Our Violent World: Terrorism in Society

ISBN-13: 9780230224735 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 224 str.

Kevin McDonald

Opis

From 1960s student movements to today's global jihad, this text explores key factors shaping violence and terrorism today. It examines the globalization of violence, the search for the extreme and the new centrality of media. Assessing recent theoretical debates it argues for a renewed social science. It is a must-read for students and citizens.

Spis treści

1. The Return of Violence 2. Terrorism 3. Competing Perspectives 4. Terror, Violence and the Student Movement 5. Violence and Nation: the Palestinian Experience 6. Apocalypse Now? 7. Violence, the Mask and the Extreme 8. The Martyr 9. Mediatizing Violence: From Snapshots to the Internet 10. Conclusion: Beyond Terror?

O autorze

Kevin McDonald is Professor and Director of the Centre for Cultural Diversity and Wellbeing at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. He is also a research associate at the Centre d'Analyse et d'Intervention Sociologiques at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France. His books include Struggles for Subjectivity and Global Movements.

Blurb

What can the analysis of violence and terror tell us about the modern world? Why is violence often used to achieve religious, cultural or political goals? Can we understand the search for the extreme that increasingly shapes violence today?
 
From 1960s student movements to today's global jihad, this text explores the factors and debates shaping violence and terrorism in our contemporary society. Each chapter confronts examples of disturbing terrorist acts and events of mass violence from recent history and uses these to examine key questions, theories and concepts surrounding this sensitive and controversial topic. In particular, the book:

- identifies core tools for the analysis of public violence
- explores the processes that mutate social movements into violent groups
- describes the cultural, embodied, experiential and imagined dimensions of violence
- highlights different periods and varying forms of terrorist violence
- examines the role of globalization, media, technology and the visual in violence and terror today.

Our Violent World shows how the social sciences can contribute to an understanding of violence and responses to terror, as well as the construction of a social world less dominated by fear of the other. It is a must-read for students and citizens.