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Women participated actively in the Finnish Civil War in January 1918-April 1918. The radicalization of the Finnish Social Democratic Party and the embracing of a revolutionary discourse sent tremors also to Sweden. In this article, I investigate how the Swedish Social Democratic women's journal Morgonbris addresses women's political violence in the period surrounding the Russian Revolution in March 1917, the October 1917 Bolshevik takeover and the following Civil War in Finland early 1918. Morgonbris did not shun from reporting or debating women's political violence, however, as this article shows there is a great discrepancy between how different acts of violence are understood in the greater discourse. Some violence, and especially some acts of violence committed by women, is clearly framed as more legitimate than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines determinants of leftist violence at the municipal level in Colombia from 2000 through 2010. A multilevel GLMM model with a negative binomial distribution is used to take advantage of the information available at the municipal and department level. Surprisingly, inequality was not a significant covariate of violence, and agricultural GDP tended to reduce, instead of increase, guerrilla violence. The main risk factors identified include physical characteristics such as rugged topography and prior violence, but also factors that are candidates for policy action, such as unemployment, incorporation of the poor into public services, repression, and the energy and mining sector. These findings suggest interventions to decrease risks of guerrilla violence beyond merely strengthening the state. While repression tends to escalate violence, targeted policies to provide health benefits to those currently underserved, and securing mining and oil operations can effectively reduce the risk of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between gender and political aggression is hotly debated and the empirical evidence is often mixed. While many surveys find a gender gap, with women less supportive of politically motivated aggression and violence than men, numerous case studies point to women’s active involvement in political violence and refute the association of women with peacefulness. This article argues that the gender–aggression relation depends upon (1) the type of political aggression under study (i.e. direct vs. indirect political aggression), and (2) contextual factors, notably the salience of a protracted conflict. Using original datasets representing Israeli Jews (N = 3,126) we found that in the context of protracted conflict, gender has a unique effect on support for indirect forms of political aggression, over and above other central predictors of political aggression (i.e. political orientation and threat perceptions), such that women are actually more supportive of politically motivated social distancing and exclusion of out-groups in conflict as compared to men. Women and men, however, do not differ in their support for direct, politically motivated, violent acts against government officials. Results also shed light on potential mechanisms underlying these differences (and lack thereof), in the context of protracted conflict. The findings cast further doubt on the stereotype of ‘peaceful women’ and point to the need for policymakers concerned with conflict resolution to address context-related factors when considering the gender-based differences in political aggression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media increasingly plays a role in conflict and contentious politics. Politicians, leaders, insurgents, and protestors all have used it as a tool for communication. At the same time, scholars have turned to social media as a source of new data on conflict. I provide a framework for understanding social media’s influence on conflict through four interrelated points: (1) social media reduces the costs of communication, (2) it increases the speed and dissemination of information, (3) scholars should focus on the strategic interaction and competitive adaption of actors in response to communication technology changes, and (4) the new data that social media provides are not only an important resource, but also fundamentally change the information available to conflict actors, thereby shaping the conflict itself. In sum, social media’s influence on conflict defies simplistic explanations that argue that it privileges incumbents or challengers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does political violence leave a lasting legacy on identities, attitudes, and behaviors? We argue that violence shapes the identities of victims and that families transmit these effects across generations. Inherited identities then impact the contemporary attitudes and behaviors of the descendants of victims. Testing these hypotheses is fraught with methodological challenges; to overcome them, we study the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 and the indiscriminate way deportees died from starvation and disease. We conducted a multigenerational survey of Crimean Tatars in 2014 and find that the descendants of individuals who suffered more intensely identify more strongly with their ethnic group, support more strongly the Crimean Tatar political leadership, hold more hostile attitudes toward Russia, and participate more in politics. But we find that victimization has no lasting effect on religious radicalization. We also provide evidence that identities are passed down from the victims of the deportation to their descendants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author(s): Paul Hollander[sup.1] Author Affiliations: Paul Hollander is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at [...]

