NCJ Number
204764
Journal
Criminology Volume: 41 Issue: 4 Dated: November 2003 Pages: 1377-1406
Editor(s)
Robert J. Bursik Jr.
Date Published
November 2003
Length
30 pages
Annotation
This paper reviews literature on the evolution of violence and examines the evidence for the evolutionary claim that violence has become more individualized and intimate, focusing on the factors of social ties and the state as explanations of privatization.
Abstract
This paper makes two claims, one empirical and the other theoretical. The empirical claim is that violence has become more private over time, building on the finding that violence in European societies has declined many times over during the past 1,000 years or so. The present-theoretical claim extends to earlier, premodern societies where violence may or may not be frequent. In premodern settings, most violence involves groups and parties who are not intimate with one another. The long process of modernization brings large declines in the incidence of collective and nonintimate violence. The violence remaining is, overall, less public and more private; meaning violence has privatized. Drawing on research conducted in 1976 and 1993, the Blackian theory of privatization, this paper proposes that as intimate social ties weakened and the state strengthened, collective and nonintimate forms of (nonpolitical) violence declined significantly; consequently, violence increasingly became less public, more private. However, other factors, such as the birth of a scientific rationalist worldview, the growth of urbanization, the development of capitalism, and the emergence of industrialization could be responsible for the privatization of violence, thereby requiring further inquiry into the validity of these proposals. References