Conventional, Engineering, History of Technology, Social Sciences, National & International Security, Military, Political Science, Military Sciences 

The use of force, from international military intervention to routine policing activities, raised a host of question about its appropriateness, necessity and proportionality. Recently much attention worldwide has focused on the possibility of so-called ‘non-lethal’ weapons to provide a greater legitimacy to the use of force by minimizing injury. Acoustic weapons that shatter windows and cause internal damage, electromagnetic. Pulse beams designed to knock individual down and cause of seizures, and chemical agents that act as calmatives are all envisioned. As weapons designed to minimize injury, non-lethal weapons are contested technologies that raise a host of concerns about the appropriateness of force, the basis of control and regulation of technology and the accept-ability of certain forms of risk.
In this empirically rich and conceptually informed study Brain Rappert describes the current ‘state of the art’; elaborates the justification for the weapons; examines the role and function of specific weapons in patrolling and suppressing dissent and conflict; and develop policy interventions for the control of those non-lethal weapons. Through a highly novel combination of insight from security and peace studies. Criminology and science and technology studies, he traces how accounts given non-lethal weapons are at once both attempt to construct a persuasive stories of technology and secure the credibility of those organization making the characterization. The analysis provides a highly challenging argument to claims about the potential of these weapons to legitimate the use of force. In doing so it also challenges conventional approaches to examination of the use, effects and characteristics of technology.
Non-lethal weapons as legitimizing forces? Will be of interest to anyone concerned about the past and future development of force and the operation of risky technologies. police and military practitioner, members of non- governmental organizations and student of technology studies, criminology science policy, security studies, risk and social movements will find this book of interest.
 

As mankind finds ever more impious ways to kill and maim, some look to non-lethal weapons as a fix. Brian Rappert discusses the technologies involved and the ethics of, for example blinding someone with a laser, leaving them blind forever, versus killing them outright. - from Amzon 

1. Introduction...................................................................................P. 1

PART I: CLAIMS AND EXPECTATIONS

2. What's in a Name?...........................................................................P. 17

3. Tools of the Trade............................................................................P. 35

4. Threats and Promises.......................................................................P. 62

PART II: TECHNOLOGIES, CONTEXTS AND CONTROLS
5. Weapons of Minimal Harm?: Assessing Effects.....................................P. 91

6. On to the Streets: Examining Major Deployments of Non-Lethals...........P. 122

7. Controlling Evaluations: The Prospects for Prohibitions.........................P. 148

PART III: CASE STUDIES
8. CS Sprays in Britain........................................................................P. 175

9. Gauging Electroshock Weapons........................................................P. 202

10. Humanitarian Interventions, Humanitarian Tools?.............................P. 228

11. Conclusions and Recommendations.................................................P. 251



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