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Violentization: A Relatively Singular Theory of Violent Crime
Abstract
Violentization offers a unique explanation of violent crime for four reasons: (1) the theory explains the formation of violent criminal acts, the development of violent criminals, as well as the transformation and maintenance of the communities in which they evolve and later commit their crimes; (2) the theory identifies the stages through which violent encounters, socialization, and communal organization/disorganization unfold; (3) the theory treats violent criminals as active agents in their violent criminal acts; and (4) it is constructed from an insider’s viewpoint because the researcher has undergone similar experiences as the people whose actions his theory explains.
... Adding to his work, we develop the notion of trajectories, aiming to provide a conceptual tool to study the emergence of violence. Finally, our work connects to interactionist insights into how encounters turn violent (Athens, 2005(Athens, , 2015Collins, 2008;Felson, 1982;Luckenbill, 1977). We add to this literature by showing that antagonists move the interaction toward violence by creating a metaconflict about the conditions under which the interaction will become a physical confrontation. ...
... (5) Both parties engage in physical violence, and when (6) one party falls or is otherwise subdued, the situation ends. Athens' (2005Athens' ( , 2015 elaboration of Luckenbill's model-which posits dominance as the master motive driving violent encounters (see also Gould, 2003)-has five interactional steps comprising role claiming, rejection, sparring, enforcement, and determination. Following the centrality of dominance in his model, Athens does not agree that trajectories toward violence can comprise a "working agreement," as Luckenbill would have it. ...
We aim to contribute to recent situational approaches to the study of interpersonal violence by elaborating the concept of trajectories. Trajectories are communicative processes in which antagonists act upon each other’s bodily and verbal actions to project a direction for the interaction to take, which is then (con) tested in the exchanges that follow. We use the notion of trajectories to gain insight in how participants turn an antagonistic situation into a violent encounter, which we contrast to interactionist and micro-sociological understandings. Using ethnomethodological and conversation analytical tools, we detail the trajectories of three violent encounters, captured on phone camera recordings to answer the question how verbal and bodily exchanges project physical violence. Methodologically, our contribution shows how bodily actions can be studied in visual data. Our cases show how antagonists move the interaction toward violence by creating a metaconflict revolving around the conditions under which the interaction will become a physical confrontation; what we call the contested projection of violence. We conclude that the concept of trajectories offers a useful analytical tool to detail the shifts and turns of the interactive process—notably it’s bodily dimensions— that characterize antagonism and violence. Substantially, our analysis raises questions about conceptualizations of the emotional dynamics (notably the role of dominance) of violence, as proposed by earlier micro-sociological and interactionist work. We therefore suggest that future studies engage with these issues in more detail and in larger datasets.
... As historical sociologist Charles Tilly (2003:226) once posed as a question: "Why does collective violence... concentrate in large waves-often with one violent encounter appearing to trigger the next-and then subside to low levels for substantial periods of time?" This cycle of violence differs from previously proposed micro-sociological cycles of violence and within groups of criminals (Athens 2015). ...
This article explores the cyclical nature of violence in the Philippine War on Drugs, with the aim of charting potential paths out of this violence. With a focus on how media framings of violence can help bring violence to an end, the article proposes a cycle of violence paradigm to explain how violence progresses in three stages: mass public socialization into violence via violent political rhetoric, a process of state denial that sustains the violence, and media, communities, and civil society (i.e., human rights activists, academics, churches) at the national level. State strategies of denial, coupled with a lack of transparency in security force operations (i.e., police, military, militia), help perpetuate the violence. Amid a cycle of violence, the deaths of innocent individuals can lead to increased media coverage, public discourse, and fear for the safety of one's own community and family. As case studies, a comparative narrative analysis is performed on two killings that led to mass public engagement at the national level, namely that of the Filipino teenager Kian delos Santos and the Korean expatriate businessman Jee Ick Joo.
