Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk
28th December 2012, 20:44
I'm currently writing an essay about collective violence and I've been asked to answer in relation to Charles Tilly's conception of it. For those who don't know, Charles Tilly is an American sociologist who conceptualized collective violence as an extension of contentious politics and based on claim-making social/political groups contending with other social/political groups (i.e. workers and bosses, workers and the state etc.).
To me, his project seems to be characterised mostly by arbitrary definitions and categories and an overall bias in favour of democratic societies (high capacity democratic regimes as he defines them). The examples he uses to illustrate his definitions mostly regard unstable political regimes (such as in India) and I'm applying his study to the London Riots of 2011 to illustrate that, contrary to Tilly's belief, democratic regimes can contain significant instances of collective violence etc and that many of Tilly's definitions are arbitrary in relation to certain examples of collective violence. Furthermore, democratic regimes can actually cultivate collective violence as opposed to being the ideal system to diminish the occurrence.
My question regards alternative theories of this kind of violence. The obvious go-to is Marxism, given the conception of violence as structural and beyond self-identifying social groups and actually inherent in class society. This alone isn't enough though. I'm going to look at Herbert Marcuse's work on violence (state violence and violent resistance, to paraphrase) and I'm also gonna look at Althusser's ISA and RSA for the purpose of understanding violence, the monopoly of violence and the 'monopoly of ideology' (I know he didn't call it that but I'm in a rush) and its role in justifying violence in modern democratic societies.
Can people suggest any other sociological works on collective violence that may be worth looking at? I think I may have enough to be getting on with in terms of how I'm gonna answer the question but it never hurts to look further.
To me, his project seems to be characterised mostly by arbitrary definitions and categories and an overall bias in favour of democratic societies (high capacity democratic regimes as he defines them). The examples he uses to illustrate his definitions mostly regard unstable political regimes (such as in India) and I'm applying his study to the London Riots of 2011 to illustrate that, contrary to Tilly's belief, democratic regimes can contain significant instances of collective violence etc and that many of Tilly's definitions are arbitrary in relation to certain examples of collective violence. Furthermore, democratic regimes can actually cultivate collective violence as opposed to being the ideal system to diminish the occurrence.
My question regards alternative theories of this kind of violence. The obvious go-to is Marxism, given the conception of violence as structural and beyond self-identifying social groups and actually inherent in class society. This alone isn't enough though. I'm going to look at Herbert Marcuse's work on violence (state violence and violent resistance, to paraphrase) and I'm also gonna look at Althusser's ISA and RSA for the purpose of understanding violence, the monopoly of violence and the 'monopoly of ideology' (I know he didn't call it that but I'm in a rush) and its role in justifying violence in modern democratic societies.
Can people suggest any other sociological works on collective violence that may be worth looking at? I think I may have enough to be getting on with in terms of how I'm gonna answer the question but it never hurts to look further.