Edited by Deborah Padfield and Joanna M. Zakrzewska.

What is persistent pain? How do we communicate pain, not only in words but in visual images and gesture? How do we respond to the pain of another, and can we do it better? Can explaining how pain works help us handle it? This unique compilation of voices addresses these and bigger questions. Defined as having lasted over three months, persistent pain changes the brain and nervous system so pain no longer warns of danger: it seems to be a fault in the system. It is a major cause of disability globally, but it remains difficult to communicate, a problem both to those with pain and those who try to help. Language struggles to bridge the gap, and it raises ethical challenges in its management unlike those of other common conditions.

UCL Press. 2021. 405p.

By Josine Junger-Tas and J.N. van Kesteren.

The Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). as well as the ministry of Justice have placed Social Cohesion, as an important subject of research, high on their agenda. In doing so the organization wants to respond to. major concerns in. Dutch society about the growing lack of social and economic integration of various groups. In this respect one might think in the first place of refugees and ethnic minorities, but of course the lack of social cohesion is not restricted to these groups. In fact, it has many faces. It may relate to certain specific population groups, which are relegated to the margins of Dutch society, but. it may also apply to some sub-sectors of the population, which find themselves in particularly unfavorable situations that impede their normal functioning and integration in society. In this respect one might think of the long-term unemployed, the disabled, the mentally disturbed, the alcohol and drug addicted, and the homeless who art roaming around in our big cities.

More in general our society has some difficulties in paying attention to those who are unable to cope with the requirements of our social system, including the criminal justice system. For example, with respect to the latter, it has taken a long time to assign a rightful place to victims of criminal offenses in criminal justice proceedings. Victims hardly had any rights and they were mainly seen and used as witnesses with the purpose of clearing up criminal cases.

One may wonder: is it not a characteristic of western culture to relegate all kinds of victims to the margins of society? Not only because they are frequently weak and cannot defend themselves, but also because they tend to reflect most clearly the shortcomings of our social system. Illustrative in this respect are the victims of domestic violence who simply have been ignored for centuries to be discovered as victims only since about the 1960's. Another example are the victims of school bullying. The problem of bullying has for a long time been considered as not serious and as something children have to sort out among themselves. Victims were considered as sissies who would benefit from being bullied? Even today some teachers claim that being bullied hardens children and teaches them useful lessons about human society. However, from the moment that victims of criminal offenses in general and victims of domestic and school violence in particular were 'discovered', and their situation was recognized as a social and legal problem, the scientific community has investigated the problem. Legal research has looked seriously to their position in the legal system and recommendations were made to improve that position in legal proceedings. In conjunction with this type of studies, criminological research concentrated on the victims as well as on their attackers. Numerous studies have been conducted on physical and sexual child abuse, wife battering and sexual abuse of women. The field of school bullying has been less explored although, since Dan Olweus' breakthrough studies in Norway in the 1970s, the subject: has been placed on the research agenda. One of the triggering elements in this respect was the finding that in a number of countries as diverse as Norway, Japan and England bullying had led to the suicide of several victims. The Meijers Institute has devoted a series of articles to the subject of social cohesion from a legal standpoint; they are published in this series as No. 6. In respect of the special position of the Meijers Institute as the research institute of the Faculty of Law of Leiden University, the institute is also interested in publishing criminological studies on social cohesion. The Meijers Institute considers the subject of school bullying relevant to the larger topic of social cohesion. Consequently we decided publish this study in our series and hope it will find a large and interested audience.

Deventer: Kluger Publications, 1999. 116p.

By Diana Rieger; Lena Frischlin; Gary Bente; Deutschland. Bundeskriminalamt.

This book deals with the psychological effects of extremist propaganda videos. Itparticularly asks the question how young adults in Germany respond to right-wing as well as Islamic extremist videos which can be found on the Internet today.This is not a book about terrorism, but about the potential conditions which mightfacilitate a climate of receptivity for radical messages in a young mass audiencewith diverging cultural and educational background and different attitudes and values.

