The Economies Of Violence

How do we understand illicit violence? Can we prevent it? Building on behavioral science and economics, this book begins with the idea that humans are more predictable than we like to believe, and this ability to model human behavior applies equally well to leaders of violent and coercive organizations as it does to everyday people. Humans ultimately seek survival for themselves and their communities in a world of competition. While the dynamics of 'us vs. them' are divisive, they also help us to survive. Access to increasingly larger markets, facilitated through digital communications and social media, creates more transnational opportunities for deception, coercion, and violence. If the economist's perspective helps to explain violence, then it must also facilitate insights into promoting peace and security. If we can approach violence as behavioral scientists, then we can also better structure our institutions to create policies that make the world a more secure place, for us and for future generations.

Recent human rights campaigns against sex trafficking have focused on individual victims, treating trafficking as a criminal aberration in an otherwise just economic order. In Economies of Violence Jennifer Suchland directly critiques these explanations and approaches, as they obscure the reality that trafficking is symptomatic of complex economic and social dynamics and the economies of violence that sustain them. Examining United Nations proceedings on women's rights issues, government and NGO anti-trafficking policies, and campaigns by feminist activists, Suchland contends that trafficking must be understood not solely as a criminal, gendered, and sexualized phenomenon, but as operating within global systems of precarious labor, neoliberalism, and the transition from socialist to capitalist economies in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. In shifting the focus away from individual victims, and by underscoring trafficking's economic and social causes, Suchland provides a foundation for building more robust methods for combatting human trafficking.

A study of workers struggles against management regimes in Britain's car industry from the Second World War to the late 1980s.

Violence against women is a major problem in all countries, affecting women in every socio-economic group and at every life stage. Yet, when women enjoy good social and economic status they are less vulnerable to violence across all societies. This book develops a political economy approach to understanding violence against women - from the household to the transnational level - accounting for its globally increasing scale and brutality.

This book explains how political control of economic privileges is used to limit violence and coordinate coalitions of powerful organizations.

How do economic conditions such as poverty, unemployment, inflation, and economic growth impact youth violence? Economics and Youth Violence provides a much-needed new perspective on this crucial issue. Pinpointing the economic factors that are most important, the editors and contributors in this volume explore how different kinds of economic issues impact children, adolescents, and their families, schools, and communities.Offering new and important insights regarding the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and youth violence across a variety of times and places, chapters cover such issues as the effect of inflation on youth violence; new quantitative analysis of the connection between race, economic opportunity, and violence; and the cyclical nature of criminal backgrounds and economic disadvantage among families. Highlighting the complexities in the relationship between economic conditions, juvenile offenses, and the community and situational contexts in which their connections are forged, Economics and Youth Violence prompts important questions that will guide future research on the causes and prevention of youth violence. Contributors: Sarah Beth Barnett, Eric P. Baumer, Philippe Bourgois, Shawn Bushway, Philip J. Cook, Robert D. Crutchfield, Linda L. Dahlberg, Mark Edberg, Jeffrey Fagan, Xiangming Fang, Curtis S. Florence, Ekaterina Gorislavsky, Nancy G. Guerra, Karen Heimer, Janet L. Lauritsen, Jennifer L. Matjasko, James A. Mercy, Matthew Phillips, Richard Rosenfeld, Tim Wadsworth, Valerie West, Kevin T. Wolff

Economic Development Strategies and the Evolution of Violence in Latin America explores the links between Latin American governments' economic policies and the nature and dynamics of inter-group violence. Based on the patterns of ten countries, the contributions to this volume trace the remarkable transformation from open ideological conflict to the explosion of social (seemingly apolitical) violence, the upsurge of urban crime, and the confrontations over natural resources and drugs across the region spanning from Mexico to Argentina. The variations in economic success and in conflict prevention and transformation can guide policymakers, development professionals, and activists committed to conflict-sensitive development.

Measuring the social and economic costs of violence can be difficult, and most estimates only consider direct economic effects, such as productivity loss or the use of health care services. Communities and societies feel the effects of violence through loss of social cohesion, financial divestment, and the increased burden on the healthcare and justice systems. Initial estimates show that early violence prevention intervention has economic benefits. The IOM Forum on Global Violence Prevention held a workshop to examine the successes and challenges of calculating direct and indirect costs of violence, as well as the potential cost-effectiveness of intervention.

This book integrates the problem of violence into a larger framework, showing how economic and political behavior are closely linked.

"Economic Gangsters" is a fascinating exploration of the dark side of economic development. Two of the world's most creative young economists use their remarkable talents for economic sleuthing to study violence, corruption, and poverty in the most unexpected ways--Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of "Freakonomics."