Violence and Society

This highly respected title comes revised and updated in a second edition to provide you with a contemporary overview of violence and society.

Clearly and lucidly written, this book offers broad coverage of theoretical debates, using case studies from the author's own extensive research to bring the various theories alive. With a sociological approach throughout, it provides up-to-date coverage of key topics including gender and violence, collective violence and media and violence.

New to this edition:

• Three new chapters on 'Collective Violence', 'Violence and the Visual' and 'Theories of Violence'
• Material on sex offending and the night-time economy
• Learning features in each chapter and an 'at-a-glance' overview within the introduction

“This new edition of Violence and Societyskillfully updates the 2011 version, with a wealth of new theoretical and empirical material and two new chapters, on collective violence and the power of visual representations of violence and its effects. All the virtues of the first edition - empirical richness, theoretical breadth and intellectual imagination - are again in evidence and enhanced by the new material, including a brilliant demonstration of how microsocial theory can be developed to explain macrosocial violence. The book is an important and distinctive contribution to research and scholarship on violence.”

This new edition of Violence and Society skilfully updates the 2011 version, with a wealth of new theoretical and empirical material and two new chapters, on collective violence and the power of visual representations of violence and its effects. All the virtues of the first edition – empirical richness, theoretical breadth and intellectual imagination – are again in evidence and enhanced by the new material, including a brilliant demonstration of how microsocial theory can be developed to explain macrosocial violence. The book is an important and distinctive contribution to research and scholarship on violence.

Sociology has long focused on conflict but has relatively neglected violence as one of its forms and methods. In this new edition of Larry Ray′s pioneering book, we have a thorough engagement with violence in its many modes and causes. He provides an intelligent social theory of violence that represents a powerful application of the sociological imagination, and like C Wright Mills, in many ways he offers us a striking diagnosis of the modern condition, with its propensity to violence.

This is one of the most comprehensive general studies of violence available. In this thoroughly revised and updated second edition Larry Ray provides in-depth analysis of micro, mezzo and macro research on violence across many disciplines. The book successfully brings together advanced sociological theory and up to date empirical material. With its wide-ranging scope, accessible prose and a wealth of original insights this book will appeal equally to scholars and students of violence.

I joined the University of Kent in 1998. Before that I was in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University. In 1996, I was visiting scholar, Victoria University Wellington, New Zealand. At Kent I was Head of the Department of Sociology and then SSPSSR between 1999-2001, and Sub-Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences between 2009-11. I am currently Director of Research for SSPSSR.

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