Hate Crimes: New Social Movements and the Politics of Violence (Social Problems & Social Issues)

Hate Crimes: New Social Movements and the Politics of Violence (Social Problems & Social Issues)

by ValerieJenness (Author), KendalBroad (Author)

Synopsis

Violence directed at victimized groups because of their real or imagined characteristics is as old as humankind. Why, then, have hate crimes only recently become recog-nized as a serious social problem, especially in the United States? This book addresses a timely set of questions about the politics and dynamics of intergroup violence manifested as discrimination. It explores such issues as why injuries against some groups of people - Jews, people of color, gays and lesbians, and, on occasion, women and those with dis-abilities - have increasingly captured notice, while similar acts of bias-motivated violence continue to go unnoticed.The authors offer empirically grounded, theoretically in-formed answers to the question: How is social change on this order possible? Their analysis of the dynamics draws upon three established traditions: the social constructionist approach; new social movements theory; and the new institutionalist approach to understanding change as a process of innovation and diffusion of cultural forms. In this case, new social movements have converged of late to sustain public discussions that put into question issues of rights and harm as they relate to a variety of minority constituencies.The authors couple their general discussion with close attention to many particular anti-violence projects. They thereby develop a compelling theoretical argument about the social processes through which new social problems emerge, social policy is developed and diffused, and new cultural forms are institutionalized.

$61.36

Quantity

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 226
Edition: illustrated edition
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter & Co
Published: 15 Dec 1997

ISBN 10: 020230602X
ISBN 13: 9780202306025

Media Reviews

This book provides a helpful account of how the social groups in the US have responded to the social scourge of hate crime. It offers a clear and valuable expla-nation of this complex problem.

--Readings: A Journal of Reviews and Commentary in Mental Health


Hate crimes, violence directed against religious, racial, and ethnic groups, also finds women and homosexuals as victims. Each of these has resulted in social movement groups organized to fight such violence. The authors identified 32 gay and lesbian organizations and 36 feminist groups that have responded to hate crimes. Data collected from these organizations consists of newsletters, reports, articles in newspapers, pamphlets, conference agendas, and the like. Treating this material as 68 case studies, the authors then compare the organizations with respect to their histories of reacting to violence and describe an evolutionary process of movement formation, agenda development, and action... Graduate, faculty.

--D. Harper, Choice

[P]rovide[s] the reader with a better understanding of the social constructions of hate crimes... Its authors describe the process by which affected groups have defined hate crimes as a social problem worthy of attention, and they place the social construction of hate crimes within an appropriate historical and sociological context. Through their extensive study of grassroots antiviolence projects emerging from the civil rights, women's, and lesbian and gay movements, they document the process by which violence against certain groups becomes visible, gets framed as a problem, and becomes transformed into condemnable criminal conduct.

--Jeanine C. Cogan and Camille Preston, Signs

Jenness and Broad relied upon the constructionist framework to analyze the ways in which hate crimes and the victims of bias incidents are recognized, identified, and labeled through the formation and continued development of social movements, collective action frames and claim-making activities... A number of illuminating points make this monograph an important contribution to the study of hate crimes, organizations, and social movements... This monograph is a valuable resource for upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, scholars, and antiviolence activists. Jenness and Broad's analysis has done a fine job of moving the literature toward a more historical, structural, and theoretical understanding of hate crimes as a system of social constructs stemming from the evolution and nature of organizational fields.

--Stephanie Shanks-Meile, Social Forces

The hate crime has emerged only in the past decade as a widely identified social problem. Jenness and Broad use a constructionist framework to explore its emergence and what determines which social groups get recognized as legitimate victims protected by hate crime legislation... The analysis of the Violence Against Women Act--which redefined violence against women from a private, family matter to a public, civil rights issue--is one of the book's more well-articulated aspects... Another strength is the book's comparisons between the antiviolence movement spawned by the women's movement, now a quarter of a century old, and the much younger product of the modern gay liberation movement.

--Karen Franklin, Gender and Society

This book provides a helpful account of how the social groups in the US have responded to the social scourge of hate crime. It offers a clear and valuable expla-nation of this complex problem.

--Readings: A Journal of Reviews and Commentary in Mental Health


Hate crimes, violence directed against religious, racial, and ethnic groups, also finds women and homosexuals as victims. Each of these has resulted in social movement groups organized to fight such violence. The authors identified 32 gay and lesbian organizations and 36 feminist groups that have responded to hate crimes. Data collected from these organizations consists of newsletters, reports, articles in newspapers, pamphlets, conference agendas, and the like. Treating this material as 68 case studies, the authors then compare the organizations with respect to their histories of reacting to violence and describe an evolutionary process of movement formation, agenda development, and action... Graduate, faculty.

