violence

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n.

1. Physical force exerted for the purpose of violating, damaging, or abusing: crimes of violence.
2. The act or an instance of violent action or behavior.
3. Intensity or severity, as in natural phenomena; untamed force: the violence of a tornado.
4. Abusive or unjust exercise of power.
5. Abuse or injury to meaning, content, or intent: do violence to a text.
6. Vehemence of feeling or expression; fervor.

Woven into the fabric of most societies, violence exists in many forms and at multiple levels. Whether physical, verbal, sexual, or psychological, whether inflicted by individuals, groups, institutions, or nations, violence threatens the body in numerous and complex ways.

At the microlevel, personal violence — acts of aggression or force performed by individuals — may be directed at inanimate objects, animals, one's self, or other bodies. Although some forms of interpersonal violence, such as injuries on the sports field or shootings in self-defence, are culturally sanctioned, the more serious forms, like homicide, rape, and aggravated assault, are usually criminalized. To understand why individuals commit violence, criminologists and psychologists often focus on the individual's personality type, family background, and possible physiological abnormalities. Sometimes, however, personal manifestations of violence are linked to broader social structures. As numerous feminist scholars have argued, domestic or family violence must be understood in terms of patriarchal family structures, which have traditionally given men the right to control and discipline their wives and children.

True forms of collective violence result when individuals engage in violent activities at a group or institutional level. Like personal violence, incidents of group violence such as riots, revolutions, and gang warfare are typically viewed as local events, tied to a specific cause or geographical region. Nevertheless, group violence possesses its own unique dynamics and is generally more destructive than personal violence. Sociologists and psychologists have observed that individual members participating in group violence frequently feel less responsibility for their activities and are willing to commit greater atrocities because they are acting in the name of a higher cause, be it religion, political beliefs, or loyalty to an ethnic group or nation. This process of deindividualization is fostered by the military to mobilize individuals for war and other forms of mass destruction like genocide. In war, not only are soldiers made to feel like cogs in a larger military machine, who ‘just follow orders’, but enemies are regularly dehumanized through propaganda, allowing for brutal massacres and torture rarely seen in personal, peacetime acts of violence.

Institutional violence — violence that serves or results from institutional objectives — can take extreme forms, like concentration camps or murders committed by totalitarian governments, or it can be part of a socially accepted economic system or religious organization's goals. Various slave systems have, for example, utilized physical, sexual, and emotional violence to deprive slaves of their humanity, while the Catholic Church employed violence in its Crusades, witch burnings, and inquisitions to neutralize perceived threats to its institutional boundaries. As modern industrial work environments like asbestos plants and coal mines demonstrate, however, institutional violence can also be subtle, resulting from acts of omission or deception rather than force.

At the macrolevel, advances in military and media technology have made violence (and the threat of it) global. Not only can we annihilate the entire planet through nuclear weapons, but we can transmit, via satellite, war and other public spectacles of violence into homes all over the globe.

— Christina Jarvis

See also genocide; killing; murder; war and the body.

noun

1. Power used to overcome resistance: coercion, compulsion, constraint, duress, force, pressure, strength. See attack/defend.
2. Exceptionally great concentration, power, or force, especially in activity: depth (often used in plural), ferociousness, ferocity, fierceness, fury, intensity, pitch, severity, vehemence, vehemency. See big/small/amount, strong/weak.

n

Definition: extreme force, intensity
Antonyms: passivity, peace, peacefulness

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n

Severe physical force; the forceful assault of a person.

The public health approach to the study and prevention of interpersonal violence was given formal recognition in 1984 when Surgeon General C. Everett Koop stated: "Violence is every bit as much a public health issue for me and my successors in this century as smallpox, tuberculosis, and syphilis were for my predecessors in the last century." As the injury and death toll from violent behavior have become increasingly evident, multidisciplinary scholarship in the study of violence has emerged and expanded at an unprecedented pace.

The most widely accepted definition of violence—sometimes termed "intentional interpersonal injury"—is: "behavior by persons against persons that intentionally threatens, attempts, or actually inflicts physical harm" (Reiss and Roth, 1993). The closely related terms "aggression" and "antisocial behavior" are generally applied to lesser forms of violence and include, but are not limited to, behaviors that are intended to inflict psychological harm as well as physical harm.

The public health approach to the study and prevention of violence entails a four-step process:(1) data collection of violence-related problems, assets, and resources; (2) assessment of the possible causes of violence through risk-factor identification; (3) the establishment and evaluation of violence prevention strategies; and (4) the dissemination and implementation of effective strategies. Public health, then, is inherently a research-driven and prevention-oriented science. This approach complements and overlaps with the narrower focus of criminology, which is primarily concerned with forms of violence that constitute crimes and with policies and practices that deter and punish perpetrators.

Violent Victimization

Epidemiological data on violence are derived from three primary sources: (1) hospital, emergency medical service, and medical examiner records;(2) police reports and arrest records (and other agency records, such as child protective services for reports of child abuse); and (3) self-report surveys and interviews. In addition, specialized studies that address the particular dynamics and contexts of violence have proven to be important to the understanding and prevention of violence.

The most complete and accurate violencerelated datasets are those on homicide victims. In the United States, the overall homicide victimization rate has fluctuated during the twentieth century from fewer than two homicides per 100,000 in 1900 to a high of nearly eleven homicides per 100,000 in 1980. In 1998, 17,893 individuals were murdered in the United States, which translates into an average daily death toll of forty-nine people. The worldwide 1998 homicide rate was 12.5 per 100,000, significantly higher than the U.S. homicide rate of 6.2 per 100,000. Nevertheless, data from the 1980s reveal that among the forty-one most developed countries, the United States has the third highest homicide rate.

Because violence is not evenly distributed throughout the population, these overall homicide rates provide only a partial picture of homicide's toll. Most notably, homicide victimization in the United States is most prevalent among youth. In 1998, homicide was the second leading cause of death among fifteen-to twenty-four-year-olds. Racial disparities in homicide rates are also disturbingly high. During the second half of the twentieth century, African Americans were murdered at five to eleven times the rate of their white counterparts. Gender differences are equally as dramatic, with males murdered at approximately ten times the rate of females. Finally, the risk of homicide is higher in urban than nonurban areas as well as within neighborhoods characterized by concentrated poverty. Neighborhood social disorganization also increases the probability of violence victimization as well as perpetration.

In comparative studies conducted in the 1990s, the homicide victimization rates in the United States, particularly among children and adolescents, were shown to be several times higher than those in any other industrialized country. In fact, the homicide rate for children under sixteen years old in the United States was five times higher than the corresponding homicide rate for the next twenty-five richest countries combined. The reasons for these elevated homicide rates in the United States are not fully understood; however, probable causes include easier access to firearms, more common and severe patterns of income disparities, and higher levels of racial and ethnic diversity in conjunction with racist and xenophobic attitudes and behaviors.

