Violence and society: Introduction to an emerging field of sociology

2012/09/25 by Sylvia Walby · 180 citations
Social Sciences · #Criminology #Disadvantaged #Epistemology #Field (mathematics) #Gender, Security, and Conflict #Interpersonal violence #Intimate Partner and Family Violence #Law #Modernity #Poison control #Political science #Social science #Sociology #State (computer science) #Suicide prevention #Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/0011392112456478

published in Current Sociology 61(2), 95-111 (SAGE Publishing)

openalex publication_date 2012/09/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25

Abstract

The analysis of violence is an important part of sociology. While it has sometimes been pushed to the margins of sociology, nevertheless, violence emerges repeatedly in the analysis of both everyday life and momentous social change; interpersonal relations and crime; governance and resistance; relations between states, north and south; and multiple varieties of modernity. New ways of making violence visible unsettle old notions of the nature and direction of violence; challenging assumptions that the disadvantaged are more violent than the powerful; and that modernity is increasingly less violent. The new research on violence against women and minorities and in the global South makes a powerful case for the inclusion of violence as a core issue in sociology. This article introduces the articles in this monograph issue of Current Sociology, situating them in a new paradigm of ‘violence and society’. The articles identify the specificities of violence, its non-reducibility to state, culture and biology, while outlining the interconnections within this emerging field.

Citations

• Violence, Peace, and Peace Research

Cited by

• Survey data show a global decline in intimate partner violence against women associated with rising living standards
• On Violent Democracy
• Safe city: Analysis of services for gender-based violence in Bengaluru, India
• Crime, culture or war? Justifying military responses to violence against civilians
• Does Sport Participation Deter or Encourage Violence? Patterns of Sport Participation and Acts of Violence Over the Life Course
• Underprivileged Women Impacted by Ethnic Violence: Deconstructing Lives. [europepmc]
• Gender Beneath the Skull: Agency, Trauma and Persisting Stereotypes in Neuroepigenetics. [europepmc]
• Organized violence as a never-ending story? Reflections in light of the Russian aggression against Ukraine. [europepmc]
• The framing of contemporary violence policy in England and Wales: An examination of the contributing roles of alcohol and illegal drugs. [europepmc]

Related

• “Violence is not part of our culture:” Ruminations about violence, culture and gender
• Violence and social orders a conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history
• Multilateral Generation of Violence: On the Theorization of Microscopic Analyses and Empirically Grounded Theories of Violence
• Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political Anthropology
• Identifying class and ‘classifying’ identity in Paris 2005 and Ahmedabad 2002