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From its beginnings in the early twelfth century, the Western civilizing process has involved two interconnected transformations: the monopolization of military force by sovereign states and the cultivation in individuals of habits and dispositions of the kind that we call'civilized.'The combined forward movement of these processes channels violent struggles for social dominance into symbolic performances. But even as the civilizing process frees many subjects from the threat of direct physical force, violence accumulates behind the scenes and at the margins of the social order, kept there by a deeply habituated performance of dominance and subordination called deferentiation. When deferentiation fails, difference becomes dangerous and genocide becomes possible. Connecting historical developments with everyday life occurrences, and discussing examples ranging from thirteenth-century Languedoc to 1994 Rwanda, Powell offers an original framework for analyzing, comparing, and discussing genocides as variable outcomes of a common underlying social system, raising unsettling questions about the contradictions of Western civilization and the possibility of a world without genocide.

Readers of criminological literature are presented with little more than thumbnail sketches as to the social characteristics or motivations of the authors. One learns their status, institutional location, and supposed credentials. Rarely are we presented with more detailed impressions of the authors as a combination of positivist assumptions and notions of professional competence seemingly render such information unimportant. However, increasing numbers of critical scholars are becoming aware of authorship as an issue; it matters who is addressing us. By taking these authors out of their methodological framework, Critical Voices in Criminology provides an opportunity for figures in and around critical criminology to discuss their own intellectual journeys into and within the discipline. The book offers the opportunity for contributors to reflect on their work and consider what they did not say. It also affords them the opportunity to describe their own'channeling processes'by indicating how the pursuance of some themes/topics'seemed'appropriate, sensible, or realistic, while others appeared less so, whether they internalized these particular themes, or attempted to contest and/or replace them.

This scholarly and well-researched study of the building industry documents the interplay of new materials and technologies, costs and the changing social and economic forces that affected the decision-making about our built environment over the last two centuries. The author provides a succinct and readable survey of the growth and development of British building which will be of interest to all building specialists and those training for a career in the construction industry.