Violence A Reader

Arthur Vidich was instrumental in encouraging Catherine Besteman to edit the book, Violence A Reader which is the last in the series of Main Trends in the Modern World.  While I thought this book might be a "dull read" since the topic of violence has become so normalized in our society, and so prevalent in every television, radio, newspaper and Internet news site, that no one seems to care why violence is so prevalent - I was clearly mistaken.  

Well if you wondered why our society is so violent this is the book you ought to read.  Rather than being a long dissertation on the consequences of violence, it focuses on how violence has become embedded in the structure of government (what the author calls the "state").   Six essays by some of the world's greatest thinkers - Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, Charles Tilly, Barrington Moore Jr.  and Zygmunt Bauman explore the intimate connection between state power and violence as a means of political control (Weber); the use of violence as an indicator of the erosion of power (Arendt); violence as a tool to create state power required to create protectionist schemes to advance capitalism (Tilly); violence as a tool to create an appropriate level of terror in dictatorial regimes to control and subjugate its subjects (Moore); and the rationalization of violence through the creation of amoral bureaucracies where genocide and extermination achieve dehumanized objectives divorced from a moral compass (Bauman). 

If you read nothing else but the first six of the fifteen essays in this powerful collection you will recognize its relevance to the political conditions in the United States in the post Obama era. Yet the book offers far more than a frame work for understanding violence as a political tool of modern governments.  The second part of this book covers case studies in political violence with a focus on the causes of terrorism, the uses of martyrdom, asymmetrical warfare, and gender and violence.  The third section addresses the normalization of violence with an essay on the violence used against Putumayo Indians enslaved on rubber plantations; an essay on the ritual uses of violence by Palestinian men during the intifada and an essay on the people of Mozambique and how they resisted violence during their seventeen year civil war and eventually restored peace.

Besteman concludes this book with an analysis of the consequences of poverty,  malnutrition, poor health, local violence and crime that result from state support for hierarchical systems that create disequilibrium of race, class, gender, and language. Political violence, she argues, is linked to the structural violence of poverty which in turn is linked to the enormous power of global capitalism which has created geographically disparate conditions of survival on this planet.  She suggests that resolving conflict will be the challenge of the 21st century and will depend on developing global principles of human rights and achieving consensus on what constitutes "legitimate state-backed violence. If you never knew why violence is so entrenched in our world, this book is for you.