alphonso Pinkney (Random House; 240 pp.; $7.95) - Violence: The Crisis of American Confidence edited by Hugh Davis Graham (Johns Hopkins University Press; 180 pp.; $8.50)

The American Way of Violence by Alphonso Pinkney (Random House; 240 pp.; $7.95) - Violence: The Crisis of American Confidence edited by Hugh Davis Graham (Johns Hopkins University Press; 180 pp.; $8.50) - Volume 16 Issue 1

Book Review: The American Way of Violence

Book Review: The American Way of Violence

Aggression in psychiatric patients

Man's aggression permeates everyone's life. Although aggression is discussed increasingly, few studies have investigated it in unselected populations. The majority of studies of human aggression have subjects selected because of their violent behavior. Marten et al. 1 called attention to this fact after a literature survey. In their recent report on belligerence, they found a 74% incidence of belligerent thoughts and behavior in their population. The subjects were largely medically indigent psychiatric patients seen in the emergency room of an urban community mental health center. Males were more belligerent than females, young patients more than old, and no direct or inverse relation could be found between belligerent and self-destructive behavior. Gulevich and Bourne 2 concluded from several investigations that discharged psychiatric patients do not show a greater risk of behaving in a criminal or violent way than the general population. Rappeport, 3,4 however, revealed a higher incidence of robbery in discharged male psychiatric patients, and of aggravated assault in discharged female psychiatric patients. This study investigates specific manifestations of aggression among hospitalized psychiatric patients by using a broad definition: the entire spectrum of assertive, intrusive, and attacking behaviors directed at the self or others. 5 Patients were asked a range of questions of gradually increasing intensity about their aggression toward others and toward themselves. If their responses to a question were positive, they were categorized into three levels of expression: thoughts and feelings, verbalization, and physical action. The subjects were not selected because they were violent in some way, but because they had some psychiatric problem or illness that caused them to be hospitalized.

The American Way of Violence.

The American Way of Violence.

Upheaval, Violence, and the Abolition of Slavery in Brazil : The Case of São Paulo

U ISTORIANS HAVE OFTEN noted contrast between Brazil's peaceful solution to problem of slavery and violent way which United States resolved question. The Brazilians abolished human bondage through parliamentary legislation that was hailed with parades streets; North America abolition required a bloody civil war. Seen this context, Brazilian experience appears to be a striking example of self-restraint, moderation, and political compromise. Concentration upon peaceful nature of 1888 settlement, however, can be misleading, for it overlooks tensions that prevailed during anti-slavery campaign Brazil. As United States, years of antislavery movement Brazil were years of crisis. A careful examination of Brazilian society 1880s reveals not only that abolition was a controversial issue, but that violence and threat of violence were important ingredients successful effort to end slavery. Nowhere Brazil was this turmoil more significant than province of Sao Paulo. Until last phase of antislavery campaign planters of Sao Paulo stood opposed to abolitionism along with their counterparts Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro. These fazendeiros of King Coffee provinces, who possessed more than two-thirds of slaves Brazil, formed a bastion of reaction debates over slavery. During 1880s Sao Paulo surpassed all other provinces coffee production, and this dynamic economy placed its leaders a strategic political position. If their resistance could be broken, abolitionism would win a crucial victory. Angered by unyielding attitude of Sao Paulo politicians, abolitionists singled out province as key post slaveholders' perimeter of defense. As late as 1883, Rio News reported that in Sao Paulo, there is not only no enthusiasm, but there seems to be decided opposition to emancipation, and Jose do Patrocinio called Sao Paulo the strong fortress of heinous slavism.'l

International Relations as a Prismatic System

Conventional theories of international relations assume, implicitly, the model of an “inter-state system.” According to this model, individually states possess a set of characteristics which differ fundamentally from the characteristics of a system of those states interacting with each other. On this basis we can construct theories about the behavior of component states in the system, and more general propositions about the nature of the inter-state system viewed as a whole. Some of the difficulties of this model will be noted here, and an alternative model proposed.Before pointing to these difficulties, however, we need a clear image of the inter-state model. A classic formulation is contained in a speech given by former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles at a meeting of the American Society for International Law. In it Mr. Dulles identified six characteristics of the nation-state: (1) laws which “reflect the moral judgment of the community”; (2) political machinery to revise these laws as needed; (3) an executive body able to administer the laws; (4) judicial machinery to settle disputes in accord with the laws; (5) superior force to deter violence by enforcing the law upon those who defy it; and (6) sufficient well-being so that people are not driven by desperation to ways of violence. The international system, Mr. Dulles pointed out, in large part lacks these characteristics. He went on to assess the limited success of attempts, ranging from the League of Nations and Kellogg-Briand Pact through the United Nations, to create such a “state system” or “order” at the international level. Mr. Dulles sadly reported that, despite notable progress in the development of international law and judicial machinery, the desired international order does not, as yet, exist.

Abu Tammam and Ibn Hani

In recent years I have had occasion to examine the Dîwâns of these two Arabic poets in connexion with theses prepared by two Indian candidates for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Oxford, and it has occurred to me that a short selection of what appeared to me at the time to be the best verses of these poets might not be lacking in interest, as no translations into English of any of the poems of either have yet been published, so far as I have been able to discover. I am not unmindful of the objections made by Doctor Nicholson when I applied a similar method of selection to the works of Mutanabbi eleven years ago, but I think that they apply, if at all, only in a very limited degree to poets of the calibre of Abu Tammâm and Ibn Hânî, whom no critic would be inclined to place in the first rank. Abu Tammâm is mainly famous as an anthologist, but his original verse is of much higher quality than that of Ibn Hânî, whose fame seems to rest more on the incidental facts that he was born in Spain and that he expressed heterodox religious opinions in a very violent way than on any poetic quality. The really great poet Abu,’l ‘Alâ, al-Ma‘arrî expressed a great dislike for his verse, comparing it to wheat grains crushed in a mill, owing to the harshness of his phraseology.