The question of mechanism, or the means by which people are murdered or injured, is another critical piece of information with respect to our understanding and prevention of violence. The examination of mechanism was particularly helpful in understanding the tremendous increase in homicide victimization rates of adolescents in the United States from 1987 to 1993, and the subsequent downturn through 1998. When the data are disaggregated by mechanism, a clear picture emerges: These trends over time can be accounted for by changes in the number and proportion of youth murdered with a firearm. The changes in gun use during this period are generally attributed to three major factors: the crack epidemic—which had the effect of destabilizing local drug trafficking markets, rendering them more volatile and violent—and the subsequent petering out of this epidemic; changes in economic opportunity; and changes in policing policy for gun violations.

Most assaultive behavior, however, does not result in death. In 1997 more than 1.75 million people in the United States were treated for assaultive injuries in emergency departments, and more than 10 million individuals aged twelve and over reported that they had been victims of violent crimes. These and other data reveal that young people, African Americans, and males are disproportionately victimized by nonlethal forms of violence, though these disparities are less pronounced than for homicide victimization.

Violence Perpetration and Associated Risk Factors

The number and characteristics of individuals who commit murder cannot be precisely determined because of limitations in law-enforcement reporting systems and because identifying information about perpetrators are only available for cases in which an arrest is made or the perpetrator is otherwise identified. Still, some reasonably sound information about adolescents who murder is available: About nine in ten are male, more than half are African American, approximately half act alone, most kill individuals who are close in age and of the same ethnic background, and most use a firearm. The peak or modal age among homicide perpetrators occurs in the late teens and early twenties.

Since the rampage shooting at Columbine High School in the spring of 1999, much concern about violence at schools has been aired, and fears that such events could happen anywhere have emerged. Contrary to these perceptions, however, the number and rate of youth-initiated school violence—both lethal and nonlethal—generally decreased, or at worst remained relatively stable, during the 1990s. Like the homicide victimization rates, the overall juvenile homicide perpetration rate, as well as the aggregate juvenile offending rate for serious forms of violence, rose precipitously in the late 1980s, peaked during the early to mid-1990s, and then decreased through the beginning of the twenty-first century. School-based homicides constitute only 1 percent or fewer of all homicides committed by young people, and schools remain one of the safest environments for children and adolescents.

Equally important to estimating the scope of violence perpetration among youth are efforts to identify risk factors—the characteristics that when present increase the probability that a young person will subsequently engage in violent acts. There are five important aspects of risk factors. First, risk factors tend to be additive—the more risk factors that are present, the more elevated the risk of violence. A single risk factor generally has low predictive power. Even among those children and adolescents with multiple risk factors, few will become violent. Second, risk factors occur, and need to be addressed, at multiple levels, including individual, family, peer group, school, and neighborhood or community levels. Third, different risk factors pertain to different points in the lifespan, with family-level factors playing a greater role for younger children, and peer group and neighborhood factors playing a greater role for older children. Fourth, some risk factors are specific to certain types of violent behavior (e.g., risk factors for sexual violence may be quite different than those for robbery). And fifth, the severity of riskfactor exposure is likely to increase or decrease risk proportionately (e.g., extreme and chronic child abuse is likely to have a more profound effect than lesser forms of child maltreatment).

Several literature reviews have been undertaken on risk factors that increase the probability that children and young teens will subsequently engage in violent behavior. These reviews have sorted out risk factors into two categories: risk factors during the childhood years and risk factors during the early adolescent years. Risk factors during infancy, and even perinatally, have also been identified, (e.g., child abuse and neglect). This entire body of research, however, is relatively new and far from exhaustive. Therefore, some factors that may in reality increase subsequent risk for violence perpetration may not have been identified in the extant literature because they have been inadequately researched or because of their complexity—the potency of a risk factor may be significantly affected by specific contextualized circumstances (e.g., bystander support), neighborhood norms, and personal history. Similarly, one factor may only become a risk factor, or may become a more potent risk factor, when it occurs in tandem with another factor.

During childhood, the two most powerful predictors of subsequent violence perpetration are substance use and delinquency. Additional, less potent risk factors include aggressive behavior; family violence; inconsistent, overly lax, and harsh disciplinary practices; association with antisocial peers; and poor attitudes toward schooling. Media violence has been shown to increase aggression in the short term, but such exposure has not been linked directly to violent adolescent behavior. Conversely, attempts to reduce violence through media advocacy (e.g., the "Squash It" campaign) have not been shown to reduce rates of violence significantly.

During the early adolescent years, three major and interrelated risk factors have been identified: weak associational ties with nondelinquent peers; strong associational ties with antisocial and delinquent peers; and gang membership. Gang membership, in particular, appears to fulfill important psychological needs with regard to peer acceptance and belonging, as well as the need for enhanced social status, particularly for unpopular youth and for those youth who feel socially powerless. Because gangs serve these fundamental needs, efforts to dissuade young people from joining youth gangs is a more efficient strategy than trying to entice them out of the gang after they have joined, particularly since gangs typically promise to provide valued incentives such as money, power and status, excitement, and, for males, promises of sexual "favors." On the other hand, to ignore current gang members, or rely exclusively on punitive law enforcement efforts, is an inefficient and ineffective violence reduction strategy. Community-based outreach efforts in association with community policing operations are required. Such efforts need to address the psychological, interpersonal, and economic needs of gang members; they should be based upon multiple sources of information about local gang activity; and they should include collaborative efforts involving the police, schools, social service agencies, former gang members, and grassroots organizations.

Additional risk factors during the early adolescent years include antisocial behavior, attending a school in which gangs are prevalent, having been a victim of a violent crime, and residing in a high-crime neighborhood and/or in neighborhoods that have high levels of social disorganization.

While quantitative risk factor analyses are important, qualitative studies based on in-depth interviews, focus groups, and intensive field studies of particular groups of youth provide insights into the dynamics underlying risk-factor analyses and point to additional factors, or combinations of factors, that may be fruitful to study. These studies are important given the generally weak overall predictive power yielded from risk-factor analyses. Examples of such studies include James Garbarino's 1999 study of children and adolescents who have committed violent crimes, Elijah Anderson's 1999 study of the impact of street and cultural norms in an impoverished African-American section of Philadelphia, John Devine's extensive 1996 field studies of school violence in New York City, and Felix Padilla's in-depth 1992 study of the dynamics and culture of a Latino gang in Chicago. These richly textured studies, and others like them, capture the complex and tragic nature of acts of violence. They also provide insights about the psychological logic and developmental history of those who commit violent acts, reminding us that even the most vicious forms of violence can ultimately be understood, though not justified, as uniquely human responses to a volatile mix of difficult circumstances and experiences combined with specific personality and character dynamics.