Reconciliation has become an integral part of the post-conflict peacebuilding process, and has come to be seen as an integral part of sustaining peace and security, particularly at the local level. The tension between a state security and human security approach to peacebuilding is particularly evident in national reconciliation and transitional justice processes. There is a continued emphasis on high-level reconciliation processes and the reconciliation of elite actors over processes that facilitate reconciliation at the community level. This article explores this in the case of Zimbabwe, where the emphasis is on a state-based approach to resolving conflict, which fails to take into account or address the needs and issues that affect local communities. Drawing from fieldwork undertaken in Matabeleland in April, 2014, this article describes what community members identify as their central needs when it comes to reconciliation, within the context of the state-driven processes that have been implemented to date., 1. Introduction Zimbabwe has a long history of violent conflict spreading over decades, including the independence struggle from 1965-1979, the Gukurahundi massacres from 1980-1987, and the post-2000 electoral violence, which [...]

Research on human development in violently and rapidly changing contexts requires innovative concepts, methods, and outcomes. Toward that end, articles in this issue focus on practice-based research in situations of adversity during and after acute phases of violent conflict. The goal of this issue is to focus on intersubjective sense-making - how children and youth in situations of violence, displacement, and other attendant consequences interact with those circumstances and with other people, especially in collectives intervening on their behalf. We explain and illustrate that research in formal and informal interventions can, in different ways, help us understand the nature of human development and gain insights to support development against great odds. This focus on collective practices highlights the systemic nature of contemporary violence and innovative dimensions to consider in human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current peace process between the Colombian Government and FARC - EP in Havana has rekindled the debate over the limits and scope of transitional justice. Phenomena such as horizontal victimization, result of the indirect participation of civilians in the conflict, poses a number of challenges for the transitional justice model, which is defined at the table; in particular how to proceed when violence has been used among neighbors. This article focuses on this tension and, for that, this presents a description of the boundaries of transitional justice and discusses the contexts of opportunity where the horizontal victimization has taken place in a Colombian region strongly affected by the armed conflict, la Sierra de La Macarena. The article concludes with the formulation of a hypothesis aimed at proposing a possible alternative in order to overcome the horizontal violence in the post conflict:, which is the possible complementarity between transitional mechanisms and the local experiences of community justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the opinions of the intellectual and political luminaries of the Muslim Brothers from the 1930s to the late 1990s on launching an armed insurrection against an unjust Muslim regime. An examination of works by Hasan al-Banna, Hasan al-Hudaybi, ‘Umar al-Tilmisani, Muhammad Qutb, Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Ma'mun al-Hudaybi reveals that, in addressing different types of challenges, the mainstream of the movement developed a broad and consistent consensus on the matter that draws from classic Islamic jurisprudence. According to this consensus, violence can be applied only as a last resort and only following an application of ‘fiqh al-muwazanat’ (the jurisprudence of balances) that indicates that success is certain, and that the harm caused in the process would not be greater than the benefit incurred. How a specific regime came to power, and the level of injustice it commits, are irrelevant criteria; a decision on launching a violent revolution is primarily concerned with pragmatically assessing opportunities and consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Can electoral reform lead to a reduction in the number of terrorist incidents? Economists have shown that the introduction of constitutional institutions such as courts in the early eighteenth century had a direct effect on investment. Could there be a similar link between the introduction of proportional representation (PR) electoral systems and a reduction in the number of terrorist attacks? Previous studies using cross-sectional data have found a negative correlation between the presence of PR-electoral systems and the number of terrorist incidents. However, earlier studies were based on aggregate figures, not on time-series data. They did not provide a direction that could be used to measure the possible effect of the introduction of PR. This research note addresses this problem. Using a paired samples t-test it is possible to show that the introduction of proportional representation in Northern Ireland and Algeria led to a marked reduction in the number of terrorist attacks. The note thus adds strength to earlier studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Sociologia e Política is the property of Revista de Sociologia e Politica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Many of the world’s most infamous terrorist organizations demonstrate clear political aptitude, maintaining highly successful political parties while simultaneously carrying out terrorist attacks. Yet the relationship between terrorism and a group’s political fortune is unclear. Groups like Hamas and Hezbollah appear to have gained significant support as a consequence of certain attacks, most notably those against US and Israeli targets. Other organizations fight for their political life after certain attacks. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and its political wing, Sinn Fein, scrambled to restore its public image after bombs in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, killed 11 Protestant civilians. In this article I examine the relationship between violence and political participation. I show that rebel groups are less likely to attack civilians when they simultaneously participate in democratic elections. I argue that attacking civilians is not good for political business. Not only can it distinguish the group as a terrorist organization and alienate supporters as a result, but attacking civilians also imposes high costs on the group’s own civilian support base. For these reasons, civilians frequently withdraw political support for rebel groups after they target civilians, which can be profoundly harmful to rebels. I analyze the violent and political behavior of non-state violent organizations from the Middle East and North Africa from 1980 to 2004. I also examine the IRA as a means of describing the causal mechanism advanced here. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Anthropologica is the property of CASCA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Terrorist groups are not completely isolated, socially “free-floating” entities, but emerge from and operate within a specific, immediate social environment—what we call the radical milieu—which shares their perspective and objectives, approves of certain forms of violence, and (at least to a certain extent) supports the violent group morally and logistically. In this article we introduce an approach to conceptualize and analyze this formative and supportive social environment of clandestine groups, addressing the questions of how the radical milieu emerges, what forms it takes, and what role it plays in shaping the development of violent groups. Our focus, thereby, rests on relationship-patterns between violent groups and radical milieus as well as on processes of interaction between radical milieus and their broader political and societal environment, which may entail dynamics of support and control but also isolation and radicalization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Illegal organizations, like mafia syndicates, gangs, and insurgencies, are often highly cohesive and hostile toward the outside world. Such groups cultivate a particular form of “anti-social” capital, which relies on ingroup bonding and limits outgroup bridging for the purpose of commissioning illicit acts. We argue that experiences within the group leave members with varying intensities of anti-social capital, and that higher intensities lead to significantly weaker relationships with political institutions and civil society, even many years after they exit the group. We test this theory using survey data from 1,485 former members of insurgent and paramilitary groups in Colombia, along with insights from 68 qualitative interviews. We find strong evidence that anti-social capital has individually varying and sticky effects on former members. These effects are pervasive and intense, and exhibit surprising and counterintuitive properties: former members of pro-state militia with higher levels of anti-social capital are systematically less likely to trust political institutions, while members of peasant-based insurgent groups with high levels of anti-social capital are less likely to participate in their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Scholars across a range of disciplines have increasingly argued that the intractability of political conflicts is rooted in the proliferation of competing historical narratives. These collective narratives construct the basis of a sense of shared collective identity. Narrative and identity are thus increasingly conceptualized as fundamental to the maintenance and reproduction of political conflict. In this paper, I explore two underlying conceptions of identity that have emerged in the literature on youth and political conflict. One conception views identity as a burden for youth, suggesting that youth perceive the need to internalize a master narrative of collective identity that provides a sense of security and solidarity in the midst of existential uncertainty. Though psychologically beneficial, this internalization is problematic in the reproductive role it assumes in the larger conflict. An alternative conception views identity as a benefit in its ability to serve as a tool for social and political change, particularly for low-status groups. I review theory and research that adopt these varying conceptions and suggest that identity must be conceptualized as both burden and benefit for youth in conflict settings. Copyright [c] 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel Key Words Conflict * Identity * Intergroup contact * Narrative * Peace education * Political violence * Social justice * Youth DOI: 10.1159/000320045