The theory of violentization, which has generated widespread mass media attention and even stimulated a fair amount of independent research, especially extending its explanation to genocide, is based on three main ideas: (1) violent encounters, (2) violent socialization, and (3) violent social organization and disorganization. Violent criminal acts are considered to arise from dominative encounters. For a violent dominative encounter to start, at least one of the participants in a social act must threaten to use physical force to determine who will perform the superordinate and subordinate roles during its construction. Thus, violent dominative encounters explain the interaction between a perpetrator and victim when physical force is threatened or actually used to settle the issue of dominance. There are three basic types of violent encounters: violent engagements, violent skirmishes , and dominance tiffs . Violent dominative encounters occur over a series of stages. The exact number of stages comprising each of them depends on how far the encounter between the conflicting parties proceeds. Violent dominative engagements represent completed dominative encounters and take place over five stages. During the first stage of role claiming , a would‐be superordinate must decide to take on that role and cast someone else in the subordinate role. The would‐be superordinate claims the dominant role by making vocal or bodily gestures signaling his superiority to his would‐be subordinate. During the role rejection , or second stage, would‐be subordinates must not only decide whether to reject the subordinate role imposed on them, but also whether they should resist a ctively or passively . Passive resistance requires making gestures that express neither dominance nor subservience but, instead, merely express their intention not to accede to performing the subordinate role in the social act. If they choose active resistance, they must gain the initiative by making their own dominance‐claiming gestures expressing their attitude of superiority and intention to perform the superordinate role in the social act. However, it is important to recognize that there are cases where the would‐be subordinate's mere presence in their would‐be superordinates’ domain of action challenges their effective performance of the superordinate role.
Athens (Domination and subjugation in everyday life. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 2015a) challenges those working within the extended symbolic interactionist tradition to attend to dominance practices in everyday life (Athens (Domination and subjugation in everyday life. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 2015a) advances an argument for radical interactionism, which I include under the extended symbolic interactionist tradition). While dominance may be associated with various negative connotations such as control, oppression, and subjugation, dominance itself may be best understood in process terms. In this paper I examine dominance as accomplished action. Dominance (and conflict and subjugation) may be framed as generic social processes which are aspects of social life that play themselves out trans-historically, trans-contextually and trans-situationally. This paper examines some of the central themes that arise in attending to dominance processes in the context of university management and specifically examines the process of dominatization in management contexts.KeywordsDominanceSocial processesSubordinate and superordinate rolesManagement
The link between military service and crime has been a subject of investigation for several decades. Although research has examined the likelihood of arrest, incarceration, and recidivism across military cohorts, relatively little is known about the circumstances surrounding police contact and suspect behavior at the exact moment of arrest. This is a critical oversight given that what transpires during an arrest can have a marked impact on downstream criminal justice outcomes, including access to diversionary programming like veterans treatment courts. Using a nationally representative survey of prison inmates, this study analyzes veteran and nonveteran self-reports of their arrest controlling for a host of relevant demographic, mental health, and criminal history variables. Findings indicate that veterans are significantly less likely to resist the police at arrest. These results provide further support to the sentiment that military culture and training can have a lasting behavioral influence on those who experience it.
Shaffir (1998:63) writes, “We must learn to reclaim the virtue of patience. When we enhance the pace of doing research, it is often at the expense of acquiring a deep appreciation of the research problem.” This paper engages Shaffir’s claim by examining the importance of undertaking a patient sociology. What is the virtue to be found in prolonged and sustained work? How does this speak to the relationships found in field research and in the identities that inform our work as researchers and theorists? In contrast to recent trends towards various versions of instant or short-term ethnography (e.g., Pink and Morgan 2013) this paper argues for the merits of “slow” ethnography by examining the advantages of relational patience, perspectival patience, and the patience required to fully appreciate omissions, rarities, and secrets of the group.
