Description
Book SynopsisA damning examination of how violence serves to maintain social order and elite power in the United StatesThe Violent Underpinnings of American Life boldly asserts that violencefar from going against American idealsis as American as apple pie, central to the country's social order and the dominance of its most powerful groups. Drawing from extensive research and analysis of key social, political, and cultural events, Liam Downey investigates the myriad ways violence maintains the American way of life. Through compelling case studies, Downey identifies four main ways in which violence produces and maintains the American social hierarchy: the creation of divisions among non-elite social groups; the reinforcement of dominant discourses in multiple social arenas; the aligning of marginalized group identities with dominant institutional practices; and the selective promotion of the interests of specific, non-elite groups. This is the first book to argue that violence is both a negative, c
Trade ReviewLiam Downey is the first sociologist since W. E. B. Du Bois to put violence right at the center
of American history and social order—a mammoth effort to rework modern social theory around
a more accurate account of violence in American life and history.
* Jonathan Simon, author of Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America *
Downey has written a sobering, hard-hitting, well-researched examination of the role that
violence plays in shaping, and indeed making possible, the American social order. Exploring the
scourges of sexual and racial violence, Downey’s approach is rigorous, data-driven and
evidence-based, relentless, and highly persuasive. At this moment when the American cultural
landscape is marked by a struggle over our willingness to reckon with the legacies of historical
injustices, this book could not be timelier. This is an urgent meditation on who we are and an
invitation to think critically and compassionately about what kind of a society we might
become.
* David Naguib Pellow, author of What is Critical Environmental Justice? *
Downey explores the central role that violence has played in creating and maintaining the US
social order, both domestically and abroad. He highlights how the nation’s global position and
wealth are intimately linked to forms of violence that create alienation, gender and racial
oppression, and inequality. This violence has become embedded within everyday lives, including
discourse and corporeal practices. Importantly, with great urgency and insight, Downey
demonstrates how it is absolutely necessary to forge a new foundation for human society to
thrive.
* Brett Clark, co-author of The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and the Ecological Rift *
