Resistance movements have become one of the most visible signs of advocating for social change, challenging an unjust system, and changing the status quo. This study aims to enhance our understanding of why some resistance movements choose a non-violent strategy, while others choose a violent one, by answering the research question: what explains the choice of violent or non-violent strategy in resistance movements? This thesis argues that when there is a presence of leaders or organisers, a movement becomes more cohesive, coordinated and able to provide protesters with an outlet for their emotions. In contrast, in the absence of a leader or organiser, a movement is expected to remain fragmented and the outbreak of violence being closer. Using the method of structured focused comparison, the hypothesis is tested on two protest movements in Tirana, Albania. Data was collected through interviews with protesters and archive research. The findings indicate that coordinated measures taken by leaders and organisers result in a cohesive resistance movement where there is a viable platform for protesters to phrase their grievances and claims for social change without resorting to violence.

Cette recherche, en étroite relation avec notre pratique clinique en milieu carcéral, s'intéresse aux émotions dans les agirs violents. Les termes « émotions » et « agirs » sont à entendre dans une acception généraliste puisque nous partons de ce qui est visible pour remonter au fonctionnement psychique. Notre recherche s'intéresse ainsi à la clinique de l'agir et aux théories psychanalytiques de l'affect. Soulignant le fait que la prise en charge du sujet ne doit pas exclusivement se centrer sur l'agir violent, nous nous questionnons sur le fonctionnement des auteurs d'agirs violents et sur le lien qui existe entre un type d'agir (recours à l'acte et / ou passage à l'acte) et un fonctionnement particulier. Les fondements théoriques de la clinique des états-limites et de la clinique psychosomatique semblent pouvoir nous apporter des réponses intéressantes. Ainsi, à une analyse du fonctionnement en fonction de l'acte, nous préférons avoir une lecture qui part du fonctionnement pour éclairer la compréhension de l'acte. De manière générale, au-delà de vouloir préciser à quel fonctionnement appartient un type d'agir, nous souhaitons avant tout souligner la pluralité des fonctionnements dans la clinique des agirs. Enfin, nous chercherons à comprendre l'impact du milieu carcéral sur le fonctionnement de ces sujets. / This research, in conjunction with our clinical practice in prisons, focuses on emotions in violent act. The terms "emotion" and "act" must be understood in a general sense because we start from what is visible for up to psychic functioning. Our research interest in the theory of violent act and psychoanalytic theories of affect. It's important not only focus on the violent act and we questionned the functioning of the author of violent act and the relationship between one type of act (different type of acting out ) and psychic functioning. The theoretical foundations of limit states and psychosomatic seem to bring us interesting answers. Thus, an analysis of the operation according to the act, we prefer to have a reading that part of the psychic functioning to illuminate the understanding of the act. In general, beyond wanting to clarify what types of operation belongs act, we would first like to emphasize the plurality of functioning in the clinic act.

Studiens syfte var att undersöka kopplingen mellan hur professionella inom socialt arbete arbetar med män som utövat våld i en nära relation och hur de ser på problemet. Som metod användes en kvalitativ intervjustudie med sju yrkesverksamma inom socialt arbete. De informanter som deltog arbetade antingen inom socialtjänsten eller i verksamheter som erbjuder behandling för våldsutövande män. I studien användes ett genusperspektiv och den ekologiska modellen som teoretiska utgångspunkter. Studiens resultat visar att professionellas arbete speglar deras syn på mäns våld mot kvinnor. De som arbetar med kvinnorna ser konsekvenserna av våldet medan de som arbetar med männen ser de som könsneutrala människor som behöver hjälp. Resultatet visar även på vikten av att våldsutövare tar ansvar för våldet och söker hjälp, detta för att undvika att våldsproblematiken förs vidare eller fortsätter. Vidare framkommer brister både i metod vid behandling av våldsutövande män samt i socialtjänstens förmåga att identifiera en våldsutsatthet respektive våldsutövande. Den behandlingsmetod som används berör inte den koppling som finns mellan manlighet och våldsutövning och de professionella som arbetar behandlande tycks sakna detta perspektiv. / The purpose of this study was to examine the connection between how social work professionals, work with men who use violence in an intimate relationship and how they see the problem. To conduct the study a qualitative method was used that included interviews with seven professionals in social work. The professionals who participated worked either in social services or in organizations offering treatment for violent men. The study used a gender perspective and the ecological model as theoretical points.  The results of the study show that the professionals' work reflects their view of men's violence against women. Those who work with women see the consequences of violence while those working with the men see them as gender neutral people who need help. The results also show the importance for offenders to take responsibility for the violence and seek help, this is to avoid that the problems of violence are forwarded or continues. Furthermore, the lack of ability to identify the violence victimization and violence is found both in the methods used in treatment of violent men as well as in the social service’s. The method used for treatment does not affect the link between masculinity and violence, the professionals who work with treatment also seem to lack this perspective.

