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Lorenzo Natali reviews Unsaid: Analyzing Harmful Silences by Lois Presser

Criminologists are primarily concerned with the analysis of actions that violate existing laws. But a growing number have begun analyzing crimes as actions that inflict harm, regardless of the applicability of legal sanctions. Even as they question standard definitions of crime as law-breaking, scholars of crime have few theoretical frameworks with which to understand the etiology of harmful action.InWhy We Harm, Lois Presser scrutinizes accounts of acts as diverse as genocide, environmental degradation, war, torture, terrorism, homicide, rape, and meat-eating in order to develop an original theoretical framework with which to consider harmful actions and their causes. In doing so, this timely book presents a general theory of harm, revealing the commonalities between actions that impose suffering and cause destruction.Harm is built on stories in which the targets of harm are reduced to one-dimensional characters-sometimes a dangerous foe, sometimes much more benign, but still a projection of our own concerns and interests. In our stories of harm, we are licensed to do the harmful deed and, at the same time, are powerless to act differently. Chapter by chapter, Presser examines statements made by perpetrators of a wide variety of harmful actions. Appearing vastly different from one another at first glance, Presser identifies the logics they share that motivate, legitimize, and sustain them. From that point, she maps out strategies for reducing harm.

Narrative Criminology: Understanding Stories of Crime by Lois Preser is reviewed.

46-7117 HM1116 2008-6459 CIP Presser, Lois. Been a heavy life: stories of violent men. Illinois, 2008. 183p bibl Index afp ISBN 0252033582, $65.00; ISBN 0252075587 pbk, $25.00; ISBN 9780252033582, $65.00; ISBN 9780252075582 pbk, $25.00

53-2004 HV6025 2015-1637 CIP Narrative criminology: understanding stories of crime, ed. by Lois Presser and Sveinung Sandberg. New York University, 2015. 318p bibl index afp ISBN 9781479876778 cloth, $89.00; ISBN 9781479823413 pbk, $30.00

Sociologist Presser (Univ. of Tennessee) makes a unique contribution to discussions of violence. Specifically, she links together a variety of types of violence that are rarely, if ever, discussed together: genocide, meat eating, intimate partner violence, and penal violence. The author weaves a compelling argument that many of the same strategies for justifying each seemingly unique form of violence are used across the various forms of violence.

  4639 Thruston-Dermont Road, Master Commissioner Ronald L. Presser to secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, $82,000. 9209 Kentucky 2830, Master Commissioner Ronald L. Presser to CitiMortgage Inc., $38,000. 4115 Kentucky 54, John McRay and Marie M. Purdy; William Emmett and [Lois A. Purdy]; and Robert Milford and Cheryl Purdy to Challenger Enterprises LLC, $130,000.