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Violence is an inescapable theme in human history. War, violent crime, personal conflict and aggression appear to be constant features of the human condition. Has violence been codified, tamed and suppressed by a ‘civilizing process’, which forged the modern, rational, bourgeois self? Is civilization opposed to or predicated upon violence? This conference aims to test these assumptions by examining interpersonal violence below the level of the state from Classical Antiquity to the 21st Century. A comparative analysis of various sorts of violence in various different periods, places and contexts will enable us better to understand how and why thresholds of acceptable and legitimate violence changed over time. What may have seemed acceptable behaviour in one time and place may be unacceptable in another. How did societies discuss and represent violence in art and literature? How was violence regulated and controlled? What factors moved people, psychological, material and ideological to violence? Papers are welcomed on particular cases, on comparative and interdisciplinary themes, or on theoretical approaches. Themes might cover such topics as:
- spectacles of violence
- crime, banditry, riot
- intimate, domestic and sexual violence
- ethnic, communal and religious violence
- combat
- honour, feuding and duelling
- peace-making and arbitration
- repression, civility and state-building
Speakers include:
- William Miller (Michigan) author of Bloodtaking & Peace-making and Humiliation
- Ed Muir (Northwestern) author of Mad Blood Stirring
John Keane (Centre for the Study of Democracy) author of Reflections on Violence
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