Public Violence in Canada, 1867-1982


Book Description

Judy Torrance introduces the concept of public violence to denote acts widely considered to be violent and of importance to society. Public violence differs from related concepts like political violence in explicitly recognizing that the subject matter is socially constructed.




Violence in Canada


Book Description

Many people consider Canada, particularly in comparison to its southern cousin, as a "peaceable kingdom." However, as the historical record demonstrates, Canadians have never been a thoroughly non-violent people. Violence in Canada highlights from an interdisciplinary perspective the major areas and contexts where violence takes place.Consisting of thirteen contributions, the book forms an indispensable guide to the subject. All of the authors are experts in their field, many with international reputations, and are drawn from the fields of sociology, political science, history, and criminology. The foreword by Ted Robert Gurr, author of Violence in America, is followed by an historical analysis of violence on the Canadian western frontier. Other scholars describe contemporary violence: by and against indigenous peoples, women, children, and the elderly; in labor-related disputes; homicide; police and prison violence; terrorism; and discuss government responses and policy implications. Each chapter specifically addresses the sociological and political dimensions of violence. The authors make ample use of statistics and empirical research. Jeffrey Ian Ross's introduction outlines the sociopolitical dynamics of violence, and his summary chapter offers directions for future research. When the book was first published in 1995 it was widely praised by scholarly journals and has since become a standard text in the study of violence and modern Canadian cultural studies.The book is all the more valuable as its new introduction places its findings in the context of research that has been produced since the original publication. Violence in Canada will be of interest to sociologists, criminologists, and political scientists.Jeffrey Ian Ross is an associate professor in the Division of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Social Policy and fellow with the Center for Comparative and International Law, University of Baltimore. His work has appeared in many academic journals and chapters in academic texts, as well as articles in popular magazines in Canada and the United States. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of eight books.Ted Robert Gurr is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. Among his books are Why Men Rebel and Violence in America.




Violence in Canada


Book Description

Many people consider Canada, particularly in comparison to its southern cousin, as a "peaceable kingdom." However, as the historical record demonstrates, Canadians have never been a thoroughly non-violent people. Violence in Canada highlights from an interdisciplinary perspective the major areas and contexts where violence takes place. Consisting of thirteen contributions, the book forms an indispensable guide to the subject. All of the authors are experts in their field, many with international reputations, and are drawn from the fields of sociology, political science, history, and criminology. The foreword by Ted Robert Gurr, author of Violence in America, is followed by an historical analysis of violence on the Canadian western frontier. Other scholars describe contemporary violence: by and against indigenous peoples, women, children, and the elderly; in labor-related disputes; homicide; police and prison violence; terrorism; and discuss government responses and policy implications. Each chapter specifically addresses the sociological and political dimensions of violence. The authors make ample use of statistics and empirical research. Jeffrey Ian Ross's introduction outlines the sociopolitical dynamics of violence, and his summary chapter offers directions for future research. When the book was first published in 1995 it was widely praised by scholarly journals and has since become a standard text in the study of violence and modern Canadian cultural studies. The book is all the more valuable as its new introduction places its findings in the context of research that has been produced since the original publication. Violence in Canada will be of interest to sociologists, criminologists, and political scientists. Jeffrey Ian Ross is an associate professor in the Division of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Social Policy and fellow with the Center for Comparative and International Law, University of Baltimore. His work has appeared in many academic journals and chapters in academic texts, as well as articles in popular magazines in Canada and the United States. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of eight books. Ted Robert Gurr is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. Among his books are Why Men Rebel and Violence in America.




The Vigilant Eye


Book Description

In The Vigilant Eye, Greg Marquis combines the narrative and chronological approach of traditional institutional history with the critical approaches of social history, legal history and criminology. The book begins with the English and Irish roots of nineteenth-century British North American policing and traces the development of the three models of law enforcement that would shape the future: the local rural constable, the municipal police department and the paramilitary territorial constabulary. Marquis examines the development of provincial police services, whose expansion coincided with the rise of mass automobile ownership and controversies over alcohol prohibition and control, and their eventual absorption into the RCMP. In terms of political policing, the vigilant eye has monitored, harassed and disrupted various social and political movements ranging from Fenians to communists, to Quebec separatists and environmentalists. Marquis argues that the style of community policing in vogue during the 1970s and 1980s lacked confidence and had a limited impact. Canada’s simplistic crime-fighting model undermines genuine reform, including curbs on the use of deadly force on citizens, and justifies the increased militarization of policing. Marquis argues that it is time for citizens to turn their vigilant eye towards police and policing in their own communities.




