COS4100

Violences

Chris Atmore and Brett Hough

12 points
* 2 hours per week
* First semester
* Clayton

Objectives The subject aims to help students appreciate the plural character of the phenomenon, violences; and to introduce a critical awareness of the diversity of understandings of and proffered solutions to violences. Upon completion of this subject students should be able to present a debate or issue central to the project of trying to eliminate violence from social life, and to demonstrate some understanding of the methodological, epistemological, ethical and political issues in researching a form of violence.

Synopsis This subject explores violences as a complex set of practices, from a range of disciplinary perspectives although with an overall emphasis on the social sciences. Topic areas covered in any year may include state-sanctioned violences like institutionalised torture and capital punishment; interpersonal violences such as rape and child abuse; and intellectual and political debates over ethics, research and methodologies and epistemologies, and issues of representation. The subject will also entail examining violences via crosscultural perspectives in order to highlight differences and similarities throughout the world. Students will be required to engage with the issues using a range of techniques, including video material, the keeping of a personal journal, and seminars led by both staff and students.

Assessment Essay (3000 words): 20%
* Project (6000 words): 60%
* Seminar work: 20%

Recommended texts

Harvey P and Gow P Sex and violence: Issues in representation and experience Routledge, 1994
Haas K and Inciardi J Challenging capital punishment: Legal and social science approaches Sage, 1988
Kappeler S The will to violence: The politics of personal behaviour Polity, 1995
Lesser W Pictures at an execution: An inquiry into the subject of murder Harvard U P, 1993
Nordstrom C and Robben A Fieldwork under fire: Contemporary studies of violence and survival U California P, 1995
Scarry E The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world OUP, 1985
Wrangham R and Peterson D Demonic males: Apes and the origins of human violence Bloomsbury, 1996