Violence and the Rise of the State

Abstract

Let us define “violence” as the infliction of physical damage on persons or property. The “forms of violence” refer to the relationship between a violent actor or actors and at least one other actor who may or may not engage in violence; collectively these forms describe how violence is used in a given society. The four principal forms of violence are public violence, symbolic violence, everyday violence, and private violence. Public violence occurs in public places, involves coordinated action, and some kind of claim-making; the two most important types of public violence are warmaking and collective protest. “Public violence” is part of a public “dialogue.” When Carl von Clausewitz asserted that “war is a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means,” as when Charles Tilly (1994) insists that intrastate violence arises out of routine actions between states and claim-making groups, they both locate violence within larger processes of social negotiation, bargaining and political exchange. In times of “civil war” the two major forms of public violence come together. Violence can speak volumes ! When Zapotec warriors beheaded a rival town’s political leaders for refusing to send tribute and displayed their heads in a rack, they communicated powerfully with a public, just as when Czarist troops fired on peaceful demonstrators.