CRJ 789 Violence Across the Globe
This course examines selected cases of large scale violence across the globe, as well as a number of social science perspectives from which to describe and analyze these human-made tragedies. The class begins with a brief overview of global weaponization to understand the material basis and widespread possibilities for armed violence. The class first considers a political/diplomatic history of violence which is the most longstanding perspective in journalism and government discourse. The class then learns to theorize the organizational components that may facilitate or prevent armed violence, from street crimes to genocide. Next, the class learns to theorize economic and political forms of structural violence, how they destroy environmental and communal infrastructures and how they are intertwined with armed violence. Finally, the class examines psycho-cultural theories of violence, and how ethnographers describe locally meaningful categories (forms of gender, race or ethnicity) that often determine who is terrorized, when, where and how. All illustrating examinations focus on locations outside the United States and may include case studies of former Yugoslavia, Israel, Colombia, Somalia, and Pakistan.
Prerequisite
None