Prevention Strategies

Four major interrelated approaches to the prevention of violence have been articulated: (1) the inculcation or enhancement of protective factors (factors that reduce the probability of violence perpetration among individuals exposed to known risk factors) and/or a corresponding reduction in the number or severity of risk factors, (2) the adoption of self-contained violence prevention programs, (3) the specification of generic strategies (e.g., social skills training) derived by grouping effective and promising programs according to the approach they adopt and the specific program characteristics they utilize, and (4) the elucidation of framing principles that guide the establishment and implementation of programs.

The use of mechanical and electronic surveillance devices (e.g., metal detectors), and the establishment of laws, law enforcement policies, judicial processing, and incarcerative practices remain primarily in the domain of criminology and need to be better integrated with public health approaches. One successful example of this kind of comprehensive and integrated approach was established in Boston. This strategy involved several agencies and programs working together to reduce gun and gang-related violence. The police, probation officers, and courts addressed surveillance, interdiction, and enforcement; legislators passed tougher penalties for gun-related violence; researchers conducted analyses of gun violations; and social workers and religious leaders counseled at-risk youth in the use of nonviolent conflict resolution techniques and offered employment opportunities and program activities. Other approaches to violence prevention, such as changes in public policies,(e.g., foster care policies, school reform, and employment and housing strategies), have received only passing attention within the public health field, with the notable exception of the significant attention paid to firearm policies.

The study of protective factors has been spurred by the long-standing observation that some children who are exposed to several known risk factors do not become violent or otherwise seriously impaired. The task, then, is to identify common characteristics or circumstances that buffer these resilient children from the ill effects of exposure to known risk factors. The scientific study of protective factors, however, is in its infancy and the evidence from this small body of literature is suggestive rather than conclusive.

The most well-documented protective factor is maintaining conventional values, including the rejection of aggressive or violent behavior as an appropriate means to resolve conflict. This characteristic is associated with the peer-level protective factor of associating with peers who hold prosocial values. At the family level, a warm and supportive relationship with one's parents or guardians and engagement in familial bonding activities have been associated with reduced levels of aggression.

As children move into the more high-risk adolescent years, family factors alone do not continue to exert a powerful protective effect. The innoculative effects of protective factors appear to require developmentally appropriate exposures at each stage of development. At the school level, commitment to school has been identified as a protective factor. Finally, because neighborhood and societal change are so difficult to study in controlled studies, and also so challenging to address, protective factors at these levels have not been identified.

The development and implementation of self-contained violence prevention programs has a long-standing history. The introduction of scientific methods to assess the effectiveness of such programs, however, only commenced in the 1980s, with the number and rigor of such evaluations accelerating rapidly during the 1990s. Still, scientific evaluations are very costly and only a small proportion of programs now in use at schools and in communities have been rigorously evaluated.

The programs that have been evaluated are generally highly structured, implemented by professionals, and developed at academic institutions. While this body of research has revealed that some programs do indeed reduce rates of aggression and violence (and that some programs clearly do not work), it is inaccurate to assume that programs that have not been evaluated do not work, or conversely, that they are effective.

It is also inaccurate to conclude that programs that have been shown to be effective will work equally well in all settings and contexts. Very little is known about whether, or how, programs need to be adapted from one setting to another. Some programs may not work equally well for males and females, some may work well in urban but not rural settings, and some programs may work in one cultural context but not another. Some programs are appropriate for all children or youth within a designated age range (universal, or primary, prevention), some are appropriate for children and youth exhibiting or possessing known risk factors (selective, or secondary, prevention), and some programs are appropriate for youth who have already engaged in violence or serious delinquent behavior (indicated, or tertiary, prevention).

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, several compendia of effective, promising, and ineffective violence prevention programs were issued. These include reports by the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, the Office of Justice Programs, the National Research Council, the Violence Institute of New Jersey, M. W. Lipsey and D. B. Wilson (1998), and M. B. Greene (1998). The major strategies that have been shown to be effective, along with brief descriptions of illustrative programs, are summarized below; however, readers interested in a full explication of such strategies, along with detailed descriptions of effective and promising programs, are urged to consult sources listed in the bibliography.

The most widely adopted violence prevention strategy emphasizes social skills training to resolve conflict without resorting to aggressive or violent tactics. Social skills training programs generally utilize structured and interactive curricula (e.g., role playing) and are usually classroom based. One example of an effective social skills training programs is Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies, or PATHS. This program is designed for children from kindergarten through fifth grade and focuses on five specific skills: emotional literacy, self-control, social competence, positive peer relations, and interpersonal problem solving. School-based sessions are taught for approximately thirty minutes each, and the program developers recommend that these lessons should be taught three times per week.

A second overall strategy focuses on parent training and family dynamics. This approach is both educational and therapeutic and based on the theory that a caring, supportive, and stable family life will provide the initial grounding to deter children from subsequently engaging in aggressive, delinquent, or violent behavior. Most commonly, programs are designed to work with parents of young children and are focused on parental decision making, communication, monitoring and sanctioning strategies, and on educating parents about child development. Several family-based strategies have been shown to be highly effective in reducing aggressive and/or violent behavior.

Home visitation, in which therapeutic guidance is provided to parents in their residence, has gained much recognition in recent years. One of the most effective home visitation programs is the Nurse Home Visitation Program, in which a trained nurse visits the home setting during the latter stages of pregnancy through the point at which the child reaches age two. Long-term follow-up studies indicate that the adolescent children of program participants had significantly fewer arrests than control-group adolescents. In addition, two family-oriented programs for adolescents who have exhibited violent and delinquent behavior have also been shown to be effective: Functional Family Therapy and Multisystemic Therapy. Both programs provide intensive family and individual therapy, as well as guidance to parents in addressing practical and everyday problems, and both have effected significant reductions in subsequent delinquent and violent behavior.

A defining feature of a third approach to violence prevention is the central role played by young people in the program's operation and implementation. Four principles underlie such programs: (1) young people understand their own peer culture and what kinds of program components are feasible; (2) young people provide a typically untapped human resource; (3) program norms are more readily diffused through the network of involved youth; and (4) the involvement by young people in implementing such programs provides an alternative for antisocial, violent, and delinquent behavior. The most popular of this class of programs is school-based peer mediation, in which a trained student mediates a dispute between two other students with the goal of establishing a mutually agreed-upon peaceful solution. Other types of programs engage young people in community organizing or advocacy activities. While the small number of peer-operated programs that have been rigorously evaluated has not shown significant reductions in violent or delinquent behavior, the theoretical promise of these programs, the fact that many types of youth-led programs have not been evaluated, and the inherent complexity in evaluating such programs suggest that a decision to forgo or eliminate such programs is premature. Nevertheless, sound policy also suggests that programs should be discontinued if they continuously fail to demonstrate their effectiveness.

