International Journal of Conflict and Violence (IJCV - Universität Bielefeld)
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Pastoralists at War: Violence and Security in the Kenya-Sudan-Uganda Border Region
Get PDFThe majority of those living in the border region of Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda are pastoralists, whose livelihoods are dictated by the upkeep and size of their herds. Harsh environmental conditions force pastoralists to migrate in search of water and pasturelands during the dry season. With limited access to water and competing rights to land, intertribal conflict arises when pastoralists from one tribe enter the territory of another. The increased availability of small arms in the region from past wars increasingly makes ordinary clashes fatal. Governments in the region have responded with heavy-handed coercive disarmament operations. These have led to distrust and subsequent violent clashes between communities and security providers. This report reviews the scale, consequences of, and responses to the many pastoral conflicts, utilizing methodological tools such as key informant interviews, retrospective analysis, and a thorough review of available literature
Introduction: Is a General Theory of Violence Possible?
Get PDF“There once was a man who aspired to be the author of the general theory of holes. When asked ‘What kind of hole—holes dug by children in the sand for amusement, holes dug by gardeners to plant lettuce seedlings, tank traps, holes made by road makers?’ he would reply indignantly that he wished for a general theory that would explain all of these. He rejected ab initio the—as he saw it—pathetically common-sense view that of the digging of different kinds of holes there are quite different kinds of explanations to be given; why then he would ask do we have the concept of a hole? Lacking the explanations to which he originally aspired, he then fell to discovering statistically significant correlations; he found for example that there is a correlation between the aggregate hole-digging achievement of a society as measured, or at least one day to be measured, by econometric techniques, and its degree of techno- logical development. The United States surpasses both Paraguay and Upper Volta in hole-digging; there are more holes in Vietnam than there were. These observations, he would always insist, were neutral and value-free. This man’s achievement has passed totally unnoticed except by me. Had he however turned his talents to political science, had he concerned himself not with holes, but with modernization, urbanization or violence, I find it difficult to believe that he might not have achieved high office in the APSA.” (MacIntyre 1971, 260
Understanding the Other’s “Understanding” of Violence: Legitimacy, Recognition, and the Challenge of Dealing with the Past in Divided Societies
Get PDFPost-conflict societies which have achieved a cessation of violence and embarked on a political conflict transformation process cannot in the long-term avoid a process of dealing with the past. Case studies of South Africa and Northern Ireland confirm this normative claim, showing that within the post-war society as a whole a social consensus on how to “understand” and “recognize” the use of violence that occurred during the conflict is necessary: understanding the other’s “understanding” of violence. A mutual understanding must be reached that both sides fought a campaign that was just and legitimate from their own perspective. The morality of the “other’s violence” has to be recognized
Clausewitz’s “Wondrous Trinity” as a Coordinate System of War and Violent Conflict
Get PDFRather than discarding Clausewitz’s theory of war in response to the revolutionary changes in modern warfare, this article articulates a broader theory of war based on his concept of the “wondrous trinity,” identifying it as his true legacy. The author shows that the concept of trinitarian war attributed to Clausewitz by his critics, which seems to be applicable only to wars between states, is a caricature of Clausewitz’s theory. He goes on to develop Clause- witz’s theory that war is composed of the three tendencies of violence/force, fighting, and the affiliation of the combatants to a warring community. Each war can be analyzed as being composed of these three tendencies and their opposites
Reconstructing the Narrative of Rape in the Kibbutz by the Israeli Press
Get PDFThe author proposes that national press coverage of sex crimes in Israeli kibbutzim is intended to restructure the public’s perception by showing that such crimes are a symptom of broader social problems. Articles about a rape incident in Kibbutz Shomrat published during 1991–1995 in the local kibbutz press are compared with a sample of articles dealing with the same subject in two of the largest daily Israeli newspapers during the same period. Coverage by both sources of a later story of rape in another kibbutz from 2005 is also examined. The author demonstrates that the national press used the rape incident to invalidate the presumed moral superiority of the kibbutz movement and presented the crime as a symptom of the broad ideological and social crisis faced by the kibbutz movement. The local kibbutz press used a “defensive attribution” mechanism to construct their narrative, allowing kibbutz members to distance themselves, and the values their community professes, from the rape case
Editorial
Get PDFThe present issue of the International Journal of Conflict and Violence continues our series of guest-edited focus sections. Manuel Eisner and Susanne Karstedt have put together an impressive range of articles on the question “Is a General Theory of Violence Possible?&rdquo
Conceptual and Theoretical Frameworks for Organised Violence
Get PDFThe possibility of violence is ubiquitous in human social relations; its forms are manifold and its causes complex. Different types of violence are inter- related, but in complex ways, and they are studied within a wide range of disciplines, so that a general theory, while possible, is difficult to achieve. This paper, acknowledging that violence can negate power and that all forms of social power can entail violence, proceeds on the assumption that the organisation of violence is a particular source of social power. It therefore explores the general relationships of violence to power, the significance of war as the archetype of organised violence, the relationships of other types (revolution, terrorism, genocide) to war, and the significance of civilian-combatant stratification for the understanding of all types of organised violence. It then discusses the problems of applying conceptual types in analysis and the necessity of a historical framework for theorising violence. The paper concludes by offering such a framework in the transition from industrialised total war to global surveillance war
Motive Structures and Violence among Young Globalization Critics: A Statistical Typology of the Motives for Protest at the 2007 G8 Summit
Get PDFThe results of a questionnaire survey of 3,578 young protesters aged 15 to 24 were used to create a typology of the motive structures of the young globalization critics who participated in protests against the G8 summit in Heiligendamm in June 2007. Eight groups with different motive structures identified using cluster analysis reveal the spectrum of motives of the young demonstrators, ranging from social and political idealism to hedonistic fun-seeking and nationalist motives. Despite the diversity of motives, two cross-cluster motives can be identified: the results clearly show that the majority of respondents were motivated by political idealism and rejected violence. Two overlapping minorities were found: one where political idealism was largely lacking, and another where violence was a prominent motive
Micro and Macro Causes of Violence
Get PDFThe dominant emotion in violence-threatening situations is confrontational tension/fear (ct/f), which causes most violence to abort, or to be carried out inaccurately and incompetently. For violence to be successful, there must be a pathway around the barrier of ct/f. These pathways include: attacking the weak; audience-oriented staged and controlled fair fights; confrontation-avoiding remote violence; confrontation-avoiding by deception; confrontation-avoiding by absorption in technique. Successfully violent persons, on both sides of the law, are those who have developed these skilled interactional techniques. Since successful violence involves dominating the emotional attention space, only a small proportion of persons can belong to the elite which does most of each type of violence. Macro-violence, including victory and defeat in war, and in struggles of paramilitaries and social movements, is shaped by both material resources and social/emotional resources for maintaining violent organizations and forcing their opponents into organizational breakdown. Social and emotional destruction generally precedes physical destruction
Banks and the Racial Patterning of Homicide: A Study of Chicago Neighborhoods
Get PDFWhile bank investment is a driving force behind neighborhood viability, few studies have directly examined the effects of bank loan practices on neighborhood crime rates. This paper proposes that variation in residential bank loans helps explain the higher rates of homicide in minority neighborhoods in Chicago compared to white neighborhoods. It finds that black and Latino neighborhoods would experience fewer homicides if more financial capital were infused into these neighborhoods. These findings suggest that neighborhoods are shaped profoundly by the decisions of external economic actors