Violence in the City: Understanding and Supporting Community Responses to Urban Violence

 

 

From the summary at the World Bank

Violence in the City: Understanding and Supporting Community Responses to Urban Violence” is the first global study of urban violence conducted by the World Bank, and incorporates case studies from urban communities in Brazil (Fortaleza), Haiti (Port-au-Prince), Kenya (Nairobi), South Africa (Johannesburg) and Timor-Leste (Dili).

For millions of people around the world, violence, or the fear of violence, is a daily reality. Much of this violence concentrates in urban centers in the developing world. Cities are now home to half the world’s population and expected to absorb almost all new population growth over the next 25 years. In many cases, the scale of urban violence can eclipse those of open warfare; some of the world’s highest homicide rates occur in countries that have not undergone a war, but that have serious epidemics of violence in urban areas. This study emerged out of a growing recognition that urban communities themselves are an integral part of understanding the causes and impacts of urban violence and of generating sustainable violence prevention initiatives.

Click here for the full report

Related articles

• LA story? (bbc.co.uk)
• Urban riots: tough love | Editorial (guardian.co.uk)

Veteran Psychologist Explains Our ‘Lust For Blood’

From the Medical News Today article, 20 April 2011

We are fascinated with the lurid details of sensational murder trials. Horror fiction and slasher movies thrill us – the gorier the better. When we drive by the scene of an accident, we’re compelled to slow down. And it’s no secret that brutal video games are solid moneymakers. Why do we thirst for the frighteningly grotesque? In The “LUST FOR BLOOD: WHY WE ARE FASCINATED BY DEATH, MURDER, HORROR, AND VIOLENCE” (Prometheus Books, $25) veteran psychologist Jeffrey A. Kottler explains our dark desire for guts, gore, and the gruesome. …

…[Kottler] ably explores our paradoxical lust and revulsion as a cathartic means of restraint, with specific attention to its psychological impact: seeing violence within a media frame makes us feel alive, recharging us to face our private anxieties about life-and-death issues. This book offers something for everyone, from media psychologists to fans of splatter-films,” said Ramsland.

Kottler considers ideas from a variety of theories and research to explain our responses to violence, raises questions about the shifting line between normal and abnormal, evaluates the confusion and ambivalence that many people feel when witnessing others’ suffering, and suggests future trends in society’s attitudes toward violence.

About the Author:
Jeffrey A. Kottler, PhD, is a practicing psychologist, professor of counseling at California State University, Fullerton, and the author of more than seventy-five books, including the New York Times best seller “The Last Victim: A True-Life Journey into the Mind of the Serial Killer.” He is also head of Empower Nepali Girls, which provides educational scholarships for at-risk, lower-caste girls.

New National Library of Medicine Website Spotlights Murder Pamphlets

This pamphlet tells the story of the 1881 discovery of the body of Jennie Cramer, a 20-year-old society girl, by fishermen along the Connecticut shore.

From  the announcement

A new website, “Most Horrible & Shocking Murders: Murder pamphlets in the collection of the National Library of Medicine,” has been launched by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world’s largest medical library. The site features a selection of murder pamphlets from the late 1600s to the late 1800s-from a treasure trove of several hundred owned by the Library.

Ever since the invention of movable type in the mid-1400s, public appetite for tales of shocking murders-“true crime”-has been one of the most durable facts of the market for printed material. For more than five centuries, murder pamphlets have been hawked on street corners, town squares, taverns, coffeehouses, news stands, and bookshops.

These pamphlets have been a rich source for historians of medicine, crime novelists, and cultural historians, who mine them for evidence to illuminate the history of class, gender, race, the law, the city, crime, religion and other topics. The murder pamphlets in the NLM’s collection address cases connected to forensic medicine, especially cases in which doctors were accused of committing-or were the victims of-murder.

The website (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/murderpamphlets/index.html), based on a 2008 exhibition at the NLM, is curated by Michael Sappol, PhD, historian in the NLM’s History of Medicine Division.

 

Editor Janice Flahiff’s thoughts…
Wondering if there are any online exhibitions of current or past telling of moving stories of peacemaking efforts at local, national, or international levels…surely peacemaking leads to healing at many levels…and is a  preventative…for many ills
Well, with 12+ years as a librarian, I think I just may do some focused searching…..

As an aside, here in Toledo, we dismantled Arlington Midwest, which was on display on the county courthouse grounds this past week. Spent about 10 hours this past week there at our information booth. Many good observations and stories by “visitors”, even those I respectfully disagreed with…..