Another class of programs utilizes psycho-educational strategies to reduce the likelihood of engagement in violent behavior. The most wellknown type of program within this class of programs is mentoring. While not all mentoring programs are effective, the Big Brothers Big Sisters program model has been rigorously evaluated and shown to be an effective violence prevention strategy. Stand-alone individual counseling, however, is considered an ineffective violence prevention strategy.

Another type of program involves counseling and supportive services for youth who have been exposed to violence, either as victims or as witnesses—both of which are risk factors for subsequent perpetration. In one such program, the Child Development Community Policing Project, police officers receive training in child development and the dynamics of psychological trauma and work together with mental health clinicians—who receive training in police practices and culture—in identifying and responding to children who have been exposed to violence. This program illustrates the potential value of integrating clinical and law enforcement approaches.

Finally, some programs are hybrids, either combining two or more of the approaches outlined above or not fitting neatly into any of the four approaches. One "hybrid" is Olweus's Bullying Prevention Program. This program has several key features, including skills-based classroom training, parent involvement, policy development, "hot spot" analysis, and counseling. Evaluations of this program suggest that it is effective in reducing levels of bullying and harassment. Indeed, multicomponent programs are generally viewed as preferable, particularly for high-risk youth.

Public health efforts to address gun-related violence also do not fit neatly into any of the approaches outlined above. Strategies to reduce gun violence include the promotion of laws and policies that reduce access to guns (some evidence of effectiveness); the adoption of mechanical and electronic means to make guns safer, such as trigger locks and personalized guns (the consistency and quality of such devises are variable and none has been adequately evaluated); educating children in safe gun practices (ineffective); gun buybacks (ineffective); and public information campaigns (no evaluations have been conducted).

As indicated above, an alternative way to approach violence prevention programming is by establishing a set of framing principles that inform their development. While this cannot be done without examining what is known from evaluation studies and from risk and protective factor analyses, it is too early in the evolution of such studies to simply extract these principles from the programs that have been subject to rigorous evaluation and proven to be effective or promising. Some of the principles listed below, therefore, owe more to findings in other areas of public health than they do to the violence prevention field per se. Some principles have been described in earlier parts of this article (e.g., that no single program or approach works equally in all settings and circumstances). What follows is a brief though not exhaustive list of such principles.

The first principle, known as local ownership, suggests that programs will be most successfully operated if the residents in the targeted neighborhood and the specific group of individuals for whom the program is designed to help are centrally involved in the planning, operation, and administration of the program. A second principle multidisciplinarianism, suggests that insights, methods, and approaches from multiple disciplines are needed in developing and implementing violence prevention programs. A third principle, collaboration, suggests that no single agency or group can successfully operate a program in isolation: Violence prevention programs are inherently neighborhood-based and require the engagement of multiple stakeholders.

A fourth principle suggests that a strength-based focus should be emphasized—focusing exclusively on deficits without drawing upon the strengths and interests of the individuals the program is designed to help and the resources available in the community will reduce the probability of success. A fifth principle suggests that committed leadership is necessary for the successful planning and implementation of violence prevention programs. Similarly, staff development is also critical: An untrained, unsupported, and unsupervised staff simply will not succeed in program implementation. Staff also need to be temperamentally suited to the populations with which they work.

Program accessibility is also critically important: If a program is sited in an undesirable location (turf issues are very important for young people), is sited in a difficult-to-get-to location, or is physically unwelcoming or uninviting, then the program will simply not attract participants. Specificity is also important: Programs need to set specific and measurable objectives, otherwise they tend to flounder and evaluation is rendered unfeasible. A final principle is local fit; A program's design and objectives should be derived from a thorough and multipronged assessment of the nature and extent of the violence-related problems in the neighborhood in which the program will be implemented. Additionally, new programs need to fit well into the context of existing programs and strategies.

Perhaps it is fitting to end with a quote from Surgeon General David Satcher, taken from his preface to the Surgeon General's report on youth violence: "As a Nation, we possess knowledge and have translated that knowledge into programs that are unequivocally effective in preventing much serious youth violence."

(SEE ALSO: Abuse; Adolescent Violence; Antisocial Behavior; Crime; Domestic Violence; Gun Control; Homicide; Prevention; Reckless Driving; Safety; Street Violence; Suicide; Terrorism; War)

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U.S. Department of Education (1999). 1999 Annual Report on School Safety. Washington, DC: Author.

Violence Institute of New Jersey (2001). Source Book of Drug and Violence Prevention Programs for Children and Adolescents.

Wintemute, G. J. (1999). "The Future of Firearm Violence Prevention." Journal of the American Medical Association 282(5):475–478.

— MICHAEL B. GREENE

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n.behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Violence is endemic to political life. The pre-political state of nature is often depicted as a place of indiscriminate violence, which we escape by forming a political society under the rule of a centralized authority (the State) that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. When the legitimacy of the State is challenged, and legal routes for voicing one's dissent are closed, citizens once again resort to violence. This can take different forms, from civil disobedience, to terrorism, to outright revolutions.

The standard definition of violence refers to an act of force exerted to impart physical harm or injury on another person. This definition is inadequate on at least three accounts. It refers exclusively to physical harm or injury, neglecting psychological abuses or attacks. Only other persons are listed as the potential victims of violence, whereas animals or inanimate objects can also be the targets of violence. It assumes that there is a direct link joining the perpetrator and the victim of violence, overlooking the fact that violence often operates in indirect ways.

A more accurate but cumbersome definition of violence would be along the following lines: ‘violence is the direct or indirect physical attack, injury, or psychological abuse of a person or animal, or the direct or indirect destruction or damage of property or potential property’. This richer definition of violence provides a more accurate standard for determining the conditions of non-violence. As Johan Galtung points out, apart from deliberately inflicting harm (direct violence), creating economic misery, repression and alienation should also count as types of violence (structural violence).

What distinguishes general ‘violence’ from ‘political violence’? An act of violence is ‘political’ when it involves the actual or potential violation of someone's basic rights. Acts of political violence are illegitimate when the rights of the victim are unjustly violated. For example, sexual violence or domestic violence is the violation of a basic right to non-interference, or a right to self-ownership, which is why sexual or domestic violence are political issues. Under special circumstances, and as long as any divergence from the initial assumption of respecting the rights of others is justified, acts of political violence can be legitimate, even though the same act would normally constitute a violation of rights. For example when the State punishes those who do not respect its laws, or when citizens rebel against the injustice of the State.

