Causes and Consequences of Group Violence

James Hawdon is professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention at Virginia Tech.John Ryan is professor and chair of sociology at Virginia Tech.Marc Lucht is visiting assistant professor of philosophy and education coordinator at the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention at Virginia Tech.

• Introduction: Working toward Understanding Group Violence, James Hawdon and John Ryan Part 1: Perpetrators of Group ViolenceChapter 1: On the Forms and Nature of Group Violence, James Hawdon Chapter 2: Hate Groups: From Offline to Online Social Identifications, Atte Oksanen, Pekka Räsänen, and James HawdonChapter 3: Violence and Street Groups: Gangs, Groups, and Violence, David Kennedy Chapter 4: Intergroup Contact and Genocide, Wenona Rymond-Richmond Chapter 5: Group Violence against the State: The Hindsight Story of the Thirty-Year War in Sri Lanka, Tharindi Udalagama and Premakumara de Silva Chapter 6: (Non)Violence and Conflict: A Theoretical Assessment of Civil Resistance and the Syrian Conflict, Jeanne Chang and Alec Clott Chapter 7: Killing Before an Audience: Terrorism and Group Violence, Mark Juergensmeyer Part 2: Victims of Group ViolenceChapter 8: Gender, Weight, and Inequality Associated with School Bullying, Anthony Peguero and Lindsay Kahle Chapter 9: Victims of Hate

These ambitious interdisciplinary articles from the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention at Virginia Tech are wide in scope. . . .The 15 articles are arranged into four sections. 'Perpetrators of Group Violence' surveys street gangs, online hate groups, genocide, state and anti-state violence, and terrorism as performance. The three chapters in 'The Victims of Group Violence' examine bullying based on gender and weight, youth exposure to Internet hate speech, and intra-group violence among Sri Lankan Tamils. 'Consequences of Group Violence' covers the aftermath of the Sri Lankan civil war, examines gender impacts on group violence, and reviews community responses to rampage killings, with case studies from Norway. In 'Reflections on Group Violence,' coeditor Hawdon calls for more sociological analysis and identifies four situational conditions associated with group violence: ineffective state control, group identity maintenance, slow rates of social mobility, and symbolic status achieved via violence. Coeditor Lucht asks researchers to supplement causal social scientific accounts of group violence with investigations that address meaning and seek understanding. Summing Up: Recommended. Faculty, specialists, professionals.