--D. Harper, Choice

[P]rovide[s] the reader with a better understanding of the social constructions of hate crimes... Its authors describe the process by which affected groups have defined hate crimes as a social problem worthy of attention, and they place the social construction of hate crimes within an appropriate historical and sociological context. Through their extensive study of grassroots antiviolence projects emerging from the civil rights, women's, and lesbian and gay movements, they document the process by which violence against certain groups becomes visible, gets framed as a problem, and becomes transformed into condemnable criminal conduct.

--Jeanine C. Cogan and Camille Preston, Signs

Jenness and Broad relied upon the constructionist framework to analyze the ways in which hate crimes and the victims of bias incidents are recognized, identified, and labeled through the formation and continued development of social movements, collective action frames and claim-making activities... A number of illuminating points make this monograph an important contribution to the study of hate crimes, organizations, and social movements... This monograph is a valuable resource for upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, scholars, and antiviolence activists. Jenness and Broad's analysis has done a fine job of moving the literature toward a more historical, structural, and theoretical understanding of hate crimes as a system of social constructs stemming from the evolution and nature of organizational fields.

--Stephanie Shanks-Meile, Social Forces

The hate crime has emerged only in the past decade as a widely identified social problem. Jenness and Broad use a constructionist framework to explore its emergence and what determines which social groups get recognized as legitimate victims protected by hate crime legislation... The analysis of the Violence Against Women Act--which redefined violence against women from a private, family matter to a public, civil rights issue--is one of the book's more well-articulated aspects... Another strength is the book's comparisons between the antiviolence movement spawned by the women's movement, now a quarter of a century old, and the much younger product of the modern gay liberation movement.

--Karen Franklin, Gender and Society

This book provides a helpful account of how the social groups in the US have responded to the social scourge of hate crime. It offers a clear and valuable expla-nation of this complex problem.

--Readings: A Journal of Reviews and Commentary in Mental Health


-Hate crimes, violence directed against religious, racial, and ethnic groups, also finds women and homosexuals as victims. Each of these has resulted in -social movement- groups organized to fight such violence. The authors identified 32 gay and lesbian organizations and 36 feminist groups that have responded to hate crimes. Data collected from these organizations consists of newsletters, reports, articles in newspapers, pamphlets, conference agendas, and the like. Treating this material as 68 case studies, the authors then compare the organizations with respect to their histories of reacting to violence and describe an evolutionary process of movement formation, agenda development, and action... Graduate, faculty.-

--D. Harper, Choice

-[P]rovide[s] the reader with a better understanding of the social constructions of hate crimes... Its authors describe the process by which affected groups have defined hate crimes as a social problem worthy of attention, and they place the social construction of hate crimes within an appropriate historical and sociological context. Through their extensive study of grassroots antiviolence projects emerging from the civil rights, women's, and lesbian and gay movements, they document the process by which violence against certain groups becomes visible, gets framed as a problem, and becomes transformed into condemnable criminal conduct.-

--Jeanine C. Cogan and Camille Preston, Signs

-Jenness and Broad relied upon the constructionist framework to analyze the ways in which hate crimes and the victims of bias incidents are recognized, identified, and labeled through the formation and continued development of social movements, collective action frames and claim-making activities... A number of illuminating points make this monograph an important contribution to the study of hate crimes, organizations, and social movements... This monograph is a valuable resource for upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, scholars, and antiviolence activists. Jenness and Broad's analysis has done a fine job of moving the literature toward a more historical, structural, and theoretical understanding of hate crimes as a system of social constructs stemming from the evolution and nature of organizational fields.-

--Stephanie Shanks-Meile, Social Forces

-The -hate crime- has emerged only in the past decade as a widely identified social problem. Jenness and Broad use a constructionist framework to explore its emergence and what determines which social groups get recognized as legitimate victims protected by hate crime legislation... The analysis of the Violence Against Women Act--which redefined violence against women from a private, family matter to a public, civil rights issue--is one of the book's more well-articulated aspects... Another strength is the book's comparisons between the antiviolence movement spawned by the women's movement, now a quarter of a century old, and the much younger product of the modern gay liberation movement.-

--Karen Franklin, Gender and Society

-This book provides a helpful account of how the social groups in the US have responded to the social scourge of hate crime. It offers a clear and valuable expla-nation of this complex problem.-

--Readings: A Journal of Reviews and Commentary in Mental Health

Author Bio
Valerie Jenness is chair of the Department of Criminology, Law and Society and a professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society and the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Making Hate a Crime: From Social Movement to Law Enforcement Practice (with Ryken Grattet, 2001) and Making it Work: The Prostitutes' Rights Movement in Perspective (1993).