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Peace psychology chapter 3

Types of Violence

Direct Violence: Domestic /Intimate Violence, Violence against Minorities, War, Homicide,

Genocide and Democide, Terrorism

Types of Violence

Introduction

Violence derives from conflict, but conflict does not inevitably result in violence. Conflict can

often be constructive. Only under certain extreme conditions does conflict ultimately result in

violence. Conflict, defined as "perceived divergence of interest, or a belief that the parties' ...

current aspirations cannot be achieved simultaneously" (Rubin, Pruitt, & Kim), can be dealt with

in a variety of ways, including cooperative problem solving, yielding by one of the parties, and

inaction. as well as various nonviolent contentious tactics such as ingratiation, persuasive

arguing, and threats. Alternatively, the conflict can be handled by violence.

There are certain preconditions for a violent response to conflict: (a) that a party care more about

its own interests than about the interests of the other, a basic principle of the dual concern model

of conflict (Blake & Mouton, 1979), and (b) that a party believe it will be successful if it acts

violently in pursuit of its goals. In addition, there are factors which increase the probability that

conflict will result in violence, among them the perception that nonviolent means will be

ineffective, that violence will have few negative repercussions for the aggressor, and that

violence will prevent the adversary from gaining an advantage if it were to initiate violence first.
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Furthermore, there are certain contextual factors that predispose a party to act violently,

including social norms that condone violence and the availability of means (e.g., weapons) of

executing a violent act.

Violence

Violence is a complex concept. Violence is often understood as the use or threat of force that can

result in injury, harm, deprivation or even death. It may be physical, verbal or psychological. The

World Health Organization (WHO) defines violence as "intentional use of physical force or

power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community

that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm,

maldevelopment or deprivation". This definition emphasizes intentionality, and broadens the

concept to include acts resulting from power relationships.

An expanded understanding of violence includes not only direct "behavioral" violence, but also

structural violence, which is often unconscious. Structural violence results from unjust and

inequitable social and economic structures and manifesting itself in for example, poverty and

deprivation of all kinds.

Forms of violence can be categorized in many ways. One such classification includes:

 direct violence, e.g. physical or behavioral violence such as war, bullying, domestic

violence, exclusion or torture

 structural violence, e.g. poverty and deprivation of basic resources and access to rights;

oppressive systems that enslave, intimidate, and abuse dissenters as well as the poor,

powerless and marginalized

Direct Violence

Direct violence, corresponding to the tip of the iceberg, has as its main characteristic the fact that

most of its effects are visible, mainly the materials, but not all of them: hate, psychological

trauma or the emergence of concepts such as ‘enemy’ are equally serious effects, but they are

often not seen as such. Being the most popular and obvious, it is commonly thought that direct is

the worst kind of violence, which is not true for precisely this visibility, which makes it easier to

identify and therefore to combat. It is important to note that this type of violence is the

manifestation of something, not its origin, and is in the beginning where it should be sought

causes and act more effectively. Direct violence does not affect many people as cultural and

structural violence, which are the hidden part of the iceberg.

Direct Violence represents behaviors that serve to threaten life itself and/or to diminish one’s

capacity to meet basic human needs. Examples include killing, maiming, bullying, sexual

assault, and emotional manipulation. There are different types of direct violence: Domestic

/Intimate Violence, Violence against Minorities, War, Homicide, Genocide and Democide,

Terrorism

1) DOMESTIC /INTIMATE VIOLENCE

Introduction

The prevalence of intimate violence has become frighteningly apparent: Current statistical

estimates suggest that 28 percent of marital relationships in the United States include incidents of

physical violence (Gelles& Straus, 1988; Straus &Gelles, 1990). Further, the rates of dating

violence are at least as high (Gelles, 1997). Clearly, the magnitude of intimate violence suggests

that a slap, punch, or kick within couples cannot be fully understood solely in terms of individual
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pathology, though it may be tempting to do so. While individual behavior is certainly shaped by

psychological factors, it is simultaneously influenced by social structures such as the family,

religion, law, and power relations particular to gender, race, and class.

Peace psychology may contribute to understanding and transforming intimate violence because it

traverses difficult bounds between individual, organizational, and societal levels of analysis in

addressing conflict and violence. At its core, intimate "iolence rips away security, identity, and

self-determination. Intimate violence often centers on power and control over another person.

Nearly 700 husbands and boyfriends are killed by their girlfriends or wives each year, whereas

more than 1,500 wives and girlfriends are killed by husbands and boyfriends each year (U.S.

Department of Justice, 1995). Murder constitutes an extreme form of intimate violence: it

represents the tip of the iceberg of a problem that is widespread in intimate relationships.

Since peace psychology identifies and promotes conditions that favor human needs for security,

identity, and self-determination, peace psychology can and should concern itself with the

daunting problem of intimate violence. Research on violence for the twenty-first century must

develop a language that adequately addresses power relations as they relate to intimate violence.

Psychology must be more closely melded with sociology in research on intimate violence.

Physical violence is one form of intimate violence along with emotional abuse and sexual abuse.

In addition, child abuse within families is a huge problem in its own right.

History of Domestic Violence

The traditional view of violence in a relationship focused on a crime of abuse involving two

individuals in an opposite-sex (heterosexual) marriage. Typically, the abuser was the husband
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and the wife was the victim. This is the origin of the term “domestic violence,” where the

abusive behavior was viewed as a form of violence that existed within a domestic relationship.

In the early 1970s, women’s rights groups began an organized campaign highlighting the need to

address the issue of abuse perpetrated by husbands upon their wives. In response, government

and non-profit agencies started providing emergency shelters and other advocacy services for

women who were survivors of domestic violence.

In addition to helping women in need, the emergence of these shelters also provided researchers

an opportunity to study the issue of domestic violence in greater depth since victims were now

easier to access. Previously, victims had few options and were forced to remain in abusive

relationships, which, in turn, made it difficult for researchers to contact them and also made them

less willing to discuss their situations.

As research on the topic of domestic violence increased, so did public awareness. In 1994,

Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). While laws addressing assault in

general already existed, this legislation strengthened those laws by specifically identifying

violence against women as a crime that needed more focused attention. Domestic violence

victims were considered the key recipients of protections provided by this legislation.

What Is Domestic Violence?

Domestic violence can be physical or psychological, and it can affect anyone of any age, gender,

race, or sexual orientation. It may include behaviors meant to scare, physically harm, or control a

partner. And while every relationship is different, domestic violence typically involves an

unequal power dynamic in which one partner tries to assert control over the other in a variety of

ways.
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Domestic violence (DV) is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as:

“Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or

mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary

deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life”.

Insults, threats, emotional abuse and sexual coercion all constitute domestic violence. Some

perpetrators may even use children, pets, or other family members as emotional leverage to get

their victim to do what they want. Victims of domestic violence experience diminished self-

worth, anxiety, depression, and a general sense of helplessness that can take time and often

professional help to overcome.

Different Forms of domestic violence

The following forms of domestic violence have been seen in different societies worldwide:

“Physical abuse is hitting, slapping, shoving, grabbing, pinching, biting, hair pulling, denying a

partner medical care, and forcing alcohol and/or drug use upon him or her. Sexual abuse is

coercing or attempting to coerce any sexual contact or behavior without consent, including

marital rape, attacks on sexual parts of the body, forcing sex, or treating one in a sexually

demeaning manner. Emotional abuse is undermining an individual‟s sense of self-worth and/or

self-esteem is abusive including, constant criticism, diminishing one‟s abilities, name-calling, or

damaging one‟s relationship with his or her children. Economic abuse is making or attempting to

make an individual financially dependent by maintaining total control over financial resources,

withholding one‟s access to money, or forbidding one‟s attendance at school or employment.

Psychological abuse is causing fear by intimidation; threatening physical harm to self, partner,
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children, or partner‟s family or friends; and forcing isolation from family, friends, or school

and/or work”.

Intimate Partner Violence Concept Introduced

Societal views expanded to better understand the types of violence that exist within

relationships as well as the reality that the roles of abuser and victim are not gender-specific. As

a result, the term “intimate partner violence” was introduced to encompass a broader

understanding of violence in relationships. While it is challenging to specifically identify when it

came into existence, but it appears to have gained momentum sometime around 2000.

Use of the term “intimate partner violence” moved us away from the old view that

abusive violence only occurs in marital relationships where the husband was the abuser and the

wife was the victim. The concept of intimate partner violence acknowledges that abuse can exist

in any type of personal intimate relationship, regardless of sexual orientation, marital status, or

gender. Like “domestic violence,” this new term does not assign the roles of the abuser and

victim to one gender or the other.

Psychological Approaches to Intimate Violence

There are a variety of approaches within the field of psychology to intimate violence. In

particular, intimate violence has been studied in relation to abnormal psychology and personality

theories, behavioral and attitudinal approaches, and social learning theory.

 Abnormal Psychology and Personality Approaches

Early psychological research tended to emphasize the unique, abnonnal characteristics of

individuals who engaged in intimate violence. For example, physically assaultive husbands

were deemed sadistic (Pizzey, 1974) or suffering from brain lesions resulting in sporadic
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outbursts of violence (Elliot, 1977). Sometimes, researchers suggested that battered women

were masochistic. Inpart, early research relied on small samples of violent relationships with

particularly skewed groups, such as men who had been convicted of assault. And, violence

was understood to be a rare occurrence in families. Most of the research, past and present,

has focused on violence against women by men in heterosexual relationships.

Within the realm of psychological literature, recent research benefits from the

understanding that violence cannot be adequately explained solely on the basis of personality

traits. While some researchers still look to personality disorders, they explain only a fairly

small proportion, estimated at 10 percent, of cases of intimate violence (Straus, 1980).

Clinical research is more likely than survey research to emphasize the characteristics of

individuals that might lead to violence.

Hamberger and Hastings (1986), for example, suggest that assaultive men may have

borderline personalities, they may be anti-social, and/or may suffer passive-dependent/

compulsive disorders. In a later comparative study of violent and non-violent men,

Hamberger and Hastings (1991) report that non-violent men are more comfortable in intimate

relationships and experience greater control over their emotional states. Other researchers

report low self-esteem among men who batter their wives, as well as feelings of inadequacy

and powerlessness (Weitzman &Dreen, 1982).

Dutton (1995) finds that borderline personality disorder is positively related to assaultive

behavior among men in intimate relationships. He argues that men who experience absent,

abusive, or cold parental upbringing develop fear and anger with respect to attachment,

resulting in borderline personalities as well as intimate abuse.

One exciting area of research in psychology looks at a variety of different profiles of

abusers. Dutton and Golant (1995) outline a variety of types of physically assaultive men.

One type of physically abusive man they discuss is the psychopathic assaulter who

experiences no remorse for the abuse he inflicts and who is often violent outside as well as

inside the family. Another type of abuser is over controlled, emotionally withdrawn, and

passive-aggressive. Finally, cyclical abusers are emotionally volatile and experience an

extreme need to control intimacy.

 Behavioral and Attitudinal Approaches

In addition to considerations of self-esteem, self-efficacy, and personality disorders as

contributors to intimate violence, Riggs and O'Leary (1989) have considered behavioral and

attitudinal predictors of violence. They suggest that acceptance of violence, past use of violence,

partner aggression, and relationship conflict are important predictors of violent behavior in

intimate relationships. Another important behavioral correlate is alcohol consumption.

Considerable research has demonstrated a correlation between alcohol abuse and family

violence.

On the other hand, Song (1996), in her study of wife beating in Korean immigrant communities,

found that alcohol consumption had no relationship to rates of violence. Instead, traditional

cultural values predicted greater levels of violence. Indeed, the cultural expectations associated

with alcohol may have a greater impact on behavior than the drug itself. From his examination of

survey, police, cross-cultural, and experimental research, Gelles (1993a) also argues that alcohol

does not cause family violence. In particular, cross-cultural and experimental research indicate

divergent behavioral outcomes from alcohol consumption. It seems that as it relates to

aggression, the effects of alcohol are less physiological than they are based on social

expectations regarding cultural definitions of the effects of alcohol. As Gelles writes: "In the end,

the social expectations about drinking and drinking behavior in our society teach people that if

they want to avoid being held responsible for their violence, they can either drink before they are

violent or at least say they were drunk,".

Behavior is organized and explained in relation to the culture in which it exists. In her work on

behavioral cycles of violence, Lenore Walker recognizes that behavioral patterns exist within

particular cultural contexts (Walker, 1999). Walker (1979) outlines a behavioral cycle that she

calls the "cycle of violence" to explain intimate violence. The cycle includes a tension-building

phase, an acute battering phase, and a tranquil, nonviolent phase. During the tension-building

phase, the abuser may engage in psychological and/or relatively minor physical assaults. The

victim of assault, generally a woman, "walks on eggshells" to assuage her partner and prevent an

escalation of violence. Escalation is inevitable, however, and at some point, an explosion of

violence occurs, during which time the victim has no control over ending the violence and

generally feels trapped. Following the acute battering stage, the abuser is often remorseful and

loving in the tranquil phase:

During the third phase, the battered woman may join widl the batterer in sustaining the

illusion of bliss. She convinces herself, too, that it will never happen again; her lover can change,

she tells herself. This "good" man, who is gende and sensitive and nurturing toward her now, is

the "real" man, the man she married, the man she loves. Many battered women believe that they

are the sole support of the batterer's emotional stability and sanity, the one link their men have to

the normal world. Sensing the batterer's isolation and despair, they feel responsible for his well-

being.
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The inherent loss of control of physical safety through the cycle of violence leads to a type of

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, according to Walker. Battered women may stay in violent

relationships in part because they feel they have at least some control in the situation they are in.

