Afterword: The Columbine Effect on Culture, Policy, and Me

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-372
Author(s):  
Glenn W. Muschert
Keyword(s):  
School Violence ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Youth Violence ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
School Shootings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Columbine High School ◽  
Academic Review ◽  
Personal Reflections ◽  
Cultural Effect

This afterword considers the cultural effect of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. I bring together the aspects of a traditional academic review with my personal reflections as a scholar who spent the past two decades researching its cultural and policy ramifications. Columbine is a noted milestone in the American cultural lexicon, and one that has become an important reference point for discussions of school violence and other social problems concerning youth. Columbine often serves as an inaccurate exemplar of the broader problem of youth violence, and this so-called “Columbine Effect” means that extreme cases exert a disproportionately strong influence on public discourse about the problem. Over the past 20 years, the net effect has been the acceleration of punitive anti-violence school policies that include policing, surveillance, and zero-tolerance policies. I consider my experience as a researcher in this area and conclude with modest suggestions for guiding policy development to mitigate the problem of violence in schools.

Introduction to Special Issue: The Legacy of Columbine—Implications for Policy After 20 Years

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-273
Author(s):  
Lynn A. Addington ◽  
Glenn W. Muschert
Keyword(s):  
School Violence ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Mass Shootings ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The Past ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Columbine High School ◽  
Twentieth Anniversary ◽  
Research And Policy

This introduction provides an overview to the special issue, which marks the twentieth anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School by considering the effect on policy addressing school violence and mass shootings. We asked each of the contributors to consider changes in their area of interest over the past two decades as well as future research and policy issues. The resulting five contributions take various forms: three are traditional scholarly articles, one is a personal commentary, and one is an afterword that combines a scholarly format with professional reflection. In our introduction, we summarize each one. As each article identifies the need for continued work in this area, and we conclude by providing a few examples of this research.

School Violence: An Overview

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
MaryAnn Tapper Strawhacker
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Violence Prevention ◽  
School Violence ◽  
Youth Violence ◽  
School Nurses ◽  
School Shootings ◽  
Prevention Strategies ◽  
National Data ◽  
General Guide ◽  
Area Of Concern

School violence is a growing area of concern for school nurses across the nation. Recent national data and a compilation of risk factors for youth violence and school shootings are presented as a general guide to identifying students who may be in need of assistance. The nurse’s role in multidisciplinary planning and developing violence prevention strategies in the school and the community are examined.

scholarly journals School Violence and the Culture of Honor

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (11) ◽  
pp. 1400-1405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan P. Brown ◽  
Lindsey L. Osterman ◽  
Collin D. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
School Violence ◽  
School Shootings ◽  
School Students ◽  
Culture Of Honor ◽  
The Past ◽  
Identity Threats ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Sociocultural Variable

We investigated the hypothesis that a sociocultural variable known as the culture of honor would be uniquely predictive of school-violence indicators. Controlling for demographic characteristics associated in previous studies with violent crime among adults, we found that high-school students in culture-of-honor states were significantly more likely than high-school students in non-culture-of honor states to report having brought a weapon to school in the past month. Using data aggregated over a 20-year period, we also found that culture-of honor states had more than twice as many school shootings per capita as non-culture-of-honor states. The data revealed important differences between school violence and general patterns of homicide and are consistent with the view that many acts of school violence reflect retaliatory aggression springing from intensely experienced social-identity threats.

scholarly journals UNDERSTANDING LAW AND RELIGION AS CULTURE: MAKING ROOM FOR MEANING IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2006
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between law and religion in contemporary civil society has been a topic of increasing social interest and importance in Canada in the past many years. We have seen the practices and commitments of religious groups and individuals become highly salient on many issues of public policy, including the nature of the institution of marriage, the content of public education, and the uses of public space, to name just a few. As the vehicle for this discussion, I want to ask a straightforward question: When we listen to our public discourse, what is the story that we hear about the relationship between law and religion? How does this topic tend to be spoken about in law and politics – what is our idiom around this issue – and does this story serve us well? Though straightforward, this question has gone all but unanswered in our political and academic discussions. We take for granted our approach to speaking about – and, therefore, our way of thinking about – the relationship between law and religion. In my view, this is most unfortunate because this taken-for-grantedness is the source of our failure to properly understand the critically important relationship between law and religion.

