Overview

Historians consider the previous century to have been one of the most violent periods in human history. As we move into an era where violence is sanitized and normalized in the media, and depicted as glamorous and fun, how will we relate to the violence in our midst? Why do people and their governments choose to engage in violent activity? How to peaceful people who live under violent conditions such as warfare or domestic abuse make sense of it? Catherine Besteman tackles these questions in this multi-disciplinary anthology that explores the topic of violence from a wide variety of perspectives. The first section focuses on state violence and deals with nationalism, warmaking and the Nazi genocide. The second section treats the question of anti-state violence with essays on the IRA, Sikh rebels and the paramilitary conflict in the Balkans. The third section examines criminal violence such as armed robbery, murder and sexual assualt while the final section explores how ordinary citizens respond when their societies are suffused with violence. Combining classic essays by Max Weber and Hannah Arendt, with contemporary treatments by leading scholars such as Michael Taussig and Julie Peteet, this anthology is designed for course use and is accessible to undergraduate and graduate students.

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9780814799000

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Reviews

Law and Justice as Seen on TV is deliberately provocative. - Akron Beacon Journal , Law and Justice as Seen on TV provides a comprehensive and sophisticated look at the ways law appears nightly in the living rooms of millions of Americans. Combining valuable insights about the workings of the television industry with an insightful argument about the criminalization of American life, Elayne Rapping has made a distinctive contribution to interdisciplinary legal scholarship. Her work shows how valuable the analysis of popular culture can be in illuminating some of the most important legal and social issues of our time. -Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College In recent years, an expanding wave of law and criminal justice programs has emerged on American television. Elayne Rapping proves a masterful guide in her overview of a wide range of TV narrative fiction series, Court TV, talk shows, news, and other programs that deals with law, order, criminality, and justice, contextualizing TV crime and justice in the context of fierce political battles over these topics in the past decades of American history. -Douglas Kellner, author of Media Culture and Media Spectacle Lively and engagingly written, it explores as Rapping writes, an interplay of aesthetics, politics, and legal history [that] come together in complex and often contradictory ways. Anyone who has watched these shows will appreciate seeing them in a new way. Much of the enjoyment in reading the book comes from Rapping's ability to draw on a wide range of cultural and intellectual interests and present them in down-to-earth language. - Trial , Accessible and lucid. - www.sirreadalot.org ,

In recent years, an expanding wave of law and criminal justice programs has emerged on American television. Elayne Rapping proves a masterful guide in her overview of a wide range of TV narrative fiction series, Court TV, talk shows, news, and other programs that deals with law, order, criminality, and justice, contextualizing TV crime and justice in the context of fierce political battles over these topics in the past decades of American history. -Douglas Kellner, author of Media Culture and Media Spectacle

<p> In recent years, an expanding wave of law and criminal justice programs has emerged on American television. Elayne Rapping proves a masterful guide in her overview of a wide range of TV narrative fiction series, Court TV, talk shows, news, and other programs that deals with law, order, criminality, and justice, contextualizing TV crime and justice in the context of fierce political battles over these topics in the past decades of American history. -Douglas Kellner, author of Media Culture and Media Spectacle

Author Information

Catherine Besteman is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Colby College.

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