Policing social unrest and collective violence

Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 374 (6565) ◽  
pp. 272-274
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Hinton
Author(s):  
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.

With comparative forays into Spain and Russia, this chapter concentrates on Italy and the historical trajectory of cholera disturbances from 1837 to its last major cholera wave in 1910–11. While the collective violence of cholera was confined mostly to Sicily in 1837, it expanded from the 1860s to 1910–11 across the mainland, affecting cities in Rome’s ambit, Livorno in Tuscany, and city states of the North, including Venice. Despite greater understanding of cholera’s transmission and the culturing of the bacillus in 1884, these riots amassed crowds as large as 3000, with the same beliefs that the state and doctors were scheming to cull populations of the poor, leading to pharmacists, physicians, and mayors being murdered and hospitals and town halls destroyed. With cholera in Naples in 1973 and social unrest, these mythologies finally disappeared. Now, working classes rioted against the scarcity of medicines and absence of professional care.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 170 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Eylem Özkaya Lassalle

The concept of failed state came to the fore with the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the USSR and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Political violence is central in these discussions on the definition of the concept or the determination of its dimensions (indicators). Specifically, the level of political violence, the type of political violence and intensity of political violence has been broached in the literature. An effective classification of political violence can lead us to a better understanding of state failure phenomenon. By using Tilly’s classification of collective violence which is based on extent of coordination among violent actors and salience of short-run damage, the role played by political violence in state failure can be understood clearly. In order to do this, two recent cases, Iraq and Syria will be examined.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meenakshi Chhabra

This article is an epistemological reflection on memory practices in the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of collective memories of a historical event involving collective violence and conflict in formal and informal spaces of education. It focuses on the 1947 British India Partition of Punjab. The article engages with multiple memory practices of Partition carried out through personal narrative, interactions between Indian and Pakistani secondary school pupils, history textbook contents, and their enactment in the classroom by teachers. It sheds light on the complex dynamic between collective memory and history education about events of violent conflict, and explores opportunities for and challenges to intercepting hegemonic remembering of a violent past.


Author(s):  
Maggie Dwyer

Soldiers in Revolt examines the understudied phenomenon of military mutinies in Africa. Through interviews with former mutineers in Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, and The Gambia, the book provides a unique and intimate perspective on those who take the risky decision to revolt. This view from the lower ranks is key to comprehending the internal struggles that can threaten a military's ability to function effectively. Maggie Dwyer's detailed accounts of specific revolts are complemented by an original dataset of West African mutinies covering more than fifty years, allowing for the identification of trends. Her book shows the complex ways mutineers often formulate and interpret their grievances against a backdrop of domestic and global politics. Just as mutineers have been influenced by the political landscape, so too have they shaped it. Mutinies have challenged political and military leaders, spurred social unrest, led to civilian casualties, threatened peacekeeping efforts and, in extreme cases, resulted in international interventions. Soldiers in Revolt offers a better understanding of West African mutinies and mutinies in general, valuable not only for military studies but for anyone interested in the complex dynamics of African states.


Author(s):  
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.

This chapter examines evidence principally from the US that the Great Influenza provoked profiteering by landlords, undertakers, vendors of fruit, pharmacists, and doctors, but shows that such complaints were rare and confined mostly to large cities on the East Coast. It then investigates anti-social advice and repressive decrees on the part of municipalities, backed by advice from the US Surgeon General and prominent physicians attacking ‘spitters, coughers, and sneezers’, which included state and municipal ordinances against kissing and even ‘big talkers’. It then surveys legislation on compulsory and recommended mask wearing. Yet this chapter finds no protest or collective violence against the diseased victims or any other ‘others’ suspected of disseminating the virus. Despite physicians’ and lawmakers’ encouragement of anti-social behaviour, mass volunteerism and abnegation instead unfolded to an extent never before witnessed in the world history of disease.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 96
Author(s):  
Marie-Christine THAIZE CHALLIER

This paper is an empirical analysis to explore the relationships between urban conflict and both rent seeking and corruption. It examines social disturbances in medieval France through a sample of twelve towns examined over the period 1270-1399 in a real context of informational asymmetries, commitment problems, and issues indivisibilities. As regards the economic corruption class, it is found that townspeople rebel more often and more intensely against the extortion of funds carried out by policy makers than against the embezzlement of a part of these funds. As to the political corruption class, the findings highlight that abuse of power against municipalities is identified in more social unrest than influence peddling against these local institutions. Furthermore, it is shown that rent-seeking-related policies (like arbitrary actions limiting property rights, economic rules-based policies, and targeted political measures) have less influence on urban conflict than corrupt policies do. These findings produce insights that apply beyond the historical context and analysis of the paper. Situations presenting over-indebted towns despite overtaxed people disturb also modern democracies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 298 ◽  
pp. 113773
Author(s):  
Stephanie MY Wong ◽  
Christy LM Hui ◽  
Corine SM Wong ◽  
YN Suen ◽  
Sherry KW Chan ◽  
...  

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