Many people consider Canada, particularly in comparison to its southern cousin, as a “peaceable kingdom. However, as the historical record demonstrates, Canadians have never been a thoroughly non-violent people. Violence in Canada highlights from an interdisciplinary perspective the major areas and contexts where violence takes place.
Consisting of thirteen contributions, the book forms an indispensable guide to the subject. All of the authors are experts in their field, many with international reputations, and are drawn from the fields of sociology, political science, history, and criminology. The foreword by Ted Robert Gurr, author of Violence in America, is followed by an historical analysis of violence on the Canadian western frontier. Other scholars describe contemporary violence: by and against indigenous peoples, women, children, and the elderly; in labor-related disputes; homicide; police and prison violence; terrorism; and discuss government responses and policy implications. Each chapter specifically addresses the sociological and political dimensions of violence. The authors make ample use of statistics and empirical research. Jeffrey Ian Ross’s introduction outlines the sociopolitical dynamics of violence, and his summary chapter offers directions for future research. When the book was first published in 1995 it was widely praised by scholarly journals and has since become a standard text in the study of violence and modern Canadian cultural studies.
The book is all the more valuable as its new introduction places its findings in the context of research that has been produced since the original publication. Violence in Canada will be of interest to sociologists, criminologists, and political scientists.
