The civilizing and sportization of Gaelic football in Ireland: 1884–2009

Over the course of the last 125 years the sport of Gaelic football in Ireland has undergone a sportization and civilizing process as the rules governing the sport became stricter and players developed greater levels of self-control. However, the civilizing of Gaelic football was a particularly fragile and uneven process. The growing social desire to diminish displays of violence was moderated by ambivalence towards violence. Gradually the external social controls on players increased and, greater and more stable levels of internalization occurred reflected by more advanced levels of player self-restraint in the control of violence. At the same time the threshold of shame toward displays of violence advanced. This transformation was shaped by lengthening chains of social interdependencies in Ireland.     

“Nothing More Than the Usual Injury”: Debating Hockey Violence During the Manslaughter Trials of Allan Loney (1905) and Charles Masson (1907)

This historical case study of violence in Canadian hockey examines media coverage of two manslaughter trials: the 1905 trial of Allan Loney and the 1907 trial of Charles Masson. Both players stood accused of killing opposing players by striking them in the head with their hockey sticks. In each case, the offending player was acquitted in the courts, mainly because such violence was deemed intrinsic to the sport. Injuries that resulted from violent acts were downplayed or ignored; even death from a deliberate stick attack could be rationalized as an unfortunate accident. Newspaper accounts of the deaths, trials, and subsequent acquittals offer valuable insight into the cultural narratives surrounding hockey violence and notions of masculinity in early twentieth‐century Canada. These cases generated considerable debate around the issue of what constituted “clean” and “rough” hockey. The game reports, trial coverage, and public opinion examined in this case study suggest that stick‐swinging incidents and aggressive play have been regarded as ordinary and “proper” aspects of “strenuous hockey” for more than a century. The historical examination of such cases is important because the justifications for violence that were articulated in the context of the deaths continue to be voiced in contemporary discussions of hockey violence. As long as fighting and aggression remain markers of masculinity – and hockey continues to be seen as a training ground for manhood – it will be difficult to remove such forms of violence from the sport.     

Fundamental Justice Is the Issue: Extending Full Equality of the Law to Women and Children

The legal doctrines that are in place to protect women and children against male sexual aggression actually operate to minimize the use of the system for redress, and to reduce the impact of the process when it is used. Because the courts are the only means of legal recourse available to women and children who have been sexually assaulted, any failure by the courts to ensure just outcomes actually serves to reinforce male sexual violence. The solution requires that we stop confusing the social conditions under which this form of violence occurs with the criteria used by courts for treating a crime as “not serious.” The key players in the courts can act as powerful forces for instrumental change.     

Fundamental Justice Is the Issue: Extending Full Equality of the Law to Women and Children

The legal doctrines that are in place to protect women and children against male sexual aggression actually operate to minimize the use of the system for redress, and to reduce the impact of the process when it is used. Because the courts are the only means of legal recourse available to women and children who have been sexually assaulted, any failure by the courts to ensure just outcomes actually serves to reinforce male sexual violence. The solution requires that we stop confusing the social conditions under which this form of violence occurs with the criteria used by courts for treating a crime as not serious. The key players in the courts can act as powerful forces for instrumental change.     

The legitimation of violence: hockey players' perceptions of their reference groups' sanctions for assault*

Des entrevues auprès de joueurs de hockey d'écoles secondares ont fourni des données quant à leurs perceptions des sanctions offertes par leurs groupes de référence normatifs concernant le comportement aggressif. Les résultats indiquent que si les joueurs percoivent des différences entre les sanctions offertes par chaque groupe de référence, il y a approbation d'une variété de comportements aggressifs. Une analyse factorielle a révélé que les sanctions venant (i) du père, (2) de la mère, (3) des confrères qui ne sont pas joueurs et (4) des membres de l'équipe et de Fentraineur constîtuent des dimensions conceptuelles distinctes. Dans l'optique du concept de justification, la violence dans les sports ainsi que dans d'autres sphères sociales, n'est pas anormale mais représente plutôt une conduite approuvée par les normes sociales. Interviews with Toronto high school hockey players yielded data pertaining to players' perceptions of their normative reference groups' sanctions for assault. Results indicated that although players viewed each reference group's sanctions as somewhat distinctive, there was approval of a variety of assaultive behaviours. Factor analysis revealed that the sanctions of (1) father, (2) mother, (3) nonplaying peers, and (4) teammates and coach formed independent conceptual dimensions. In light of the concept of legitimation, much of the violence in sport, as in other social spheres, is not aberrant, but rather is socially acquired normative conduct.     

