Interventions: Activists and Academics Respond to Violence

Interventions: Activists and Academics Respond to Violence brings together top scholars to discuss the significance of violence from a global perspective and the intersections between the global structures of violence and more localized and intimate forms of violence. The contributors to Interventions examine many hard questions including: Are there situations in which violence should be politically supported? Are non-violent or anti-war movements in the US able to respond effectively to violence? Do we need to rethink our understanding of both "religion" and "secularism" in light of the current world situation? Have new paradigms been developed in response to violence? The essays in this collection offer incisive analysis of particular situations and creative alternatives to the omnipresence of violence.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Feminists Responding to Violence - Elizabeth A. Castelli * Part I: Terms of Engagement * Feminism in a Time of Violence - Karen Beckman * The Wrong Victims - Sally Bachner * Definitions and Injuries of Violence - Meredeth Turshen * Filling the Sight by Force - Laura Wexler * Rethinking Responses to Violence, Rethinking the Safety of "Home" - Andrea Smith * Violence of Protection - Minoo Moallem * Is Secularism Less Violent than Religion? - Janet R. Jakobsen * Part II: Violence and the U.S. Political Regime * Biblical Promise and Threat in U.S. Imperialist Rhetoric, Before and After 9.11 - Erin Runions * The Best Defense? The Problem with Bush's "Preemptive" War Strategy - Neta C. Crawford * The Erosion of Democracy in Advancing the Bush Administration's Irag Agenda - Jody Williams * Part III: Contexts and Locations of Violence * Naming Enmity - Gil Anidjar * Toward a Cherokee Theory of Violence - Laura E. Donaldson * Dangerous Crossings - Lois Ann Lorentzen * Domestic Terror - Catherine Lutz & Jon Elliston * Testifying to Violence - Anupama Rao * Challenging What We Mean by Conflict Prevention - Gwi-Yeop Son * Part IV: Anti-Violence Ethics and Strategies: Coalitions, Theatres, Interdependencies * Sisterhood after Terrorism - Kathryn Poethig * The Female Body as Site of Attack - Fawzia Afzal-Khan * Responses to Violence - Helena Cobban * Our Enemies, Ourselves - Kay Whitlock

About the Author :
Elizabeth A. Castelli is Associate Professor of Religion at Barnard College at Columbia University. For 2003-2004 she is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Religion and Media at New York University. Janet R. Jakobsen is the Director of the Center for Research on Women at Barnard College at Columbia University.

Review :
'There is a long tradition of intellectuals responding to violence, particularly if there is a provocation such as the US invasion in Iraq. Castelli and Jakobsen have edited a book with a wide range of articles, most of them written from a feminist point of view. All are in some way related to violence. Basically, they try to contribute to the development of new and more comprehensive vocabularies for analyzing violence and revitalized strategies for antiviolence activism...For the peace research community, this book brings together articles that try to focus on violence from a feminist or at least from a female point of view. This is the most relevant and fruitful aspect of the book.' - Journal of Peace Research