Promoting Peace, Inciting Violence The Role of Religion and Media [Paperback]

This book explores how media and religion combine to play a role in promoting peace and inciting violence. It analyses a wide range of media - from posters, cartoons and stained glass to websites, radio and film - and draws on diverse examples from around the world, including Iran, Rwanda and South Africa.

• Part One considers how various media forms can contribute to the creation of violent environments: by memorialising past hurts; by instilling fear of the other; by encouraging audiences to fight, to die or to kill neighbours for an apparently greater good.
• Part Two explores how film can bear witness to past acts of violence, how film-makers can reveal the search for truth, justice and reconciliation, and how new media can become sites for non-violent responses to terrorism and government oppression. To what extent can popular media arts contribute to imagining and building peace, transforming weapons into art, swords into ploughshares?

Jolyon Mitchell skillfully combines personal narrative, practical insight and academic analysis.

List of Illustrations. Acknowledgements. Introduction. Part One: Inciting Violence1. Visualising Holy War  2. Celebrating Martyrdom 3. Cultivating Violence. Part One Conclusions. Part Two: Promoting Peace  4. Bearing Witness through Film  5. Searching for Truth and Reconciliation  6. Promoting Peace on Screen 7. Conclusion: Swords into Ploughshares. Notes. Bibliography. Webography. Filmography. Index.

From the world's premier thinker on ethics and popular culture, a historic book on peace-building by religion and media instead of violence and war. This erudite manifesto will become a classic; it sets the agenda for one of the most complicated issues of our perilous times. ls'