— Vittorio Bufacchi

The first crime recorded in the Bible is the slaying of Abel by Cain (Gen. 4:8) and the first crime mentioned in the Ten Commandments is Murder. The great Flood was a Divine punishment for lawlessness and violence (ḥamas; Gen. 6:11-13), while Jacob condemned his sons Simeon and Levi for their ruthless violence against the men of Shechem (Gen. 34:30, 49:5-7). The Day of Atonement liturgy at its climax, in the Ne'Ilah (Concluding Service), affirms that this day was given to Israel "so that we should cease from violence" (oshek).

Jewish law nevertheless recognized that to act violently or aggressively is human, and a blanket pacifism was never endorsed. Realizing that it could not eliminate this tendency, Judaism sought to confine violent action within a framework of holiness and dignity. A distinction was to be made between aggressors and victims, with the sages unanimously sanctioning self-defense: "If one comes to slay you, slay him first" is the rabbinic formulation (Num. R. 21:5; Sanh. 72a). One forfeits one's own life, however, by becoming an aggressor. When someone told Rava that he had been ordered to kill another man or forfeit his own life, Rava replied: "Rather allow yourself to be killed than commit murder. Is your blood redder than that other man's? Perhaps his blood is redder than yours (Pes. 25b).

Faced with violence, Jews could react in four different ways: by self-defense (whenever possible), by choosing martyrdom, by taking flight, or by seeking an accommodation (the Marrano solution). As far as resorting to violent action is concerned, the halakhah permitted extreme violence only as a means of preserving life. Limited violence was allowed to defend one's religious convictions or property, but killing a burglar is permitted only when the householder has reason to fear for his own life. In defending oneself or others, where life can be saved through wounding the aggressor it would be murder to take his life (Sanh. 72b). This principle is derived from the biblical law concerning housebreaking and robbery (Ex. 22:2).

Under no circumstance is violence permitted for the sake of revenge, though violent action may be lawful when dealing with criminals. Here, a typical example is the use of force to liberate persons held in captivity and whose very lives are at stake; operations against kidnapers, hijackers, and "skyjackers" would be the modern equivalent (see Captlves, Ransoming of). See also War.

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Action that injures or destroys that to which it is applied. Structural violence is that which is inherent in a situation whose intentional or unintentional result is injury and destruction, and to which the authors of the situation are indifferent. In this sense coalmines, or family life, may conceal structural violence. The main social thinker to recommend or glorify violence as a political means was Sorel.

Infliction of physical damage on person or property. In sport, the term violence usually refers to serious types of overt aggression.

Human history has been marked and marred by violence; the United States has proved to be no exception. Violent conflict between Native Americans and settlers and immigrants flared soon after the English colonization of Virginia in 1607 and lasted nearly three centuries until the defeat of the Lakotas at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1890. In the numerous wars fought, both sides engaged in massacres. Six massacres stand out for the numbers slaughtered: 400 Pequot Indians in Rhode Island (1637); 300 Sioux at Wounded Knee; some 200 at Wyot in Humboldt Bay, California (1860); 200 Cheyennes at Sand Creek, Colorado (1864); 173 Blackfeet on the Marias River in Montana (1870); and 103 Cheyennes on the Washita River in Oklahoma (1868).

Similar to white-Indian racial violence were the black uprisings; the first was in Virginia in 1691 followed by significant revolts in New York City in 1712 and 1741. By far, the greatest number of these rebellions was in the South—the most notable of which was led by Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831.

Blacks As Targets

Following the Civil War, former slaves were killed in great numbers in riots by whites in New Orleans and Memphis (1866), and in Colfax, Louisiana (1873). Most devastating of all were Lynchings—the hanging of persons (usually black men) by mobs. Primarily a southern phenomenon, lynchings occurred from the 1880s well into the twentieth century. At its peak from 1889 to 1918, lynching was responsible for the execution of 2,460 African Americans in the South.

As more blacks fled the South for great cities in the North and West, urban violence became the rule. Riots in East St. Louis (1917), Chicago (1919), and Detroit (1943), primarily targeted black neighborhoods. During the 1960s, residents of black ghettos rioted in the Watts

area of Los Angeles (1965); Newark and Detroit (1967); and Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, and Kansas City in 1968. The 1968 riots were in reaction to the assassination of black leader Martin Luther King Jr. (see King, Martin Luther, Assassination). The 1992 riot in Los Angeles saw members of other minority groups joining African Americans in the greatest urban riot (54 deaths) of the twentieth century (see Los Angeles Riots). Over a century before, the New York City antidraft riot of 1863, one of the biggest urban riots in American history, was motivated to a significant degree by racial prejudice against blacks (see Draft Riots). This riot found lower-class whites violently protesting the newly imposed draft of men into the Union army. Rioting New Yorkers killed more than 110 people, most of them black.

Farmer and Frontier Violence

Racial minorities were not the only aggrieved Americans to resort to violence. Among the most chronically discontented were the white farmers, who over 260 years engaged in uprisings such as Bacon'S Rebellion (Virginia, 1676), the Anti-Rent movement (New York, 1700s and 1800s), Shays'S Rebellion (Massachusetts, 1784–1786), the Whiskey Rebellion (Pennsylvania, 1794), the Mussel Slough Incident (California, 1878–1882), the Kentucky Night Riders (early twentieth century), and the Farm Holiday movement in the Midwest (1930s).

Frontier whites were at the center of a distinctive type of American violence: vigilantism—taking the law into their own hands. Beginning with the South Carolina "Regulators" (1767–1769), vigilantism gradually spread westward, reaching the Pacific Coast where, in 1856, the powerful San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, with between 6,000 and 8,000 members, became the largest such movement in American history. Although Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa had strong Vigilante groups, the strongest groups were to be found in the West, especially in California, Texas, and Montana. Between 1767 and 1904, more than 300 vigilante movements sprung up in the United States, taking at least 729 lives. Their targets and victims were overwhelmingly lawless white members of turbulent pioneer communities.

Labor Violence

Oppressive labor conditions during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries frequently precipitated violence. In 1877, railroad employees spontaneously and violently rebelled from coast to coast. Strikes by workers and lockouts by management often led to tragedy as in the Homestead Strike of 1892, in which clashes between workers and Pinkerton guards hired by the Carnegie Steel Company led to the deaths of sixteen, and in the unsuccessful strike of miners against a Rockefeller-controlled coal company near Ludlow, Colorado, in 1913–1914. The Ludlow strike and management's response led to the death by suffocation of thirteen women and children in April 1914. Members of union families had taken underground refuge from antilabor militia in a deep dugout that came to be known as the "Black Hole of Ludlow" (see Ludlow Massacre).