The so-called web 2.0, with its mostly unfiltered, user-created content provides unprecedented opportunities for extremists to present themselves and uncensored ideas to a mass audience. This internet propaganda is created in order to increase attention and interest for extremist ideas and group memberships. It also aims to indoctrinate the recipients and, as a last consequence, to foster radicalization.The radicalizing potential has been feared by international security agencies and mass media. Nevertheless, not even the early stage effects of extremist propaganda in terms of raising attention and interest have yet been analyzed empirically.They are however necessary preconditions in order for propaganda to envelope a radicalizing effect.

The current studies close this gap by focusing on this early stage effects. We ana-lyzed how a non-radicalized audience responds to extremist internet videos. For the first time, based on a content analysis of actual right-wing and Islamic extremistInternet videos, our study used state-of-the-art methods from experimental media psychology for tracking the emotional and cognitive responses of a broad sample of 450 young male adults. As expected, we mostly found rejection and never strong acceptance for the extremist videos. Still, specific production styles and audience characteristics were able to cause at least neutral attitudes underpinning the strategic potential of internet propaganda. In the end, our studies might result in more questions than answers. However, we are confident that the conceptual as well as the methodological way chosen is most promising as to approach a deeper understanding of the first effects of extremist Internet propaganda.

Köln : Luchterhand, 2013. 165p,

By European Parliament. Policy Department C - Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs.

This study provides an overview of the extent, scope and forms of cyberbullying in the EU taking into account the age and gender of victims and perpetrators as well as the medium used. Commissioned by the Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the LIBE Committee, the study illustrates the legal and policy measures on cyberbullying adopted at EU and international levels and delineates the EU role in this area. An analysis of legislation and policies aimed at preventing and fighting this phenomenon across the 28 EU Member States is also presented. The study outlines the variety of definitions of cyberbullying across EU Member States and the similarities and differences between cyberbullying, traditional bullying and cyber aggression. Moreover, it presents successful practices on how to prevent and combat cyberbullying in nine selected EU Member States and puts forward recommendations for improving the response at EU and Member State levels.

Brussels: European Parliament, 2016. 196p.

By Monika Schwarz-Friesel and Jehuda Reinharz.

Antisemitism is on the rise in Europe, sometimes manifest in violent acts against Jews, but more commonly noticeable in everyday discourse. This innovative empirical study examines written examples of antisemitism in contemporary Germany. Drawing on 14,000 letters and e-mails sent between 2002 and 2012 to the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Israeli embassy in Berlin, as well communications sent between 2010 and 2011 to Israeli embassies across Europe, the authors show how language plays a crucial role in activating antisemitism across a broad spectrum of social classes, investigate the role of emotions in antisemitic argumentation patterns, and analyze “anti-Israelism” as the dominant form of contemporary hatred of Jews.

Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2017. 458p.

By Cas Mudde.

Though the extreme right was not particularly successful in the 1999 European elections, it continues to be a major factor in the politics of Western Europe. This book, newly available in paperback, provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the extreme right in the Netherlands (Centrumdemocraten, Centrumpartij'86), Belgium (Vlaams Blok) and Germany (Die Republikaner, Deutsche Volksunion). On the basis of original research - using party literature - the author concludes that though individual parties might stress different issues, the extreme right party family does share a core ideology of nationalism, xenophobia, welfare chauvinism, and law and order. The author's research and conclusions clearly have broader implications for the study of the extreme right phenomenon and party ideology in general, and the book should be of interest to anyone studying or researching in the areas of European politics, political ideologies, political parties, extremism, racism or nationalism.

Manchester, UK; New York: Manchester University Press, 2020. 225p.

By N.E. Haas.

Why can vigilantes count on public support? Why do citizens in certain cases oppose the formal prosecution and punishment of vigilantes? Are such reactions an indication of lacking confidence in the criminal justice system? Or do situational aspects perhaps also play a role? The goal of this dissertation is to explain public support for vigilantism. In two studies, respondents were presented with a fictional case about vigilantism and answered related questions. The findings of both studies show that support for vigilantism cannot be interpreted automatically as a sign that confidence in the criminal justice system is lacking: situational characteristics have an independent influence on support. The results also reveal that support for vigilantism is a complex concept. People are not simply for or against vigilantism; responses to vigilantism are more nuanced. People can for instance feel little empathy for the victim of vigilantism, but at the same time express a desire for punishment of the vigilante. Additionally, a higher level of confidence in the courts and criminal justice system led to less support for vigilantism, while confidence in police did not play a role. Lastly, general support for vigilantism was an important predictor of support for a specific case.