Escape would hurt them into the unknown. The psychological effects of the cycle of violence

also help explain why battered women kill their abusers. Walker describes Battered Women's

Syndrome as a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder triggered by intimate violence in which

battered women kill their abusive partners. Walker is quick to point out that psychological

dynamics cannot be understood apart from the societal sanctioning of intimate violence and the

lack of adequate protection or response from the state (i.e., police). Battered women are trapped

not only in a psychological sense, but also through the lack of support they receive culturally,

economically, and from the criminal justice system.

Social Learning

Social learning provides another important area of research into intimate violence. Children who

observe violence and/or are victims of violence in their family of origin are more likely than

others to engage in violent behavior or to become victims of violence as adults. In other words,

through modeling, individuals may develop an acceptance of, and propensity to engage in,

violence (O'Leary, 1993). The effects of witnessing violence as a child are more likely to predict

violence for men than for women.

However, Kaufman and Zigler (1993), Straus (1980), and O'leary (1988) warn that the effects of

observing violence are easily overestimated. Growing up in violent households does not

determine that an individual will become violent. As a result, understanding intimate violence

must extend beyond an modeling approach.

While research on the psychological processes involved in intimate violence are important, the

problem of intimate violence spills beyond individual characteristics and dispositions and

relationship conflict into social structure. In order to understand what ties people to violent

relationships, it is important to consider societal constructions of the family and gender. To fully

explore the structural dimensions of intimate violence, sociological approaches to intimate

violence must be considered.

Sociological Approaches to Intimate Violence

Within sociology, there are two primary and conflicting approaches to intimate violence. One

approach emphasizes the construction of the family as a system and as a social institution. As

Gelles points out, "The family, with the exception of the military in times of war and the police,

is society's most violent institution" (1993b, p. 35). The other approach centers on gender

inequality.

Family Systems

Gelles and Straus (1979, 1988) suggest that a number of characteristics of families contribute to

intimate violence. In part, contemporary American culture encourages very high expectations for

intimacy within romantic relationships and families. High expectations regarding family

intimacy may also engender disappointment over unmet desires. Violence may result from

frustration over a sense of a lack of reciprocation of rewards within the family (Gelles, 1983).

Research on courtship violence suggests that dating relationships contain somewhat higher levels

of violence than do marital relationships (Gelles, 1997). Perhaps even more disturbing is the

finding by Henton et al. (1983) that one-quarter of victims of intimate violence and a little less
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than one-third of offenders viewed physical violence as a sign of love. Clearly, cultural

definitions of romantic love and family intimacy feed into high rates of intimate violence.

Intimacy may combine with stress to produce intimate violence in families. Stress is an inherent

outcome of ever-changing family life as families grow throughout the life course (Gelles&

Straus, 1979). Stress experienced outside of the family may be projected onto the family. One

source of stress is financial: Intimate violence is more common in low-income households, and

in families where men are unemployed or employed part-time (Prescott &Letko, 1977;

Rounsaville, 1978).

Further, societal norms of family privacy also contribute to violence. What goes on in the family

is easily hidden from public scrutiny (Gelles& Straus, 1979). Gelles (1983) suggests that people

engage in family violence because the rewards of violence (for example, producing a desired

result from a family member, gaining control) outweigh the costs of violence such as negative

labeling in the larger community.

Gender Inequality

For many feminist researchers, the family as an institution is also deemed to contribute to

intimate violence, though here we begin to touch on one of the m.gor divisions within

sociological schools of thought regarding intimate violence. Language differences reveal

divergent perspectives: Family systems theory sociologists write about "domestic violence"

whereas feminist researchers write about "battered wives" and "battered women." Feminist

researchers emphasize gender inequality as the basis for violence (Dobash&Dobash, 1979;

Yllo&Bogard, 1988).Indeed; cross-cultural research suggests that cultural expectations

condoning marital violence and emphasizing gender inequality contribute to high rates of
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intimate violence. Around the globe, high rates of wife-beating occur in patriarchal societies

(Walker, 1999). From the many thousands of women burned alive by in-laws when dowry

endowments are not deemed high enough in India (Narasimhan, 1994), to Chilean rates of

intimate violence against woman reaching 60 percent of heterosexual relationships (Larrain,

1993), wife-beating is deeply enmeshed in the "common sense" of patriarchal cultures.

The economic structuring of society is woven into cultural traditions supporting intimate

violence against women in families. In Western industrialized nations, women are still primarily

responsible for domestic labor including child care and are more likely to have interrupted career

trajectories to care for small children while being paid less than men for the work that they do in

the paid labor force across racial categories (Thornborrow& Sheldon, 1995). Interviews with

women who are survivors of intimate violence indicate that economic dependence is one

important bind to domestic assault (Barnett &laViolette, 1993; Pagelow, 1981). In this way,

patriarchal structures of the family and labor force contribute to wife-battering. One avenue for

addressing the problem of intimate violence involves promoting economic as well as domestic

equality.

At the same time, some research suggests that when husbands have lower status educationally

and occupationally than their wives they are more likely to engage in intimate violence.

Despite important legal changes as well as growing economic resources from the state to aid

victims of intimate violence in the United States, battered women still experience a lack of

support from the police, courts, and support services (Barnett &LaViolette, 1993; Hoff, 1990).

As a result, battered women are left in violent homes in states of fear. Feminist research on

battered women also reveals that fear holds women in families in which they experience intimate
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violence (Hoff, 1990). This fear is far from irrational. Indeed, the greatest likelihood of serious

injury and death occurs after women have left their violent partners (Saltzman et al., 1990).

Women are not adequately protected from violence by the state.

Thus, while the issue of violence against men has been controversial and heated within

sociological discourse and popular culture, the fact that men encounter violence inflicted by

women does not erase gendered power relations of intimate violence. Still, it is important to

recognize the reality that men are beaten, and that gender is not the sole determinant of violent

behavior.

Moving Into the Twenty-First Century: Expanding the Discourse

Feminist research on intimate violence contributes a great deal to an understanding of the

patriarchal structures that produce intimate violence. Clearly, cultural constructions of gender

playa central role in such violence. Gender is not, however, the entire explanatory framework

necessary for intimate violence. Men are sometimes victims of intimate violence in heterosexual

couples. And, violence occurs in gay and lesbian relationships.

While international perspectives on intimate violence highlight the importance of gender

inequality (Walker, 1999), we must both acknowledge the importance of gender and avoid the

insistence that gender is the only important dynamic underlying intimate violence.

Further, this new discourse must somehow bind more adequately sociological and psychological

approaches to violence. That is, psychological factors contributing to violence must be

understood in a sociocultural context. For example, Dutton (1994) takes us in the wrong

direction when he suggests that gay and lesbian violence demonstrates the explanatory power of

psychological rather than social-structural factors (such as gender) in intimate violence.

Internalized homophobia occurs when gay men and lesbians accept heterosexual society's

negative evaluations of them and incorporate them into their self-concepts . . . Clinicians report

that internalized homophobia causes homosexuals to experience lowered self-esteem, feelings of

powerlessness, obsessive closeting of sexual orientation, denial of difference between themselves

and heterosexuals, and self-destructive behavior such as substance abuse. It may also lead to

aggression against members of one's own group, which could take the form of partner abuse.

Thus, societal homophobia (a social structural variable) generates internalized homophobia (a

psychological variable), which, in tum, may lead to partner abuse in same-sex relationships.

The danger in relying too heavily on psychological approaches to intimate violence is that it

misses the "big picture,· the social structures in and through which people act. On the other hand,

the danger in relying solely on sociological explanations for violence is that it may

overgeneralize structural categories as explanations for violence and miss out on individual-level

variables that contribute to violent behavior in intimate relationships. The problem of intimate

violence requires that we develop a new, integrated language for explaining and understanding

the dynamics underlying such violence: a language that weaves together psychological and

sociological approaches to intimate violence.

THEORIES OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

From a theoretical perspective, domestic violence has been seen differently by the sociologists,

psychologists, and other scholars in order to describe its causes and factors. Following discussion

delineates the theories of domestic violence:

1. Sociological Theories
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Sociological theories extensively describe the causes of domestic violence. For example, the

general systems theory suggests, “violence as a system rather than as a result of individual

mental disturbance.” The Resource theory states, “the more resources such as social, personal,

and economic a person can command, the more power he or she can potentially call on.” The

Exchange/Social Control Theory argues, “Violence can be explained by the principle of costs

and rewards.” The Subculture of Violence Theory posits, “there is a subculture of violence in

which some groups within society hold values that permit, and even encourage, the use of

violence.” “Perhaps, the Subculture theory of violence is the most widely accepted theory”.

2. Psychological Theories:

From a psychological perspective, the developmental and personality theories emphasize, “the

individual-level explanations of domestic violence and variously suggest interrelated factors such

as early abuse trauma, harsh, shaming, disrupted parenting, insecure or disorganized attachment

styles, personality disorders, anger, depression, emotional difficulties, substance misuse

problems or low self-esteem, explain why some men become violent to their partners.”2

Similarly, psychologists view domestic violence as, “a medical problem, suggesting that abusive

men have some sort of illness that causes them to behave violently toward their partners, such as

excessive use of alcohol and drugs.”

3. Feminist Theory

Feminist theories posit, “societal patriarchal structures of gender-based inequalities of power are

at the root of the problem. Therefore, the violence is an expression of male domination over

females and includes a variety of „control tactics‟ meant to control women.”

4. Ecological Model
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According to the ecological model, “the source of domestic violence is demonstrated into four

major co-existing factors, namely the individual perpetrator, relationship, community and

society.”

2) VIOLENCE AGAINST MINORITIES

Introduction

Violence against minorities refers to the acts of violence in which victims are selected because

of their ethnic, racial, religious, cultural, or national origin. These victims are attacked not in

their capacities as individuals, but as representatives of such minority groups. There is

widespread consensus among researchers that this is the defining core of the phenomenon, but

no agreement on how to delimit it or what label to use. This form of violence is described as

racist violence, xenophobic violence, hate crime, or rightwing extremist violence.

Until the early 1990s, there was very little academic research published on racist violence or hate

crimes. However, especially from 1993 onwards, a large number of substantial empirical studies

were published, partly as a response to the worldwide attention to the problem caused by the

wave of xenophobic violence in Germany and several other countries.

Violence aimed at individuals who identify, or are perceived as lesbian, gay, bisexual,

transgender, queer (LGBTQ), or otherwise gender variant has been a part of the fabric of most

societies both historically and in the present era.

With regard to both ideological and violent dimensions, racism, right-wing extremism,

xenophobia, and hate crime are to a large extent overlapping-but not completely

interchangeable--categories. Different labels, covering different aspects, are used in academic

and political discourse in various countries. "Racist violence" and "racial violence" (the latter

often meaning "interracial violence") are predominant labels in British discourse. In Germany

and the Scandinavian countries, a common label is "fremdenfeindlicheGewalt" /

''fremmedfiendtlig void, " which means xenophobic or, literally, "foreigner-hostile violence." In

North America, "hate crime" is the predominant label in academic and legal discourse. These

various labels are not synonymous, as they tend to restrict or expand the scope of the

phenomenon in different ways and place the emphasis on different aspects, whether on the

characteristics of the victims, or on the perpetrators with their motives and ideologies.

Racism, xenophobia, and hatred directed against specific categories of people are central

elements in most forms of right-wing extremism, but there are also forms of rightwing

extremism where racism or xenophobia does not necessarily play any role (cf. Sprinzak, 1995).

Heitmeyer (1987:13-16) describes the basic elements of a right-wing extremist orientation as 1)

an ideology of considering inequality between people as a nature-given principle and 2) an

acceptance of violence as a legitimate form of political action. However, many researchers find it

somewhat arbitrary to place this phenomenon on the one end of a right-left dichotomy, preferring

other labels.

Racism is no less disputed as a concept and label. Some definitions of racism emphasize that it is

an ideology of inequality based on certain phenotypical and/or genetic characteristics of human

beings, in other words an ideology of superior and inferior races. Others see racism as a practice

of social exclusion that does not necessarily require a conscious or explicit ideology of racial

differences or superiority (Barker, 1981).

Xenophobia (literally "fear of foreigners") does not require an ideological theory but is merely a

reflection of people's negative "gut" feelings, prejudices, or aggression towards groups that

appear strange and different. Thus, xenophobia is affective rather than cognitive. In its practical

expressions, however, xenophobia can hardly be distinguished from other varieties of racism.

The notion of hate crime does not refer to any specific target group but rather to the more

general tendency to give symbolic status to various categories of "others" that represent

something or someone to hate. In American discourse, the label "hate crime" is therefore not

restricted only to criminal acts against various ethnic minorities, but is also applied to violence

against homosexuals, women, and others.

Hate Crimes

"Hate crimes are words or actions intended to harm or intimidate an individual because of her or

his membership in a minority group; they include violent assaults, murder, rape, and property

crimes motivated by prejudice, as well as threats of violence and other acts of intimidation".

In the United States, hate crimes are committed against racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual

minorities. According to official reports, racial bias results in approximately 60 percent of all

hate crimes in the United States, with African-Americans being the most vulnerable to hate

crimes. Crimes com mitted against people because of their religious affiliation rank second,

while crimes committed against people because of their sexual orientation rank third. It should

be noted that according to FBI statistics, most hate crimes based on religion are property crimes

directed at religious institutions, i.e., vandalism of synagogues, churches, and cemeteries.