Understanding domestic violence against women: using evolutionary psychology to extend the feminist functional analysis

Evolutionary psychologists such as Wilson and Daly (1993b) hypothesize that one goal of male-perpetrated domestic violence is control over female sexuality, including the deterrence of infidelity. According to this hypothesis, domestic violence varies with women's reproductive value or expected future reproduction, declining steeply as women age. We tested this hypothesis with a sample of 3,969 cases of male-perpetrated partner-abuse reported to a single police precinct in a large urban area over a 14-year period. Results show that (a) rates of domestic violence decrease as women age, (b) younger men are at greatest risk for perpetrating domestic violence, (c) younger, reproductive age women incur nearly 10 times the risk of domestic violence as do older, post-reproductive age women, and (d) the greater risk of domestic violence incurred by reproductive age women is not attributable solely to mateship to younger, more violent men. Discussion addresses theoretical implications of these findings and suggests a refinement of the feminist hypothesis of domestic violence against women.     

A review of research on women's use of violence with male intimate partners

This article provides a review of research literature on women who use violence with intimate partners. The central purpose is to inform service providers in the military and civilian communities who work with domestically violent women. The major points of this review are as follows: (a) women's violence usually occurs in the context of violence against them by their male partners; (b) in general, women and men perpetrate equivalent levels of physical and psychological aggression, but evidence suggests that men perpetrate sexual abuse, coercive control, and stalking more frequently than women and that women also are much more frequently injured during domestic violence incidents; (c) women and men are equally likely to initiate physical violence in relationships involving less serious "situational couple violence," and in relationships in which serious and very violent "intimate terrorism" occurs, men are much more likely to be perpetrators and women victims; (d) women's physical violence is more likely than men's violence to be motivated by self-defense and fear, whereas men's physical violence is more likely than women's to be driven by control motives; (e) studies of couples in mutually violent relationships find more negative effects for women than for men; and (f) because of the many differences in behaviors and motivations between women's and men's violence, interventions based on male models of partner violence are likely not effective for many women.     

The sense of violence and the absence of consolation

The paper is an attempt to engage with our contemplations of violence and the failure of familiar explanations to capture these contemplations. We begin our explorations of these familiar accounts by examining contemporary debates on media violence but find these problematic. By reducing media violence to mere spectacle or, on the contrary, by seeing such violence as desensitising and destructive, the various positions in the debates deprive violence of meaning and fail to address our fascination with violence. Other explanations that seek to attach meaning or utility to violence, be it economic, symbolic or moral, equally fail to convince. There is always an excess that transcends these explanations, an excess that is ill-captured by the notion of ‘gratuitous violence’ often deployed to condemn violence that does not make sense. Furthermore, the various accounts of violence we review tend to consider violence only in terms of its victims and perpetrators rather than the (fortunately) more common position of the observer. In the remaining of the paper, we try to say something about the sense of violence without investing it with deterministic or moralistic implications. This leads us to re-interpret the notion of desensitisation; for the observer, desensitisation indexes a lack of sensation of violence. This lack of sensation, our inability as observers to sense and make sense of violence, we argue, brings about moral questioning and acuity rather than moral indifference.     

Right-wing extremist violence among adolescents in Germany

What are the preconditions for right-wing extremist violence among German youths? For several years, the rate of this violence has been increasing in Germany, and the same can be observed for right-wing extremist orientations characterized by the coming together of ideologies of unequal worth and the acceptance of violence as a mode of action. And although it is emphasized that approval of and willingness to use violence do not automatically lead to actual acts of violence, this article suggests that the existence of these convictions in society helps to legitimize attitudes that become expressed in violence, in particular among youths.This article presents a five-stage process model that portrays the underlying preconditions for acts of right-wing extremist violence, the contexts in which such violence takes place, and the factors that cause it to escalate. This structural model is used to outline central empirical findings of recent German quantitative and especially qualitative studies about right-wing extremist violent offenders. For analytical reasons, the basic elements of the process model (socialization, organization, legitimation, interaction, and escalation) are treated separately. The authors also examine right-wing extremist violence from a disintegrative perspective. Given that intersubjective recognition is an existential human need, right-wing extremist violence is understood as a "productive" way of dealing with individual recognition deficits. On the basis of the integration dimensions of social disintegration theory, three fundamental recognition needs are distinguished. Right-wing extremist violence can best be explained as a consequence of recognition deficits in all three central integration dimensions.     

