GETTING A GRIP ON VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

 

The latest school shooting (in Uvalde, Texas) has produced exactly the same call for prayers and change as all the previous school shootings.  President Biden, like so many others, has asked why these mass shootings don’t happen with such regularity in other countries.  Let’s look at some of the resources we can turn to to get a grip on things.  

The Right-Wing Lie That's Killing Our Children

https://flip.it/udaJcq

Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America, by Mark Follman (New York: Harper/Collins).

Mark Follman is a longtime journalist and the national affairs editor for Mother Jones, where he leads investigative projects and writes on subjects of national security, politics and beyond.

“An urgent read that illuminates real possibility for change.” —John Carreyrou, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Blood

For the first time, a story about the specialized teams of forensic psychologists, FBI agents, and other experts who are successfully stopping mass shootings—a hopeful, myth-busting narrative built on new details of infamous attacks, never-before-told accounts from perpetrators and survivors, and real-time immersion in confidential threat cases, casting a whole new light on how to solve a grievous problem

It's time to go beyond all the thoughts and prayers, misguided blame on mental illness, and dug-in disputes over the Second Amendment. Through meticulous reporting and panoramic storytelling, award-winning journalist Mark Follman chronicles the decades-long search for identifiable profiles of mass shooters and brings readers inside a groundbreaking method for preventing devastating attacks. The emerging field of behavioral threat assessment, with its synergy of mental health and law enforcement expertise, focuses on circumstances and behaviors leading up to planned acts of violence—warning signs that offer a chance for constructive intervention before it's too late.

Beginning with the pioneering study in the late 1970s of "criminally insane" assassins and the stalking behaviors discovered after the murder of John Lennon and the shooting of Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, Follman traces how the field of behavioral threat assessment first grew out of Secret Service investigations and FBI serial-killer hunting. Soon to be revolutionized after the tragedies at Columbine and Virginia Tech, and expanded further after Sandy Hook and Parkland, the method is used increasingly today to thwart attacks brewing within American communities.

As Follman examines threat-assessment work throughout the country, he goes inside the FBI's elite Behavioral Analysis Unit and immerses in an Oregon school district's innovative violence-prevention program, the first such comprehensive system to prioritize helping kids and avoid relying on punitive measures. With its focus squarely on progress, the story delves into consequential tragedies and others averted, revealing the dangers of cultural misunderstanding and media sensationalism along the way. Ultimately, Follman shows how the nation could adopt the techniques of behavioral threat assessment more broadly, with powerful potential to save lives.

Eight years in the making, Trigger Points illuminates a way forward at a time when the failure to prevent mass shootings has never been more costly—and the prospects for stopping them never more promising

. 

Violence in America: The History of Crime, Ted Gurr (London: Sage, 1989)This third edition of Violence in America is a completely new book with all 12 chapters of this volume written specifically for it. These chapters survey a wealth of new research on the long-term dynamics of murder and other crimes of violence. The contributors identify and diagnose the circumstances of recurring epidemics of violent crime that have swept the social landscape of the United States in the last 150 years, including waves of immigration, the social dislocation of war, and growing concentrations of urban poverty. They also evaluate the traits of political assassins and assess the pros and cons of gun control for reducing crime. 

***************************************************

Excerpted from: 

“The Body Reimagined as a Node in a Nested Network of Social Ecologies: Body/Brain/Culture in the World,” Sal Restivo

Round Table 3 (Dialogues). Knowledge in Praxis: The Social Construction of the Body, Post Porto Alegre, Brazil,  International Sociological Association  Forum, RC 54: The Body in the Social Sciences: Bodies in the Pandemic Context, 9/4/21.

Social isolation or rejection disrupts our thinking, our will power, and our immune systems. It is for this reason that solitary confinement should be considered “cruel and unusual punishment.”  Loneliness – lack of connections - may be the key to violent behaviors ranging from bullying to street violence and school shootings.  It’s not too much of a leap to suggest that it might play a role in terrorism and warfare.  Not only should we not underestimate the relevance of the loss of community in explaining violence, we should also pay more attention to the relevance of touching in a radically social species.  Fear of and barriers to touching (and sex which is a more complicated extrapolation of touching) are implicated along with loneliness in many if not most of the problems of the human condition (Montague (1971).  

