Forms of brutality: Towards a historical sociology of violence

European Journal of Social Theory 16 (3):273-291 (2013)
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Abstract

Most analyses of violence in the different historical periods tend to view the modern era as significantly less violent than all of its historical predecessors. By focusing on such apparently reliable indicators as the decrease in homicide rates, the disappearance of public torture or growing civility in inter-personal relationships, many authors contend that our ancestors inhabited a substantially more violent world. In this article, I argue that since such blanket evaluations do not clearly distinguish between different levels of violence analysis, they are unable to provide an accurate picture of historical reality. To properly understand violence, it is necessary to compare and contrast its historical transformation at the interpersonal and intra-group (micro), the inter-group and intra-polity (mezzo), and inter-polity (macro) levels. When violence is comparatively analysed on these three interrelated levels, it becomes clear that the scale of collective brutality gradually and dramatically increases with the rise of modern social organizations and ideologies while the character of inter-personal and intra-group violence remains essentially constant.

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Sinisa Malesevic
University College Dublin

References found in this work

The Emotions.Nico H. Frijda - 1986 - Cambridge University Press.
Economy and Society.Max Weber - 2013 - Harvard University Press.
Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory.Randall Collins - 2009 - Princeton University Press.
Between the Book and the New Sword: Gellner, Violence and Ideology.Siniša Maleševic - 2007 - In Siniša Malešević & Mark Haugaard (eds.), Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought. Cambridge University Press. pp. 140.

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