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Ember et al. (1992) addressed whether the “democracies rarely fight each other” hypothesis held true in the anthropological record of societies of various sizes and scales around the world. They indeed found that more participatory polities had less internal warfare – or warfare between one society’s territorial units (e.g. bands, villages, districts). The purpose of this paper is to examine when political participation would have similar effects in eastern Africa, and whether more participatory polities commit fewer atrocities against each other.

A cross-cultural sample of 46 societies from eastern Africa was used to retest the original Ember et al. (1992) multiple regression model and revised post-hoc models. The team read ethnographies to code for levels of political participation at the local and multilocal levels. Other variables came from previous research including warfare and atrocity variables (Ember et al., 2013).

The Ember et al. (1992) model did not replicate in eastern Africa, but analysis with additional variables (degree of formal leadership, presence of state-level organization, and threat of natural disasters that destroy food supplies) suggested that greater local political participation does predict less internal warfare. Also, more participatory polities were less likely to commit atrocities in the course of internal warfare.

This study demonstrates regional comparisons are important because they help us evaluate the generalizability of worldwide findings. Additionally, adding atrocities to the study of democracy and warfare is new and suggests reduced atrocities as an additional benefit of political participation.

This paper explores the retrospective construction of atrocity narratives of organizational change in primary industries of the Latrobe Valley, located in southeast Australia. Within their narratives, participants discuss various forms of workplace violence aimed at employees by management and, in some cases, other employees. In addition, shifting narratives from violence to resignation are explored. As all participants are no longer employed in the organizations described in the narratives, causal associations between workplace violence and resignation choices are of particular interest. In this context, atrocity narratives are presented in a deliberate effort to extend the theorizing of organizational change into domains that are neither attractive nor progressive.

This chapter discusses the creation, structure, and functioning of the International Criminal Court. It also examines its operations to date and addresses many contemporary criticisms of the court.

Cultural heritage destruction, acts that are carried out by both state and non-state actors, have accompanied violence towards people in all types of wars throughout human history. Used as a means to cause terror and to directly perpetuate harm on a particular group of people, heritage destruction ultimately erases the history of the people and denies them a future at the same time. Heritage destruction, as such, is a topic that is directly relevant for conflict and peace economics. Yet, economics literature on heritage destruction, especially during epochs of violence is scant at best. Presenting some examples of heritage destruction during mass atrocities, this chapter discusses how heritage destruction is related to causes, conduct, and consequences of violence. Doing so illustrates how heritage destruction could be incorporated in extant conflict and peace economics studies and their relevance for post-conflict reconstruction and violence prevention.

This chapter explores the nature of military law and IHL during the cold war period. It explores what treaties were completed, Additional Protocols I and II of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the ad hoc international tribunals of the 1990s and 2000s, and examines the ICJ’s ruling of the legality of nuclear weapons.

Lead is a well-established environmental contaminant that over the last 50 years has become recognized as a neurotoxin with its greatest concern for the developing child (i.e. both in-utero and postnatally). What is problematic is that children exposed to lead often come from lower socioeconomic status (SES), are largely Black communities and are further at increased risk for developing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The literature on ACEs had focused much on trauma, single parenting, child abuse, lack of finances and stress, etc., but has not considered the intersectionality of these ACEs as risk factors within environmental neurotoxic exposures such as lead poisoning. This is important as most low SES communities are Black. In particular, within the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), Black families have been neglected of proper lead-abatement to their apartments for nearly 70 years.

This is a viewpoint/perspective paper that examines the lived experiences of Black folxs in NYCHA through a Black critical theory (BlackCrit) and antiblackness framework pertaining to ACEs, and lead poisoning within the NYCHA system of New York City. This perspective paper draws upon the last three years of news reports, five decades of publicly available data sets from NYCHA and the comptroller to raise an awareness of how Black children are treated by NYCHA generation after generation which can be argued as a mass atrocity against NYCHA residents. Furthermore, the systematic and institutionalized racism and environmental injustices by NYCHA and the state can also be considered as a crime against humanity. As such, BlackCrit could help to position awareness, advocacy and knowledge about Black folxs residing in NYCHA to achieve fair, safe and affordable public housing to experience Black joy across future generations.

