Collective violence as social control

Collective violence is often social control: self-help by a group. It typically defines and responds to conduct as deviant. When unilateral and nongovernmental, it appears in four major forms—lynching, rioting, vigilantism, and terrorism—each distinguished by its system of liability (individual or collective) and degree of organization (higher or lower). Following Donald Black's paradigm of pure sociology, the central assumption is that collective violence varies with its location and direction in social space—the conflict structure. I offer ten propositions that predict and explain the likelihood and severity of collective violence in general and the four forms of collective violence in particular. Conflict structures with a high degree of relational distance, cultural distance, functional independence, and inequality between the adversaries are associated with collective violence in general. Each of the four forms depends on the degree of social polarization between the parties as well as the continuity of the deviant behavior to which the violence responds. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 1992, and the Centennial Congress of the International Institute of Sociology, University of Paris (Sorbonne), Paris, June 1993.     

Street children in Trinidad and Tobago: understanding their lives and experiences

A community-based action research process, over a three-year period, employed interviews and participant observations with five children living on the streets in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago. Data revealed violence in the family to be a contributing factor to children's presence on the streets: it was also a feature of their lives on the streets. A complex pattern emerged of violence, hostility, and distorted social interactions amidst negative attitudes and disdainful behaviour all around them. It is argued that, although it is not easy, more people – professionals and citizens – would do well to listen to, and understand the lives of, street children in order to be motivated for change.     

Work-related violence—is national reporting good enough?

Throughout Europe there are relatively few statistics, gathered a national level, which deal specifically with the problem of violence at work. In the UK, the revised Reporting of Injuries. Discases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) 1995 now require that certain violent incidents are reported on a national basis. The criteria for reporting, which are entirely dependent on the physical outcome of incidents. are discussed. It is recommended that employing organizations should establish their own internal systems for reporting and recording a wider range of violent, and potentially violent. incidents. These should then be used to inform risk assessment and risk management.     

Explaining Intimate Partner Violence: The Sociological Limitations of Victimization Studies

This paper examines whether differentiating among types of intimate partner violence enhances the explanatory capacity of extant empirical models.The analysis uses national-level Canadian data to evaluate an alternative approach to operationalizing intimate partner violence, drawing upon Black's (1990) and Johnson's (1995) theoretical work. The main argument suggests that current efforts to explain intimate partner violence with victimization studies are inadequate because they typically do not measure key sociological variables. The failure to assess the contexts within which different types of violence occur further hinders explanatory efforts.The paper concludes with recommendations for innovative theoretical and methodological strategies to address these limitations.     

Cosmopolitanism and violence: difficulties of judgment

This paper addresses the difficult relation of cosmopolitan ideas to the existence of war and violence. It explores the ambivalences within the cosmopolitan outlook as it seeks to reconcile its attentiveness to the actuality of violence in the modern age with its normative vision of perpetual peace. I address these ambivalences through a discussion of a) what it is to learn from the catastrophes of the twentieth century; b) the contribution Kant's theory of cosmopolitan law to the solution to contemporary problems of violence; c) the reconstruction of cosmopolitan thinking in the wake of the Holocaust as an attempt to take atrocities seriously; d) the application of cosmopolitan criteria to the justification and authorization of humanitarian military intervention; and e) the attempt on the part of Habermas and Derrida to address the ambivalence involved in reconciling cosmopolitanism and violence in Kosovo and Iraq. While cosmopolitanism is usually understood as a reference to a worldly legal and institutional order, the cosmopolitan outlook is also a mode of understanding the world, an ethic of responsibility and an ongoing exercise of political judgment in the face of violence.     

我国反家庭暴力工作的实践与思考

家庭暴力是对人权的粗暴践踏,它的主要受害者是妇女。反对一切形式对妇女的暴力已成为国际社会的共识。我国反家庭暴力工作经历了三个主要阶段,呈现出法律法规体系不断健全、执法和司法工作力度不断加大、社会化支持网络日趋完善等六个方面的特点。但由于封建残余思想影响、家庭经济地位不平等、社会不良因素影响等原因,我国家庭暴力仍然是一个亟待解决的社会问题,“以暴抗暴”和对儿童、老人的暴力现象值得关注。为切实遏制家庭暴力,应当从加强宣传教育、完善立法、强化政府干预、推进多部门合作、健全救助服务体系、深化社区工作等方面进一步加强此项工作。     

形式合法性和实质合法性——论卢梭的政治合法性思想

政治合法性问题主要探讨权力为什么以及如何获得社会成员的忠诚和认同,这个问题的提出目的就在于将暴力因素加以排除从而实现政治的文明化。卢梭为政治设置了"形式合法性"和"实质合法性"两个基础。由于卢梭思想中的"逻辑悖反"以及其与后世政治实践中的一些悲剧性后果高度相关,卢梭的政治合法性思想为人诟病不已。但是卢梭政治合法性思想在政治哲学史上具有重要地位,其对后世政治哲学和政治实践具有深刻影响。     

论暴力对人的奴役——别尔嘉耶夫暴力思想探析

别尔嘉耶夫认为,暴力包括显性暴力和隐性暴力两种类型。隐性暴力奴役人的形式主要包括教育形式、历史形式、社会舆论形式、金钱形式与生活惯性形式。暴力产生的原因在于施暴者精神上的软弱无力。别尔嘉耶夫深邃的暴力理论为解放人提供了现实途径,但仅从精神层面分析暴力产生的原因是其理论的局限之处。     

对女性的暴力美学--论英国古典哥特小说的女性监禁叙述模式

英国古典哥特小说中包含了大量与女性监禁相关的叙述序列,对监禁的叙述构成了哥特式小说的基本叙述模式。监禁叙述,从权力的角度来看,表现的是父权社会世俗权力与宗教权力通过对女性身体的监禁来实现对女性的规训权力机制。同时,从阅读的角度来看,女性监禁叙述可以解读为女性个体死亡经验的体验,而对女性监禁叙述文本的阅读行为又是父权社会实现以规训女性为目的的示众效应的有效手段。通过这样权力机制以及相对应的体验解读和阅读机制的运作,英国古典哥特小说最终构建的是古典时期以父权文化为基础与对女性权力规训为特征的暴力美学。     

怎样看待《水浒传》中的暴力行为

如何看待梁山好汉的暴力行为?这是明清以来就争论不休的老话题。本文以为应从四个方面加以理解这个问题:一是水浒世界的乱砍乱杀现象是正义集团成长过程中的必然现象;二是梁山好汉的暴力倾向是黑暗专制社会的产物;三是“替天行道”决非一块空招牌,不能否认水浒世界主流的正义性;四是《水浒》渲染血腥场景带有迎合市民审美口味的成分。