Moving beyond simply documenting that political violence negatively impacts children, we tested a social-ecological hypothesis for relations between political violence and child outcomes. Participants were 700 mother--child (M = 12.1 years, SD = 1.8) dyads from 18 working-class, socially deprived areas in Belfast, Northern Ireland, including single- and two-parent families. Sectarian community violence was associated with elevated family conflict and children's reduced security about multiple aspects of their social environment (i.e., family, parent-child relations, and community), with links to child adjustment problems and reductions in prosocial behavior. By comparison, and consistent with expectations, links with negative family processes, child regulatory problems, and child outcomes were less consistent for nonsectarian community violence. Support was found for a social-ecological model for relations between political violence and child outcomes among both single- and two-parent families, with evidence that emotional security and adjustment problems were more negatively affected in single-parent families. The implications for understanding social ecologies of political violence and children's functioning are discussed. DOI: 10.1037/a0019668

An ethnographic and diachronic examination of the commemoration of violent events--battles and massacres--in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon shows the shift in mnemonic frames that helps one to understand political contention and strategies of struggle. The transformations in the representation and remembrance of battles and massacres in response to particular audiences and contexts reveal the dynamic and constructed nature of commemorative practices. The persistence of some commemorative narratives at times and their oblivion at others depend on the character and role of local institutions on one hand--political organizations or nongovernmental organizations--and the available and authorized transnational discourses on the other. Keywords: nationalist commemoration; political violence; Palestinians; martyrs; guerrillas

The use of rhetoric in Anna Comnena's work 'the Alexiad' is discussed. She portrays the living conditions and experiences during the politically unstable situations.