Violence: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Causes, Consequences, and Cures

by Lee (Author), Lee (Author), Lee (Author)

• New

  Hardcover
  2019

  $103.32

  Amidst significant medical advancements in the treatment of chronic diseases throughout the 20th century, the global burden of homicide and suicide has persisted as leading causes of death worldwide. Collectively the impact of violent death on human health ranks among one of the most pressing social problems facing contemporary global public health. Overall, the World Health Organization estimates that approximately one third of the 5.8 million annual deaths from injury are attributed to violence with 15% due to suicide, 11% due to homicide and 3% due to war. If violent death rates continue unabated, it is anticipated that the ranking of homicide will increase from 22nd to 17th, and suicide from 16th to 12th in the leading causes of death for all ages by 2030 (WHO, 2010). These rates disproportionately affect younger age groups, men, and lower income countries. In 2004, homicide was ranked the 4th and suicide the 5^th leading cause of death globally for persons between the ages of 15 and 29. According to the latest figures from the World Health Organization, violent deaths continue to increase with an estimated 804,000 deaths due to suicide in 2012, thus elevating suicide to the second leading cause of death for the 15-29 age group (WHO, 2014). In addition to gender and age, the global burden of violent death is not experienced equally across all nations and geographical regions. Homicide death has declined in more developed, resource rich nations, while it has increased in less developed and unstable nation states. Conversely, rates of suicide continue to rise for middle and high income countries while remaining stagnant in lower income nations.

  Until recently, the study of violence has been fragmented among several arbitrarily defined fields. For example, homicide has been almost exclusively studied by criminologists; suicide equally exclusively reserved for psychiatrists; warfare delegated to political scientists and historians; and culturally specific forms of violence, such as genital mutilation, to anthropologists. This has been a major obstacle to our progress in deciphering the causes of violence in a way that could be most effective in guiding our efforts in research and prevention. Like the proverbial blind men describing an elephant, the lack of interdisciplinary integration has led to a fragmentary understanding of the beast called violence.

  Encyclopedias and other literature have tried to bring some of these areas together, and seminars and conferences on violence have been multiplying in diverse fields, but a coherent volume that organizes current information and formulates it into a perspective on how to think about the problem, is lacking. Students who wish to develop a firm foundation of knowledge before moving onto areas of specialty, and scholars who wish to integrate their knowledge into a perspective of a whole, have had nowhere to go. Instructors who would like to teach an introductory course have had no source that could integrate the information.

  This text assumes no previous exposure to the study of violence. While its target audience is college- and graduate-level students of criminology and global health, it contains no jargon and requires no prior knowledge. It might serve as a comprehensive overview before delving into whatever field students choose: violence prevention, conflict resolution, legal practice, global health ethics, or human rights advocacy. It can also be a guideline for bringing together the disparate information one has studied most likely in piecemeal fashion. In order to make the material accessible, as well as to encourage interdisciplinary exchange, this book is rather unique in its structuring: it starts not with a list of topics but domains of research, starting with the most basic but not implicating a hierarchy in either direction. Each chapter attempts to explain how its topic relates to the others.

  The chapters will also focus on highlighting a rich array of new information, especially that which has arisen in the past twenty years, as interest in the field has expanded beyond the U.S. to encompass the world. Information from low- and middle-income countries, where most of global violence occurs, is particularly important and emphasized. This text will incorporate the evolving awareness of the subjective psychological and cultural experience of perpetrators, the manifestation and effects of trauma, and the accumulating sociological, anthropological, politico-economic, and environmental understanding of its origins. The book also explores the growing links between different types of violence and the subsequent necessary expansion (and clarification) of definitions.