Violence

by Collins, Randall

• ISBN13: 9780691143224
• ISBN10: 0691143226
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-03
• Publisher: Ingram Pub Services

Summary

In the popular misconception fostered by blockbuster action movies and best-selling thrillers--not to mention conventional explanations by social scientists--violence is easy under certain conditions, like poverty, racial or ideological hatreds, or family pathologies. Randall Collins challenges this view inViolence, arguing that violent confrontation goes against human physiological hardwiring. It is the exception, not the rule--regardless of the underlying conditions or motivations. Collins gives a comprehensive explanation of violence and its dynamics, drawing upon video footage, cutting-edge forensics, and ethnography to examine violent situations up close as they actually happen--and his conclusions will surprise you. Violence comes neither easily nor automatically. Antagonists are by nature tense and fearful, and their confrontational anxieties put up a powerful emotional barrier against violence. Collins guides readers into the very real and disturbing worlds of human discord--from domestic abuse and schoolyard bullying to muggings, violent sports, and armed conflicts. He reveals how the fog of war pervades all violent encounters, limiting people mostly to bluster and bluff, and making violence, when it does occur, largely incompetent, often injuring someone other than its intended target. Collins shows how violence can be triggered only when pathways around this emotional barrier are presented. He explains why violence typically comes in the form of atrocities against the weak, ritualized exhibitions before audiences, or clandestine acts of terrorism and murder--and why a small number of individuals are competent at violence. Violenceoverturns standard views about the root causes of violence and offers solutions for confronting it in the future.

Author Biography

Randall Collins is the Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology and a member of the department of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton) and The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
The Micro-sociology of Violent Confrontations	p. 1
Violent Situations	p. 1
Micro-evidence: Situational Recordings, Reconstructions, and Observations	p. 3
Comparing Situations across Types of Violence	p. 8
Fight Myths	p. 10
Violent Situations Are Shaped by an Emotional Field of Tension and Fear	p. 19
Alternative Theoretical Approaches	p. 20
Historical Evolution of Social Techniques for Controlling Confrontational Tension	p. 25
Sources	p. 29
Preview	p. 32
The Complementarity of Micro and Macro Theories	p. 34
The Dirty Secrets of Violence	p. 37
Confrontational Tension and Incompetent Violence	p. 39
Brave, Competent and Evenly Matched?	p. 39
The Central Reality: Confrontational Tension	p. 41
Tension/Fear and Non-performance in Military Combat	p. 43
Low Fighting Competence	p. 57
Friendly Fire and Bystander Hits	p. 59
Joy of Combat: Under What Conditions?	p. 66
The Continuum of Tension/Fear and Combat Performance	p. 68
Confrontational Tension in Policing and Non-Military Fighting	p. 70
Fear of What?	p. 73
Forward Panic	p. 83
Confrontational Tension and Release: Hot Rush, Piling On, Overkill	p. 89
Atrocities of War	p. 94
Caveat: The Multiple Causation of Atrocities	p. 99
Asymmetrical Entrainment of Forward Panic and Paralyzed Victims	p. 102
Forward Panics and One-Sided Casualties in Decisive Battles	p. 104
Atrocities of Peace	p. 112
Crowd Violence	p. 115
Demonstrators and Crowd-Control Forces	p. 121
The Crowd Multiplier	p. 128
Alternatives to Forward Panic	p. 132
Attacking the Weak: I. Domestic Abuse	p. 134
The Emotional Definition of the Situation	p. 134
Background and Foreground Explanations	p. 135
Abusing the Exceptionally Weak: Time-patterns from Normalcy to Atrocity	p. 137
Three Pathways: Normal Limited Conflict, Severe Forward Panic, and Terroristic Torture Regime	p. 141
Negotiating Interactional Techniques of Violence and Victimhood	p. 148
Attacking the Weak: II. Bullying, Mugging, and Holdups	p. 156
The Continuum of Total Institutions	p. 165
Muggings and Holdups	p. 174
Battening on Interactional Weakness	p. 186
Cleaned-up and Staged Violence	p. 191
Staging Fair Fights	p. 193
Hero versus Hero	p. 194
Audience Supports and Limits on Violence	p. 198
Fighting Schools and Fighting Manners	p. 207
Displaying Risk and Manipulating Danger in Sword and Pistol Duels	p. 212
The Decline of Elite Dueling and Its Replacement by the Gunfight	p. 220
Honor without Fairness: Vendettas as Chains of Unbalanced Fights	p. 223
Ephemeral Situational Honor and Leap-Frog Escalation to One-Gun Fights	p. 226
Behind the Facade of Honor and Disrespect	p. 229
The Cultural Prestige of Fair and Unfair Fights	p. 237
Violence as Fun and Entertainment	p. 242
Moral Holidays	p. 243
Looting and Destruction as Participation Sustainers	p. 245
The Wild Party as Elite Potlatch	p. 253
Carousing Zones and Boundary Exclusion Violence	p. 256
End-Resisting Violence	p. 259
Frustrated Carousing and Stirring up Effervescence	p. 261
Paradox: Why Does Most Intoxication Not Lead to Violence?	p. 263
The One-Fight-Per-Venue Limitation	p. 270
Fighting as Action and Fun	p. 274
Mock Fights and Mosh Pits	p. 277
Sports Violence	p. 282
Sports as Dramatically Contrived Conflicts	p. 283
Game Dynamics and Player Violence	p. 285
Winning by Practical Skills for Producing Emotional Energy Dominance	p. 296
The Timing of Player Violence: Loser-Frustration Fights and Turning-Point Fights	p. 302
Spectators' Game-Dependent Violence	p. 307
Offsite Fans' Violence: Celebration and Defeat Riots	p. 311
Offsite Violence as Sophisticated Technique: Soccer Hooligans	p. 315
The Dramatic Local Construction of Antagonistic Identities	p. 324
Revolt of the Audience in the Era of Entertainers' Domination	p. 328
Dynamics and Structure of Violent Situations	p. 335
How Fights Start, or Not	p. 337
Normal Limited Acrimony: Griping, Whining, Arguing, Quarreling	p. 338
Boasting and Blustering	p. 345
The Code of the Street: Institutionalized Bluster and Threat	p. 348
Pathways into the Tunnel of Violence	p. 360
The Violent Few	p. 370
Small Numbers of the Actively and Competently Violent	p. 370
Confrontation Leaders and Action-Seekers: Police	p. 375
Who Wins?	p. 381
Military Snipers: Concealed and Absorbed in Technique	p. 381
Fighter Pilot Aces: Aggressively Imposing Momentum	p. 387
In the Zone versus the Glaze of Combat: Micro-situational Techniques of Interactional Dominance	p. 399
The 9/11 Cockpit Fight	p. 409
Violence as Dominance in Emotional Attention Space	p. 413
What Does the Rest of the Crowd Do?	p. 413
Violence without Audiences: Professional Killers and Clandestine Violence	p. 430
Confrontation-Minimizing Terrorist Tactics	p. 440
Violent Niches in Confrontational Attention Space	p. 448
Epilogue
Practical Conclusions	p. 463
Notes	p. 467
References	p. 527
Index	p. 555
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