Hate violence is a form of terrorism. Hate violence traumatizes not only the direct victim but all

members of the targeted group. Richard Berk, Elizabeth Boyd, and Karl Hamner (1992) note that
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a key ingredient of hate-motivated violence is the "symbolic status of the victim". As Greg Herek

points out, bias crimes "are especially serious because they potentially victimize an entire class

of people ... they assail the victim's identity and intimidate other group members".

Anti-Gay /Lesbian Hate Crimes: Overt, Direct, Episodic Violence

In Los Angeles, a man yelling "sick mother-fucker" threw a beaker of acid into the face of a

lesbian employee of the local Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center.

A 21-year-old University of Wyoming student was pistol whipped and then left lashed to a fence

in the near freezing cold outside of Laramie. He was found after 10 hours and died after five

days in a coma.

Gay men and lesbian women, as well as other sexual minorities, including bisexual and

transgendered men and women, are frequent targets of hate crimes in the United States. The

Southern Poverty Law Center has estimated that gay men and lesbians are six times as likely to

be physically attacked as Jews and Hispanics in America, and twice as likely as Mrican

Americans. Kendal Broad note: "By many accounts, violence motivated by homophobia and

heterosexism represents the most visible, violent, and culturally legitimated type of 'hate crime'

in this country.

Official statistics on hate crimes are an inaccurate measure of anti-gay lesbian violence. Many

gay men and lesbian women do not report verbal harassment or physical violence against them to

the authorities because they fear that they will be subjected to secondary victimization at the

hands of police or others who may learn of their sexual orientation and subject the victim to a

second round of mistreatment. Greg Herek, Roy Gillis, Jeanine Cogan, and Eric Glunt (1997)

found that while approximately two-thirds of lesbian and gay victims of non-bias crimes reported
22

the incident to law enforcement authorities, only about one third of the hate crime victims did so.

In a study on sexual orientation hate crimes in Los Angeles, Edward Dunbar (1998) reported that

gay and lesbian people of color were both more likely to be victimized and less likely to report

the hate act than European white gay men and lesbian women.

In El Paso, Texas, a gay man was assaulted by his cousin, brother, and father during a wedding

reception because of his sexual orientation. The man drove himself to the hospital for x-rays and

emergency treatment. When asked why he was there, he told a male nurse what had happened

and was advised not to disclose his sexual orientation to anyone else at the hospital because

"they won't treat you right.' The victim declined to report either incident to the police or hospital

administration.

Since official statistics only record those who have reported the attack, many researchers survey

samples of gay and lesbian communities to determine the rates of hate violence. Reviewing these

surveys, Greg Herek (1989) reports as many as 92 percent of lesbian women and gay men

responded that they have been the targets of anti-gay verbal abuse or threats, and as many as 24

percent report physical attacks because of their sexual orientation. In a survey of Sacramento-

area adults, Herek, et al (1997) found that, since age 16, 11 percent had experienced assault with

a weapon, based on their sexual orientation; 14 percent had experienced assault without a

weapon; 17 percent vandalism; 45 percent had been threatened with violence; 32 percent had

been chased or followed; 33 percent had objects thrown at them; and the overwhelming m~ority

had been verbally harassed.

Characteristics of Anti-Gay / Lesbian Hate Violence

A number of studies have been conducted to understand the nature of hate crimes. These studies

have focused on the characteristics of the perpetrators and the circumstances in which hate

crimes occur.

1. The perpetrators of anti-gay/lesbian violence (and most hate crimes) are pre dominantly

male teenagers and young adults. In a survey of almost 500 community college students,

Karen Franklin (1998) found that 18 percent of the men said that they had physically

assaulted or threatened someone they thought was gay or lesbian compared to 4 percent

of the women. Thirty-two percent of the men and 17 percent of the women said that they

were guilty of verbal harassment.

2. Anti-gay /lesbian violence frequently happens in groups. Groups increase violence

through social contagion and deindividuation. People in groups don't feel personally

responsible for their behavior-often thinking, "It is the group, not me, who is doing this."

3. The targets of anti-gay and lesbian attacks are often unknown to the perpetrator and

chosen at random. This randomness may make it harder for the person to cope with the

consequences than if he or she was a victim of some other crime. Victims may feel that

there is nothing they could have done to prevent the attack, especially since .they were

attacked for something over which they feel they have no control and which may be a key

aspect of their personal identity-their sexual orientation.

4. Anti-gay/lesbian violence is particularly brutal. Kevin Berrill, formerly the director of the

Anti-Violence Project of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), reports that

homosexual murder victims are less likely to be shot than to be "stabbed a dozen or more

times, mutilated and strangled".

Some Psychological Explanations of Anti-Gay/ Lesbian Violence

Psychologists have a long history of attempting to understand what causes prejudice and

violence. These approaches have focused primarily on intrapsychic and interpersonal

psychological processes.

Authoritarian Personalities

In keeping with psychology's emphasis on understanding individual behaviors, one of the earliest

explanations of prejudice was based on individual personality. People who were prejudiced

shared characteristics referred to as an authoritarian personality. The characteristics included

submissiveness to the authority of the in-group, a tendency to punish others who violated

conventional values, preoccupation with dominance, exaggerated concern with sex and

repression of sexual feeling, and rigid thinking. While it may be argued that the leaders of

organized hate groups may demonstrate these "authoritarian" characteristics, very little research

has been done on the perpetrators of anti-gay/lesbian hate crimes.

Frustration, Scapegoating, and Realistic Group Conflict

Another early psychological explanation of prejudice and aggression comes from the work of

John Dollard and his colleagues at Yale University. They suggested a theory of scapegoating or

displaced aggression: Frustrated people often direct their anger toward members of another

group. Racial prejudice, for example, was seen as related to economic insecurity.

Related to the frustration-aggression theory, is MuzaferSherifs (1966) realistic conflict theory

(RCT). The realistic group conflict theory can be seen in Levin and McDevitt's (1993)

description of zero-sum thinking. "They view two or more individuals or groups as striving for

the same scarce goals, with the success of one automatically implying a reduced probability that

others will attain their goals ... Zero-sum thinking engages the individual in a competitive
25

struggle to upgrade himself and downgrade others", which can set the scene for hate violence.

For example, Jeanine Cogan (1996) suggests that marginalized groups, the poor, immigrants,

ethnic minorities, and sexual minorities are being scapegoated by society-at-large for the

growing disparity between the very rich and the rest of society in the United States. "The victims

are blamed for the offender's personal or economic plight".

Social Identity Theory and Ingroup Bias

According to social identity theory, people have both an individual and a social identity. Seeing

one's group as superior increases personal self-esteem. People have a tendency to enhance their

self-esteem by evaluating more favorably the groups to which they belong (ingroups) compared

to other groups (outgroups). Simply being placed in a group can create ingroup bias.

Ingroup biases means favoring one's own group, but it can also, although not always, mean

devaluing the other. A sense of belonging increases when there is a common enemy. Studies

have shown that those in group members who have an experience which lowers their self-

esteem, are more likely to highly rate the in group and denigrate the out group. Bias against the

out group is also more common if there are social supports for degrading the out group. In the

United States there are social, religious, political, and legal supports for prejudice against gay

men and lesbian women.

Violence against Religious Minorities

In 2007, Minority Rights Group International, a watchdog organization, ranked Pakistan as the

world's top country for major increases in threats to minorities — along with Sri Lanka, which is

embroiled in civil war. The group lists Pakistan as seventh on the list of 10 most dangerous

countries for minorities, after Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar and Congo.
26

Religious minorities represent about 5 percent of Pakistan's 160 million people, according to the

CIA World Fact book. At the same time, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom,

has named Pakistan as one of the 13 countries where violence against religious minorities is

common and condoned or supported by the government.

The country’s constitution states that adequate provisions shall be made for minorities to profess

and practice their religions freely; however the policies, laws and practices in force do not appear

to be in line with the same. For instance, in state run schools students of other faiths are exempt

from Islamiyyat (Islamic studies) however; in practice, teachers force non-Muslim students to

complete Islamic studies. Similarly, while the law provides for up to 10 years in prison for

insulting another's religious beliefs with the intent to offend religious feelings however, till date

this penalty has been used only against those who have allegedly insulted the Prophet

Muhammad. Furthermore, all citizens, muslims and nonmuslims alike, are subject to the

blasphemy laws. Freedom of speech is constitutionally subject to "any reasonable restrictions

imposed by law in the interest of the glory of Islam”; and the penal code calls for death sentence

or life imprisonment for anyone who blasphemes the Prophet Muhammad.

Violence against religious minorities is not new in Pakistan and is generally characterized by

massive bloodshed and the desecration of their religious and personal assets. Among the

religious minorities present in the country, Christians constitute a major percentage. Of the four

provinces, Punjab hosts the majority of Pakistan's 3 million impoverished Christians. For this

reason it is also the place where most cases of violence against religious minorities in general,

and Christian minority in particular are reported. During the last year alone, the burning of a

church in Gujranwala; attack on 50 Christian houses in Kasur; attack on Christians on alleged

defiling of Koran in Gojra and murder of Christians facing blasphemy charges in jails, are a few
27

cases in point. In majority of such cases the apparent reason behind the carnage are accusations

of blasphemy that have marred the image of Muslim world in general and that of Pakistan in

particular.

In recent years, the inhuman acts against the Christian minorities have been a subject of great

public debate and criticism. However, in spite of this the Government has not taken any concrete

measures for safeguarding Christians from facing persecution in the name of blasphemy laws

and becoming victims of cruel atrocities.

Ethnic Violence

Pakistan’s ongoing religious and sectarian conflict overlaps with ethnically-motivated violence.

Ethnic violence is largely rooted in the city of Karachi, one of Pakistan’s most diverse cities with

migrant populations from across the country. A projection of population growth shows that 44

percent of Karachi’s population in 2011 were Urdu speakers, many of whom identify as

belonging to the Mohajir community, which originally relocated from India in 1947. The second-

largest group comprised Punjabi and Seraiki speakers (17 percent), followed by Pashto speakers,

suggesting membership in the Pashtun community.

Ethnic conflict has dominated the city of Karachi since the 1980s, when clashes broke out

between the Pashtun and Mohajir communities. This stemmed from a long-established sense of

resentment against the central government over resources, resistance by older settlers to new

waves of migrants, and long-established xenophobia.

Although the the earliest clashes between these communities had criminal motiveslocal politics

increasingly became delineated on ethnic lines, particularly after the emergence of the

MohajirQaumi Movement party (the MQM, now called the MuttahidaQaumi Movement), which
28

sought to represent the interests of the Mohajir community. As such, Karachi’s politics became a

mix of ethnically-driven political parties, religious groups, and mainstream political groups, and

has developed a distinctly militant nature. Political groups like the MQM trained armed forces

and built strongholds in the neighborhoods where their constituencies reside.

Since the 1980s Karachi has seen several extended periods of ethno-political violence. During

these episodes, the violence fanned out to include conflict with the state, and drew in other ethnic

communities such as the Baloch, KutchiMemons, and Sindhis, as well as migrants from the

southern parts of Punjab. These ethnic groups were represented by a range of political parties and

criminal groups, including the MQM, the Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party, and the

Peoples Amn Committee, a criminal syndicate affiliated with the mainstream Pakistan Peoples

Party, which drew support from Baloch communities in Karachi. This has led to repeated

paramilitary and police operations against these groups over the course of the past three decades.

Ethnic violence is also prevalent in the province of Balochistan, where Punjabi workers have

been killed by what is widely cited as Baloch separatist groups fighting an insurgency against the

Pakistani government. These attacks are seen as part of the insurgency’s reaction to the influence

of the Punjab province in Pakistani politics, which is why migrant workers from that province

are targeted

3) WAR

Introduction

Much of the complexity stems from the fact that the epithets refer to different aspects of, and

perspectives on, war: e.g. war as condition, techniques of warfare, alleged motives and/or
29

objectives of war, or assumptions about belligerent behavior and the causes (causative factors,

determinants, conditions, etc. ) of war. War is a species in the genus of violence; more

specifically it is collective, direct, manifest, personal, intentional, organized, institutionalized,

instrumental, sanctioned, and sometimes ritualized and regulated, violence. These distinguishing

features and dimensional delineations are not limitative. It should be perfectly clear; however,

that war, or the state of belligerence, is a very special category of violence.War is the oldest,

most prevalent, and most salient issue in international relations.Attention to war and security is

necessary: security comes first in international relations; all other competing values such as

human rights, the environment, and economic development presuppose security. Although 3.5

billion have died in the 14,500 armed struggles throughout history, the number and intensity of

war has dropped by one-half since 1991. International relations theorists disagree over the

inevitability of war.

Definitions of war

 Von Clausewitz (1911) defined war as “an act of violence intended to compel our

opponents to fulfil our will”, and elsewhere he emphasized the continuity of violence

with other political methods: “War is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse,

with a mixture of other means.”

 Sorel (1912) defined war as a “political act by means of which States, unable to adjust a

dispute regarding their obligations, rights or interests, resort to armed force to decide

which is the stronger and may therefore impose its will on the other”.

 B. Russell’s ( 1916) definition of war as “conflict between two groups, each of which

attempts to kill and maim as many as possible of the other group in order to achieve some
30

object which it desires” is even more general and uncritically inclusive. Russell states the

object for which men fight as “generally power or wealth”.

 Deutsch and Senghaas (1971): “By ‘war’ we mean actual large-scale organized violence,

prepared and maintained by the compulsion and legitimacy claims of a State and its

government, and directed against another State or quasi-State, i.e. a relatively comparable

political organization”.

Types of War

Interstate wars: wars between two or more states. In the past these were the focus of most

research. They are the easiest to study and have caused the most damage.