Industrial violence between capitalists and their employees declined greatly after the labor reforms initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" in the 1930s. New Deal reforms in the interest of hard-pressed farmers also brought to an end some agrarian violence.

Assassinations, Mass Murder, and Riots

Assassination of those who hold public office is the apex of political violence. U.S. presidents have been unusually vulnerable to assassination: Abraham Lincoln (1865), James A. Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), and John F. Kennedy (1963). Ronald Reagan was badly wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt. Also felled by an assassin's bullet was the great nonviolent civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., shot in Memphis in 1968.

The greatest episode of mass killing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries actually took place outside the United States. The combination of mass suicide and murder ordered by the California cult leader, Jim Jones, in 1978 took his own life as well as the lives of 912 (including many children) of his followers at the cult's compound in Guyana, South America (see Jonestown Massacre).

The portrayal of violence changed enormously in the second half of the twentieth century with television news coverage and entertainment. TV coverage of the 1965 Watts riot in Los Angeles showed the anarchy and destruction of that massive riot. In 1991, repeated replays on television of the video recording of the police beating a black motorist, Rodney King, were followed a year later by live TV coverage of the multiracial looting and burning of far-flung areas of Los Angeles in anger over a suburban jury's acquittal of the police who beat King.

Television's most riveting broadcast of violence was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963. Two days later, live TV caught Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused Kennedy assassin. The Kennedy assassination was the tragic introduction to one of the most violent decades in U.S. history—a decade graphically portrayed on TV.

Terror

Beginning in 1993, horrific acts of terrorism were perpetrated, starting with a great explosion at the World Trade Center, New York City. In 1995 antigovernment terrorist Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168. Few thought that the Oklahoma City horror could be exceeded, but on 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon in Virginia took at least 3,063 lives (see 9/11 Attack). The television images of two of the hijacked airliners being deliberately flown into the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center, which collapsed in less than two hours, traumatized the nation. Americans were reminded of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. While the emotional impact of Pearl Harbor on the public was huge, the stunning visual impact of the televised destruction of the World Trade Center had an immeasurably greater and more immediate effect.

Bibliography

Ayers, Edward L. Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth-Century South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Brown, Richard Maxwell. No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Clarke, James W. American Assassins: The Darker Side of American Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982.

Dray, Philip. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. New York, Random House, 2002.

Gilje, Paul A. Rioting in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Gottesman, Ronald, and Richard M. Brown, eds. Violence in America: An Encyclopedia. 3 vols. New York, Scribners, 1999.

Hofstadter, Richard, and Michael Wallace, eds. American Violence: A Documentary History. New York: Knopf, 1970.

Violence was endemic in early modern Europe, from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, and from the Urals to the British Isles. Serfs and peasants wielded knives and staffs, most gentlemen and merchants wore swords and/or pistols, and nobles and their numerous retainers were similarly armed. Even teenaged students carried knives in their schools, brawled in the streets, and operated as gangs. The weapons used were often determined by class, as were the instruments of public death. Thus while serfs and peasants were hanged, the aristocracy had the privilege of death by the sword; women were burned alive or drowned. Tempers were short in this society, and weapons were easy to hand. The propertied classes, especially, lacked self-control until the waning of the seventeenth century. They encouraged gangs of retainers or hired thugs, or they formed groups of brigands, to assault enemies in paying off grudges or pursuing local or political power.

Rates of violent activity that can be quantified from official records in western Europe suggest a large rise from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, followed by a long decline to the late eighteenth century. Rates of violent crime based on indictments and inquests rose sharply from the 1560s to the 1620s, peaking at the turn of century at ten per hundred thousand. They then declined greatly in the mid-seventeenth century, when they reached six per hundred thousand, drifted lower in 1700, when they reached three per hundred thousand, and then declined significantly in the mid-eighteenth century, when they reached two per hundred thousand. In all countries, however, rates were highest in the borderlands and lowest in central urban areas.

Personal Violence

The sixteenth century represented the apex of a long-term acceleration in personal violence that began in the decades following the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century. Social, economic, and religious conflict nurtured violent solutions in an age where there were few institutions to control human activity. Thus personal violence rose in the midst of the decline of medieval institutions and the cobbling together of new ones that would form the early modern state. Personal violence, whether reactive, instinctive, or ritualized, became an acceptable form of human behavior.

However, a growing intolerance of brutality marked a shift in social psychology that developed in England, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, France, and Switzerland, and which later spread first throughout western Europe, and more slowly across the Mediterranean, in the course of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. An increasingly civilized and sophisticated view of the behavior of middle class citizens, together with a stronger sense of "the peace of God" in Catholic and Protestant churches of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, caused a movement away from violence as a means for the resolution of personal quarrels and disputes. Distressed by sensationalist literature boasting graphic representations of murder and mayhem, the aristocratic and middle classes of Europe began to reform their behavior in what Norbert Elias termed "a civilizing process." Without social support, many traditional forms of personal violence inevitably declined. At the same time, growth in the state's control of violence through policing (particularly in France and Spain) and weapons licensing had a profound effect on communities, limiting opportunities for violence. Finally, with the decay of a popular culture grounded in violence and new expectations of social comportment enforced by the state's judicial system, both group and interpersonal violence receded into the background.

However, perceptions of violence were not easily changed. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries witnessed a surge of popular literature in the form of pamphlets and ballads that told gruesome tales of horrid violent acts; these materials were republished throughout the eighteenth century. This perception was also promoted by women who wrote best-sellers on sensational and scandalous violent acts by women, which became stereotypes in the literature of the era. Moreover, while group violence at the hands of the aristocracy was in decline, the rise of the duel among aristocrats came into vogue in the course of the seventeenth century, most significantly in France, Italy, and England, in spite of the admonitions of churchmen, lawyers, judges, and moralists. And while plebeian and gentlemanly delinquency was on the decline, individual aristocratic delinquency in the form of sexual and roisterous debauchery was on the rise. Thus while interpersonal violence had declined sharply in the overall population by the mid-eighteenth century, in its growing absence the public appetite for stories of violence had increased dramatically.

Much violence, however, was spontaneous. The Paduan artist Niccolò Pizzolo was murdered in a quick-tempered argument; the Mantuan painter Andrea Mantegna hired thugs to beat up rivals who pinched his designs; the Swiss artist Urs Graf displayed bouts of brutal beatings; the sculptor-painter Michelangelo of Florence had his nose broken in a fight with a fellow sculptor; and Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in a tavern brawl, as was the actor Gabriel Spencer by the London playwright Ben Jonson. Fencing grew in popularity in the sixteenth century as the rapier became a favourite weapon of fashionable society because of its more flexible and lightweight qualities in violent confrontations. Many towns enacted legislation to ban the carrying of arms in public places, all to little avail. But most standards of behavior were flaunted, especially by youths at a time (late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries) when male adolescents and young bachelors comprised a significant proportion of the population increase.

