In the past few years, shockingly violent acts perpetrated by young people have figured prominently in newspaper headlines. On the morning of May 9, 1995, a homeless man in New York City was burned alive by five youths, ranging in age from twelve to...

“A vast system of communications technology . . . has led to the creation of a culture of violence of unprecedented dimensions, much of it directed toward or available to children.” —journalist and professor Myriam Miedzian...

STORIES OF VIOLENCE by and against youth explode from the news like gunshots from a passing car. It would seem that America is under attack by armed teenagers. During the early 1980s, about a thousand murders were committed by teens each year in the...

Violence on television has been the subject of debate for decades in the United States. It seems as though everyone has an opinion on the topic. Many observers argue that there is an excessive amount of bloodshed on television. In fact, a 1999 national...

VIOLENCE. Humans, as individuals and as groups, have the potential to be violent. Physical violence is disruptive and damaging to other individuals and groups because it conflicts with some of their basic rights. Individuals try to protect themselves...

Violence and Brutality Introduction One of the greatest murderers of the twentieth century, or any century, Josef Stalin, is reported to have said, "One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic." Whether or not Stalin actually...

One of the multiple battlefields of environmental determinists versus biological determinists relates to the causes of violence. The former see violence as a primarily culturally rooted phenomenon, whereas the latter see it as being biologically...

This entry does not provide an overview of the whole range of men’s violences (Hearn 1998). Many of the relevant issues are already addressed in a broad range of other entries noted at the end of this entry. This present essay partly responds to...

Violence entails inflicting emotional, psychological, sexual, physical and/or material damage. It involves the exercise of force or constraint perpetrated by individuals, on their own behalf or for a collective or state-sanctioned purpose. Research on...

Collective violence bracketed the Civil War and was important both to events leading up to the war and to its results. In an upsurge of rioting in the mid-1830s, proslavery mobs predominated. Northern and Southern rioters attacked African Americans and...

Just as violence has long been taken to be a sign of the primitive, the savage or the uncivilized, or alternatively of the deviant, the individual and the unsocialized, so anthropology has long been concerned to show that violence obeys rules, is part...

Violence "Violence" is derived from the Latin violentia, "vehemence," which itself comes from vis (force) + latus (to carry) and means, literally, intense force. Violence shares its etymology with violate,...

It is natural to man to resist violence. (Roman) That which is violent never lasts long. (Roman) If man’s heart is violent, Heaven’s heart will be violent....

Violence is the exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse. The word is used broadly to describe the destructive action of natural phenomena like storms and earthquakes. More frequently the word describes forceful human destruction of property...