Leiden: Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), 2010. 197p.

Edited by Lora Anne Viola and Pawel Laidler.

Investigating the theoretical and empirical relationships between transparency and trust in the context of surveillance, this volume argues that neither transparency nor trust provides a simple and self-evident path for mitigating the negative political and social consequences of state surveillance practices. Dominant in both the scholarly literature and public debate is the conviction that transparency can promote better-informed decisions, provide greater oversight, and restore trust damaged by the secrecy of surveillance. The contributions to this volume challenge this conventional wisdom by considering how relations of trust and policies of transparency are modulated by underlying power asymmetries, sociohistorical legacies, economic structures, and institutional constraints. They study trust and transparency as embedded in specific sociopolitical contexts to show how, under certain conditions, transparency can become a tool of social control that erodes trust, while mistrust—rather than trust—can sometimes offer the most promising approach to safeguarding rights and freedom in an age of surveillance. The first book addressing the interrelationship of trust, transparency, and surveillance practices, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of surveillance studies as well as appeal to an interdisciplinary audience given the contributions from political science, sociology, philosophy, law, and civil society.

London; New York: Routledge, 2022. 282p.

By Steven C. Hughes.

Following its creation as a country in 1861, Italy experienced a wave of dueling that led commentators to bemoan a national “duellomania” evidenced by the sad spectacle of a duel a day. Pamphlets with titles like “Down with the Duel” and “The Shame of the Duel” all communicated the passion of those who could not believe that a people supposedly just returned to the path of progress and civilization had wholeheartedly embraced such a “barbaric” custom. Yet these critics were consistently countered by sober-minded men of rank and influence who felt that the duel was necessary for the very health of the new nation. Steven C. Hughes argues that this extraordinary increase in chivalric combat occurred because the duel played an important role in the formation, consolidation, and functioning of united Italy. The code of honor that lay at the heart of the dueling ethic offered a common model and bond of masculine identity for those patriotic elites who, having created a country of great variety and contrast for often contradictory motives, had to then deal with the consequences. Thus dueling became an iconic weapon of struggle during the Risorgimento, and, as Italy performed poorly on the stage of great power politics, it continued to offer images of martial valor and manly discipline. It also enhanced the social and political power of the new national elites, whose monopoly over chivalric honor helped reinforce the disenfranchisement of the masses. Eventually, the duel fed into the hypermasculinity and cult of violence that marked the early fascist movement, but in the end it would prove too individualistic in its definition of honor to stand up to the emerging totalitarian state. Although Mussolini would himself fight five duels at the start of his career, the duel would disappear along with the liberal regime that had embraced it.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2007. 360p.

Edited by Petrus Cornelis Spierenburg.

There is growing interest in the history of masculinity and male culture, including violence, as an integral part of a proper understanding of gender. In almost every historical setting, masculinity and violence are closely linked; certainly violent crime has been overwhelmingly a male enterprise. But violence is not always criminal: in many cultural contexts violence is linked instead to honor and encoded in rituals. We possess only an imperfect understanding of the ways in which aggressive behavior, or the abstention from aggressive behavior, contributes to the construction of masculinity and male honor. Pieter Spierenburg brings together eight scholars to explore the fascinating interrelationship of masculinity, honor, and the body. The essays focus on the United States and western Europe from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1998. 279p.

By Loren Daniel Glass and Charles Francis Williams.

Over the course of the nineteenth century in both Europe and the United States, the state usurped the traditional authority of the church in regulating sexual expression and behavior. In the same century philosophers of classical liberalism identified that state function as a threat to individual liberty. Since then, liberalism has provided the framework for debates over obscenity around the globe. But liberalism has recently been under siege, on the one side from postmodern thinkers skeptical about its andro- and ethnocentric assumptions, and on the other side from religious thinkers doubtful of the moral integrity of the Enlightenment project writ large. The principal challenge for those who conduct academic work in this realm is to formulate new models of research and analysis appropriate to understanding and evaluating speech in the present-day public sphere. Toward those ends, Obscenity and the Limits of Liberalism contains a selection of essays and interventions by prominent authors and artists in a variety of disciplines and media. These writings, taken as a whole, put recent developments into historical and global contexts and chart possible futures for a debate that promises to persist well into the new millennium.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2011. 181p.

