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Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, brings his inimitable vision, exhaustive research, and mesmerizing prose to this timely book that dissects violence and offers new solutions to the age old problem of why people kill. Lonnie Athens was raised by a brutally domineering father. Defying all odds, Athens became a groundbreaking criminologist who turned his scholar's eye to the problem of why people become violent. After a decade of interviewing several hundred violent convicts--men and women of varied background and ethnicity, he discovered "violentization," the four-stage process by which almost any human being can evolve into someone who will assault, rape, or murder another human being. Why They Kill is a riveting biography of Athens and a judicious critique of his seminal work, as well as an unflinching investigation into the history of violence.
Lonnie H. Athens’ path-breaking work examines a problem that has baffled experts and the general public alike: How does a person become a predatory violent criminal? In the original edition, the process that Athens labeled “violentization” encompassed four stages: brutalization, defiance, dominative engagements, and virulency. In this edition, Athens identifies a new final stage, violent predation, as the culmination of the violent criminal’s development. He uses vivid first-person accounts gleaned from in-depth interviews and participant observation of nascent and hardened violent criminals to back up his theory. In this vastly expanded edition, Athens examines how his thinking and ideas have evolved over the past thirty years and renames and clarifies two stages of development. Athens also addresses, for the first time, criticisms of his original theory. Milestones of this important work are discussed, as well as the paradoxes surrounding its present-day status in the field of criminology. Athens proposes a revised theoretical model that will be useful for classroom use, as well as for interested general readers and professionals.
Rather than finding the causes of criminal behavior in external forces or personality disorders, as conventional wisdom often does, the author renews his fundamental argument that a violent situation comes into being when defined by an individual as a situation that calls for violence -- that an actor responds to the circumstance as he or she defines it. Based on the author's many firsthand interviews with offenders and on his personal experience, this book augments his call to reexamine the source and locus of violent criminal behavior.
Lonnie Athens examines a problem that has long baffled experts and lay people alike: How does a person become a dangerous violent criminal? He explains how those who commit brutal crimes begin as relatively benign individuals who undergo lengthy, at times tortuous. development leading them to malevolence. The process that Athens labels "violentization" encompasses four stages: brutalization, belligerency, violent performance, and virulency. Athens uses vivid first-person accounts gleaned from in-depth interviews with nascent and hardened violent criminals to back up his theory, producing a book that will appeal to a wide variety of readers interested in criminal justice, law, and sociology.
No other European country experienced the disruption of political and everyday life suffered by Italy in the so-called 'years of lead' (1969-c.1983), when there were more than 12,000 incidents of terrorist violence. This experience affected all aspects of Italian cultural life, shaping political, judicial and everyday language as well as artistic representation of every kind. In this innovative and broad-ranging study, experts from the fields of philosophy, history, media, law, cinema, theatre and literary studies trace how the experience and legacies of terrorism have determined the form and content of Italian cultural production and shaped the country's way of thinking about such events?
Reputable scholars have long charged that symbolic interactionism, which is based on the principle of “sociality," discounts the importance that subordination plays in human groups. Emphasizing dominance and power, Athens explains how subordination operates in human group life from a new interactionist’s perspective, aptly dubbed by him, “radical interactionism." Expanding on the work of sociologist Robert E. Park, Athens explains the nature and operation of super-ordination and subordination, which he believes affects all social interaction between human beings and groups. He then develops a generic framework and a common terminology to help explain all forms of social conflicts. Athens argues that a radical interactionism disentangles the nature of domination, power and force, as well as the relationship among them, in a manner consistent with the basic premises of the Chicago school of pragmatism. This book offers a provocative and intelligent outline of the development and evolution of radical interactionism, a perspective interactionists can add to their toolbox with profit.
This issue of the Blue Ribbon Papers is must reading for anyone wishing to remain up- to- date on the latest breaking developments in interactionism which could potentially change forever both the history of this venerated American school of thought and, in turn, American sociological theory.
Athens's work on violence is applied, assessed, and extended in this title by scholars from a variety of fields, including clinical psychology, criminology, history, psychiatry, and sociology. Violence is examined from contexts of child abuse, corrections, soldiers in wartime, and the Holocaust.
Explores the Pragmatists' contributions to American social thought, drawing upon the writings of William James, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, James Hayden Tufts, and their various critics. This work also explores the Pragmatic analysis of society's potential for ongoing intelligent inquiry and cooperative evaluation to address social ills.