Can history improve big bang health reform? Commentary

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 251-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory P. Marchildon
Keyword(s):  
Universal Health Coverage ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Health Coverage ◽  
Policy Problem ◽  
The Past ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
Universal Health

AbstractAt present, the professional skills of the historian are rarely relied upon when health policies are being formulated. There are numerous reasons for this, one of which is the natural desire of decision-makers to break with the past when enacting big bang policy change. This article identifies the strengths professional historians bring to bear on policy development using the establishment and subsequent reform of universal health coverage as an example. Historians provide pertinent and historically informed context; isolate the forces that have historically allowed for major reform; and separate the truly novel reforms from those attempted or implemented in the past. In addition, the historian’s use of primary sources allows potentially new and highly salient facts to guide the framing of the policy problem and its solution. This paper argues that historians are critical for constructing a viable narrative of the establishment and evolution of universal health coverage policies. The lack of this narrative makes it difficult to achieve an accurate assessment of systemic gaps in coverage and access, and the design or redesign of universal health coverage that can successfully close these gaps.

The Cool Brand, Affective Activism and Japanese Youth

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 89-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Allison
Keyword(s):  
National Economy ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Youth Activism ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
National Brand ◽  
Immaterial Labor ◽  
The Past ◽  
Japanese Youth

Japanese youth goods have become globally popular over the past 15 years. Referred to as `cool', their contribution to the national economy has been much hyped under the catchword Japan's `GNC' (gross national cool). While this new national brand is indebted to youth — youth are the intended consumers for such products and sometimes the creators — young Japanese today are also chastised for not working hard, failing at school and work, and being insufficiently productive or reproductive. Using the concept of immaterial labor, the article argues that such `J-cool' products as Pokémon are both based on, and generative of, a type of socio-power also seen in the very behaviors of youth — flexible sociality, instantaneous communication, information juggling — that are so roundly condemned in public discourse. The article examines the contradictions between these two different ways of assessing and calibrating the value of youth today. It also looks at the emergence of youth activism around the very precariousness, for them, of socio-economic conditions of flexibility.

scholarly journals The Right to Survival in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiyoung Song
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Confucian Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
North Korean Defectors ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Over Time

AbstractFor the past decade, the author has examined North Korean primary public documents and concludes that there have been changes of identities and ideas in the public discourse of human rights in the DPRK: from strong post-colonialism to Marxism-Leninism, from there to the creation of Juche as the state ideology and finally 'our style' socialism. This paper explains the background to Kim Jong Il's 'our style' human rights in North Korea: his broader framework, 'our style' socialism, with its two supporting ideational mechanisms, named 'virtuous politics' and 'military-first politics'. It analyses how some of these characteristics have disappeared while others have been reinforced over time. Marxism has significantly withered away since the end of the Cold War, and communism was finally deleted from the latest 2009 amended Socialist Constitution, whereas the concept of sovereignty has been strengthened and the language of duties has been actively employed by the authority almost as a relapse to the feudal Confucian tradition. The paper also includes some first-hand accounts from North Korean defectors interviewed in South Korea in October–December 2008. They show the perception of ordinary North Koreans on the ideas of human rights.

scholarly journals Reception of Natalie's Ramonda, Armistice Day Symbol in Serbia

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Senka Kovač
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Representative Sample ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
First Year ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
The Past

Nataliе’s Ramonda, a symbol of Armistice Day – November 11 in Serbia, is a new memorial symbol constructed and promoted by politicians in 2012. The Armistice Day was celebrated then as a national holiday in Serbia. The reception of this symbol has been explored over a five-year period, both in a public discourse and on a representative sample of first year students at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. In public discourse, as well as among students of the Faculty of Philosophy, Natalie’s Ramonda is perceived as an emblem, a badge, and most often as a symbol. It was seen as an emblem on the lapel of public and media figures, inaccessible to broad commercial promotion and sales. In public discourse and among students at the Faculty of Philosophy, Natalie’s Ramonda was perceived in several answers as a medal, and is also recognized as a flower that symbolizes the suffering of the Serbian people in World War One; symbol of the nation’s rebirth – the flower phoenix, as a mark of peace and freedom. As a newly constructed symbol of the Armistice Day in Serbia, for the past seven years, Natalie’s Ramonda has been a mediator in the public culture of remembrance and in the ongoing process, by becoming a part of cultural memory.

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