Intrastate wars: wars between groups within a state, with or without international participation.

While the number of ongoing intrastate wars has declined, the decline has been less precipitous

than the decline in interstate wars.

Total war: Wars involving multiple great powers. Total wars include significant destruction and

loss of life. Since the end of World War II, total wars have become less frequent; the number of

countries participating in total wars has fallen, and they tend to last for shorter lengths of time

This has led some to argue that this type of war is obsolete.

Limited war: the objective is not surrender and occupation of enemy territory, but rather to

attain limited goals. The Korean War, the Gulf War, and conflicts in Sudan and Sierra Leone are

examples of limited war.

Impact of War/Political Violence on Families

Related/committed persons who live together. Family members' shared lives are often disrupted

by war, and members are often separated. Death is the most obvious and permanent form of

separation. As established above, in the decade preceding 1996, civilians represented 90 percent

of the casualties of war. The result was an overwhelming number of people in war zones who

were separated by death from family members.

Families may be forced to live apart for other reasons. A family member or multiple family

members may be involved as soldiers in combat. This could include voluntary or forced fighting

and may affect families surrounded by the conflict (e.g., the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) or those

far from the war (e.g., United States's military forces deployed in the Middle East).

Family members may be separated in refugee situations. The "unbridled attacks on civilians and

rural communities have provoked mass exoduses and the displacement of entire populations who

flee conflict in search of elusive sanctuaries within and outside their national borders.Among

these uprooted millions, it is estimated that 80 percent are children and women" (United Nations,

1996, art. 26). In 1996, the United Nations identified more than 27.4 million refugees, and the

number is estimated to have grown since then. At least half of these refugees and displaced

people were children, and millions of them were separated from their families.

War has a more devastating effect on poor families than families with more resources. This may

indicate that poor families are more vulnerable and are at risk for severe effects of war; it could

also indicate that wealthier families have the resources to get out of harm's way to avoid many

negative consequences. War can ruin a society's infrastructure (businesses, schools, utilities,

transportation, etc), an effect that leaves many poorer families with an unemployed head of

household. Therefore, "not only do the usual problems that [poor families] face not evaporate
32

because of the onset of political violence, but it is likely that there is a cumulative effect with the

negative consequences of political violence added to the effect of economic and social

disadvantage" (Cairns 1996, p.71). During war situations, families can expend most of their

efforts trying (and often failing) to meet the basic needs of their members. Displaced families

(either in refugee camps or those staying with friends or relatives within the war zone) face a

constant struggle to meet the basic needs of their members in a situation in which there are never

enough resources to meet the needs of all.

Protection and safety. Protection and safety are of great concern for families involved in

political violence. Trying to keep members safe from injury, exploitation, and death in a war

zone can dominate a family's life. It is difficult and highly unlikely that families can provide for

the safety of their members during wars. This is an especially salient issue for female-headed

families, because women and girls often are targets of sexual exploitation as well as other forms

of violence

Education and socialization. Because schools are part of the infrastructure, they often are

closed or destroyed in war zones. Therefore, families are expected to meet the educational needs

of their members. However, other basic survival needs tend to dominate the time and energy of

the adults. This leaves little time for extras such as education.

Socialization, or helping children learn appropriate behavior for the culture, may overemphasize

issues related to the conflict during a war. Several authors have questioned whether children in

war zones have a less developed moral sense compared to children who do not grow up

surrounded by political violence (e.g., Garbarino; Kostelny; and Dubrow 1991; Punamaki 1987).
33

"In such societies, children cannot be successfully socialized . . . in a period when the behaviour

of their whole society is based on . . . the denial of basic human values" (Punamaki 1987, p. 33).

4) HOMICIDE

Introduction

Homicide is a relatively rare yet high-impact event. Its consequences are deadly for the victim

but also devastating for those intimately connected to the victim and offender and, often, the

offender too. At the same time it is an act that captivates many and is the subject of sustained

media attention and of numerous popular works of fiction. These depictions rarely reflect the

reality of homicide. Rather, they tend to focus on the more (statistically) unusual forms of

homicide such as those with a sexual or unknown motive, serial or spree killings or those

involving young children.

Homicide of a socio-political nature, which is often linked to power-related agendas, may also be

dominant in some States with recent experiences of conflict. This is particularly true in countries

where the causes of armed conflict have not been fully resolved and the distinction between

conflicts related deaths and intentional homicides is particularly blurred. For example, recorded

deaths due to intentional homicide may overlap with recorded civilian casualties attributed to the

conflict, making it difficult to determine the types of policies and prevention efforts that need to

be implemented from a criminal justice perspective.

Definition

“Homicide is the killing of a person by another with intent to cause death or serious injury,

by any means. It excludes death due to legal intervention and operations of war”.
34

Deconstructing Homicide

The term ‘homicide’ refers to the killing of a human being, whether the killing is lawful or

unlawful. Examples of lawful homicide would include the killing of another human being during

wartime combat, the implementation of the death penalty or the accidental killing of a boxer by

his opponent. Unlawful homicide is legally classified, in England and Wales, as murder,

manslaughter or infanticide. Each of these categories shares a common guilty act.

Types of Homicide

The most common types of homicide include:

 First Degree Murder – which is the premeditated killing of a person or fetus. Examples

include intentional poisoning, hiring someone to murder another, or to cover up another

crime.

 Second Degree Murder – murder that is unintentional, but is the direct result of an

unlawful activity. This could be the result of committing a misdemeanor or felony

offense.

 Felon Murder – is similar to second degree murder, only in these instances the

defendant was engaging in an unlawful activity that was a felony, such as a burglary, a

robbery or other similar crimes

 Vehicular Manslaughter – a killing that took place because of reckless driving

 Voluntary Manslaughter – the intentional killing of another human being in the heat of

the moment. An example is a lover who discovers their partner has been cheating, and in

the heat of the moment, kills the partner or the other party in question.

 Involuntary Manslaughter – which is very similar to second degree murder

As seen in the types of homicides above, there are slight variations between the definitions, but

these defining factors will have a huge impact in conducting trials for murder and homicide.

Factors that affect charges for murder include:

 Whether the killing was premeditated

 Whether the killing was intentional

 Whether the killing was a result of negligence

Murder carries some of the most severe penalties in categories of crimes, including the death

penalty. In the penal codes of California for example, punishments range from 25 years to life,

imprisonment without parole, and in other states – capital punishment. This is why many lawyers

will be a the forefront of homicidal cases. There are many legal defenses for murder, with one of

the most prominent being self-defense. Another popular defense strategy is pleading insanity,

which will be discussed in another posting.

Offender, victim and offence characteristics

This section will include brief consideration of the socio-demographic characteristics of those

who become involved in homicide as well as some details of the homicide event.

Offenders and victims

Gender and Age

One of the most significant ‘facts’ about homicide is that it is dominated by males or, to be more

precise, young men. Over 90 per cent of offenders are male, over 70 per cent of victims are male

and, as illustrated in Table 12.3, 60 per cent of homicides over the last decade were male-on-
36

male. In stark contrast, only 3 per cent of homicides occur among females. Forty-four per cent of

all homicides in England and Wales between 1998 and 2008 (for which age and gender of

suspect are known) were committed by young males aged less than 30.

Both gender and age also have a considerable impact upon the likelihood of falling victim to

homicide. For example, males are three to four times more likely to fall victim to homicide than

females and comprise 70–80 per cent of the victims in an average year. Somewhat peculiar to

homicide, the age group most at risk are infants under one year old (at 36 per million

population). This group are followed by young adults aged 16–29 (at 24 per million population).

Ethnicity

It is now well established that black and Asian people are over-represented as both victims and

offenders of homicide. For example, for the period 2003– 5, black people were 5.5 times more

likely to fall victim to homicide than whites and Asian people were 1.8 times more likely than

white people to become victims of a homicide. Black individuals comprise 14 per cent of

homicide victims despite them comprising less than 3 per cent of the population of England and

Wales (Census 2001). Whites make up over 90 per cent of the population but only 73 per cent of

homicide victims. Homicides involving a black victim exhibit some distinct qualities.

For example, during the last decade (1998–2008) almost a third of black victims were shot,

compared to 5 per cent of white victims, 9 per cent of Asians and 7 per cent of other ethnic

groups. Blacks are also more likely than other ethnic groups to be killed with a sharp instrument

(40 per cent of black victims compared to around a third of all other groups). Finally, it is more

common for homicides involving black victims to remain unsolved (28 per cent) in comparison

with white or Asian victims (11 per cent).

Finally, non-white people are over-represented as homicide offenders, with blacks comprising 12

per cent of offenders, Asians 7 per cent and other nonwhite groups 3 per cent. More than one-

fifth (21 per cent) of all homicide suspects between 1998 and 2008 were non-white males. We

will explore later in the chapter the possible reasons for the over-representation of ethnic

minority groups in homicide.

Social class and occupation

There is little reliable information in the UK regarding the social class and employment status of

offenders and victims of homicide. What is clear from the limited data available on the Homicide

Index is that at least 28 per cent of victims of homicide over the last decade were unemployed at

the time of their death (this figure excludes students and retired individuals) and a quarter were

in employment. The employment status of a quarter of victims was unknown/not recorded and it

is likely that many if not most of these cases involved unemployed victims.

Dobash et al. (2002), in their Homicide in Britain study, discovered that almost 70 per cent of the

786 male offenders that they studied were usually unemployed and that most had left school

without qualifications. Overall, the available evidence indicates that homicide is dominated by

offenders from the lower classes and a significant number are unemployed at the time of the

offence. However, this finding is, in part, a reflection of the kinds of killings that are routinely

included in the statistics and those that are generally not.

Victim-offender relationship

Around a quarter of homicides occur among friends or social acquaintances, 16 per cent among

intimate partners/ex-partners and 15 per cent among strangers. Seven per cent involve the murder
38

of a son or daughter and a further 5 per cent involve the killing of another kind of family member

(e.g. an in-law or sibling. Business and criminal associates comprise a further 7 per cent.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, these patterns vary by gender. For example, of the 208 females killed in

England and Wales in 2007–8, 35 per cent were killed by a partner or ex-partner (compared to

just 6 per cent of male victims), 22 per cent by another family member (compared to just 11 per

cent of males) and only 13 per cent of female victims were killed by a stranger (compared to 36

per cent of male victims). Clearly, homicides involving females (as killer, victim or both) tend to

occur between intimates, whereas male-on-male homicides are more likely to involve strangers

or acquaintances. The basic patterns of victim–offender relationship have remained relatively

stable over the last decade with just two exceptions; the number of ‘no suspect’ cases has

increased over time (more than doubled in ten years from 7 per cent to 15 per cent) and

homicides among ‘partners/ex-partners’ have decreased from 20 per cent to 13 per cent.

The seeds of homicide: structural forces

Structural theorists have been concerned primarily to explain certain striking patterns to be found

in the social characteristics of offenders (and sometimes victims) of both violence in general and

homicide in particular. They try to unravel, for example, how and why certain factors or

conditions such as poverty, deprivation and inequality or social disorganization may explain

homicide patterns. Most recently, McCall et al. (2008) highlighted a number of contemporary

social and economic factors relevant to the sharp increase in US homicides (from the mid-1980s

to the early 1990s) followed by its equally dramatic decline – including, recession, illicit drug

market activity, incarceration rates and police presence.

Cultural influences
39

While structural theories focus upon the social conditions that can foster crime, cultural theorists

focus upon the ideas and values that particular groups hold and how these can generate

involvement in crime. For example, the ‘subculture of violence’ theory (Wolfgang and Ferracuti

1967) starts from the premise that homicide predominantly occurs among individuals from the

lowest socio-economic groups in society and that the lethal encounters in which they become

embroiled often arise from trivial incidents – such as minor insults or scuffles. These findings

can apparently be explained by the fact that the vast majority of these people share beliefs that

are conducive to the use of force and violence when insulted or challenged such an exaggerated

sense of honour, courage and manliness.

Both cultural and structural explanations suffer from the age-old problem of over-prediction.

Explanations of relative deprivation or poverty and homicide, for example, cannot account for

the fact that most people suffering from economic inequality do not engage in violence.

Approaches to Prevent homicide

Broadly speaking approaches to reduce or prevent homicide fall into one of the following

categories:

1) Strategies to reduce the overall frequency of interpersonal violence (the assumption being

that a decrease in violence will automatically bring about a decrease in homicide).

Examples would include efforts to reduce domestic violence (see Robinson this volume)

or violence in the context of the night-time economy or, more broadly, programmes to

tackle poverty and social exclusion.

2) The identification of people, locations or situations with an exceptionally high risk of

serious violence/homicide in order to ‘target’ these for preventative interventions (the

basic assumption similar to that above, however, with the potential benefit of a greater

reduction in homicide through a more focused use of resources). Examples include ‘risk

factor’ research to identify infants most at risk of being killed by a parent or specialist

strategies to target gang-related shootings (such as Operation Trident in London).

3) The use of measures that reduce the likelihood that an assault will end lethally (the aim

being to reduce the degree of violence or its impact upon the victim without necessarily

aiming to reduce the overall numbers of violent incidents). Examples include the use of

toughened or plastic drinking vessels in pubs and clubs or improvements in the speed and

efficiency of emergency medical treatment for victims of serious violence.

5) GENOCIDE AND DEMOCIDE

Genocide

The U.N. Genocide Convention, passed on December 9, 1948, has defined genocide as "acts

committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious

group.

By "genocide" we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word,

coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the

ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing), thus corresponding in

its formation to such words a tyrannicide, homicide, infanticide, etc. Generally speaking,

genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when

accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a

coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of

the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The
41

objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of

culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups,

and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of

the individuals belonging to such groups.