Este breve ensaio pretende debater indícios de algumas conexões difusas entre a cultura de massas na voragem contemporânea e explosões de violência extrema, tentando, na medida do possível, compreender possíveis lastros históricos. Como as cenas de tortura, decapitações e esquartejamentos parecem ter saltado das telas de cinema para a nossa vida cotidiana a real, talvez resida aí um bom gancho de partida para essa reflexão, muito mais intuitiva do que propriamente acadêmica, até porque a história do presente não se pode fazer se não por meio de ensaios críticos. Assim, o texto transita de filmes de terror, como O albergue, a grandes romances, como O último dia de um condenado, de Victor Hugo, procurando identificar conexões para uma estética cultural da dimensão penal.
The article argues that understanding hegemonic masculinity can be amplified by looking into the situational contexts of men’s interactions in fraternity initiations based on the analysis of narratives of 15 fraternity men. Fraternity members from a Philippine university reached for hegemonic masculinity through the masculine exemplar of toughness to demonstrate preparedness for academic success, dominance in campus positions, and future national leadership. Through violentization (Athens, 2015), their initiations simulate the power clash between harsh patriarchs and supportive brothers that place young men’s bodies as objects and subjects of testing and indoctrination. Individual and collective efforts to critique and eschew the hypermasculinity of initiation violence achieved limited success although the pursuit of alternative socialization rituals remains a challenge.
This chapter examines the self in the context of management activities. Drawing upon Mead’s (1934) framing of the social self in process terms, we engage self-management in the context of the generalized other. Symbolic interactionists have long recognized the multifaceted aspects of the self—as the reflected, looking glass self (Cooley 1902) and the self as developed and contextualized in relation to others (Blumer 1969; Mead 1934). Embracing this long tradition of inquiry, in this chapter we attend to the related themes of the self as a target of management activities in an organizational context and the self as an object of one’s own management activities. By attending to ‘doing nothing’ as an aspect of deliberative action and self-management, this chapter contributes to an examination of inaction as social action. We pay particular attention to office holder perspectives and the circumstances where opting for inaction may be defined as a preferable or otherwise strategic course of action. Additionally, we examine self-management in the context of joint action and office holder attentiveness to the relational dynamics as a central aspect of self-management. Lastly, this chapter discusses being managed by addressing themes such as experiencing management as disruption and emotionality in the context of management related activities.
Lonnie H. Athens’ path-breaking work examines a problem that has baffled experts and the general public alike: How does a person become a predatory violent criminal? In the original edition, the process that Athens labeled “violentization” encompassed four stages: brutalization, defiance, dominative engagements, and virulency. In this edition, Athens identifies a new final stage, violent predation, as the culmination of the violent criminal’s development. He uses vivid first-person accounts gleaned from in-depth interviews and participant observation of nascent and hardened violent criminals to back up his theory. In this vastly expanded edition, Athens examines how his thinking and ideas have evolved over the past thirty years and renames and clarifies two stages of development. Athens also addresses, for the first time, criticisms of his original theory. Milestones of this important work are discussed, as well as the paradoxes surrounding its present-day status in the field of criminology. Athens proposes a revised theoretical model that will be useful for classroom use, as well as for interested general readers and professionals.
A holistic, agentive, and progressive violent crime control policy derived from the theory of violentization will be presented. The theory is based on three main ideas: (1) violent dominative encounters, (2) violentization process, and (3) violent communal disorganization and organization. On the basis of each one of these ideas, specific policy recommendations are developed for stymieing the formation of attempted and completed violent criminal acts; the development of violent, ultraviolent, and violent predatory criminals; and the transformation or maintenance of the communities in which these criminals evolve and later commit their crimes. The policy formulated is holistic because it attacks the problem of violent crime on three different integrated levels, and takes into account that not all violent criminals, violent criminal acts, and communities are equally violent; thereby, different modes of intervention are needed for them. The policy is agentive because it views both actual and potential violent criminals as active agents in their commission of violent criminal acts and rehabilitation. Finally, the policy is progressive because it makes education—antiviolent, remedial, vocational, and higher education, and gainful employment in legitimate occupations—the cornerstone of violent crime prevention and violent offender rehabilitation.
