The Violent Underpinnings of American Life

Liam Downey is Associate Professor of Sociology and Faculty Associate for Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of Inequality, Democracy and the Environment, Winner of the 2016 American Sociological Associations Section on Environment and Technology Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award.

Liam Downey is the first sociologist since W. E. B. Du Bois to put violence right at the century 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

Liam 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, Downeys 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

In this tome, Downey explores the central role that violence has played in creating and maintaining the U.S. social order, both domestically and abroad. He highlights how the nations 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