Hostility and Violence

The Hostility and Violence Hub has a special focus on issues to do with civil society, human community, conflict and belonging. The inter- and multi-disciplinary projects within the Hub aim to identify and understand the nature and role of hostility and violence in contemporary life. We seek to pay particular attention to the different contexts and sites where violence develops, occurs and where its effects are felt; from the interpersonal to the international, from the empirical to the symbolic. It is also interested to identify the motives, dynamics and the functions that violence has for individuals, groups, populations and societies, as well as for bonds and social relations in the private, institutional and public spheres of life. Likewise, we seek explore and understand how violence is represented and dealt with in media, art and literature. Violence has been part of societies and used as a political tool in multiple ways: to unite or divide, to produce fear and compliance, to incite or neutralize mobilization, to resist domination or to impose subordination. It has been touted as the only path for liberation or the inevitable road to annihilation and destruction, as a necessary means for transformation or as the ultimate form to avoid change and defend the status quo. And despite global, national and local efforts to minimize, reduce or eliminate it remains a horrifying feature of today’s world and life.

Alongside these issues the Hub examines the nature and role of the State, state power and violence. It looks at the relationship between coercion and the enforcement of criminal law and other legal prohibitions, and how these are connected with general issues of law, citizenship, and political identity. The justifications for punishment, including capital punishment are explored along with the intersection of law with issues of choice, responsibility, and diminished responsibility. As part of the remit it further evaluates state responsibility for terrorism, war, intervention, ethnic cleansing and other problems of international law and international relations.

In dealing with these final set of issues, the Hub considers whether war is an extension of politics by other means or whether other factors are at work. The projects are an examination and evaluation of the nature, purpose and experience of war, and its impacts on all aspects of security, human security and to communities across the world.

Hub Leader

Bob Brecher is Hub Leader for the Violence and Hostility Hub. The Hub is presently undergoing restructuring as we bring new projects on-line for 2010 and 2011 (for example, Persecution, Incarceration Writings) as well as create some inter-Hub connections with, for example, Evil, Law and State form the Evil Hub. Bob is based at the Centre for Research and Development, Faculty of Arts, Brighton University, United Kingdom. His latest book, Torture and the Ticking Bomb, is published by Blackwell.

Get Involved

The Hub is a centre of activity for all the various projects which presently take place within it. We welcome your involvement and interaction; you may choose to become involved as little or as much as you like.

The Hub Leaders run a blog which discusses issues and themes arising from all the projects within the Evil hub. The blog will be available from 1st March 2009. You will be able to access the blog by clicking here.

During the course of 2009 a number of email discussion groups will come in to existence, one for each of the projects we run. These will be listed here as soon as they ready along eith details on how to subscribe.

From April 2009 there will be a series of eForums where people can share resources, access information and get involved in on-line discussions.

And from July 2009 we will be launching a Repository Wicki which will aim to become a comprehensive collection of materials and resources relating to the themes and issues covered by the hub and its projects.