Genocide, however, is a confused and confusing concept. It may or may not include government

murder, refer to wholly or partially eliminating some group, or involve psychological damage. If

it includes government murder, it may mean all such murder or just some. Boiling all this down,

genocide can have three different meanings.

One meaning is that defined by international treaty, the Convention on the Prevention and

Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This makes genocide a punishable crime under

international law, and defines it as:

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,

ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its

physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Democide
42

Democide is any murder by government--by officials acting under the authority of government.

That is, they act according to explicit or implicit government policy or with the implicit or

explicit approval of the highest officials. Such was the burying alive of Chinese civilians by

Japanese soldiers, the shooting of hostages by German soldiers, the starving to death of

Ukrainians by communist cadre, or the burning alive of Japanese civilians purposely fire-

bombed from the air by American airmen.

Democide is meant to define the killing by government as the concept of murder does individual

killing in domestic society. Here intentionality (premeditation) is critical. This also includes

practical intentionality. If a government causes deaths through a reckless and depraved

indifference to human life, the deaths were as though intended. If through neglect a mother lets

her baby die of malnutrition, this is murder. If we imprison a girl in our home, force her to do

exhausting work throughout the day, not even minimally feed and clothe her, and watch her

gradually die a little each day without helping her, then her inevitable death is not only our fault,

but our practical intention. It is murder. Similarly, for example, as the Soviet government

forcibly transported political prisoners to labor camps hundreds of thousands of them died at the

hands of criminals or guards or from heat, cold, and inadequate food and water. Although not

intended (indeed, this deprived the regime of their labor), the deaths were still public murder. It

was democide.

The Roots of Group Violence

How do human beings develop the motivation to kill large numbers of people or even to

exterminate a whole group? How do the inhibitions that normally stop us from killing other

people decline? Understanding the roots of genocide and mass killing requires us to look at
43

social conditions, culture, political systems, relationships between groups, individual and group

psychology, and the behavior of "bystanders."

Difficult Life Conditions as a Source of Group Violence

Intense life problems in a society, as a starting point for group violence, include severe economic

problems, great political conflict, rapid and substantial social change and their combinations. For

example, Germany faced tremendous life problems before Hitler came to power. In Rwanda, a

very poor, overpopulated country, preceding the genocide of the Tutsis and the massacres of

"moderate" Hutus in 1994, there was further increase in population, great increase in economic

problems, a civil war, and political conflict among the Hutus who ruled the country.

Difficult life conditions create social upheaval and frustrate fundamental human needs (Kelman,

1990). Especially important are the following needs: for physical and material security, including

the belief that one will be able to feed oneself and one's family; for defense of one's identity or

self-concept, including one's values and ways of life; for a feeling of effectiveness and control

over important events that affect oneself; for a comprehension of reality, especially as social

disorganization and change make people's world views ineffective in understanding the world

and their place in it; for connection to and support by other people, especially in difficult times

when connection is disrupted by people focusing on their own needs (Staub, 1996b).

Psychological Responses

In response to difficult life conditions, people often scapegoat a particular group, blaming the

group for life problems. They adopt new ideologies, conceptions or visions of how to organize

society or the world. People need positive visions, especially in difficult times, but the ideologies

they adopt are often destructive, in that they identify "enemies" who supposedly stand in the way
44

of the ideology's fulfillment. Many authors suggest that scapegoating and destructive ideologies

are created by leaders in an effort to gain followers or solidify their influence over followers.

Another theory, however, is that when people cannot find ways to fulfill their basic needs

constructively, they act to fulfill them in destructive ways, such as turning to and even seeking

leaders who initiate or encourage scapegoating and offer destructive ideologies.

By scapegoating others, people come to feel better about themselves and their group: The

difficulties they face are not their fault. By adopting destructive ideologies, they adopt a new

understanding of what reality is and should be. The Nazi ideology told Germans that while

others, especially Jews, are inferior, they themselves are superior people and have a right to more

"living space," to the territories of other people. The ideology of Cambodia's communists, the

Khmer Rouge, proclaimed total social equality, identifying those who previously had power and

educated people in general as enemies unable to contribute to an equal society. Thus, some must

be destroyed to create a better world for "all." Both scapegoating and ideology strengthen

identity and connect people to others who join them in working for a shared cause against a

targeted group. Both create hope.

The Evolution of Destructiveness

Genocide does not directly result from turning against others. Its motivation and psychological

possibility evolve gradually. In most instances, there is a progression of actions and a

psychological evolution along a continuum of destruction. Sometimes the evolution starts long

before those who commit genocide appear on the scene. For example, long before the genocide

in Turkey in 1915 to 1916, the Armenians were discriminated against as a subject people and
45

suffered repeated attacks. In one period during the late nineteenth century, at least 200,000

Armenians were killed.

Both research with individuals (Buss, 1966; Goldstein et al., 1975) and my analysis of group

violence (Staub, 1989) indicate that people learn by doing. Engaging in harmful acts changes

individual perpetrators, bystanders, societal norms and institutions, and the entire culture. Such

changes not only make possible but also often encourage increasingly harmful acts.

Cultural/Societal Characteristics

A number of cultural/societal characteristics predispose a group to respond to difficult life

conditions by thoughts and actions that lead to violence. Most societies possess these

characteristics to some degree; they become dangerous, however, when they are present in

combination and to a substantial degree.

Differentiating between "us" and "them," and devaluing "them," are essential, central roots of

people turning against others. Such devaluation often becomes part of a culture and societal

institutions. Cultural devaluation evolves because it serves a number of functions, like

strengthening identity by elevating one's group over another or justifying the lesser status or

rights of some group. There was a history of devaluation of Jews by Germans; of Tutsis by

Hutus; and of Serbs, Croats, and Muslims by one another. There was a rift, suspicion and

antagonism in Cambodia between the ruling classes and wealthier people living in the cities and

the peasants working the land in the countryside.

A monolithic society, in contrast to a pluralistic society, is another important predisposing

characteristic. In a monolithic society, the range of values and beliefs and the freedom to express

them are limited-either by the political system or by the nature of the culture. In such a society, it
46

is less likely that members of the population will speak out against policies and practices that

inflict harm on some group. In a pluralistic society, by contrast, many voices intermingle in the

public domain. The public dialogue makes scapegoating, the widespread adoption of destructive

ideologies, and progression along a continuum of destruction less likely.

A strong respect for and obedience to authority is another predisposing cultural characteristic.

For example, long before Hider came to power Germans were regarded as extremely respectful

of and obedient to authority (Girard, 1980). In societies that are strongly oriented to authority,

people will be more affected by difficult life conditions, as their leaders and society fail to

protect them. They will also be less likely to speak out as leaders move the society along the

continuum of destruction.

Finally, unhealed group trauma can be a source of collective violence. Trauma creates insecurity

and mistrust. Members of victimized groups will see the world as a dangerous place. During

periods of conflict, they will tend to focus on their own vulnerability and needs, making it

difficult for them to consider the needs of others. Individuals and groups that have experienced

great suffering, especially violence at the hand of others, are more likely to respond to a renewed

threat with violence, which they will view as defensive aggression.

However, it is far from inevitable that survivors of group violence will become perpetrators.

Many individual survivors devote themselves to the service of other human beings (Valent,

1998). Most likely, these are people who have experienced genuine human connections to others

or have had protective or healing experiences and want to make sure that others won't suffer as

they have.

Preventing Collective Violence

Even when there is no imminent danger of intense violence, instigating conditions and culture

may make future collective violence probable. In such instances, prevention is extremely

important. The role of outsiders, of bystanders, of "third parties" is crucial here as well (Staub,

1996c).

A number of organizations, like Peaceworkers and Peace Brigade International, send foreign

volunteers into countries where the government or the military appears ready to perpetrate

violence against some group. Usually, perpetrators do not want the world to know about their

violence and do not want other countries involved. As a result, the simple presence of foreign

witnesses can sometimes stop violence at demonstrations or against individuals whom the

perpetrators consider undesirable. For example, in the fall of 1997, a coalition between Peace

workers and a new youth-led human rights organization, Global Youthconnect, sent American

college students to be present at student demonstrations in Kosovo. No violence occurred at

these demonstrations.

6) TERRORISM

Introduction

Acts of terrorism, whether bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, or other actions, are rooted in

violent behavior. As observed by McCue (2005), “In many ways terrorism is violence with a

larger agenda.” Yet in contrast to most violent offenders, terrorists use violence to support the

attainment of political, moral, or social goals. Terrorism has become a considerable and constant

threat in today’s world. Largescale attacks such as 9/11, the Madrid train bombings, and the

London subway bombings, have demonstrated the increasing willingness of terrorists, mainly

Islamic extremists, to engage in indiscriminate largescale destruction and murder. Since 1968,
48

19,960 terrorist incidents have taken place worldwide, resulting in 66,757 injuries and 22,668

deaths. Over this period, the number of international terrorist incidents has increased nearly 15-

fold from 132 incidents in 1968 to 1,932 in 2004.

Terrorism, the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and

thereby to bring about a particular political objective. Terrorism has been practiced by political

organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and religious groups, by

revolutionaries, and even by state institutions such as armies, intelligence services, and police.

Defining Terrorism

When discussing terrorism, one of the initial stumbling blocks is often the definitional

complexities that arise when trying to explain exactly what terrorism refers to.Although

terrorism is a term that is used widely in modern vocabulary, there has been and continues to be

much debate over how it should be defined. Schmid (1983) examined more than 100 existing

definitions of terrorism and dedicated more than 100 pages to the discussion, but was still unable

to make any reasonable progress toward a mutually acceptable definition. Interestingly, in his

review he found that “violence” was by far the most common word used to define the concept of

terrorism.

Jenkins (1980) described it as a “weapons-system” that can be used by a range of different

actors, including governments, political factions, criminal gangs, and religious movements or

cults.
49

Hoffman (1998) believes that “the terrorist is fundamentally a violent intellectual, prepared to

use and indeed committed to using force in the attainment of his goals.” He goes on to

characterize terrorism as (a) political in aims and motives; (b) designed to have more widespread

psychological effects beyond the immediate victims or targets; (c) carried out by a subnational

group or nonstate entity; and (d) conducted by an organization with an identifiable chain of

command or cell structure.

Despite the rather extensive quantity and variety of the definitions of terrorism, models of

terrorist behavior tend to fall into one of two paradigms: (1) the rational/strategic paradigm,

which views terrorist behavior as a deliberate, calculated choice made by an organization as part

of its overall strategyand (2) the psychological paradigm, which argues that individuals who are

drawn to and ultimately join terrorist organizations and commit violent acts are in some way

psychologically damaged. Although these two schools of thought remain dominant within the

field, it is significant to note that, as the study of terrorism has expanded, most scholars

acknowledge that multiple forces (i.e., social, psychological, political, economic, and cultural)

contribute to an individual’s decision to join a terrorist organization and to participate in the

perpetration of terrorist acts.

The term “terrorism” is fairly generic and is used by the media and others to refer to a

tremendously wide range of acts, including assassinations, the distribution of chemicals such as

anthrax through the mail, and insurgency efforts in countries such as Iraq.It was first coined in

the 1790s to refer to the terror used during the French Revolution by the revolutionaries against

their opponents. The Jacobin party of Maximilien Robespierre carried out a Reign of

Terror involving mass executions by the guillotine. Although terrorism in this usage implies an
50

act of violence by a state against its domestic enemies, since the 20th century the term has been

applied most frequently to violence aimed, either directly or indirectly, at governments in an

effort to influence policy or topple an existing regime. Terrorism is not legally defined in all

jurisdictions; the statutes that do exist, however, generally share some common elements.

Terrorism involves the use or threat of violence and seeks to create fear, not just within the direct

victims but among a wide audience.The goal of terrorism generally is to destroy the public’s

sense of security in the places most familiar to them. Major targets sometimes also include

buildings or other locations that are important economic or political symbols, such as embassies

or military installations. The hope of the terrorist is that the sense of terror these acts engender

will induce the population to pressure political leaders toward a specific political end.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines both international and domestic

terrorism as involving “violent, criminal acts.” The element of criminality, however, is

problematic, because it does not distinguish among different political and legal systems and thus

cannot account for cases in which violent attacks against a government may be legitimate. A

frequently mentioned example is the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, which

committed violent actions against that country’s apartheid government but commanded broad

sympathy throughout the world. Another example is the Resistance movement against

the Nazi occupation of France during World War II.

Characterizing Terrorism and Violence

Conceptually a greater understanding is needed of the congruence, or lack thereof,between

terrorism and violent crime. Terrorists and organized criminal networks both use violence to

achieve their goals, yet these groups have normally been seen as distinct threats. Yet, in recent

years there is increasing evidence that criminal networks and terrorist organizations are working

together with increasing regularity. As the threat of terrorism increases and as we continue to

dedicate more resources toward preventing future attacks, it makes sense that we should benefit

from our understanding of violent crime. A greater appreciation for the theoretical connections

(and disconnections) between terrorism and “ordinary” violence could lead to the transfer of

effective strategies used for analyzing and preventing violent crime (LaFree& Dugan, 2004). For

instance, by identifying the areas of overlap, we can use advancements in the behavioral analysis

of violent crime to improve our understanding and prediction of terrorist events.

Terrorists Have Different Motivations for Using Violence

One of the key distinctions between terrorists and their criminal counterparts is motivation.