By by Naomi Mandel.

Generation X, comprised of people born between 1960 and 1980, is a generation with no Great War or Depression to define it. Dismissed as apathetic slackers and detached losers, Xers have a striking disregard for the causes and isms that defined their Boomer parents. In Disappear Here: Violence after Generation X, Naomi Mandel argues that this characterization of Generation X can be traced back to changing experiences and representations of violence in the late twentieth century. Examining developments in media, philosophy, literature, and politics in the years Xers were coming of age, Mandel demonstrates that Generation X’s unique attitude toward violence was formed by developments in home media, personal computing, and reality TV. This attitude, Mandel contends, is key to understanding our current world of media ubiquity, online activism, simulated sensation, and jihad. With chapters addressing both fictional and filmic representations of violence, Mandel studies the work of Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, Claire Messud, Jess Walter, and Jonathan Safran Foer. A critical and conceptual tour de force, Disappear Here sets forth a new, and necessary, approach to violence, the real, and real violence for the twenty-first century.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2015. 264p.

By Daniel Nettle.

"Nettle’s book presents the results of five years of comparative ethnographic fieldwork in two different neighbourhoods of the same British city, Newcastle upon Tyne. The neighbourhoods are only a few kilometres apart, yet whilst one is relatively affluent, the other is amongst the most economically deprived in the UK. Tyneside Neighbourhoods uses multiple research methods to explore social relationships and social behaviour, attempting to understand whether the experience of deprivation fosters social solidarity, or undermines it. The book is distinctive in its development of novel quantitative methods for ethnography: systematic social observation, economic games, household surveys, crime statistics, and field experiments. Nettle analyses these findings in the context of the cultural, psychological and economic consequences of economic deprivation, and of the ethical difficulties of representing a deprived community. In so doing the book sheds light on one of the main issues of our time: the roles of culture and of socioeconomic factors in determining patterns of human social behaviour. Tyneside Neighbourhoods is a must read for scholars, students, individual readers, charities and government departments seeking insight into the social consequences of deprivation and inequality in the West. Nettle’s book presents the results of five years of comparative ethnographic fieldwork in two different neighbourhoods of the same British city, Newcastle upon Tyne. The neighbourhoods are only a few kilometres apart, yet whilst one is relatively affluent, the other is amongst the most economically deprived in the UK. Tyneside Neighbourhoods uses multiple research methods to explore social relationships and social behaviour, attempting to understand whether the experience of deprivation fosters social solidarity, or undermines it. The book is distinctive in its development of novel quantitative methods for ethnography: systematic social observation, economic games, household surveys, crime statistics, and field experiments. Nettle analyses these findings in the context of the cultural, psychological and economic consequences of economic deprivation, and of the ethical difficulties of representing a deprived community. In so doing the book sheds light on one of the main issues of our time: the roles of culture and of socioeconomic factors in determining patterns of human social behaviour. Tyneside Neighbourhoods is a must read for scholars, students, individual readers, charities and government departments seeking insight into the social consequences of deprivation and inequality in the West. "

Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2015. 148p.

Edited by Maria Isabel Romero-Ruiz and Pilar Cuder-Domínguez.

A Mediterranean Approach to the Anglosphere. This Open Access book considers the cultural representation of gender violence, vulnerability and resistance with a focus on the transnational dimension of our contemporary visual and literary cultures in English. Contributors address concepts such as vulnerability, resilience, precarity and resistance in the Anglophone world through an analysis of memoirs, films, TV series, and crime and literary fiction across India, Ireland, Canada, Australia, the US, and the UK. Chapters explore literary and media displays of precarious conditions to examine whether these are exacerbated when intersecting with gender and ethnic identities, thus resulting in structural forms of vulnerability that generate and justify oppression, as well as forms of individual or collective resistance and/or resilience. Substantial insights are drawn from Animal Studies, Critical Race Studies, Human Rights Studies, Post-Humanism and Postcolonialism.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2022. 241p.

