On Violence and Perpetrators 15 German historian Karl Heinz Metz, who wrote History of Vio­lence (Geschichte der Gewalt), came to a similar evaluation of vio­lence in relation to ­human exis- tence and its history: In history ­there is always vio­lence—­and always the longing for peace. The question about vio­lence is prob­ably the seminal question of the ­ human being. From vio­lence all religion and all politics evolve: Religion as the attempt of a symbolic answer to the question, why ­humans are not able to abolish vio­lence, politics as the attempt to practically overcome vio­ lence by rule, which might tame it. And yet, vio­lence never dis­appears, neither in the state, which cannot secure inner peace without the threat of vio­lence, and which often uses excessive vio­lence, as war, ­towards its external, nor in religion, which also becomes violent against heretics and pagans, as soon as religion begins to wish to order society ­after its own values.7 Evidently, vio­lence is always “instrumental by its nature”8 and usually needs a purpose to be used. ­Because vio­lence is a tool used to achieve goals, it requires justification.9 Furthermore, vio­lence is a form of social action, which can be omnipres- ent and contingent at the same time. ­There has never been a society without vio­lence, and it is likely that humanity ­will never be able to fully abolish vio­ lence.10 Even postmodern socie­ties that often claim to have achieved this status ­will never exist without it, if one is to believe the Polish-British soci- ologist Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017).11 In any society, vio­lence is usually not an “ontological or pre-­social category, but a normative, moral, and ethical one.”12 Vio­lence must also be defined by existing social norms, meaning that what is perceived as violent depends on the “specific chronological, social, and cultural condition and order.”13 What is individually and collectively consid- ered violent depends on developmental pro­cesses that determine and recon- figure the social order and its understanding or categorization of vio­lence. Sociologist and director of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, Wolf- gang Knöbl, warned against analyzing vio­lence with “totally new methodolog- ical and theoretical approaches,” as they are “neither helpful nor necessary.”14 Instead of making vio­lence seem exotic and far-­removed, which enables the Western perspective of having “outlived” it, examining vio­lence closely may help ­ people understand its probable endlessness. To analyze vio­lence and its occurrences within specific time periods, its geo­graph­i­cal and sociocultural contexts and the number of active players within it can be used to both char- acterize and comparatively analyze vio­lence.15 Forms of vio­lence are usually standardized by social norms that is, society determines what is allowed and what is not, but ­these norms are changeable
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