On Comparing Apples with Apples Deemed Nonexistent: A Reply to Johnson

ABSTRACT

M. Johnson's rebuttal is an example of the paradigm I described to readers in my original article. Johnson develops a taxonomy of intimate violence where female initiated violence does not exist. He does this despite extensive evidence to the contrary. A recent national survey included questions about both severity and instrumentality of violence given to both genders. Intimate terrorism (as defined by a combination of instrumentality and repletion of severe violence) is perpetrated by both genders (2.6% of women and 4.2% of men). The notion that women do not initiate domestic violence is misleading to custody assessors who must consider risk to children as part of the child's best interest.     

Governance for reconstruction in Africa: challenges for policy communities and coalitions

This article seeks to advance analyses and responses to conflict prevention and reconstruction in Africa that go beyond state‐centric perspectives to include a range of non‐state players. Drawing on examples from both Uganda and Canada, it focuses on the activities of NGOs that have ‘partnered’ with state‐based actors in various peacekeeping and peace‐building operations as well as on the increasingly important role played by think‐tanks. The latter have emerged in Africa as major contributors to the proliferating literature on the political economy of violence, an approach that recognizes that African conflict reflects imperatives of production and consumption in relations that juxtapose Africa’s political institutions and cultures with international and global political economies. The article argues that novel forms of ‘security communities’ are emerging from the non‐state/state/international partnerships and coalitions that have developed around contemporary issues like ‘blood’ diamonds, small arms, debt and HIV/AIDS, thus drawing attention to connections between conflict and development.     

Frequency and types of partner violence among Mexican American college women

OBJECTIVE AND PARTICIPANTS: The authors studied the prevalence of partner violence, by type, among Mexican American college women aged 18 to 35 years (N = 149; response rate = 85%). RESULTS: Twelve percent of women who reported a dating partner in the past year were physically or sexually assaulted, 12.1% were stalked, and 9.1% scored as psychologically abused. Among those experiencing partner violence, almost half experienced stalking and 89% reported psychological abuse. Few women (25%) who experienced physical violence believed violence was a problem in their relationship. CONCLUSIONS: Partner violence was prevalent in this population, and participants experienced many forms of violence. Because few women experiencing physical violence report that violence is a problem in their relationship, interventions must address perceptions of violence and its impact on women's mental and physical health in college populations.     

Black Adolescent Females

Abstract

Violence remains a major health problem in the U. S. While teen males are often studied as the victims and perpetrators of violence, there is significant evidence that adolescent females are perpetrators as well as victims of violence; and that both groups are affected by the broader institutional sources of violence. Adolescent girls growing up in inner city neighborhoods are often victimized by exposure to violence, as well as their perceptions of a lack of sustained support from institutions regarded as protective, and nurturing. Survey data and information from focus groups provide insight into their exposure to violence, their fear of violence and coping strategies in neighborhoods and schools they perceive as unsafe.     

METROPOLITAN STRUCTURE AND CRIMINAL VIOLENCE

This article re-examines the conclusions of an earlier paper (Blau and Blau. 1982);i.e., that racial inequality in metropolitan places increases criminal violence and is accountable for various factors to which this violence is often attributed, notably poverty, race, and the Southern subculture of violence. The replication confirms the basic original hypothesis that a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area's (SMSA) racial inequality in socioeconomic status raises its rates of violent crime. This article also supports the earlier findings that rates of criminal violence are higher in larger SMSAs and in SMSAs with a great number of marital conflicts and disruptions (as indicated by the large proportion of divorced and separated), and that these rates are unrelated to an SMSA's poverty level once other conditions are controlled. However, when interaction effects and curvilinear relationships are taken into consideration, criminal violence is seen to depend considerably on an SMSA's racial composition and to be more prevalent in SMSAs with a largely Southern population than in others, which supports the thesis of a Southern subculture of violence.     

