The state, violence and resistance

2021 ◽  
pp. 101-115
Author(s):  
Upinder Singh
Keyword(s):  
State Violence ◽  
The State

scholarly journals The dark footprint of state violence: A synthetic approach to the American crime decline

2021 ◽  
pp. 136248062098423
Author(s):  
Aaron Roussell ◽  
Lori Sexton ◽  
Paul Deppen ◽  
Marisa Omori ◽  
Esther Scheibler
Keyword(s):  
Crime Rate ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Synthetic Approach ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Lethal Violence ◽  
Crime Decline ◽  
Reported Crime ◽  
Criminal Legal System ◽  
Deaths In Custody

This project combines the conversation on the national crime rate with emerging discussions on the violence that the state perpetrates against civilians. To measure US lethal violence holistically, we reconceptualize the traditional definitional boundaries of violence to erase arbitrary distinctions between state- and civilian-caused crime and violence. Discussions of the “crime decline” focus specifically on civilian crime, positioning civilians as the sole danger to the health, wealth, and safety of individuals. Violence committed by the state—from police homicide to deaths in custody to in-prison sexual assault—is not found in the traditionally reported crime rate. These absences belie real dangers posed to individuals which are historical and contemporary, nonnegligible, and possibly rising. We present Uniform Crime Report data side-by-side with data on police killings, deaths in custody, and executions from sources such as Fatal Encounters, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and the Center for Disease Control to produce a robust discussion of deaths produced through the criminal legal system. We ground this empirical analysis in a broader conceptual framework that situates state violence squarely within the realm of US crime, and explore the implications of this more holistic view of crime for future analyses.

The State of (Intersectional Critique of) State Violence

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 306-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liat Ben-Moshe
Keyword(s):  
State Violence ◽  
The State

scholarly journals The Problem of State Violence

Daedalus ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 151 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-37
Author(s):  
Paul Butler
Keyword(s):  
Use Of Force ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Abuse And Neglect ◽  
The Future ◽  
State Actors

Abstract When violence occurs, the state has an obligation to respond to and reduce the impacts of it; yet often the state originates, or at least contributes to, the violence. This may occur in a variety of ways, including through the use of force by police, pretrial incarceration at local jails, long periods of incarceration in prisons, or abuse and neglect of people who are incarcerated. This essay explores the role of the state in responding to violence and how it should contribute to reducing violence in communities, as well as in its own operations. Finally, it explores what the future of collaboration between state actors and the community looks like and offers examples of successful power-sharing and co-producing of safety between the state and the public.

Black Mothering Legacies: Theorizing Lament as a Form of Justice Research

2021 ◽  
pp. 194084472110495
Author(s):  
Nichole A. Guillory
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Black Child ◽  
The State ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Black Life ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Black Mothering

I feel compelled by the moment to take up these questions: What does it mean to mother a Black child within/against this historical moment within/against the (carceral) United States? What does it mean to mother a Black child when the legacy of enslavement in the United States is still the basis for assessing the “worth” of you and your children? How do I determine justice for my/a/the Black child in this historical moment? How does this justice come to matter? My approach to critical qualitative research is best understood through Cynthia Dillard’s (2006) notion of “endarkened feminist epistemology” (p. 3). Here I trace a lineage of Black mothering praxis that has been enacted in response to injustice across different historical moments and geographical locations in the United States. This lineage focuses on Black mothers who have lost their children to state violence, when that violence is perpetrated by the state or when the state fails to mete out justice for the taking of Black life.

State, Masculinity, and the Aestheticization of Violence

2021 ◽  
pp. 394-416
Author(s):  
Erol Subasi ◽  
Selda Tunc Subasi
Keyword(s):  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Detective Story ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Law System ◽  
Gender Based

Violence is a fundamental bio-sociological phenomenon. It can take many forms including psychological, emotional, economic, gender-based, religious, cultural, and political. The latter is primarily associated with the state. Historically, all states exercised violence in accordance with their law. Thus, law is the codification of violence. State and violence are also associated with masculinity, which is not fixed biological but rather a flexible sociological category. Masculinity is concretized in specific patterns of behaviors. In this perspective, the present study analyzes the famous Turkish TV Series, Behzat Ç: An Ankara Detective Story. It argues that since the Turkish law system could not function of its violence due to the struggles of various socio-political actors within the state, the protagonist, Behzat, aestheticizes and mimics state violence through his masculine performances. That is, state violence is materialized in the masculinity of Behzat who by resorting to violence brings the justice that the state fails to provide.