Violence was also embedded in the extreme passions of the fifteenth century, which continued into the sixteenth. Rapes, murders, fisticuffs, and knifings followed adulteries or rejections, as recounted in the stories of Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre, in the 1530s and 1540s. These passions also influenced perceptions that violent crime was "situationally determined": they can be seen in the activities of cunning women in England, muchachos and caballeristas in Spain, strollica in Italy, znakhar in Russia, and charivari in France. They also can be found in the activities of people on the margins, such as suicides and witches, and the unrecorded inhabitants of marshes, forests, and moors.

Other examples of personal violence were clearly ritualized. These included, for continental Europe, punching a debtor until he agreed to pay, hiring assassins in family vendettas, and gathering armed bands to redress wrongs real or imagined. In German towns, initiation riots for journeyman aspirants to the Hanseatic merchant guilds included being hanged from a chimney until out of breath, thrown three times from a boat in the harbor and pushed back into the sea upon climbing in each time until the last, and being whipped bloody in the guildhall. Erasmus noted from his enlightened Rotterdam and Paris that the initiation ceremonies for schools were "fit for executioners, torturers, pimps or galley-slaves."

Youth were often regarded by authorities as primary agents of personal violence. In Swiss and Italian towns, youthful vigilantes used violence upon older citizens who committed immoral sins such as gambling and the ostentatious display of wealth. In French towns, intervillage combat games led to beatings and killings, which were regarded as part of the culture of sport. In England, there are recorded examples of youthful cricketers beating one another with their bats, and a statute from 1563 stated that a man under age twenty-four "is wild, without judgment and not of sufficient experience to govern himself." Much of this violence was conditioned by their exposure to extreme cruelty early in life. Throughout Europe, cats were stoned to death, and bulls and bears were baited and maimed, as were individuals accused of criminal offences. It was not unusual for crowds to see impaled men on stakes thrown to the ground to be eaten by dogs and crows. As Juan de Mariana of Toledo wrote in 1599, killing beasts brutally was a short step from killing men.

Finally, women throughout Europe were responsible for their own violent acts. These acts were accepted because of the perception of sex: women, ruled by their physical body rather than by rational capacity, and aggressive in their actions, possessed magical powers over men. This was seen in the role of women in murder, rape, and suicide in contemporary writing, prose fiction, and drama. Sexual violence became a defining element in male-female relations through rape, ravishment, and seduction. Older women were also active in violence, especially in Ireland, Holland, and France in riots and rebellions against communities and the state. In Germany they were as apt as men to be tortured by church or state for acts asof ill conduct. Their violence, however, was more pronounced in towns than in the countryside.

State-Sponsored Violence

Meanwhile, institutions of the state, through war, interrogation, and the courts, became major players in dispensing acts of violence against their own and neighboring peoples. While unquantifiable, it would be safe to assume that interpersonal relations became more peaceful in the course of the early modern era, especially in the second half of the seventeenth century, but that society as a whole became more violent with the actions of city- and nation-states from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a time of ubiquitous violence unleashed by new nation-states. This was violence inflicted upon civilians by employed or discharged soldiers living in their midst; institutionalized violence such as torture and execution; violence associated with extra-legal dispute resolution in the form of duels, feuds, and arbitration; interpersonal violence as assault, homicide, domestic violence, rape, and infanticide; group violence in the rituals of youth gangs, carnival, and sports; popular protest displayed in enclosure, food, and tax riots; and the organized crime of bandits and highwaymen. In the end, violence was never far from the consciousness of early modern Europeans.

War could be especially violent for civilian noncombatants. As Francesco Guicciardini wrote in 1525, "all political power is rooted in violence." In the Schmalkaldic War of 1546–1547, Spanish troops suspended male civilians by their genitals, then tortured them to reveal where they had hidden their money and valuables; women and girls were raped. The link between personal and public violence was well expressed by Pierre de la Primaudaye in 1577: out of quarrels and dissension come sedition, civil, and open wars, and men, under the influence of war, "become savage."

Violence was also a result of the growth of wealth in the era as it came to a few, while poverty worked its way into the many. Enclosure and the commercial cultivation of land caused rural depopulation and dearth, while swelling populations in towns and cities caused job competition and low salaries in an age of rising prices for food. Thus Leonardo da Vinci's plan for an ideal town had upper walks for the gentility to protect them from the plebs. This idea came to symbolize one of the primary aims of the new seventeenth-century state: the suppression of disorder and the monopolization of violence in the form of ritualized public punishment. It proved workable in the new monarchies of France, Netherlands, and the British Isles, moderately feasible in Italian and German areas, and only partly possible in the Iberic world, Helvetic cities, and Nordic countries.

In the end, the dawn of the modern era of violence occurred in the late eighteenth century with the disintegration of monarchial governments and the rise of secular nation-states, organized bandits and brigades, and modern warfare. These institutions precipitated a professional police, central courts, and the prison as the royal power of the early modern era gave way to the state power of modern times. Thus the growth of the modern state from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century contributed to a shift in violence from personal to state controlled.

Regional Variations

Europe comprises an area of diverse regions, and its geography has led to the work of the Annales School of quantitative research that has included violence as one of its subjects. In France and Italy, each region has a research leader and team. In other regions the focus has been on towns, as with the Burgundian, Flemish, Helvetic, Dutch, German, and Swiss. In the British Isles and Scandinavia, it has been a combination of both regions and towns. Most of the published research, however, has been on Italy, France, the Netherlands, Swiss and German towns, the British Isles, and Nordic countries. Results reveal that England, France, and the Netherlands were the most violent societies from the sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century.

In England, there were various high points from the alleged execution of 70,000 rogues during the reign of Henry VII to the "crime wave" of the early 1600s. While criminal gangs were being eliminated and the violence of private warfare waged by the nobility was replaced with war in the courts (litigation), petty violence seems to have continued unabated, stimulated by the social and economic dislocations of the first agricultural and industrial revolution beginning in the late sixteenth century. In criminal acts, there was also a significant change from violent acts against persons (personal crime) to acts against property (property crime). But while noble violence was diluted by resort to the courts, violence was waged incessantly among the peasantry.

In Scandinavia, violence stemmed from personal conflicts, as is visible in the famous witch trials of the 1660s and 1670s that involved mostly old women. Here, in the Nordic countries, crimes of violence, especially lethal violence, underwent a major decline during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. As in England, violence became more tied to economic disputes, both rural and urban. Much of the violence caused by "honor" disappeared as disputes came to be resolved in nonviolent ways. However, by the late seventeenth century women came to be charged with one-third of all offenses because of sexual crimes that were first prosecuted during Reformation efforts to curb extramarital sex, infanticide, and witchcraft. Violent offenders were often goldsmiths, shoemakers, peasants, and farmhands; only soldiers were overrepresented after wars.

