Human security thinking in practice: ‘personal security’, ‘citizen security' and comprehensive mappings

This paper describes the introduction of an emphasis on ‘personal security’ in human security thinking and practice, as part of the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to compartmentalize the pursuit of security. It reviews the past 20 years of attention to ‘personal security’: both in compartments that consider organized physical violence or threats to personal safety and property (‘citizen security’), and as parts of more wide-ranging examination of threats to fulfilment of basic needs and rights, for example, in comprehensive mapping exercises undertaken in various UNDP Regional and National Human Development Reports or in studies of women's security. The paper reflects on the complex process of opening-up conventional security thinking and practice in ways that add value and depth without shrinking into preconceived compartments.     

Conceptualizing the Harms Done to Children Made the Subjects of Sexual Abuse Images Online

The innovation of the Internet and the proliferation of new digital technologies in everyday life have unfortunately created more opportunities for the sexual abuse of children and especially the global distribution of child sexual abuse images online (CSAIO). Most of the current therapeutic interventions being used were designed to treat ‘conventional’ sexual abuse trauma. Victims of CSAIO may experience ongoing trauma because the recordings of their abuse have the potential to be endlessly viewed and shared by those with a sexual interest in children some of whom may be known to them. However, little is known about the potential psychological harm to victims, the extent to which existing trauma treatment modalities are applicable to them, or what modifications of these treatments may be required for effective treatment. This paper explores current ways of understanding the harms done to the victims of CSAIO and presents cautions and recommendations for moving forward.     

Living in the Era of Digital Exhibitionism

Digitally mediated communication technologies have fundamentally changed the problem of child sexual abuse. Sexually explicit images of young people that can be found online range from those documenting offline abuse including adult-to-child and peer-on-peer violence, to self-generated images including those taken within the context of a coercive relationship or those that are shared online beyond the taker's control. Online availability of these images can have serious effects on victims. It is vital to identify what victims need, how youngsters are at risk online, how self-generated images may be shared online beyond the taker's control, and how children who have been traumatized by experiences of sexual abuse (offline as well as online) can be taught to stay safe online. This article summarizes the results of four different studies exploring these issues.     

Peace education and childhood

Peace studies and peace education are multifaceted processes focusing on diverse audiences from children in elementary grades to those involved in political negotiations at the highest levels. This paper addresses the foundational importance of including conflict embedded in adult-child relationships in peace education. It conceptually grounds assignments for university level courses designed to teach concepts linked to peace education through the vehicle of understanding violence against children. Such learning is designed to liberate students from the hegemony of adultism, the colonial relationship between adults and children and in turn to contribute to the advancement of peace education. Such pedagogy reflects the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’s call for educational measures to protect and support children’s human dignity. Such an approach is especially relevant for peace education, as a large body of research across disciplines has provided substantial evidence of a significant relationship between childhood experiences of violence and subsequent juvenile and adult behavioral and social problems including conflict and violence. The approach and assignments described in this paper reflect insights about the use of narratives of childhood experiences, the etiology and effects of violence against children and the reproduction of conflict and violence across generations.     

Landscapes of power: local struggles and national stakes at the rural-urban fringe of Kabul,Afghanistan

This article shows the coexistence of the language of legal claims and the use of violence as constitutive modes of getting control over resources. Through the analysis of a specific case of land dispute east of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, we aim at revealing how local struggles are linked to broader geographies of power. Following important changes in the material conditions in Afghanistan, which have led to the expansion of the city and the transformation of the rural-urban fringe, territorialized power appears as a pre-condition to control the circulation of people, goods and money, information and ideas, allowing us to add landscapes, the circulation of land, to the five categories famously distinguished by Appadurai as a way of organizing the study of the world's culture and economy.     

Means of production versus means of coercion: can Russian business limit the violence of a predatory state?