Edited by Vincent Buskens, RenseCorten, and Chris Snijders.

Theory, Experiments, and Field Studies. . The book identifies conditions for trust and cooperation. It highlights unintended consequences of individually rational behavior, and shows how trust and cooperation change dependent on social embeddedness. Such analyses inspire experimental tests in lab conditions, but also tests through empirical applications in field studies. The results of this mixed-method approach can in turn be used to inspire further theoretical work.

Berlin; Boston: de Gruyter, 2020. 557p.

Edited by Tiina Mäntymäki, Marinella Rodi-Risberg, and Anna Foka.

Cultural, Linguistic and Literary Approaches to Narratives of Femininity. This multidisciplinary collection of articles illuminates the ways in which the concept of female deviance is represented, appropriated, re-inscribed and refigured in a wide range of texts across time, cultures and genres. Such a choice of variety shows that representations of deviance accommodate meaning-making spaces and possibilities for resistance in different socio-cultural and literary contexts. The construct of the deviant woman is analysed from literary, sociolinguistic and historical-cultural perspectives, revealing insights about cultures and societies. Furthermore, the studies recognise and explain the significance of the concept of deviance in relation to gender that bespeaks a contemporary cultural concern about narratives of femininity.

Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014. 242p.

By S. Wittendorp, R. de Bont, J.H. de Roy van Zuijdewijn and E. Bakker.

This report offers an understanding of counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation policies in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Its emphasis is on developments following the 11 September 2001 attacks, and addresses the phenomenon referred to as jihadism. The report identifies three developments: 1) the development of counterterrorism and counterradicalisation as actual policy domains, 2) increased coordination of policy and initiatives for information-sharing, 3) unclear demarcation of the policy domain.

Leiden: Leiden University, 2017. 114p.

By J. Bouje and M.E. de Bruijn.

Ordinary social violence, - i.e. recurrent mental or physical aggression occurring between closely related people - structures social relationships in Africa, and in the world. Studies of violence in Africa often refer to ethnic wars and explicit conflicts and do not enter the hidden domain of violence that this book reveals through in-depth anthropological studies from different parts and contexts in Africa. Ordinary violence has its distinctive forms embedded in specific histories and cultures. It is gendered, implicates witchcraft accusations, varies in rural and urban contexts, relates to demographic and socio-economic changes of the past decades and is embedded in the everyday life of many African citizens. The experience of ordinary violence goes beyond the simple notion of victimhood; instead it structures social life and should therefore be a compelling part of the study of social change.

Leiden: African Studies Centre,, 2014. 190p.

By J.C. Both, M.C. Mouguia and M.E. de Bruijn.

In this report we elaborate on the historical dimensions of young people’s enrolment and use in armed groups or armed forces in the Central African Republic (CAR). While this phenomenon, also understood as the enlistment and use of child soldiers, is often seen as a recent phenomenon, the report aims to show that children and adolescents have historically been involved in self-defence groups or were forcefully recruited in what is currently the territory of CAR. In the past, they were not called child soldiers; they may not even have always been seen as children due to different cultural definitions of childhood. However, the phenomenon is not new as will be shown in this report.

Leiden: African Studies Centre, 2020. 81p.

Edited by Marta Pérez-Escolar and José Manuel Noguera-Vivo.

This timely volume offers a comprehensive and rigorous overview of the role of communication in the construction of hate speech and polarization in the online and offline arena. Delving into the meanings, implications, contexts and effects of extreme speech and gated communities in the media landscape, the chapters analyse misleading metaphors and rhetoric via focused case studies to understand how we can overcome the risks and threats stemming from the past decade’s defining communicative phenomena. The book brings together an international team of experts, enabling a broad, multidisciplinary approach that examines hate speech, dislike, polarization and enclave deliberation as cross axes that influence offline and digital conversations. The diverse case studies herein offer insights into international news media, television drama and social media in a range of contexts, suggesting an academic frame of reference for examining this emerging phenomenon within the field of communication studies.

London; New York: Routledge, 2022. 279p.