In poor and isolated regions of France, violence was directed downward, rarely upward, in the social order. Much of the violence was that of a riposte—informal justice administered by someone provoked into violent action. Here magistrates showed little interest in investigating popular traditions of "self-help." A similar situation existed in Italy with the popular vendetta. This was demonstrated by the Zambarlini family, who turned their victims into "dogmeat." They dismembered corpses, leaving them unburied to be consumed by dogs or pigs, thereby denying their victims the rites of Christian burial and the hope of eternal salvation.

Regional variations also involved distinctions between violence in rural and urban settings. In the county of Essex, England, for example, the rate of interpersonal violence has been estimated as three times the national average. However, that may be due to the fact that Essex was the center of the Puritan movement, where local clergy were vigilant in having acts of violence reported, and where human acts previously regarded as nonviolent (such as child- and wife-beating) were now regarded as violent in nature and to be strongly condemned and eliminated. In major urban areas such as London, however, local authorities took a strong hand in highlighting major violent acts and creating institutions to reduce violence. Therefore, Londoners came to recognize the limits of terror with a new concern over violence associated with public hangings and their processions and public whippings in the streets; Londoners thus became advocates of the end of state-sponsored violence.

Conclusion

The historiography of violence has seen parallel developments with social history since the mid 1970s, where there are distinct typologies linked to politics and society and integrated into the wider historical context. Currently, there is an outpouring of theses, mostly on violence associated with homicide, infanticide, sexual offences, gender, dearth, and forms of punishment. Recent publications emphasize the role of the state, the deployment of central authority, and ideology. But there are few studies of violence from the view of the perpetrator, apart from London historians who have interpreted violent acts as strategies of the poor to aid their quest for survival in the eighteenth-century city.

Bibliography

Beattie, John. Policing and Punishment in London, 1660– 1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror. Oxford, 2001.

Burke, Peter. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. New York, 1978.

Egmond, Florike. Underworlds: Organized Crime in the Netherlands, 1650–1800. Cambridge, U.K., 1993.

Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process. 2 vols. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. 1st ed. 1978. New York, 2001.

Emsley, Clive, and Louis A. Knafla, eds. Crime History and Histories of Crime: Studies in the Historiography of Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern History. Westport, Conn., 1996.

Evans, Richard J., ed. The German Underworld: Deviants and Outcasts in German History. London, 1988.

Greenshields, Malcolm. An Economy of Violence in Early Modern France: Crime and Justice in the Hauite Avergne, 1587–1664. University Park, Pa., 1994.

Kiernan, V. G. The Duel in European History: Honour and the Reign of Aristocracy. Oxford, 1988.

Österberg, Eva, and D. Lindström. Crime and Social Control in Medieval and Early Modern Swedish Towns. Uppsala, 1988.

Ruff, Julius R. Violence in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800. Cambridge, Mass., 2001.

Sharpe, James. Crime in Early Modern England, 1550–1750. London, 1984; rev. ed., 1998.

Stone, Lawrence. "Interpersonal Violence in English Society, 1300–1980." Past & Present 101 (1983): 22–33.

—LOUIS A. KNAFLA

Moving, acting, or characterized by physical force, especially by extreme and sudden or unjust or improper force. 79 S.W. 2d 292, 296. The degree of force implied by the word "violence" depends upon the context in which it is used. For instance, its use in an insurance policy may imply a lesser degree or a different type of force than its use in a criminal statute. Compare 13 A. 2d 651, 656; 68 Cal. Rptr. 657.

IN BRIEF: Great strength or force. Also: The use of force to harm people or property.

The main goal of the future is to stop violence. The world is addicted to it. — Bill Cosby.

Quotes:

"The more dubious and uncertain an instrument violence has become in international relations, the more it has gained in reputation and appeal in domestic affairs, specifically in the matter of revolution." - Hannah Arendt

"Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance." - Hannah Arendt

"Perhaps violence, like pornography, is some kind of an evolutionary standby system, a last-resort device for throwing a wild joker into the game?" - J. G. Ballard

"I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent we have no future." - Edward Bond

"They are not following dharma who resort to violence to achieve their purpose. But those who lead others through nonviolent means, knowing right and wrong, may be called guardians of the dharma." - Buddha

"We are supposed to be the children of Seth; but Seth is too much of an effete nonentity to deserve ancestral regard. No, we are the sons of Cain, and with violence can be associated the attacks on sound, stone, wood and metal that produced civilization." - Anthony Burgess

See more famous quotes about Violence

Horrifying scenes of violence and destruction may indicate an overwhelming fear of the loss of one's sense of power and control. Because of this fear, the dreamer may be in rage at others. An upheaval may have taken place in the dreamer's work or personal life prior to such a dream.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - vold, skade, voldshandling

idioms:

• do violence to    gøre skade på, krænke

Nederlands (Dutch)
geweld, hevigheid, gewelddadigheid, hevig(e) gevoel/actie, onenigheid/ wanklank, onnodige verandering van woorden

Français (French)
n. - violence, force, intensité, action/comportement violent, abus de pouvoir, véhémence (des propos), mot/sens employé abusivement

idioms:

• do violence to    faire violence à, trahir/déformer (un texte original)

Deutsch (German)
n. - Gewalt, Heftigkeit, Gewalttätigkeit

idioms:

• do violence to    beschädigen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - βιαιότητα, ένταση, σφοδρότητα, βία, μανία

idioms:

• do violence to    (παρα)βιάζω, κακοποιώ

Italiano (Italian)
violenza, mischia

Português (Portuguese)
n. - violência (f), força (f)

idioms:

• do violence to    alterar ou distorcer (um texto)

Русский (Russian)
насилие, оскорбление

idioms:

• do violence to    причинить кому-л. сильный вред, оскорбить

Español (Spanish)
n. - violencia, fuerza, brutalidad

idioms:

• do violence to    ejercer violencia con

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - våld, våldsamhet, häftighet

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
暴力, 暴行, 暴虐

idioms:

• do violence to    强暴对待, 歪曲

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 暴力, 暴行, 暴虐

idioms:

• do violence to    強暴對待, 歪曲

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 격렬함, 난폭, 왜곡

idioms:

• do violence to    ~에게 폭행을 가하다, ~을 해치다, 파괴하다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 猛烈, 猛威, 暴行, 暴力, 冒涜, 改竄, 歪曲

idioms:

• do violence to    暴力を加える, 損う, わい曲する, 暴行を加える

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) عنف, قسوة, شدة, تخويف‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮אלימות, כוח, עוז, עוצמה, הפחדה‬

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