Women in Haiti are frequent victims of sexual violence and armed assault. Yet an astonishing proportion of these victims also act as perpetrators of violent crime, often as part of armed groups. Award-winning legal scholar Benedetta Faedi Duramy visited Haiti to discover what causes these women to act in such destructive ways and what might be done to stop this tragic cycle of violence.

Gender and Violence in Haiti is the product of more than a year of extensive firsthand observations and interviews with the women who have been caught up in the widespread violence plaguing Haiti. Drawing from the experiences of a diverse group of Haitian women, Faedi Duramy finds that both the victims and perpetrators of violence share a common sense of anger and desperation. Untangling the many factors that cause these women to commit violence, from self-defense to revenge, she identifies concrete measures that can lead them to feel vindicated and protected by their communities.

Faedi Duramy vividly conveys the horrifying conditions pervading Haiti, even before the 2010 earthquake. But Gender and Violence in Haiti also carries a message of hope—and shows what local authorities and international relief agencies can do to help the women of Haiti.

Reports from war zones often note the obscene victimization of women, who are frequently raped, tortured, beaten, and pressed into sexual servitude. Yet this reign of terror against women not only occurs during exceptional moments of social collapse, but during peacetime too. As this powerful book argues, violence against women should be understood as a systemic problem—one for which the state must be held accountable. 

 

The twelve essays in Gender Violence in Peace and War present a continuum of cases where the state enables violence against women—from state-sponsored torture to lax prosecution of sexual assault. Some contributors uncover buried histories of state violence against women throughout the twentieth century, in locations as diverse as Ireland, Indonesia, and Guatemala. Others spotlight ongoing struggles to define the state’s role in preventing gendered violence, from domestic abuse policies in the Russian Federation to anti-trafficking laws in the United States. 

 

Bringing together cutting-edge research from political science, history, gender studies, anthropology, and legal studies, this collection offers a comparative analysis of how the state facilitates, legitimates, and perpetuates gender violence worldwide. The contributors also offer vital insights into how states might adequately protect women’s rights in peacetime, as well as how to intervene when a state declares war on its female citizens.  

 

Armed conflicts continue to wreak havoc on children and families around the world with profound effects. In 2017, 420 million children—nearly one in five—were living in conflict-affected areas, an increase in 30 million from the previous year. The recent surge in war-induced migration, referred to as a “global refugee crisis” has made migration a highly politicized issue, with refugee populations and host countries facing unique challenges. We know from research related to asylum seeking families that it is vital to think about children and families in relation to what it means to stay together, what it means for parents to be separated from their children, and the kinds of everyday tensions that emerge in living in dangerous, insecure, and precarious circumstances. In Global Child, the authors draw on what they have learned through their collaborative undertakings, and highlight the unique features of participatory, arts-based, and socio-ecological approaches to studying war-affected children and families, demonstrating the collective strength as well as the limitations and ethical implications of such research. Building on work across the Global South and the Global North, this book aims to deepen an understanding of their tri-pillared approach, and the potential of this methodology for contributing to improved practices in working with war-affected children and their families.

Often considered peculiarly American, lynching in fact takes place around the world. In the first book of a two-volume study, Michael J. Pfeifer collects essays that look at lynching and related forms of collective violence in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Understanding lynching as a transnational phenomenon rooted in political and cultural flux, the writers probe important issues from Indonesia--where a long history of public violence now twines with the Internet--to South Africa, with its notorious history of necklacing. Other scholars examine lynching in medieval Nepal, the epidemic of summary executions in late Qing-era China, the merging of state-sponsored and local collective violence during the Nanking Massacre, and the ways public anger and lynching in India relate to identity, autonomy, and territory. Contributors: Laurens Bakker, Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, Nandana Dutta, Weiting Guo, Or Honig, Frank Jacob, Michael J. Pfeifer, Yogesh Raj, and Nicholas Rush Smith.

"Karl Marx aspired to a world in which our animal needs would be satisfied and our human needs could be addressed. It is a realistic possibility now, as William Robinson outlines—or the alternative that is taking shape before our eyes: a 'global police state' controlled by narrowly concentrated capital with 'surplus humanity' left to survive somehow on its own. The choice is in our hands."
—Noam Chomsky, author of Who Rules the World?
 
As the world becomes ever more unequal, people become ever more “disposable.” Today, governments systematically exclude sections of their populations from society through heavy-handed policing. But it doesn't always go to plan.
 
William I. Robinson exposes the nature and dynamics of this out-of-control system, arguing for the urgency of creating a movement capable of overthrowing it. The global police state uses a variety of ingenious methods of control, including mass incarceration, police violence, US-led wars, the persecution of immigrants and refugees, and the repression of environmental activists.
 
He writes in his Introduction, “I offer a ‘big picture” of the emerging global police state in a short book that is eminently readable. The pages to follow may startle many readers and make them angry. I trust the work will serve as a warning of the dystopic future that is upon us. More importantly, by exposing the nature and dynamic of this out-of-control system, I hope it will contribute to the struggles to bring about an alternative future based on human freedom and liberation.”
 
Movements have emerged to combat the increasing militarization, surveillance and social cleansing; however, many of them appeal to a moral sense of social justice rather than addressing its root: global capitalism.
 
Using shocking data which reveals how far capitalism has become a system of repression, Robinson argues that the emerging megacities of the world are becoming the battlegrounds where the excluded and the oppressed face off against the global police state.     

Terrorism and guerrilla warfare, whether justified as resistance to oppression or condemned as disrupting the rule of law, are as old as civilization itself. The power of the terrorist, however, has been magnified by modern weapons, including television, which he has learned to exploit.

To protect itself, society must understand the terrorist and what he is trying to do; thus Dr. Clutterbuck’s purpose in writing this book: “to contribute to the understanding and cooperation between the police, the public and the media.”