Thursday 25th September - Sunday 28th September 2003
St Catherine's College, Oxford

Session 1: Conflict, Violence & Explanations
Chair: Kate Flynn

Theories of Violence Put to the Test: Is Athens' Theory the "Best Explanation" of Violent Behaviour?
Patricia Turrisi
Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Various scientific disciplines offer radically different accounts of the origin of violence, but it is not clear how the study of violence is to be “scientifically” grounded. Moreover, what sorts of acts constitute violence and how it is to be explained differ amongst social scientists, biologists, anthropologists and neurophysiologists. In this paper we investigate whether any of these general theoretical approaches can be clearly considered to be the best approach to the explanation of the origination of violent behaviour, and our specific aim is to examine the controversial explanation of violent behaviour offered by Lonnie Athens.
The scientific study of violence currently uses some dozen major theories that fall into four major categories to account for violence among humans. Most assume violence is deviant and caused by factors that preside over the person, whether internally or externally. Natural theories attribute violence to congenital causes such as genetics, hormonal conditions, gender, or pathologies such as schizophrenia or bipolar disease. Biological conditions that are said to account for violent behaviour include brain damage, physical abuse, and malnutrition. Theories attributing violence to external causes claim violent actions arise from gender socialization, mental illness, or conditions in the home, school and society. Media-induced violence is a popular theory among sociologists, while some neuropsychologists study the influence of exposure to violent acts upon neurological states. An exception to theorists who find violence to be deviant, primate anthropologists are apt to explain violence as a normal evolutionary adaptation. Remaining theories hold that violence is random, inexplicable or simply “crazy,” in other words, impervious to explanation.
In this paper we analyze an array of types of theories of violence in contrast to an approach that purports to be the best explanation, that of Lonnie Athens in The Creation of Dangerous Violent Criminals (1992) and Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited (1997): the violent socialization of the person through a four-stage holistic and experiential process. We conclude that Athens’ theory is not the best explanation of violent behaviour when compared with its competitors on the basis of typical accounts of what it is to be the best explanation of a phenomenon.

The Globalization of Violence, The Violence of Globalization
Barry Weisberg
Executive Director of the Not-For-Profit Violence Prevention Peace Promotion Strategy

Human violence is defined as the threat or use of physical or psychological force to damage (mortality) or destroy (morbidity) people, other species and the environment (air, land, water, life cycles). This paper compares and contrasts this definition with other definitions and typologies, such as that of the World Health Organization.   After reviewing the most important analyses of globalization, it is argued that globalization  has both facilitated the spread of historical forms of violence and engendered unprecedented new forms of violence that  threaten not only the positive features of globalization, but the very future of the geosphere, biosphere and humansphere. The impact on individuals, families, schools, communities, and cities are examined.  The roles of countries, corporations and capital as producers and reproducers of violence are documented.  More important than the capacity of globalization to spread violence and crime worldwide, globalization itself has emerged as the principal form of  human violation, producing new varieties (types of violence), volumes (quantities of violence), velocities (speed at which the variety and volume of violence are increasing) and vectors (the result) of violence.  If continued unabated in its present form, globalization is likely to lead to catastrophic consequences for both the planetary and global systems within the next two or three generations.    There is no more potent symbol of this trajectory than the former  United States World Trade Center - one moment the symbol of world capital and the next minute the representation of death and destruction.  This paper is a result of  research conducted in over half the countries of the world and almost all of the mega cities with ten million or more people.

E Pluribus Unum: European Nationalism. Shopping for Identities in the European Union
Oleg Piletsky

Will the 21st century in Europe be one of international cooperation and globalization based on the model of the European Union, where state borders increasingly lose their significance? Or, will the resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia result in conflict, as the rest of Europe follows the pattern of Yugoslavia?
This paper will examine the development of nationalism and globalization throughout twentieth-century European history, from the formation of nation states to the current debates on the European Union and globalization. As an introduction to the paper, I will discuss the background and theories of European nationalism.
This paper challenges the contemporary critique of ideology and in doing so opens they way for new understanding of social conflict, particularly the recent outbursts of nationalism and violence and ethnic struggle. Provocatively, I will argue in favour of Zizek's statement that what drives nationalistic and ethnic antagonism is a collectively driven refusal of enjoyment. What we conceal by imputing to the other the theft of enjoyment is the traumatic fact that we never possessed what was allegedly stolen from us: the lack is originary, enjoyment constitutes itself as "stolen", or, to quote Hegel "it comes to be through being left behind". The late Yugoslavia offers a case study of such a paradox, in which we witness a detailed network of thefts of enjoyment. Every nationality has built its own methodology narrating how other nations deprive it of the vital part of enjoyment the possession of which would allow it to live fully.
In the second part, I shall apply this background to twentieth-century European history and case studies of specific countries (e.g. Germany, France, Italy and Great Britain.). Some observers noted that what hampers the process of "ever closer" integration in the EU is the belief in the ultimate power of the so called big Other personified by the State and the Government and inherent impotence of the potential "Super Other" in the form of the EU. It is precisely this belief in the existence of the big Other which enables us to account for a paradox: the reason people are ready to renounce their freedom cannot be sought in their "pathological" motivations, fear of dying, greed, lust for material goods, etc., since - if their fanatism is properly aroused - they are prepared to sacrifice everything, including of their life, for the despot whom they obey.