Although terrorists engage in specific violent acts (e.g., homicide, assault, kidnapping), they are

driven by political or moralistic goals against what they often perceive is some “chronic”

grievance with a long history. Islamic fundamentalists, such as Osama bin Laden and his

followers, are not motivated to attack America only because of recent acts committed by U.S.

governments but by what they perceive are thousands of years of social injustice perpetuated by

the West. In this sense, terrorists are altruistic and view their crimes as serving the greater good

and supporting their constituency (Hoffman, 1998). Terrorists are highly motivated and loyal to a

particular cause, and their actions have symbolic value and are meant to send a message to a

wider audience (Paletz&Schmid, 1992). The immediate targets of violence, who are often
52

innocent victims, are distinct from the targets of influence, which can represent an entire segment

of society or the government decision makers representing them. Unlike most criminals,

terrorists often want their actions to be made public and to attach their group’s identity to these

crimes, as demonstrated by the recent use and distribution of videos of beheadings by a variety

of Islamic groups. When captured and prosecuted, terrorists frequently seek to turn their trials

into political theater.

In contrast to terrorists, who are motivated by ideology, religion, or a political cause, the typical

offender engages in violent crime for personal gain (Douglas et al., 1992). For most offenders,

violence is simply a method used for obtaining something desired by the individual, such as

financial reward, drugs, revenge, or power. Criminaldrug organizations use violence as a method

of enforcement and to protect their business interests. An armed robber uses violence to

accomplish the means of obtaining something of value, such as money or clothing, from a

specific victim. With some notable exceptions, such as victims of hate crimes including racially

motivated homicide and assassinations perhaps, the immediate victim of violence is not symbolic

of a larger political or social agenda.

Types of Terrorism

You will need to be familiar with the five types of terrorism.

 State-Sponsored terrorism, which consists of terrorist acts on a state or government by

a state or government.

 Dissent terrorism, which are terrorist groups which have rebelled against their

government.
53

 Terrorists and the Left and Right, which are groups rooted in political ideology.

 Religious terrorism, which are terrorist groups which are extremely religiously

motivated and

 Criminal Terrorism, which are terrorists acts used to aid in crime and criminal profit.

One popular typology identifies three broad classes of terrorism: revolutionary, subrevolutionary,

and establishment. Although this typology has been criticized as inexhaustive, it provides a

useful framework for understanding and evaluating terrorist activities.

Revolutionary terrorism is arguably the most common form. Practitioners of this type of

terrorism seek the complete abolition of a political system and its replacement with new

structures. Modern instances of such activity include campaigns by the Italian Red Brigades, the

German Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Gang), the Basque separatist group ETA, the

Peruvian Shining Path (SenderoLuminoso), and ISIL (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant;

also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS]).

Subrevolutionary terrorism is rather less common. It is used not to overthrow an existing

regime but to modify the existing sociopolitical structure. Since this modification is often

accomplished through the threat of deposing the existing regime, subrevolutionary groups are

somewhat more difficult to identify. An example can be seen in the ANC and its campaign to

end apartheid in South Africa.

Establishment terrorism, often called state or state-sponsored terrorism, is employed by

governments—or more often by factions within governments—against that government’s

citizens, against factions within the government, or against foreign governments or groups. This
54

type of terrorism is very common but difficult to identify, mainly because the state’s support is

always clandestine. The Soviet Union and its allies allegedly engaged in widespread support of

international terrorism during the Cold War; in the 1980s the United States supported rebel

groups in Africa that allegedly engaged in acts of terrorism, such as UNITA (the National Union

for the Total Independence of Angola); and various Muslim countries (e.g., Iran and Syria)

purportedly provided logistical and financial aid to Islamic revolutionary groups engaged in

campaigns against Israel, the United States, and some Muslim countries in the late 20th and early

21st centuries.

Causes of Terrorism

Discussions about the causes of terrorism are controversial, with many people viewing the focus

on underlying causes, motivation and grievance as implicit with justifying violence. A

dispassionate outlook is required to understand the driving forces and devise effective long-term

counter measures.

However, no comprehensive review of why some countries experience terrorism more than

others, exist. Explanations are varied and disagreements occur. For example, psycho-

pathological explanations for terrorism tend to divest terrorism of socio-economic and political

motivations. While researchers agree that one of the characteristics of a terrorist is normality,

psycho-pathological factors amongst group leadership can play a significant role. Other theories

over the causes of terrorism include:

 Perceptions of deprivation and inequality, especially amongst culturally defined groups.

This can lead to civil violence, of which terrorism may be a part. Terrorism represents
55

social control from below, as attacks are directed upon targets symbolizing central

government or a superior community.

 A lack of political legitimacy and continuity, as well as a lack of integration for the

political fringes, encourages ideological terrorism. The potential is exacerbated by

ethnic diversity.

 Terrorism in one country can spillover into neighboring areas. Mass media can influence

the patterns of terrorism by enhancing agenda setting, increasing lethality and

expanding the transnational character.

 A skewed gender balance and high proportion of unmarried males increases the

association with intra-societal violence and instability. Political and criminally motivated

violence is largely the work of young unmarried men.

 Windows of opportunity when terrorist violence can serve to influence opinion and

resource. In the case of peace agreements, radical members of coalition groups resume

and escalate hostilities to undermine confidence and prevent compromise, thus regaining

the initiative and avoiding marginalization.

 Hegemony in the international system by one or two actors will cause a high level of

transnational anti-systematic terrorism as a war by proxy develops. Therefore, terrorism

can represent a backlash against globalization and modernization.

Structural violence

Introduction

Broadly, violence refers to insults to basic human interests in survival, sustenance and wellbeing,

freedom, and a sense of meaning. "us we have four basic kinds of violence:

(1) There is the direct physical violence that injures and kills people, as in wars, torture and

certain kinds of crimes. Physical violence involves direct injury to the human body.

(2) There is economic violence of the sort that leads to deprivation, malnutrition and disease.

Economic violence is based on the use of material incentives, usually money, but sometimes

other sorts of goods such as food. Economic violence is sometimes described as exploitation.

(3) There is the political violence that violates by repression, depriving people of their freedom

and their human rights in general. In contrast to economic violence, political violence is based on

deprivation of nonmaterial goods.

(4) There is the cultural violence of alienation that reduces the meaning, value and quality of

life. Cultural violence refers to manipulation of the meaning framework within which individuals

and communities live.

For example, a society’s consensus view that certain categories of people are inherently less

worthy and thus deserve less pay and other amenities would be a manifestation of cultural

violence. Cultural violence is often manifested in the form of systematic discrimination against

particular categories of people.

Physical violence is direct violence while economic, political and cultural violence are forms of

structural or indirect violence. Structural violence is harm imposed by some people on others

indirectly, through the social system, as they pursue their own preferences. For example, if many
57

rich people begin moving into a community, they may drive up housing costs, harming some of

the people who already live there. "e harms may or may not be inflicted deliberately, and may

occur without the clear awareness of the parties involved.

Violence is the exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse. Johan Galtung (1969) directs

our attention to overt vs. more subtle forms of violence.

Direct violence is immediate, concrete, physical violence committed by and on particular,

identifiable people. Even when it is committed from afar, as in missile launches, particular

people decide what to do, particular people activate weaponry at a particular moment, and

particular people are victims.

Structural violence, in contrast, is less obvious than direct violence. It is gradual, imperceptible,

and normalized as the way things are done; it determines whose voice is systemically heard or

ignored, who gets particular resources, and who goes without.

In structural violence, agency is blurred and responsibility is unclear; there may not be anyone

person who directly harms another. Structural violence normalizes unequal access to such social

and economic resources as education, wealth, quality housing, civic services, and political

power.

Direct violence is horrific, but its brutality usually gets our attention: we notice it, and often

respond to it. Structural violence, however, is almost always invisible, embedded in ubiquitous

social structures, normalized by stable institutions and regular experience. Structural violence

occurs whenever people are disadvantaged by political, legal, economic, or cultural traditions.

Because they are longstanding, structural inequities usually seem ordinary-the way things are and

always have been. But structural violence produces suffering and death as often as direct
58

violence does, though the damage is slower, more subde, more common, and more difficult to

repair.

 Johan Galtung originally framed the term "structural violence" to mean any constraint on

human potential caused by economic and poIltical structures (1969). Unequal access to

resources, to political power, to education, to health care, or to legal standing, are forms

of structural violence. When inner-city children have inadequate schools while others do

not, when gays and lesbians are fired for their sexual orientation, when laborers toil in

inhumane conditions, when people of color endure environmental toxins in their

neighborhoods, structural violence exists. Unfortunately, even those who are victims of

structural violence often do not see the systematic ways in which their plight is

choreographed by unequal and unfair distribution of society's resources. Such is the

insidiousness of structural violence.

Structural violence is problematic in and of itself, but it is also dangerous because it frequendy

leads to direct violence. The chronically oppressed are often, for logical reasons, those who

resort to direct violence.

Structural violence has the effect of denying people important rights such as economic opportunity, social

and political equality, a sense of fulfillment and self-worth, and so on. When people starve to death, or

even go hungry, a kind of violence is taking place. Similarly, when human beings suffer from diseases that

are preventable, when they are denied a decent education, housing, an opportunity to play, to grow, to

work, to raise a family, to express themselves freely, to organize peacefully, or to participate in their own

governance, a kind of violence is occurring even if bullets or clubs are not used. Violence is done when

the optimum development of each human being is denied because of race, religion, sex, sexual preference,

age, or whatever.
59

Structural violence is another way of identifying oppression.

Under systems of structural violence, otherwise “good people,” thinking themselves peace loving

and at peace, may participate in “settings within which individuals may do enormous amounts of

harm to other human beings without ever intending to do so, just performing their regular

duties.” Hannah Arendt, writing about Adolph Eichmann, referred to the banality of evil to

emphasize the fact that routine, work-a-day behavior by unremarkable people can contribute

toward horror. Employees of the Union Carbide pesticide plant at Bhopal, India, did not see

themselves as contributing to structural violence, but they did, to the polluted land as well as to a

system of economic exploitation, even before the chemical leak that killed thousands in 1984.

Structural violence, including misery, hunger, repression, and alienation, most often works

slowly, eroding human values and eventually, human lives. By contrast, direct violence generally

works much faster and is more dramatic. In cases of direct violence, even those people no

specifically involved in the conflict are inclined to take sides. News coverage is often intense,

and because the outcome is often quite real and undeniable—such as dead bodies and property

destruction---the viewer is more likely to pay attention and to be concerned. World interest in

student-led-protests against the Chinese government in 1989, for example, increased

dramatically when Chinese troops and tanks opened fire.

Topic 1 Corruption

We often think of corruption as an economic development or political governance issue. I would

like to propose that corruption is a peace building issue of critical concern. I would argue that

corruption is a form of structural violence and therefore connected to the notion and goals of

peace building.
60

From a systems perspective, corruption has many driving factors and characteristic elements that

place it in the category of oppressive, structural violence. Corruption, like endemic violence may

be better understood as a public health issue. It is a socio-political and economic disease whose

destructive legacies and aftermaths are pandemic in proportions and nature. At the foundation of

this conversation, it is incumbent on us to acknowledge that corruption is one of the outgrowths

of widespread poverty and inequality around the Globe. It represents a legacy of the yawning gap

between the rich and the poor plaguing most countries worldwide. One could say that corruption

is like the often ignored, ‘unwanted child’ of our dominant global economic system – one that

promotes unregulated capital accumulation, profit, greed, self-preservation and the

commodification of human labor.

The aftermaths of corruption are multiple:

 Corruption fails to acknowledge or value the needs of the “common good” – it elevates

competition and diminishes cooperation

 Corruption works off of a deficit mentality – promoting a worldview that focuses on the

ideas of a “limited pie” resources and “zero-sum” game theories

 Corruption feeds off of power asymmetry and thereby inadvertently nurtures and

legitimates hierarchy, patrimony and dependency

 Corruption enforces pseudo-collaboration – convincing people that participation in the

corrupt system is the only way to personally survive and even to preserve societal order.

We are deceived into believing that without consenting to corruption, there would be

socio-political and economic chaos.

4 concrete actions we could all take to tackle this problem.

 Firstly, we must all commit to educate and raise awareness on this issue.
61

We need to challenge ordinary citizens to understand the ethical pitfalls, the economic drain, and

the social, political and cultural disintegration that comes with corruption.

 Secondly, we need to train and facilitate processes that allow public leaders in all sectors

to experience a personal transformation and thereby improve the governance structures

that mitigate corruption. Initiatives of Change (IofC) as an organization and social

movement, is doing excellent work in this arena already.

 Thirdly, we need to increase viable, life choices for the global poor in order to better

enhance quality of life for all persons sharing this planet. This requires bolstering the

resolve, resources and connections being allocated for local, national and global

development and humanitarian action goals.

 Fourthly, we must activate and mobilize for legislative and policy change from the

micro to the macro levels in each of our societies. If we are serious about overcoming the

complex, structural violence of corruption we are going to have to call for the reform of

economic systems across the Globe, for the prioritization of distributive justice in all its

forms, and for the transformation of corrupt cultures one person at a time.

Topic 2 Social injustice

Violence is the exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse. Johan Galtung (1969) directs

our attention to overt vs. more subtle forms of violence. Direct violence is immediate, concrete,

physical violence committed by and on particular, identifiable people. Even when it is committed

from afar, as in missile launches, particular people decide what to do, particular people activate

Structural violence, in contrast, is less obvious than direct violence. It is gradual, imperceptible,

and normalized as the way things are done; it determines whose voice is systemically heard or
62

ignored, who gets particular resources, and who goes without. In structural violence, agency is

blurred and responsibility is unclear; there may not be any one person who directly harms

another.

