Violence and Society: Toward a New Sociology

What is violence and how can we understand it sociologically? And is society becoming increasingly inured to acts of violent behaviour? Pushing beyond widely accepted sociological theories of the complexity of violence, Violence and Society: Toward a New Sociology gathers leading national and international experts to set a new agenda for our understanding of interpersonal and state violence in contemporary society. Through an in–depth analysis of issues that include the nature of contemporary war; gender–based violence and street fights; and of the role of biography, the body, culture, emotion, and time in the exercise and experience of violence, chapters reveal how modern sociological thinking is at odds with a proper understanding of the nature and root causes of violence. Timely and important, Violence and Society: Toward a New Sociology sheds important new light on our understanding of the world we live in.

Jane Kilby is Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford. She is the author of Violence and the Cultural Politics of Trauma (2007). Larry Ray is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent. He has researched and published on topics in sociological theory, globalization, post–communism, social memory, collective and interpersonal violence; and is the author of Violence and Society (2011).