Arbetet behandlar frågor rörande hur olika politiska subjekt ställs i ett dikotomt förhållande till varandra genom diskursiva praktiker. Meningsmotståndare tänks utmana varandras olika samhällsvisioner inom ett politiskt rum som utgörs av den demokratiska processen. Detta rum kan artikuleras genom olika politiska styrningsformer, exempelvis konsensuspolitik eller agonism. Oavsett form tänks samhällsordningen och dess politiska styrelseform med tiden etableras genom dess allmänna acceptans som underbyggs av dess legitimitet och acceptans av samhället i stort. Denna cementering kännetecknas av begreppet hegemoni. Studien utgår till stor del utifrån Chantal Mouffes tankar om det politiska som något som kräver ett konfliktelement för att driva samhällsutvecklingen framåt. Således ses konsensuspolitik som något som i längden skadar den demokratiska processen och det demokratiska samhället. Genom ett diskursanalytiskt tillvägagångssätt tolkas våldsbejakande extremism som ett fenomen utpekat av och genom samhällets hegemoniska ordning. Våldsbejakande extremism är således de krafter som bjuder den hegemoniska ordningen motstånd genom att presentera alternativa samhällsvisioner. När motstånd och förändringsmöjligheter inte upplevs kunna föras genom de etablerade demokratiska strukturerna riskerar de utlöpa i våldsamma sammandrabbningar, ofta betecknade våldsbejakande extremism. Således undersöker studien hur dessa olika krafter möts inom det politiska rummet och bjuder varandra motstånd. Det teoretiska ramverket konkretiseras genom det empiriska underlaget i form av intervjuer och rapporter.

Advances in social networks and multimedia technologies greatly facilitate the recording and sharing of video data on violent social and/or political events via In- ternet. These video data are a rich source of information in terms of identifying the individuals responsible for damaging public and private property through vio- lent behavior. Any abnormal, violent individual behavior could trigger a cascade of undesirable events, such as vandalism and damage to stores and public facilities. When such incidents occur, investigators usually need to analyze thousands of hours of videos recorded using handheld devices in order to identify suspects. The exhaus- tive manual investigation of these video data is highly time and resource-consuming. Automated detection techniques of abnormal events and actions based on computer vision would o↵er a more e cient solution to this problem. The first contribution described in this thesis consists of a novel method for fire detection in riot videos acquired with handheld cameras and smart-phones. This is a typical example of computer vision in the wild, where we have no control over the data acquisition process, and where the quality of the video data varies considerably. The proposed spatial model is based on the Mixtures of Gaussians model and exploits color adjacency in the visible spectrum of incandescence. The experimental results demonstrate that using this spatial model in concert with motion cues leads to highly accurate results for fire detection in noisy, complex scenes of rioting crowds. The second contribution consists in a method for detecting abnormal, violent actions that are performed by individual subjects and witnessed by passive crowds. The problem of abnormal individual behavior, such as a fight, witnessed by passive bystanders gathered into a crowd has not been studied before. We show that the presence of a passive, standing crowd is an important indicator that an abnormal action might occur. Thus, detecting the standing crowd improves the performance of detecting the abnormal action. The proposed method performs crowd detection first, followed by the detection of abnormal motion events. Our main theoretical contribution consists in linking crowd detection to abnormal, violent actions, as well as in defining novel sets of features that characterize static crowds and abnormal individual actions in both spatial and spatio-temporal domains. Experimental results are computed on a custom dataset, the Vancouver Riot Dataset, that we generated using amateur video footage acquired with handheld devices and uploaded on public social network sites. Our approach achieves good precision and recall values, which validates our system’s reliability of localizing the crowds and the abnormal actions. To summarize, this thesis focuses on the detection of two types of abnormal events occurring in violent street movements. The data are gathered by passive participants to these movements using handheld devices. Although our data sets are drawn from one single social movement (the Vancouver 2011 Stanley cup riot) we are confident that our approaches would generalize well and would be helpful to forensic activities performed in the context of other similar violent occasions. / Graduate

In recent years urban violence has become understood as a 'reproduced', multi-causal and socially generated phenomenon. Less is understood about why young men reproduce the majority of this violence. This thesis uses original empirical data based on thirty-two life-histories of youths living in two poor and violent neighbourhoods in Medellín, Colombia. It argues that urban violence is reproduced by male youths because it is linked to 'masculinity'; that is, the process of 'becoming men' where youths strive to fulfil productive or 'successful' models of masculinity. These processes are related to contexts of poverty, inequality and exclusion, so this thesis does not reduce the generation of urban violence to masculinity alone. Rather, understanding masculinity provides us with further insight into the reproduction of violence. This thesis further argues that male youths are disposed by their habitus - after Pierre Bourdieu - to negotiate a pathway to manhood that largely reflects traditional masculine values in their context. Striving to achieve prevailing versions of manhood contributed to some of these youths joining armed groups, such as gangs. The gang acted as a mechanism to fulfil their dispositions to become men, by providing them with a way to perform a version of 'successful' masculinity. This is prevalent in urban contexts of exclusion and high levels of social violence, because there are limited opportunities to achieve legal and dignified versions of manhood, whilst there are significant opportunities to join the local gang. The youths interviewed that did not join gangs tended to come from families that taught them to reject violence at a young age, whilst supporting them in pursuing alternative pathways to manhood. Youths that joined gangs tended to have more problems at home and often had family members already in gangs.