Structural violence normalizes unequal access to such social and economic resources as

education, wealth, quality housing, civic services, and political power.

Direct and structural violence have different manifestations, but they are clearly related and

interdependent. Ethnic cleansing, a euphemism for mass murder motivated by ethnic conflict, is

direct violence that results from many kinds of structural violence, forces which have intertwined

in “a long-forgotten history coming back to haunt us, a history full of thousands of economic,

social, ethical, territorial, cultural and political problems that remained latent and unnoticed

under the surface of totalitarian boredom”.

On the other hand, direct violence can give rise to long-term structural violence. Rape as a

weapon of war has long-lived effects on victims and their society. Raped individuals are often

reluctant to come forward because they fear exacerbating the debasement they and their families

have already experienced. In some societies, mass rape has produced social, economic, and

political inequalities; for example, in 1998, rape directed at Chinese women in Indonesia was

tactically employed to wrest control of Indonesia’s commerce away from Chinese citizens

 MORAL EXCLUSION

Both structural and direct violence result from moral justifications and rationalizations. Morals

are the norms, rights, entitlements, obligations, responsibilities, and duties that shape our sense

of justice and guide our behavior with others (Deutsch, 1985). Morals operationalize our sense of

justice by identifying what we owe to whom, whose needs, views, and well-being count, and

whose do not. Our morals apply to people we value, which define who is inside our scope of
63

justice (or “moral community”), such as family members, friends, compatriots, and

coreligionists. We extend considerations of fairness to them, share community resources with

them, and make sacrifices for them that foster their wellbeing.

We see other kinds of people such as enemies or strangers outside our scope of justice; they are

morally excluded. Gender, ethnicity, religious identity, age, mental capacity, sexual orientation,

and political affiliation are some criteria used to define moral exclusion. Excluded people can be

hated and viewed as “vermin” or “plague” or they can be seen as expendable non-entities. In

either case, disadvantage, hardship, and exploitation inflicted on them seems normal, acceptable,

and just—as “the way things are” or the way they “ought to be.” Fairness and deserving seem

irrelevant when applied to them and harm befalling them elicits neither remorse, outrage, nor

demands for restitution; instead, harm inflicted on them can inspire celebration.

Many social issues and controversies, such as aid to school drop-outs, illegal immigrants,

“welfare moms,” people who are homeless, substance abusers, and those infected with HIV are

essentially moral debates about who deserves public resources, and thus, ultimately, about moral

inclusion. When we see other people’s circumstances to be a result of their moral failings, moral

exclusion seems warranted. But when we see others’ circumstances as a result of structural

violence, moral exclusion seems unwarranted and unjust.

 Psychological Bases for Moral Exclusion

While it is psychologically more comfortable to perceive harm-doers to be evil or demented, we

each have boundaries for justice. Our moral obligations are stronger toward those close to us and

weaker toward those who are distant. When the media reports suffering and death in Cambodia,

El Salvador, Nicaragua, the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, we often fail—as a nation, as

communities, and as individuals—to protest or to provide aid. Rationalizations include

insufficient knowledge of the political dynamics, the futility of doing much of use, and not

knowing where to begin. Our tendency to exclude people is fostered by a number of normal

perceptual tendencies:

1. Social categorization. Our tendency to group and classify objects, including social

categories, is ordinarily innocuous, facilitating acquisition of information and memory

(Tajfel & Wilkes, 1963). Social categorizations can become invidious, however, when

they serve as a basis for rationalizing structural inequality and social injustice. For

example, race is a neutral physical characteristic, but it often becomes a value-loaded

label, which generates unequal treatment and outcomes (Archer, 1985; Tajfel, 1978).

2. Evaluative judgments. Our tendency to make simple, evaluative, dichotomous judgments

(e.g., good and bad, like and dislike) is a fundamental feature of human perception. Evaluative

judgments have cognitive, affective, and moral components. From a behavioral, evolutionary,

and social learning perspective, evaluative judgments have positive adaptive value because they

provide feedback that protects our well-being (Edwards & von Hippel, 1995; Osgood, Suci, &

Tannenbaum, 1957). Evaluative judgments can support structural violence and exclusionary

thinking, however, when they lend a negative slant to perceived difference. Ingroup-outgroup

and we-them thinking can result from social comparisons made on dimensions that maximize a

positive social identity for oneself or one’s group at the expense of others (Tajfel, 1982).

3. Fundamental attribution error. We tend to attribute our own behavior to situational factors

but attribute others’ behavior to their personalities or dispositions (Jones & Nisbett, 1971). This

attribution bias occurs because situational factors influencing others are less obvious to us than

the nuances of our own social situation. As a result, our characterological attributions about

others can be harsh or unflattering because we do not see the complex contextual factors that
65

influence their behavior. In interpersonal feuds and in intergroup wars, an adversary’s position

and interests are depicted as more simple than the complex contingencies and extenuating

circumstances influencing our own behavior.

4. Self-serving biases. Social comparisons often result in moral judgments with egocentric biases

(Messick & Sentis, 1979). Self-serving perceptions and judgments magnify others’ imperfections

and lead us to cast others as less deserving than ourselves (Miller & Ross, 1975). Research on

enemy images (cf., Holt & Silverstein, 1989; Volkan, 1988; White, 1984) and ethnocentric

conflict (cf., Brewer, 1979; LeVine & Campbell, 1972) document our tendency to see

adversaries as frightening, untrustworthy, or immoral.

5. Zero-sum thinking. Although many conflicts can be resolved with some mutual gains for

disputants, we tend to view conflicts as zero-sum so that gains for one mean losses for the other

(Deutsch, 1973). This perceived—but often exaggerated and inaccurate—incompatibility of

interests can generate negative attitudes, prejudice, bias, and hostility (Campbell, 1965).

6. Attributive projection. Our tendency to perceive our own views as correct and universal can

make it difficult to prevent them from intruding on and interfering with our inferences about

others (Higgins, 1981; Ross & Fletcher, 1985). Imagining others’ views as indistinguishable

from our own supports the belief that our own social reality is correct and helps us avoid

intrapsychic tensions that could result from realizing that others’ beliefs may be in opposition to

ours (Markus & Zajonc, 1985; Ross & Fletcher, 1985). Although we assume that age increases

our ability for perspective taking and understanding others’ thoughts and concerns, research on

social perception, attributive projection, and false consensus indicate that adults continue to

perceive others’ beliefs and perceptions as more similar to their own than they actually are

(Holmes, 1968; Ross & Fletcher, 1985; Ross, Greene, & House, 1977). Consequently, when
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others hold views that are different from our own, attributive projection leads us to view people

who hold them as wrong and outside our moral community.

 Dimensions of Moral Exclusion

Like violence, moral exclusion takes a variety of forms. The forms of moral exclusion can be

described on three dimensions: 1) intensity, from subtle to blatant; 2) degree of engagement,

from active to passive; and 3) extent, from narrow to wide in scope.

 Intensity. The intensity of moral exclusion ranges from subtle to blatant. At the mildest

end of the intensity dimension, we have rude or degrading behavior, then mild injury,

severe injury, torture, irreversible injuries, mutilation, and murder. More subtle forms of

moral exclusion relegate some people to social roles that undermine human dignity and

allocate resources so that they receive less. Subtle forms of exclusion include such forms

of structural violence as inadequate health care, sanitation, enforcement of housing

codes, and police protection; substandard civic services can cause injury and death, even

when direct violence is not intended. Blatant forms of moral exclusion include

intentionally injurious, destructive behavior such as inflicting disfigurement, pain, injury,

and death on people and destroying homes, communities, crops, and businesses.

 Engagement. Participation in moral exclusion ranges from unawareness to ignoring,

allowing, facilitating, executing, and devising. At the more passive end of the

engagement dimension, crimes of ignoring and allowing occur when people have the

social, intellectual, or financial resources to hinder moral exclusion, or aid those who are

harmed, but remain aloof, uninterested, or uninformed. At the more active end of this

dimension, are crimes of devising and executing violent acts. Architects of genocide,
67

despots such as Pol Pot of Cambodia, are at the extreme end of the engagement scale,

even when they themselves do not carry out the policies they devise and set into motion.

 Extent. Moral exclusion ranges in extent from narrowly focused, to widespread and

prevalent within a society. Narrowly focused moral exclusion affects small segments of a

society, targeting those viewed as marginal, deviant, or nonentities, such as people

having minority religious views or minority sexual orientations. Widespread moral

exclusion affects most of a society; for example, during dictatorships or inquisitions,

human rights violations and persecutions become the norm (cf., Moore, 1987).

 DETECTING SOCIAL INJUSTICE

Moral exclusion fosters structural and direct violence. Even when moral exclusion and structural

violence are widespread and severe, they can be invisible when they are institutionalized. Before

they can be addressed and deterred, they require detection. Detection, however, can be difficult

for several reasons:

1. Social injustice does not surface as a moral issue. Harm and suffering that others experience

is less obvious and painful than harm we ourselves experience. How we understand others’

situations determines what we believe can or should be done. Different kinds of obligations

ensue from construing others’ experiences as morally relevant or not (Berkowitz, Guerra, &

Nucci, 1991). Structural violence such as dangerous, brutal, degrading, and ill-paid work can be

perceived as a matter of personal discretion (e.g., “It’s her choice to work here”) or social

convention (e.g., “This is how these factories operate or they will close and people will be out of

work”) rather than a moral issue (e.g., “Poverty-level wages and insufficient safety mechanisms

are exploitative and should be illegal”).

2. Social injustice is hard to see up close. It is easier to detect injustice and moral exclusion in

the past or in distant cultures than it is in our own. Self-deception occurs when people encounter

evidence that contradicts their worldview. Psychologically, it is easier to question the credibility

of evidence, dismiss its relevance, or distort it to fit one’s views (Bandura, 1991). To avoid

discovering evidence that disconfirms important beliefs, people keep themselves intentionally

uninformed, failing to ask questions that would reveal unwanted information (Fingarette, 1969;

Haight, 1980), “leav[ing] the foreseeable unforeseen and the knowable unknown” (Bandura,

1991, p. 95). For example, information on the widespread use of child labor in the production of

rugs, clothing, and footwear was available many years before public opinion was mobilized to

combat it.

3. Indecision and inaction abets social injustice. Eldridge Cleaver’s aphorism from the

1960s, “you are either part of the problem or part of the solution,” emphasizes non-neutrality of

inaction. In malevolent social contexts, failing to perceive violence or act against injustice has

important individual and collective social consequences. Failing to perceive or oppose moral

exclusion in contexts of widespread, severe, active violence, such as slavery or political

repression, may be expedient and self-serving, but is a non-neutral decision with political

implications for victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. Since moral exclusion narrowly directed at

one group is more likely to spill over and spread than it is to abate, large portions of a society can

become collaborators in persecution, as happened during the Spanish Inquisition, the witch trials

in Europe, and McCarthyism in the United States (Moore, 1987).

4. Combating social injustice consumes resources. Constricting the scope of justice can lead to

harmful outcomes. Enlarging the scope of justice, however, is not always possible or desirable.
69

Although we like to think of ourselves as fair, moral, and upstanding, our capacity for justice is

finite. Considering, attempting, and achieving fairness incurs real costs in time, energy, and

resources.

These costs increase during conflict, as resource availability diminishes and claims on scarce

resources expand. Under adverse conditions, excluding others from one’s scope of justice is

adaptive and simplifies difficult choices. Thus, moral exclusion is not a simple problem, but

raises profound, complex questions about justice.

 FOSTERING SOCIAL JUSTICE

Structural violence and moral exclusion can be narrow in scope, relatively subtle in outcome, and

result from passive complicity. They can be perceived as acceptable, normal, and the way things

are done. Structural violence may offer some members of society protection against competing

claims on our scarce social or physical resources. Yet structural violence is not inevitable. While

our society is characterized by many forms of direct and structural violence, inclusionary

thinking also flourishes. As previously unrecognized injustices gain attention, now more than

ever we support the civil and human rights of such disadvantaged people as children, the aged,

and people with HIV, and increasingly, the effects of destructive environmental behavior on the

natural world. Fostering inclusionary thinking can be accomplished by:

1. Welcoming open dialogue and critique. Change and resource scarcity are a fact of

social life, but they increase the sense of threat and danger and consequently narrow the scope of

justice. Therefore, tolerance for and encouragement of discussion and critique is a first step in

recognizing structural violence and identifying its causes and cures. Supporting open dialogue

and valuing pluralistic perspectives not only can help us identify unfair and divisive procedures

for distributing social resources, but can also help social groups (e.g., political entities, citizen
70

organizations) develop sufficient flexibility to withstand the stresses of social change and

conflict.

2. Establishing procedures that keep communication channels open during increased

conflict. Dialogue and critique are especially difficult and particularly important in those

difficult times characterized by conflict and resource scarcity. Therefore, establishing

communication channels and keeping them open is important if open dialogue and critique are to

be encouraged. Foresight in establishing and maintaining these channels before they are needed

is essential if they are to function when conflicts escalate.

3. Valuing pluralism and tolerance. The need to view situations from perspectives other

than one’s own is axiomatic in conflict resolution, but the ability to do so is not innate (Opotow,

1992). Understanding others’ needs and positions means quieting one’s own views so that they

do not interfere with our ability to perceive the perspectives of others. Benefits that result from

pluralism and tolerance include an increased ability to take others’ perspectives; an increase in

fresh, novel, and creative approaches; personal growth; and constructive societal change.

Perspective taking and tolerance can be learned, and are more likely to become normative when

they are modeled throughout the society by leaders, teachers, and parents in their relationships

with each other.