In their most recent works, North and his coauthors (North, D. C., J. J. Wallis, S. Webb, and B. R. Weingast. 2012. In the Shadow of Violence: Politics, Economics, and the Problems of Development. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press; North, D.C., J. J. Wallis, and B. R. Weingast. 2009. Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press) name the formation of organizations capable of effectively restricting violence in society as a necessary condition for transition from developing societies to societies with sustainable economic growth. However, the mechanisms of emergence and conditions for the operation of such organizations in contemporary developing countries remain unclear. We follow the logic of formation of such organizations using the case study of collective actions of the Russian business community aimed at restricting “state violence” against business. We seek to identify the conditions leading to a shift in the choice of strategies from attempts at informal agreements with extortionists controlling means of coercion to cooperation of businessmen and trace the further evolution of organized forms of collective action. Finally, we assess to what extent the created organizations can be efficient and self-supporting in the long term.     

‘Because they're a couple she should do what he says’: Young People's justifications of violence: heterosexuality,gender and adulthood

This article is based upon research that explored how 89 eleven- and twelve-year-olds understood and explained men's violence against women. The research found that young people examined the motivations of individual male perpetrators though the context of heterosexuality. For the young people, adulthood appeared to generate a more rigid framework of heterosexuality, where the gender differences begin to exemplify inequality upon which justifications can be based. Young people's justifications can be collated into the themes of: heteronormativity, the endorsement of marriage, restrictive gender roles and blaming women for the violence. Violence is justified because inequality is not questioned – it is endorsed and taken for granted as being part of an adult heterosexual relationship. This has implications for young people's own existing and anticipated relationships.     

Feminism,masculinity and male rape: bringing male rape ‘out of the closet’

Feminist research has played a pivotal role in uncovering the extent and nature of male violence against women and suggests that the main motivations for rape are the need for power, control and domination. This paper argues that, although feminist explanations of rape are robust and comprehensive, male victims of rape have largely been excluded from this field of research. While feminism has enabled the victimisation of women to be recognised, further understanding of the victimisation of men is required. Some feminist writers (such as hooks, 2000) have argued that men's emancipation is an essential part of feminism since men are equally harmed by gender role expectations and sexism. This paper makes a contribution to current knowledge through evaluating the social constructions, stigma and phenomenological realities associated with male rape (by both men and women), arguing that there has been neglect in this area that functions to support, maintain and reinforce patriarchal power relations and hegemonic masculinities.     

Desublimating monstrous desire: the horror of gender in new extremist cinema

Known for graphic gore and formal experimentation, films of European new extremism stand out for the way in which they combine sex with violence, stressing the body in extreme modes of being and rendering its materiality emphatic, uncanny and profoundly disturbing. While this emphasis on sex and violence has been widely recognized in scholarly literature on new extremism, its connections to gendered conventions of genre cinema have not. In this article, we contend that films such as Philippe Grandrieux's Sombre (1998), Lars von Trier's Antichrist (2009) and Claire Denis's Trouble Every Day (2001) directly reference gendered tropes and conventions of horror cinema in their explorations of desire, sexual difference and violence. Far from being inconsequential or secondary concerns, we argue that emphatically gendered characteristics of cinematic horror are crucial to the disturbing impact of these films. By appropriating tropes from the horror film, but refusing them the closure and recuperation customary to narrative conventions of the genre, new extremist films critique these gendered implications, calling attention to the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in the gender politics of horror.     

Vulnerability and resilience: critical reflexivity in gendered violence research

South Asian women are a focus area for organisations such as the UN, World Bank and WHO, where violence against women severely constrains policy instruments such as the Millennium Development Goals. The field researcher is often invisible in research space, which informs policy in practice. Through critical reflexivity we rupture the silence on researcher vulnerability, foregrounding researcher resilience as the ethical compass in the research space of gendered violence. Through narratives of researchers as development actors in the river of corrosiveness involved in acid violence research, we offer a typology for researcher resilience for consideration in research designs for policy development.