Violence

Using discourses from across the conceptual and geographical board, Toby Miller argues for a different way of understanding violence, one that goes beyond supposedly universal human traits to focus instead on the specificities of history, place, and population as explanations for it. Violence engages these issues in a wide-ranging interdisciplinary form, examining definitions and data, psychology and ideology, gender, nation-states, and the media by covering several foundational questions: how has violence been defined, historically and geographically? has it decreased or increased over time? which regions of the world are the most violent? does violence correlate with economies, political systems, and religions? what is the relationship of gender and violence? what role do the media play? This book is a powerful introduction to the study of violence, ideal for students and researchers across the human sciences, most notably sociology, American and area studies, history, media and communication studies, politics, literature, and cultural studies.

INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE—Meaning and Data CHAPTER TWO—Mind CHAPTER THREE—Gender CHAPTER FOUR—Nation-State CHAPTER FIVE—Media CONCLUSION (with Richard Maxwell)

Toby Miller is Stuart Hall Professor of Cultural Studies, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana–Cuajimalpa; Research Professor of the Graduate Division, University of California, Riverside; and Sir Walter Murdoch Distinguished Collaborator, Murdoch University. He is Past-President of the Cultural Studies Association (US) and the author and editor of 50 books and hundreds of articles and chapters.