The Necropolitics of Documents and the Slow Death of Prisoners in Turkey

2019 ◽  
pp. 97-117
Author(s):  
Başak Can
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Health Condition ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Penal Institutions ◽  
Multiple State ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

The government used medico-legal documentation of prisoners’ health condition to solve the biopolitical crisis in penal institutions immediately after the end of death fast (2000-2007) and released hundreds of hunger strikers, who suffered from incurable conditions. That the state turned a political crisis into a medical one using the illness clause had unprecedented consequences for how claims are made in the political sphere. Human rights activists, Kurdish and leftist politicians are now using the plight of ill prisoners to make political arguments in the public sphere. The health conditions of political prisoners, specifically the use of the illness clause has thus emerged as one of the most contentious fields in the encounters between the state and its opponents. This chapter examines how temporality works as an instrument of necropolitics through the slow production and circulation of the medico-legal bureaucratic documents that are produced through encounters with multiple state officials. I argue, first, that medico-legal processes surrounding the detainees are mediated through the discretionary sovereign acts of multiple state officials, including but not limited to physicians, and second, that legal medicine as a technology of state violence is central to understanding the intertwined histories of sovereignty and biopolitics in Turkey.

الشعب‎ يريد‎ اسقاط‎ النظام‎ “The People Want to Overthrow the Regime”

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-73
Author(s):  
Amy Austin Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Breaking Point ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Security Organizations

This chapter analyzes the first wave of the revolution against Hosni Mubarak. Refuting arguments that focus on the role of the social media, or divisions among the elite, and the alleged neutrality of the Egyptian military, the chapter illustrates that it was a revolutionary coalition of the middle and lower classes that created a breaking point for the regime. Key features of this mass mobilization included the refusal of protesters to be cowed by state violence, the creation of “liberated zones” occupied by the people, “popular security” organizations that replaced the repressive security apparatus of the state, and strikes that crippled the economy in the final days of the Mubarak era. Key moments during the 18 days are described with ethnographic detail, including the unfiltered reactions of protesters to the deployment of soldiers on January 28. The revolutionary nature of the uprising is that people demanded more than just the ouster of Mubarak—they wanted to topple “the regime” by naming the names of a slew of Mubarak’s cronies to remove them from power.

‘Three warnings and you’re out’: Banishment and precarious penality in South Africa’s informal settlements

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail Super
Keyword(s):  
Informal Settlements ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
State Punishment ◽  
Group Boundaries ◽  
Legitimate Violence

This paper asks how punitive forms of non-state punishment play out on the margins of the state, in informal (shack) settlements in South Africa. My focus is on the practice of forcing those who are suspected of certain offences to leave their homes in informal settlements. I refer to this as ‘banishment’ and argue that it is a ‘penal phenomenon’ which is intimately tied to the general precarity that residents experience on a daily basis. The paper examines the ways in which these formally illegal, but nonetheless legitimate practices, draw on and reconfigure liberal state punishment. I use my study to make a broader theoretical point about the interplay between lawful state punishment and unlawful punishment on the periphery of the state. The blurred boundaries between legal (state) violence and illegal (but nonetheless legitimate) violence are particularly ‘visible’ in situations of ‘precarious penality’ – a term that I use to describe the unstable, violent and exclusionary penality that manifests in situations of socio-economic precarity, particularly in contexts of inequality, high rates of violent crime and a delegitimated rule of law. In these circumstances ‘non-state’ punishment contributes to the construction and maintenance of group boundaries and fulfils a similar function to ‘formal’ punishment. Thus, I ask whether it makes sense to exclude ‘non-state’ public authorities which act against ‘criminality’, when asking what or who constitutes the penal field and, when measuring state punitiveness?

Legitimation, State Repression, and the Sioux Massacre at Wounded Knee

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Roscigno ◽  
Julia Cantzler ◽  
Salvatore Restifo ◽  
Joshua Guetzkow
Keyword(s):  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Dance Movement ◽  
Ghost Dance ◽  
Cultural Foundations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wounded Knee ◽  
Institutional Actors

The Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 and the Ghost Dance movement that preceded it offer a compelling sociological case for understanding legitimation, elite framing, and repression. Building on the social movements literature and theoretical insights on power, institutions, and inequality, we engage in multimethod, in-depth analyses of a rich body of archived correspondence from key institutional actors at the time. Doing so contributes to the literature by drawing attention to (1) the cultural foundations of inequality and repression; (2) super-ordinate framing by political elites and the state; and (3) key institutional conflicts and their consequences. We find that, within an ambiguous colonial context, officials of the Office of Indian Affairs and federal politicians shelved benign military observations and, instead, amplified ethnocentric and threat frames. Force was consequently portrayed as justifiable, which increased the likelihood of the massacre. We conclude by discussing the utility of our results for conceptions of culture, power, inequality, the state, and state violence.

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