De Gruyter Contemporary Social Sciences provides a platform for disseminating topical analyses of current events, showcasing new theoretical, empirical or applied research across the social sciences and related fields. Through engaging storytelling and in-depth analysis, it presents new work that appeals to a wide audience, and engages with issues of major public interest, highlighting the implications for both policy and professional practice.

Care over Cruelty integrates the pacifist and anarchist traditions with liberation ethics. This project seeks to understand ways in which spaces for participation among newcomers and the native-born population can be expanded. It contributes to the literature on refugees by arguing that engaging in practices of liberatory care as anti-war and peacemaking political praxis to improve the lives and conditions for newcomers is one way to do so. Moreover, (re)politicizing displacement and practices of resettlement as a form of resistance can point toward alternatives for more peaceful futures.

This book foregrounds opposition to the cruelty of the American state. The research argues that Americans have responsibilities to address the harm done by their government and military. The author argues that refugee resettlement is one way to begin the process of redressing harm, and that we have responsibilities, both general and specific, to others that transcend the boundaries of particular communities into which we were born and/or that we "imagine" we belong to. Moreover, enacting caring practices for and with newcomers can be an articulation of liberatory care as anti-war and peacemaking political praxis.

Autorentext

Dr. Jared (Jake) Keyel is an assistant professor of sociology at Rowan University in New Jersey, USA. His research focuses on war, displacement, and migration. He is interested in identifying the responsibilities Americans have for the violence committed by their government and ways to end and ameliorate the harms of that violence. Dr. Keyel's first book, Resettled Iraqi Refugees in the United States: War, Refuge, Belonging, Participation, and Protest (Berghahn Books, 2023), explores the displacement caused by the American war in Iraq, and opportunities for resettled Iraqi refugees to engage in social and political struggles in the United States. Dr. Keyel is a scholar-practitioner with more than 15 years of experience in nonprofits and community-based organizations. His work has focused on facilitating education, employment, and civic engagement programming for new immigrants, particularly individuals from the Middle East and North Africa. Most recently, from 2016-2022, Dr. Keyel served as a tutor, treasurer, and board member for the Blacksburg Refugee Partnership, a community resettlement initiative in Southwest Virginia, USA.