Loneliness is not just an individual phenomenon.  The separation of groups and cultures may cause collective loneliness.  Ecumenical thinkers like Karen Armstrong (Charter for Compassion) and the Dalai Lama have argued that world peace could be based on the compassion that is at the center of all religious traditions.  The problem is that compassion is a centripetal force and reinforces the boundaries that separate groups and cultures.  This force tends to overwhelm any centrifugal forces that might help to link us across our cultural differences.  There are certainly cases in which the centrifugal forces of compassion can be mobilized to support communication and exchange across national borders, and across barriers of sex, gender, race, class, and ethnicity.  But the differences represented in all these categories of our lives are intensified by the centripetal forces of compassion.  And this breeds physical and emotional violence across these categories.   

The last school shooting (in Uvalde, Texas) has produced exactly the same call for prayers and change as all the previous school shootings.  President Biden, like so many others, has asked why these mass shootings don’t happen with such regularity in other countries.  Let’s look at some of the resources we can turn to to get a grip on things.  

The Right-Wing Lie That's Killing Our Children

https://flip.it/udaJcq

Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America, by Mark Follman (New York: Harper/Collins).

Mark Follman is a longtime journalist and the national affairs editor for Mother Jones, where he leads investigative projects and writes on subjects of national security, politics and beyond.

“An urgent read that illuminates real possibility for change.” —John Carreyrou, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Blood

For the first time, a story about the specialized teams of forensic psychologists, FBI agents, and other experts who are successfully stopping mass shootings—a hopeful, myth-busting narrative built on new details of infamous attacks, never-before-told accounts from perpetrators and survivors, and real-time immersion in confidential threat cases, casting a whole new light on how to solve a grievous problem

It's time to go beyond all the thoughts and prayers, misguided blame on mental illness, and dug-in disputes over the Second Amendment. Through meticulous reporting and panoramic storytelling, award-winning journalist Mark Follman chronicles the decades-long search for identifiable profiles of mass shooters and brings readers inside a groundbreaking method for preventing devastating attacks. The emerging field of behavioral threat assessment, with its synergy of mental health and law enforcement expertise, focuses on circumstances and behaviors leading up to planned acts of violence—warning signs that offer a chance for constructive intervention before it's too late.

Beginning with the pioneering study in the late 1970s of "criminally insane" assassins and the stalking behaviors discovered after the murder of John Lennon and the shooting of Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, Follman traces how the field of behavioral threat assessment first grew out of Secret Service investigations and FBI serial-killer hunting. Soon to be revolutionized after the tragedies at Columbine and Virginia Tech, and expanded further after Sandy Hook and Parkland, the method is used increasingly today to thwart attacks brewing within American communities.

As Follman examines threat-assessment work throughout the country, he goes inside the FBI's elite Behavioral Analysis Unit and immerses in an Oregon school district's innovative violence-prevention program, the first such comprehensive system to prioritize helping kids and avoid relying on punitive measures. With its focus squarely on progress, the story delves into consequential tragedies and others averted, revealing the dangers of cultural misunderstanding and media sensationalism along the way. Ultimately, Follman shows how the nation could adopt the techniques of behavioral threat assessment more broadly, with powerful potential to save lives.

Eight years in the making, Trigger Points illuminates a way forward at a time when the failure to prevent mass shootings has never been more costly—and the prospects for stopping them never more promising

. 

This third edition of Violence in America is a completely new book with all 12 chapters of this volume written specifically for it. These chapters survey a wealth of new research on the long-term dynamics of murder and other crimes of violence. The contributors identify and diagnose the circumstances of recurring epidemics of violent crime that have swept the social landscape of the United States in the last 150 years, including waves of immigration, the social dislocation of war, and growing concentrations of urban poverty. They also evaluate the traits of political assassins and assess the pros and cons of gun control for reducing crime. 

