“Come on Now, I Want to See Blood!”

Violent initiation rites directed at new members or potential members of an organization are not recent phenomena and not exclusive to joining street gangs or crews. This chapter will explore the origins of violent initiation through history and how contemporary rites used to “welcome” new members in youth gangs mirror other entries into exclusively male enclaves. These rituals include controlled, choreographed patterns of violent behavior, including participants vs. voyeurs and number of blows directed at the initiate before the rite is considered to be completed. In additional to taking a historical perspective, recognized predictive risk factors for gang recruitment are listed, including those identified by Hill et al. (1999) in their Seattle study of juvenile delinquency and how it leads down the slippery slope to gang affiliation.

Video Games and Society

Video games do not exist in a vacuum; they influence and are influenced by many other factors. The factors that involve individuals or smaller groups have already been discussed, but there are many other issues that exist in society at large that impact video games or that video games impact. Two of the largest issues are how video games and violence affect each other, and how video games can be addicting, similar to gambling addiction. These and other issues regarding how video games try to interact within society as a whole are discussed in this chapter.

Reparations for Children and Youth

Violence against children and youth in war causes severe damage to individuals, communities and societies. This chapter aims to demonstrate the importance of reparations for children and youth as a peacebuilding mechanism in the context of transitional justice. On one hand, the chapter seeks to address reparations for children and youth understood as a political project, with a transformative and participatory potential for rebuilding societies and healing the wounds of those who have been affected by armed conflict. On the other hand, the paper attempts to overcome the conception of children and youth as passive victims, providing them with agency to become engaged political members in building peaceful societies. Thus, reparations should position them as subjects of rights, giving them voice as contributors in peacebuilding processes.

Gender Violence Experiences of Urban Adult Indigenous Women

This chapter deals with the problem of gender violence, especially in Chilean Aymara women. The aim of the study is to make a diagnosis of the indices and forms of domestic violence against women on the basis of gender in a sample of Aymara women from the urban area in the Arica and Parinacota Region (Chile). The chapter assumes the definition of intrafamiliar violence, according to the formulation adopted by Chilean legislation, as a complex and multi-determined phenomenon, which happens in the context of a culture and certain social relationships that support and make it possible. In this sense, it is one of the most dramatic manifestations of discrimination experienced by women because of their sexual condition. It is conceptualized as any form of physical, psychological-emotional, sexual, and/or economic abuse, which happens within the couple relationship, regardless of the legality of the bond. The chapter deals with the description of conditions and ways of life of the Aymara ethnic group, from socio-demographic, economic, and public health indicators that may be related to these women's perceptions concerning their situation in view of the intrafamiliar violence phenomenon. The research is a quantitative and qualitative multimethod design. The qualitative side of this study consists of group discussions in which the object of the research is analyzed through an outline ad hoc. The quantitative side of the research consists of the application of two standardized scales of domestic violence (WASTT and ISA).

Economic Drivers of Domestic Violence among Women

Violence against women seems to be more of an economic than a sociological problem. In Ghana, no study has investigated the economic causes of domestic violence against women. The chapter seeks to investigate the economic factors that are likely to drive domestic violence among married couples. The study uses a survey of 260 married women from selected communities around the University of Cape Coast. Due to the nature of the measurement of domestic violence, the study adopts the binary logit model to estimate the key economic variables that affect the likelihood of being subjected to domestic violence. Average income, property ownership, economic activities, and their interactions seem to drive domestic violence after controlling for some household covariates. It is found that income and a combination of being economically engaged and owning an asset significantly affected domestic violence at their desired level of significance. Stemming from this, the authors call on the appropriate authorities to make credit facilities available to women to enable them to be economically engaged. Empowering women through the provision of micro-credit facilities has the potential to reduce the economic dimensions of domestic violence.

The Roles of Age, Gender, and Ethnicity in Cyberbullying

Children and adolescents have become active users of electronic technologies, with many of them blogging, watching videos, and chatting via instant messenger and social networking sites. Many of these activities have become a typical part of their lives. Electronic technologies have brought many conveniences to the lives of children and adolescents. Along with the opportunities associated with these technologies, children and adolescents are also susceptible to risks, including cyberbullying. Therefore, many researchers have become concerned with identifying which factors might predict children's and adolescents' involvement in these behaviors. Some predictors that researchers have focused on include age, gender, and ethnicity, but the findings were mixed. This chapter draws on research to review studies on the relationship of age, gender, and ethnicity to children's and adolescents' cyberbullying involvement and concludes with solutions and recommendations as well as future directions for research focused on these predictors and cyberbullying.

Youth Gangs and Youth Violence in Australia

This chapter provides an introduction and overview of issues pertaining to youth gangs and youth violence in Australia. The first part features the voices of young people from around Australia describing their experiences of youth gang violence. The second part provides a broad overview of biological, psychological and social factors that together shape the propensities for young people, and young men in particular, to join gangs and to engage in youth violence. The final part of the chapter provides more detailed exposition of two gang members, 'Mohammad' and 'Tan', and the everyday complexities of their lives. The chapter concludes by noting that the gang does not have to be seen as an overwhelming influence in the lives of young people, and that their activities and behaviours are more diverse, and include positive elements, than generally given credit in mainstream youth gangs research and analysis.

Cape Town Gangs

Almost all gang studies throughout the 20th century and most in the 21st locate the reasons for both gang membership and a tendency to violence in the environments within which young people are raised: family, neighbourhood, school, poverty, access to drugs and general deprivation. In Cape Town all these were present under apartheid and still persist 20 years after the country became a democracy. The reasons for this persistence have to do with global and local economics, skills shortages, corruption, political mismanagement and neglect of certain neighbourhoods and are beyond the scope of this chapter. Rather, acknowledging these influences, this study looks at how gangs are defined and examines them from a more finely grained perspective.

The Reality and Myth of Weapons and Violence in Gang Life

Weapons and violence are both real and mythic elements of gang life. Though violence is a real element of gang life, public perceptions about gangs may be exaggerated, invoking the idea of dangerous youth roaming the streets. The image of violent gang members is also embraced and used by youth on the streets to navigate their social world. Gang members often create personal and group-based myths by exaggerating their use of weapons and violence. This chapter examines the division between myth and reality in gang life. It reviews research to establish that weapons and violence are real elements of gang members' lives throughout the world. It further explores how myths emerge among gang members who have ample motivation for fictionalizing violence and weapons use. This chapter relies on the social psychological ideas of social constructionism, interpretive socialization, and identity to explain the existence of myths in gang life.

Ethics, Decision-Making, and Risk Communication in the Era of Terroredia

Terrorism today is one of the most frequent global severe stress situations. The advanced and widespread new media and information technologies as well as modern tactics of terrorism make the public of any nation in exposure, directly and indirectly, to uncertain potential acts of terrorism. The relationship between terrorists and media personnel has grown widely influential, and has been described recently by the term terroredia, in which the public is the main target of both terrorism and the media. Both responsibility and rationality are fundamental weights for the effectiveness of risk communication during times of terrorism. This paper critically analyzes how policymakers in several Western countries have communicated to the public, through the media, the risk of terrorist attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) against their individuals and societies. The study uncovers that rationality and responsibility are lacking in Western media decision-making regarding the risk of ISIL's potential activities.