Suchergebnisse

▪ Abstract  Two features have marked the sociological analysis of violence: (a) disparate clusters of research on various forms of violence that have been the object of urgent social concern, and relatedly, (b) an overwhelming focus on forms of violence that are socially deviant and motivated by willful malice. The resulting literature is balkanized and disjointed, and yet narrowly focused. The systematic understanding of violence as a broad genus of social behavior has suffered accordingly. I examine the issues that have clouded the analysis of violence: the importance of physical injuries vs. psychological, social, and material injuries; the weight placed on physical vs. verbal and written actions; the role of force vs. victim complicity in the infliction of injuries; and the emphasis on interpersonal vs. corporate agents and victims. That discussion highlights the widely varying forms of violence in social life, including many instances that are neither driven by malicious intent nor socially repudiated. I consider the diverse motives that drive violent actions and the variant social acceptance or repudiation that they meet. I propose a generic definition of violence, freed of ad hoc restrictions, that encompasses the full population of violent social actions. This directs us to more systematic questions about violence in social life.

The unwritten codes that govern social behavior, & the cues given by people engaged in a number of activities -- on holiday, walking on the street, in men's public lavatories, shopping, & among women waiting for friends in public -- are discussed. Mistakes in the production & recognition of cues are attributed to ignorance of the rules or being in an unfamiliar setting. F. S. J. Ledgister

This paper reclaims the idea that human society is a form of life, an idea once vibrant in the work of Toennies, Durkheim, Simmel, Le Bon, Kroeber, Freud, Bion, and Follett but moribund today. Despite current disparagements, this idea remains the only and best answer to our primary experience of society as vital feeling. The main obstacle to conceiving society as a life is linguistic; the logical form of life is incommensurate with the logical form of language. However, it is possible to extend our conceptual reach by appealing to alternative symbolisms more congenial to living form such as, and especially, art.