Nation Maker


Book Description

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER John A. Macdonald, Canada's first and most important prime minister, is the man who made Confederation happen, who built this country over the next quarter century, and who shaped what it is today. From Confederation Day in 1867, where this volume picks up, Macdonald finessed a reluctant union of four provinces in central and eastern Canada into a strong nation, despite indifference from Britain and annexationist sentiment in the United States. But it wasn't easy. Gwyn paints a superb portrait of Canada and its leaders through these formative years and also delves deep to show us Macdonald the man, as he marries for the second time, deals with the birth of a disabled child, and the assassination of his close friend Darcy McGee, and wrestles with whether Riel should hang. Indelibly, Gwyn shows us Macdonald's love of this country and his ability to joust with forces who would have been just as happy to see the end of Canada before it had really begun, creating a must-read for all Canadians.







Violence and the Female Imagination


Book Description

In the past twenty years Quebec women writers, including Aline Chamberland, Claire Dé, Suzanne Jacob, and Hélène Rioux, have created female characters who are fascinated with bold sexual actions and language, cruelty, and violence, at times culminating in infanticide and serial killing. Paula Ruth Gilbert argues that these Quebec feminist writers are "re-framing" gender. Violence and the Female Imagination explores whether these imagined women are striking out at an external other or harming themselves through acts of self-destruction and depression. Gilbert examines the degree to which women are imitating men in the outward direction of their anger and hostility and suggests that such "tough" women may be mocking men in their "macho" exploits of sexuality and violence. She illustrates the ways in which Quebec female authors are "feminizing" violence or re-envisioning gender in North American culture. Gilbert bridges methodological gaps and integrates history, sociology, literary theory, feminist theory, and other disciplinary approaches to provide a framework for the discussion of important ethical and aesthetic questions.




Managing Terrorism and Insurgency


Book Description

This book examines how governments can weaken the regenerative capabilities of terrorist and insurgent groups. The exploration of this question takes the form of a two-tier examination of three insurgent actors whose capacity to regenerate weakened in the past: the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) of Canada, the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional - Tupamaros (MLN-T) of Uruguay and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) of Northern Ireland during the mid-1970s. At the first level of its examination, the book investigates the extent to which the regenerative capacities of the FLQ, MLN-T, and PIRA weakened because of an increase in attrition and a decrease in recruitment. The primary objectives of this analysis are to uncover whether a declining intake of recruits played a lesser, equal, or greater role than a burgeoning loss of personnel in weakening the capacities to regenerate of the three insurgent actors; and, in turn, to shed greater light on the broader validity of the prevailing view in conflict studies that a decrease in recruitment is more important than an increase in attrition in effecting the corrosion of an insurgent actor's capacity to regenerate. At the second level of its exploration, the book assesses the effectiveness of five of the most prominent policy prescriptions in the literature and insurgent recruitment and attrition: ameliorating grievances, selective repression, discrediting insurgent ideology, improving intelligence collection, and restricting civil liberties This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and counter-terrorism, conflict studies, strategic studies and security studies in general. Cameron Crouch is currently an Analyst at Allen Consulting Group, an Australian economics and public policy consulting firm. He has a PhD from the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University.




City of Order


Book Description

Interwar Halifax was a city in flux, a place where citizens debated adopting new ideas and technologies but agreed on one thing – modernity was corrupting public morality and unleashing untold social problems on their fair city. In this context, citizens, policy makers, and officials turned to the criminal justice system to create a bulwark against further social dislocation. Officials modernized the city’s machinery of order – courts, prisons, and the police force – and placed greater emphasis on crime control, while residents supported tough-on-crime measures and attached little importance to rehabilitation. These initiatives gave birth to a constructed vision of a criminal class that singled out ethnic minorities, working-class men, and female and juvenile offenders as problem figures in the eternal quest for order. Michael Boudreau’s in-depth study of crime and culture in interwar Halifax, the first of its kind, shows how tough-on-crime measures can compound, rather than resolve, social inequalities and dislocations.




Beaten Down


Book Description

This book examines interpersonal violence in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia beginning with Native American cultures before colonization and continuing into the mid-twentieth centuries. Rather than riots or lynchings, it is concerned with more prosaic acts of physical force--a husband slapping his wife, a parent taking a birch branch to a child, a pair of drunken friends squaring off to establish who was the “better man.” Del Mar accounts for the social relations of power that lie behind this intimate form of violence.