Synopses & Reviews
The early conviction that the destruction of the federal building in Oklahoma City was the work of Islamic fundamentalists is testimony to the depth of current American fears of Middle Eastern terrorism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and in the wake of the World Trade Center bombing, terrorist attacks have rapidly replaced nuclear armageddon as the foremost lurking threat in the nation's consciousness.
Is militant Islam an unstoppable juggernaut, an imminent danger to both moderate Muslim governments and Western ones? Or will it inevitably burn itself out? Regardless, its record during the past decade and a half is impressive and bloody. With the destruction of Israel as its stated goal, the Islamic fundamentalist movement has embraced terrorism as the means to this end. In his bid to consolidate power in Iran after the Islamic revolution in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini, facing terrorist opposition, curbed it by extreme measures, gaining a taste for this form of warfare and using it as an arm of Iranian foreign policy to aid like-minded terrorist groups and embarrass Iran's national enemies. Since then, Iran has been at the heart of both the fundamentalist movement and the terrorism which seems inextricably linked to it. The Iranian Connection is a world-wide network of embassies and diplomatic missions--staffed with intelligence personnel-- which shelters terrorists, stores their weaponry, and monitors potential targets.
With this book, Edgar O'Ballance has written a readable investigative account of Iran's involvement in international terrorist activity.
Review
“Insightful and sympathetic…The extraordinary depth of knowledge of the dimensions of self-injuring will increase the understanding of those who see self-injurers in their work and private lives.” -Ruth Horowitz,author of Honor and the American Dream: Culture and Identity in a Chicano Community
Review
"Timely, important…In their thorough treatment of the subject, the authors include a history and literature review of this difficult topic, discussions of case histories, and examinations of relational dynamics and social contexts that may lead to cutting…This is a must read for those connected in any way to this topic." -Library Journal,
Review
"But more than a compendium of personal accounts, The Tender Cut charts self-injury's shift from a behavior regarded as pathological and practiced by demonstrably mentally ill to a more widely accepted coping mechanism and a vehicle for the assertion of will or identity...thought-provoking books sheds a many-rayed light on a topic often shrouded in darkness."-Haili Jones Graff,Bitch Magazine
Synopsis
Cutting, burning, branding, and bone-breaking are all types of self-injury, or the deliberate, non-suicidal destruction of ones own body tissue, a practice that emerged from obscurity in the 1990s and spread dramatically as a typical behavior among adolescents. Long considered a suicidal gesture,
The Tender Cut argues instead that self-injury is often a coping mechanism, a form of teenage angst, an expression of group membership, and a type of rebellion, converting unbearable emotional pain into manageable physical pain.
Based on the largest, qualitative, non-clinical population of self-injurers ever gathered, noted ethnographers Patricia and Peter Adler draw on 150 interviews with self-injurers from all over the world, along with 30,000-40,000 internet posts in chat rooms and communiqués. Their 10-year longitudinal research follows the practice of self-injury from its early days when people engaged in it alone and did not know others, to the present, where a subculture has formed via cyberspace that shares similar norms, values, lore, vocabulary, and interests. An important portrait of a troubling behavior, The Tender Cut illuminates the meaning of self-injury in the 21st century, its effects on current and former users, and its future as a practice for self-discovery or a cry for help.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 217) and index.
About the Author
Patricia A. Adler is Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Peter Adler is Professor of Sociology at the University of Denver. They are the co-authors and co-editors of numerous books, including
Peer Power, Paradise Laborers, and Constructions of Deviance. Both Adlers collaboratively received the 2010 George Herbert Mead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.
Peter Adler is Professor of Sociology at the University of Denver. Patricia A. Adler is Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. They are the co-authors and co-editors of numerous books, including Peer Power, Paradise Laborers, and Constructions of Deviance. Both Adlers collaboratively received the 2010 George Herbert Mead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.