***************************************************

Excerpted from: 

“The Body Reimagined as a Node in a Nested Network of Social Ecologies: Body/Brain/Culture in the World,” Sal Restivo

Round Table 3 (Dialogues). Knowledge in Praxis: The Social Construction of the Body, Post Porto Alegre, Brazil,  International Sociological Association  Forum, RC 54: The Body in the Social Sciences: Bodies in the Pandemic Context, 9/4/21.

Social isolation or rejection disrupts our thinking, our will power, and our immune systems. It is for this reason that solitary confinement should be considered “cruel and unusual punishment.”  Loneliness – lack of connections - may be the key to violent behaviors ranging from bullying to street violence and school shootings.  It’s not too much of a leap to suggest that it might play a role in terrorism and warfare.  Not only should we not underestimate the relevance of the loss of community in explaining violence, we should also pay more attention to the relevance of touching in a radically social species.  Fear of and barriers to touching (and sex which is a more complicated extrapolation of touching) are implicated along with loneliness in many if not most of the problems of the human condition (Montague (1971).  

Loneliness is not just an individual phenomenon.  The separation of groups and cultures may cause collective loneliness.  Ecumenical thinkers like Karen Armstrong (Charter for Compassion) and the Dalai Lama have argued that world peace could be based on the compassion that is at the center of all religious traditions.  The problem is that compassion is a centripetal force and reinforces the boundaries that separate groups and cultures.  This force tends to overwhelm any centrifugal forces that might help to link us across our cultural differences.  There are certainly cases in which the centrifugal forces of compassion can be mobilized to support communication and exchange across national borders, and across barriers of sex, gender, race, class, and ethnicity.  But the differences represented in all these categories of our lives are intensified by the centripetal forces of compassion.  And this breeds physical and emotional violence across these categories.   

VIOLENCE, COOPERATION, PEACE

AN INTERNATIONAL SERIES

F.A. BEER & T.R. GURR, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER

VIOLENCE IN AMERICA, VOL. 1, T.R. GURR

VIOLENCE IN AMERICA, VOL. 2, T.R. GURR

VIOLENCE IN AMERICA, VOL. 3, T.R. GURR

MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT: NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROTEST IN AMERICA

F.B. MCCREA & G.E. MARKLE

POWER AND CONFLICT: TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY

H.M. BLALOCK, Jr. 

Explosive Conflict, Randall Collins (New York: Routledge, 2022)

This book is a major contribution to Collins' influential theories of violence. It has a breadth and novelty of argument that can't be found elsewhere. 

-- Ralph Schroeder, Oxford University

Collins offers a fresh and provocative perspective on the sociology of violence and grand theory.

--Elijah Anderson, Yale University

Violence: A Micro-sociological theory, Randall Collins (Princeton: Princeton University Press)

"Covering infinitely recurrent strips of social action running from blustering confrontation to intimate physical attack, Violence is peppered with breakthrough insights, demonstrating the power of systematic theory and even concluding with that rarest of sociological contributions, a short list of eminently practical suggestions. The concept of 'forward panic' alone makes the book indispensable. This book is a milestone contribution to criminology, to micro-sociology, to the sociology of emotions, and to a field that knows no academic boundaries: the history of efforts to control violence. Randy Collins has developed a framework that should guide a generation of research."―Jack Katz, University of California, Los Angeles

"I have no doubt that this book will be hailed as one of the most important works on violence ever written. After reading it, it is difficult any longer to imagine that all that is needed for violence to occur is a motive to engage in violence. Collins argues persuasively that the situation must also be right if violence is actually to occur."―Donald Black, author of The Social Structure of Right and Wrong

"A masterful study of the microdynamics of violence. This book will undoubtedly provoke excitement and controversy among a wide group of readers, including educated nonspecialists as well as academics, journalists, law-enforcement professionals, and policymakers. Truly an original book."―Eiko Ikegami, author of The Taming of the Samurai