Midterm Flashcards
Violence
Research consistently shows that violence is “connected by a web of actions, behaviours, ideas, perceptions and justifications.”
- Violence – despite how it is manifested – often committed for same kinds of reasons
- Perpetrator often sees violence as justified
- Violent behaviour often replicated in different spheres of one’s life (e.g. predictor of violence is history of violent behaviour)
- Violence overlaps in variety of situations (e.g. macro/micro linkages)
Culture and Violence - Engaging in Violence in Multiple Spheres
Examples of people engaging in violence in multiple spheres would include:
- Athletes in violent/contact sports who commit violent crimes (e.g. sexual assault, domestic violence)
- Military and/or law enforcement officials and problem of domestic violence among its members
Culture and Violence - Violence Overlap in Different Context
Examples how violence overlaps in different contexts
- More society engages in ‘legitimate violence’ the more ‘illegitimate violence’ there will be
- Brutalization hypothesis: Argues states with death penalty have higher rates of homicide than those that don’t; essentially argument says death penalty desensitizes society to killing and devalues human life which increases tolerance toward lethal behaviour
- War also found to increase rates of illegitimate violence, not just among returning soldiers in domestic realm, but within larger soceity as well.
Types of Violence
1) Instrumental
2) Expressive
Types of Violence - Instrumental Violence
Violence is means to an end.
Designed to improve the financial or social position of the criminal.
- E.g., inheritance
Types of Violence
1) Instrumental: Violence is means to an end.
2) Expressive: Violence that vents, rage, anger or frustration.
3 Interconnected Types of Violence
Iadicola & Shupe
1) Interpersonal
2) Institutional
3) Structural
Violence is any action or structural arrangement that results in physical or non-physical harm to one or more persons.
1) Interpersonal
Person-to-person.
- E.g., murder, rape
2) Institutional
Violence perpetuated in organizational settings.
- E.g., family violence, corporate and workplace violence
3) Structural Violence
Discriminatory social arrangements in light of negative effects on life changes on particular groups.
Definition of Violence - Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary
“exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse…intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force.”
Definition of Violence - National Panel on the Understanding & Control of Violent Behaviour
“behaviors by individuals that intentionally threaten, attempt, or inflict physical harm to others.”
Definition of Violence - Newman (1998)
“a series of events, the course of which or the outcomes of which, cause injury or damage to persons or property.”
Definition of Violence - Iadicola & Shupe (2003)
“Violence is any action or structural arrangement that results in physical or non-physical harm to one or more persons”
Strengths of Mainstream Violence Definitions
All definitions agree that violence and aggression are harmful.
- Differ in conceptualizing what kinds of harm count
Limitations of Mainstream Violence Definitions
Violence is about injuring, damaging, destroying, or killing.
- Can be for constructive reasons, but always destructive
- Important to differentiate between intent and purpose of act and act itself
Mary Jackman
- Author argues that research on violence has been limited because of legal discourse and focus on forms of violence deemed socially deviant and motivated by willful malice
- Attempts to present “generic definition of violence that focuses unequivocally on the injuriousness of actions, detached from their social, moral, or legal standing”
Range of Injurious Outcomes
Issues that distort understanding of violence:
1) Physical
2) Psychological
3) Material
4) Social
All are highly consequential, sometimes devastating for human beings
- Most profound effects of physical violence often nonphysical
Range of Injurious Outcomes - Physical
Physical outcomes don’t adequately represent range of injuries that human beings find consequential.
Range of Injurious Outcomes - Psychological
- Fear
- Anxiety
- Shame
- Low Self-Esteem
Range of Injurious Outcomes - Material
- Destruction
- Confiscation
- Defacement of Property
- Loss of Earnings
- Loss of Material Goods
Range of Injurious Outcomes - Social
- Public Humiliation
- Stigmatization
- Exclusion
- Imprisonment
- Banishment
Injurious Behaviours - Physical
Verbal & written actions may also cause physical injuries
- Either directly or indirectly
- Legalistic concept of agency holds individual physically responsible for act; ignores others who are equally complicit but further removed
Injurious Behaviours - Verbal & Written
Verbal & written actions can accomplish variety of non-physical injuries as well
- Actions that denigrate, defame, or humiliate individual/group inflicts significant psychological, social, or material injuries
- To some degree, law provides remedies for individual, not group