Beaten down : a history of interpersonal violence in the West / David Peterson del Mar.
2002
HM886 .P474 2002 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection
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Details
Title
Beaten down : a history of interpersonal violence in the West / David Peterson del Mar.
ISBN
0295982608 (alk. paper)
Publication Details
Seattle : University of Washington Press, c2002.
Language
English
Description
x, 300 p. ; 23 cm.
Call Number
HM886 .P474 2002
Dewey Decimal Classification
303.6/0978
Summary
The word "violence" conjures up images of terrorism, bombings, and lynchings. Beaten down is concerned with more prosaic acts of physical force--a husband slapping his wife, a parent taking a birch branch to a child, a pair of drunken friends squaring off to establish who is the "better man." David Peterson del Mar accounts for the social relations of power that lie behind this intimate form of violence, this "white noise" that has always been with us, humming quietly between more explosive acts of violence. Broad in its chronological and cultural sweep, Beaten down examines interpersonal violence in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia beginning with Native American cultures before colonization and continuing into the mid-twentieth century. The author has drawn on a vast array of vivid sources, including newspaper accounts, autobiographies, novels, oral histories, historical and ethnographic publications, and hundreds of detailed court cases to account for not only the relative frequency of different forms of violence, but also the shifting definitions and perceptions of what constitutes violence. This is a thoughtful and probing account of how and why people have hit each other and the manner in which opinion makers and ordinary citizens have censured, defended, or celebrated such acts. His conclusions have important implications for an understanding of violence and perceptions of violence in contemporary society.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-287) and index.
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Table of Contents
A white fist on their noses: colonization and violence
To take your own part: violence among the settlers
I was not there to fight: the decline and persistence of violence in the late nineteenth century
Plucky women and crazed Italians: representing violence and marginality in Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver
To do just as he pleased: violence in the 1920s
Big as God almighty and undemanding as dew: violence and people of African and Japanese descent.
To take your own part: violence among the settlers
I was not there to fight: the decline and persistence of violence in the late nineteenth century
Plucky women and crazed Italians: representing violence and marginality in Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver
To do just as he pleased: violence in the 1920s
Big as God almighty and undemanding as dew: violence and people of African and Japanese descent.