M.A. / Violence exacts an enormous social cost which is concerned with the loss of self-respect in both the perpetrators, the victims as well as the family and the broader social community. The purpose of this study was to describe the link between environmental violence and family well-being so as to develop effective intervention strategies for social work practice and community development. This study was conducted within Zola Primary Health Care Clinic in Soweto. A questionnaire was used as a method of gathering data that was required. The researcher used an exploratory descriptive design. It was found in this study that environmental violence has an impact on family well-being. The results of the study indicated that there is a significant difference between the type of environmental violence that was experienced by the victim e.g. rape/sexual abuse especially whereby the perpetrator is a family member or relative. The results showed that family well-being was affected in a way that victims felt less power, less goal-inclined, less safe within their own families as well as within their own communities. The family well-being is also affected by several factors such as housing, marital status, age, education. For an example the results showed that victims of violence with a higher level of education felt more power, more goal-inclined and safer within their families and within their own communities. Recommendations for social work practice and community development were drawn whereby the importance of knowing and understanding the needs of the victims were highlighted – before effective intervention can take place. / Dr. E. Oliphant

Introduction. Serious violent offenders and their offending behaviour stood in focus of thisstudy. Scientific literature tends to classify offenders into non-violent or violent; however,it is known that within the area of violent crime, dimensions of offending behaviour such asgoal-directedness, provocation and planning can be expressed differently. The present studyuses these dimensions to evaluate the construct of serious violent offending by analysingdifferent cases, comparing their offending behavioural profiles and evaluating at what levelthese profiles are consistent with the common psychopathic offending behaviour.Methods. Verdicts and Preliminary investigation protocols of nine Swedish offenderslabelled as seriously violent were used to gather the information from scene investigations,autopsy reports and offender/victim interrogations in order to describe the crime history andcrime dynamics of the cases which served as a basis for assessing different dimensions,using the values from a violent incident coding sheet.Results. Cases of serious violent offending displayed heterogeneity rather thanhomogeneity in the offending behaviour. Homicide offenders demonstrated a mixed patternof behaviour compared to sex offenders who showed a more homogeneous profile withtypically goal-directed, unprovoked and impulsive behaviour, also being more consistentwith the offending behaviour commonly displayed by psychopathic offenders.Conclusion. Based on the dimensions analysed, a universal serious violent offendingbehavioural profile does not seem to exist. More criminological research with a largernumber of subjects is required, however, findings from this study make it arguable tosuggest that sex offenders might benefit from treatment focusing on improving their selfcontrolcompared to homicide offenders where aspects of emotional regulation seem to beof even greater importance. / <p>2016-05-27</p>

This paper examines the prevalence of sexual violence in American media with particular focus on attitudes of sexual violence as a contribution to rape culture. Included is a content analysis of the prevalence of sexually violent lyrics in popular rap music, and a literature review of articles and studies on the effects of sexually violent media. The media discussed in the literature review includes films, television, and pornography. The relationship between the presence of sexually violent media and its impact on public opinion on sexual assault and rape proclivity are analyzed. The literature reviewed includes studies on differences in response to sexually violent media based on gender. Also included are explanation and summary of a study utilizing the excitation transfer theory and the social learning theory as they apply to the understanding of the perpetuation of rape myth acceptance based in the viewing of sexually violent media. These studies utilize the rape myth acceptance scale, the acceptance of interpersonal violence scale, and the adversarial sexual beliefs scale, among other scales of measurement to assess rape myth acceptance and rape proclivity. The high prevalence of sexual assault in the United States calls for an analysis of the acceptance of beliefs that perpetuate sexual assault and the media which support and increase the presence of these beliefs.

Certain characteristics generally attributed to the British Romantics can be seen in selected writings of Flannery O'Connor, a contemporary American author (1926-1964). Chapter I defines Romanticism and identifies the Romantic elements to be discussed in the paper. Chapter II discusses Gothicism, Primitivism, and the treatment of the child as they appear in five of O'Connor's short stories. Variations of the Byronic Hero are presented in Chapter III as they appear in two short stories and one novel, Wise Blood. The internal struggle and anti-intellectualism in The Violent Bear It Away are the basis of Chapter IV. Chapter V concludes that O'Connor's concern with man as master of his fate aligns her with the Romantics and thus illustrates the influence of Romanticism on contemporary life and art.