Ruling the Exceptions:

This paper examines the challenges presented to current gender-based domestic violence theory by the existence of same-sex domestic violence. Charging the dominant theory is heterosexist and ignores the experience of battered lesbians and gay men, Island and Letellier (1991) have argued that domestic violence is not a gender issue and advocate a psychological framework that emphasizes batterer treatment. Examining the theoretical conflicts, this paper attempts to domenstrate that sociopolitcal and psychological theories can be successfully integrated into a social-psychological model. Such a model, developed by Zemsky (1990) and Gilbert, Poorman, and Simmons (1990), is explored and critiqued as an excellent beginning. By integrating psychological principles and sociological concepts, this theory explores the many dimensions of power and explains the phenomenon of domestic violence as it occurs in all relationship configurations. Suggestions for further theoretical considerations and research are made.     

The relative effects of intimate partner physical and sexual violence on post-traumatic stress disorder symptomatology

This study examined the relative effects of intimate partner physical and sexual violence on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptomatology. Severity of physical and sexual violence as well as PTSD severity were assessed in a sample of 62 help-seeking battered women. The results of this study were consistent with prior research, finding significant and positive relationships between physical and sexual violence as well as sexual violence and PTSD symptoms. In order to further clarify these relationships, the unique effects of sexual violence on PTSD were examined after controlling for physical violence severity. Results indicated that sexual violence severity explained a significant proportion of the variance in PTSD severity beyond that which was already accounted for by physical violence severity. These findings have important implications for mental health and social service professionals who work with battered women.     

An analysis of the self-control and criminal versatility of gang and dating violence offenders

How versatile are gang and dating violence offenders? Current gang research highlights the versatility of gang members, yet the versatility of intimate violence offenders is often unexamined. Gottfredson and Hirschi, A General Theory of Crime (1990), support the idea of versatile rather than specialized offenders and suggests that low self-control is associated with a host of criminal and noncriminal risk-taking activities. Using data from a self-report sample of 1139 youths in grades 9 through 11, we investigated both the versatility of gang and dating violence offenders and theoretical variables associated with each. We find disproportionate offending by dating and gang violence offenders in a variety of crimes, as well as considerable overlap in the independent variables associated with both types of violence. Low levels of self-control and exposure to general and crime-specific criminal opportunities are significantly associated with engaging in dating and gang violence.     

Sexual Violence and the MDGs

ABSTRACT

Sexual violence is multi-faceted. Three (overlapping) categories can be distinguished: violence that is sexual in nature, gender-based violence, and sexuality-based violence. The latter refers to violence against persons because of their sexuality and/or their (presumed) sexual behavior. Being female, young, poor, and living in a sexually conservative culture and/or in conflict areas appear to be important risk factors for sexual violence. Sexual violence is widespread (one in five girls worldwide are sexually abused in childhood and up to three-quarters of women in some countries have been victimized by a partner), but prevalence figures around the globe are hard to compare. Both the individual and society suffer from sexual violence. The eradication of sexual violence is directly relevant to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) related to infant and maternal health and mortality, and combating HIV/AIDS. And certainly no less important, it is very closely linked to the MDGs related to gender equality and the empowerment of women, poverty, and primary education for all. Campaigning against sexual violence against women has been presented as one of the ‘quick wins’ in progress towards achieving the MDGs by the UN Millennium Project. Many good practices have been employed in political-legal, awareness raising, prevention, and health care domains, but important setbacks are noteworthy as well. Priority number one for the World Association for Sexual Health now seems to be to adequately and strategically contribute to the continuous efforts to integrate sexual health into the Millennium Development framework.     

“Don’t Worry, It’s Just Poker!”-Experience, Self-Rumination and Self-Reflection as Determinants of Decision-Making in On-Line Poker

On-line poker is a game of chance and skill. The construct of poker playing skill has both a technical (game strategy-related) and an emotional (emotion regulation-related) aspect. A correlational on-line study (N = 354) was conducted to assess differences in technical skills and emotional characteristics related to poker playing style between experienced and inexperienced poker players. Results suggest that, with respect to emotional characteristics, experienced poker players engage in less self-rumination and more self-reflection, as compared to inexperienced players. Experienced poker players are also able to make better decisions, by mathematical standards, in a poker decision-making environment, as assessed by two fictitious on-line poker decision-making scenarios. Furthermore, this study provides supportive evidence that experienced poker players conceptualize the construct of “luck” differently from inexperienced players. A new poker playing experience scale (PES) for accurately measuring poker playing experience is presented in this paper.