4. Being alert to symptoms of moral exclusion. Although it is more comfortable to see

others as the ones perpetrating structural and direct violence, we are all skilled at moral

exclusion. Exclusionary thinking is promoted by prevailing myths that allow us to take a

righteous stance, deny negative outcomes that accrue to others, deny the validity of their

perspective, and deny our own contributions to the problems of social living. Awareness of the
71

symptoms of moral exclusion can help individuals, groups, institutions, and nations take actions

consistent with the moral principles they cherish.

Topic 3 Poverty

Definitions of poverty

Generally defined as lack of sufficient resources

United Nations

 Denial of choices and opportunities

 Lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society

 Not having enough to food and clothing a family

 Not having a school or clinic to go to

 Not having a land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living

 Insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities

 It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living in marginal or fragile

environments, without access to clean water or sanitation.

World Bank

 Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well being

 In include low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services

necessary for survival with dignity

Poverty is often defined in terms of a person’s income or expenditure.

For example, the World Bank has set the international poverty line at an expenditure level of

approximately US$ 1.25 per person per day.

Types of poverty

Absolute poverty
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o Individual is unable to provide even the basic necessities of life

 Felipe Miranda

o Cannot provide needed nutrition requirement

o Afford to at least two changes in clothing

 Copenhagen declaration

o Is a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including

food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health , shelter and education. It

depends not only the income but also on access to social services.

Relative poverty

o Median family income

o Relative poverty views poverty as socially defined and dependent on social context,

hence relative poverty is a measured of income inequality

Causes of poverty

 Cultural theories

o Stress differences between the poor & middle class

o Set of values& attitudes

 Social structure theories

o Focus not on attitudes but on the institutional structures, primarily the economy, that

constrains individuals by limiting opportunities

 Culture of poverty theory

o Poverty due to low wages, high rate of unemployment & underemployment as well as

culture& values of the people

Region by region

East Asia (driven by poverty reduction in China) has seen a spec tacular fall in both the numbers

of people living in poverty and the proportion of the population who are poor.

In South Asia the total numbers of poor people have remained stagnant (or risen slightly); but the

headcount index has declined by about 20 percentage points.

Sub-Saharan Africa has seen a dramatic increase in absolute poverty levels from 212 million in

1981 to 388 million in 2005. In this case the headcount index has remained stubbornly high, with

over half the continent’s population living below the absolute poverty line (reaching nearly 60%

during the stagnation years of the 1990s).

The absolute numbers of poor people in India are greater than in the whole of sub-Saharan

Africa, yet much of the international community’s focus is on increasing aid to Africa, whereas

India is seen as rich enough to help its own population.

Eastern Europe and Central Asia have seen sharp increases in poverty rates (at low levels) in the

wake of their transition from communism to capitalism.

Latin America and the Caribbean and the Middle East and North Africa regions have seen

absolute numbers of poor people stay steady (at low levels) and moderate declines in the

headcount index. One factor you may have noted is population growth. In South Asia the

headcount index fell quite steeply between 1981 and 2001, while absolute numbers of poor failed

to shift. This is because economic growth has been lifting an increasing percentage of a

(growing) population out of poverty. In sub-Saharan Africa, on the other hand, population

growth has been considerable but economic growth has been weak and failed to reduce poverty –

so both the numbers of people in poverty and the headcount index have increased. The headcount
74

index started to decline after 2000, however, with economic growth triggered by China’s demand

for natural resources from Africa.

Yet these explanations do not tell us why economic and population growth rates have risen or

fallen. For this reason, we will look more closely at the causes of success and failure in poverty

reduction.

Limitations of income/expenditure-based poverty lines

The international poverty line is a convenient way of taking snapshots of poverty in different

countries and looking at trends over time. However, it is a very blunt instrument for measuring a

complex phenomenon. A number of different factors affect its usefulness as a tool for policy-

makers.

You may have thought of the following factors:

 It does not show movement across the poverty line – who lives in permanent and who

lives in temporary poverty.

 It does not reveal the distribution of income within the household.

 It only values goods that are delivered on the market. In many poor countries, people

grow food and rear animals for their own consumption, a process not captured by the

measurement of the purchase of goods sold as commodities (although sometimes national

accounts adjust for this).

 The focus on income or expenditure leads to a focus on lack of money as the central

expression of what it means to be poor (Kanbur and Squire 2001; UNDP 1997).

A human development perspective

Let us look more closely at a standard definition of absolute poverty: ‘a condition of life so

characterised by malnutrition, illiteracy, and disease as to be beneath any reasonable definition of

human decency’ (World Bank, cited in Kanbur and Squire 2001).

This definition does not spotlight lack of income as a characteristic of poverty.

Rather, it concentrates on what it means to be in a state of poverty – to lack food, to be

uneducated, to lack access to health care.

So why don’t we measure who is poor in these ways too?

In fact, the human development reports of the UN Development Programme

(UNDP) do exactly this. Underlying their approach is an idea in development – called the

capability approach – which suggests that poverty lies ‘in the lack of real opportunity people

have to live valuable and valued lives’ (UNDP 1997:16). The capability approach looks at the

key functionings that people can achieve. Being healthy or literate might constitute core

functionings, but there are others as well, such as living a life free of political persecution.

The annual UNDP human development reports chart progress in many similar areas. They also

try to go beyond assessments of countries’ wealth or poverty in financial terms, by combining in

one index some key indicators of core functionings like life expectancy, literacy and educational

enrolment rates with countries’ national income. Through a complex equation that weights these

different factors, it then comes up with the Human Development Index. This ranks countries by

their achievements in all these areas combined. It goes from 0 to 1, with 1 being the highest

attainable level of ‘human development’.

Limitations of the human development approach

The human development perspective gives us more insight into the wellbeing of societies and

their people than a purely monetary focus. However, the HDI has limitations. Is it valid to try
76

and add income to life expectancy and some measurement of educational attainment? And why

choose these factors as key to a society’s wellbeing?

Measuring poverty will always be controversial. How we measure it is based on how we define

it: a human development approach, for instance, defines poverty broadly, so we must therefore

measure it broadly. This is very demanding in terms of gathering data, but it can be a fruitful way

to approach poverty because it recognizes the different components of people’s livelihoods. It

also gives policymakers more levers with which to tackle the complex problem of destitution.

Topic 4 Unemployment

Introduction

How are unemployment and violence linked? Ideas about this link are driven by an OECD

literature on crime, gangs and unemployment and by recent economic models of developing

country ‘civil wars’. These ideas are commonly linked with an increasing interest in the age-

structure of demography in developing countries, in particular the observation of a common

‘youth bulge’. There is a very widespread view that youth unemployment is a key cause of

insurgency or civil war (Cincotta et al, 2003; Heinsohn, 2003; Urdal, 2004). This is despite the

fact that there is barely any reliable evidence on youth unemployment for any developing

country. Running through many assumptions about the role of labour markets, and in particular

unemployment, in causing violence and violent conflict, is the influence of the “economic

approach” championed by Gary Becker (1968) with respect to crime and punishment initially

and then by others including Jack Hirshleifer (2001).

first sets out the main features of the economic approach to the study of violence in developing

countries, as a special class of economic approaches to an increasingly wide circle of social

phenomena. The paper then shows that there are other analytical approaches to studying labour
77

market participation and its links to violent behaviour – in wars and in other forms of violence,

including domestic violence. Indeed, there is an analytical bridge between the Beckeresque and

these other approaches, constructed out of the arguments of many economists who remain within

the mainstream of economic orthodoxy but whose own economic approach has dealt with “the

social” and yielded more to other social sciences than does Becker’s (or Hirshleifer’s). These

include Robert Solow’s treatment of the labour market and also the work of Bruno Frey and

others on the economics of terrorism.

The Economic Approach

In arguing for the application of economic calculus to the challenges of understanding and

designing policy for a range of crimes that created diseconomies, harm, or social loss, Becker

(1968) sought a “resurrection, modernization, and thereby I hope improvement” on much earlier,

pioneering studies by Bentham and Beccaria of criminology. If such an approach had “lost

favour” in the interim, Becker’s work contributed to what has become rather more than a return

to favour for an interest in applying economic calculus to criminology and a range of other social

phenomena and fields of study. Becker’s work, among others, influenced the increasing

confidence with which, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, economists sought to

use the axioms and conceptual apparatus of neo-classical economics to model virtually any

social phenomenon under the sun.

An intellectual movement that became known to detractors and champions alike as ‘economics

imperialism’, this extension of the economic approach was part of a broader trend in which the

concerns of the economic approach (utility maximisation, efficiency, and choice under

conditions of scarcity) became the litmus test of all policies.2 The resulting economism, as Judt
78

(2009) argued, was not an eternal, cross-cultural preoccupation but a historically, socially

acquired taste.

The ‘economic approach’ has had a significant effect on the study of violence and war in

developing countries (and beyond). One of the pioneering economists in this field, Jack

Hirshleifer, was an uncompromising economics imperialist. His combination of an economic

theory of conflict with an interest in promoting bio-economics (linking evolutionary theory and

rational choice economics) puts him squarely into the “behaviour” class of explanations of

violence identified – along with “ideas” and “relations” explanations – by Tilly (2000). Picking

up Becker’s idea of generalizing to the study of crime and punishment the economist’s analysis

of diseconomies by incorporating the costs of apprehension and conviction (and their

probabilities), Hirshleifer extended this approach to the choice individuals make between conflict

and cooperation (the way of Macchiavelli versus the way of Coase, as he had it). One of the

implications of Hirshleifer’s focus on opportunities, costs, and preferences was that, given the

low opportunity cost of violence to the poor, they have a comparative advantage in violence.

Those without access to legal, cooperative gainful employment were more likely to maximise

their utility by recourse to violent conflict and extortion.

Labour markets, violence, group belonging: analytical distinctions

In trying to identify and understand empirical and causal connections between labour market

status or experience and participation in violence, there are distinctions to bear in mind. The

usual distinction between employment and unemployment may be too simple. Underemployment

may be as significant as unemployment, as may be irregular employment. The type of

employment opportunities available may be significant rather than simply whether or not such

opportunities are available. Next, if there is a social significance to labour market participation
79

beyond the straightforwardly pecuniary this involves norms of fairness, ideas of status, and the

value derived from belonging to groups and forging social ties through a variety of interactions.

Participation in groups using violence – gangs, militia, insurgent groups, formal security forces –

will most likely also be partly or chiefly ‘about’ these same values, sources of identity, and

opportunities for social ties. Therefore, it is not always clear that participation in a violent

organization is driven by the social institutions and values of belonging to that organization or by

the violence it uses, per se.

Unemployment may be linked to violence without group organization (e.g. inter-personal

violence, domestic violence); unemployment may be linked to a wish to be part of a group,

whether violent or not; and it may be linked to deriving meaning from belonging to a group with

a high salience of violence. Where there is a link between unemployment and participation in

groups ostensibly organized around violence or commonly using violence, given that there are so

many influences on the use of violence it is difficult to know to what extent it is unemployment –

versus institutionalized violence, experiences of police brutality, violence in the home, etc – that

results in ‘referred violence’.

There is little research investigating the varying salience of violence across organizations as a

variable directly or indirectly linked to unemployment or other labor market experiences. Thus,

for example, Gambetta (1993) argues that physical violence is not the main modus operandi of

the Sicilian mafia and its mainland (and international) relations: as with states in ‘open access

orders’ (North et al, 2009), for the mafia the knowledge of a credible threat to use force is more

important than the frequent meting out of violence, which is typically counter-productive to the

‘business’ of Mafiosi.6 A different example is the varying salience of atrocity in insurgent

organizations (e.g. between Renamo in Mozambique and the NLA in Uganda or between

different parts of Sendero Luminoso in Peru) (see Weinstein, 2006).

Unemployment, social expectations, and intimate partner violence

One way to explore the significance of violence as opposed to (or alongside) group membership

is to explore the relationship between labor market status and inter-personal (not formally group

organized) violence – there is a particularly relevant literature on employment and domestic,

gender-based partner violence. These distinctions have not been studied systematically. This

paper suggests that there is a case for more systematic research guided by finer distinctions

between labour market categories and between violence and organizations.

The frustrations of unemployment and/or irregular employment have been linked to one form of

violence without being mediated through organizations, i.e. to intimate partner violence. The

literature here is on both industrialized and developing countries. The literature addresses (to

varying degrees) both women’s employment as a risk or protection variable and men’s

employment.7 A simple hypothesis – from the economic approach – would be that if either or

both partners are employed this should reduce household income stress and therefore reduce

violence between partners. However, alternative hypotheses are shaped by the political economy

of gender and the assumption that gender relations are typically governed by power relations and

that social expectations of what men and women ‘should’ do (breadwinner vs. home-carer roles,

etc.) shape behaviour. Macmillan and Gartner (1999), for example, find that the combination – in

North America – of female partner employment and male partner unemployment was a strong

predictor of male violence against women partners. In a cross-section survey of urban and rural

women in Kerala (India), Panda and Agarwal (2005) found that women whose husbands were

employed were significantly less likely to report domestic violence (physical) than women with
81

unemployed husbands. In a wider cross-sectional study in India women who were employed but

whose husbands were unemployed were twice as likely to report physical domestic violence

compared to those women who were unemployed but whose husbands were employed

(Jeyaseelan et al, 2007). Related research, highlighting unequal educational status between

partners within the context of a prevailing patriarchal ideology is Deyesse et al (2010), who find

that in rural Ethiopia women who are literate but married to illiterate men report the highest

exposure to domestic violence.