Thus, rather than civic and state government response efforts focusing their full attention and resources to serving and supporting individuals affected by ACEs they should equally consider the environments in which Black people live and also allocate funds proportionally to address these areas often overlooked. Moreover, proportions of these funds should be redirected especially to lead-abatement and removal of known sources of lead exposures, evaluation of suspected sources of lead exposures (i.e. drinking water, baby food and formula, children’s juice and cereal products, superfund and other waste sites, electronic recycling plants, etc.) and accompanied by all affected children undergoing full and comprehensive neuropsychological testing and follow up studies paid for by the state. The goal should have two fundamental objectives: (1) accepting accountability for failing to address these preventable neuropsychological issues directly affecting Black children generation after generation and (2) offering the proper waived or reimbursable supports and resources to help Black children sustain the best quality of life (QOL) trajectory possible when diagnosed with lead poisoning.

The manuscript is a viewpoint/perspective paper grounded in BlackCrit and an antiblackness framework. There are ample public news reports and public data available from NYCHA on these matters over the last three years. However, the scope of this paper was not to delve too deep into these numbers per se, but rather to address the concerns leading up to and arguably contributing to, at least in part, to these numbers of lead-exposed Black children in NYCHA. Lead poisoning has never been considered as an ACE and its relationship to mass atrocity research is novel which may pave a new avenue for research of this kind through the utility of BlackCrit and antiblackness framework to support and advocate for change so that Black children can be provided with a basic human right of safe housing and experience Black joy.

BlackCrit has not been used in the context of lead poisoning research. Mostly individuals and families of middle- and low-income have been studied in the context of poverty and lead poisoning. However, many people who live in poverty, in public housing, within New York are Black. Thus, Black children are generation after generation exposed to unaddressed lead-abatement and it appears that now more than ever BlackCrit should become the framework for how this work should be discussed in the literature to raise awareness to state governments regarding Black folx's persistent lead poisoning, NYCHA's neglect and mass atrocity research as a long overdue advocacy effort to bring the necessary voice, authentic narrative, and actual knowledge of the lived experiences of Black families in NYCHA with lead poisoning.

The goal of this viewpoint/perspective paper should have two fundamental objectives (1) NYCHA and New York State accepting accountability for failing to address these preventable lead poisoning issues directly affecting Black children; and (2) offering the proper support and resources to help Black children sustain the best QOL trajectory possible when diagnosed with lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning research has never been approached through a mass atrocity and BlackCrit framework and perspective. This is the first report on bridging these fields within the context of NYCHA public housing neglect of lead-abatement and continued poisoning of current and future generations of Black children. This failure of NYCHA lead-abatement contributes annually to economic loss in New York State for many years to come which could be entirely avoided.

This paper aims to develop a heuristic ethical stance as a provocation for responsible leadership scholarship and practice within entangled human–environment systems. Through consideration of the failures of ethics – in particular Uyghur mass atrocities and their residues in global supply chains – the stance offers a reflexive pathway between the inner value orientation of leaders and the scope of interconnected interests affected by leader action and inaction.

Through an autoethnographic narrative, the applied ethic brings together work by the contemporary Holocaust philosopher John Roth with a motto spread by Anglican educational philosopher and social entrepreneur Charlotte Mason (1842–1923). The failures of ethics centre material, sensorial, religious and relational tensions that are explored through three conversational vignettes relating to the current mass atrocities of Uyghur Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang region of China.

The resulting ethical stance relates individual personhood to meso and macro levels through Mason’s motto –I am, I can, I ought, I will –and is developed to contain self-reflexivity and identity, conscience informed by testimony, consciousness of the power to protest and resist and intention to pivot. The failures of ethics highlight the apparent centrality of religious ethical traditions to considerations of responsible leadership.

The lack of serious and sustained attention to the ethics in responsible leadership, in particular ethical failures and religious ethics, limits its relevance within entangled systems The paper brings to responsible leadership novel philosophical perspectives to link reflexivity between individual and governance level responses and enliven the imagination of conscience through the ubiquity of complicity.