The purpose of this article is to use Lonnie Athens’ violentization theory to explain the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides. These two case studies are used to compare and contrast how the brutalization, defiance, violent dominance engagements, and virulency stages emerged prior to and during the genocides. Using published texts such as interviews with perpetrators, human rights reports, and court transcripts, qualitative content analysis is employed to test the fit between violentization theory and the two case studies. The results demonstrate that violentization theory is consistent with the data and provides an explanation of how the genocides developed and were enacted. Similarities and differences between Rwanda and Bosnia are described to explain how the perpetrators went through the violentization process, and an additional stage is added to illustrate extreme violence. Suggestions for further research using this model are provided.
The purpose of this paper is to examine accounts of a Serbian soldier who participated in the execution of civilians during the Bosnian genocide. The application of Lonnie Athens’ violentization theory (Athens, 2003) and the circumplex theory from family therapy (Olson, 1995, 2000) are used to examine the case study. Following Winton’s (2008) and Winton and Unlu’s (2008) model, the theories are consistent with the data. Suggestions for further research are addressed.
The title of my paper refers intentionally to that of a Symposium held in December, 1952, at the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association.2 Ernest Nagel and Carl G. Hempel contributed highly stimulating comments on the problem involved, formulated in the careful and lucid way so characteristic of these scholars. Their topic is a controversy which for more than half a century has split not only logicians and methodologists but also social scientists into two schools of thought. One of these holds that the methods of the natural sciences which have brought about such magnificent results are the only scientific ones and that they alone, therefore, have to be applied in their entirety to the study of human affairs. Failure to do so, it has been maintained, prevented the social sciences from developing systems of explanatory theory comparable in precision to those offered by the natural sciences and makes debatable the empirical work of theories developed in restricted domains such as economics.
The problem : violent criminal acts and actors -- A review and critique of the dominant approaches taken in the study of violent criminality -- An interpretive approach -- Self as process : interpretation of the situation -- When interpretations of the situations lead to violent criminal acts -- Self as object : self images -- Self as object and process : the linkage between self-images and interpretations -- Careers of violent actors -- Conclusions. Data on convicted violent offenders. Participant observation of violent actors and acts -- A second look at violent criminal acts and actors -- The conflicting assumptions of positivism and interpretivism -- The origin of my interest in violent crime -- The preliminary phase : the self and the violent criminal act -- Theprincipal phase, I : violent criminal acts and actors -- The principal phrase, II : the larger theoretical implications -- The principal phase, III : the policy implications -- Final thoughts.
Qualitative researchers experience common traps as we build our analyses. These traps include (1) becoming attached to studies related to our topic; (2) feeling overly sympathetic toward participants; (3) unknowingly taking on lay assumptions and beliefs; and (4) falling into subjectivism. These categories are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive but represent the stumbling blocks we have encountered in our research and in others' work. We examine these barriers to qualitative analysis and discuss practical strategies to avoid or overcome them.
Researchers are continually looking for the definitive answer to the question of what causes violence; whether it is a product of biology or socialization or, perhaps, a bit of both. Lonnie Athens, a criminologist, is known primarily for his theory about the unique transforming process gone through by individuals to become dangerous, violent offenders. Athens, himself, said that discourse about the etiologies of violent behavior cannot be broken down into a dichotomous model; either bio-physiological or socialization, but rather should be conceptualized more holistically. This paper analyzes Athens's theory within a greater context of leading theories about violence.
Herbert Blumer sought to develop “naturalistic inquiry” to provide sociologists, especially those who subscribe to the perspective known as “symbolic interactionism,” with an alternative methodology to positivism for them to use in their research. Since Blumer died before he could complete the job, an attempt is made to finish the work that he left undone on the method of naturalistic inquiry along the lines originally envisioned by him. Among other things, more details are provided to help researchers to carry out the two stages of naturalistic inquiry that he identified: “exploration” and “inspection.” A third stage, confirmation, is also added to the method. Although Blumer described naturalistic inquiry only in theory, it is described here both in theory and actual practice, which is essential to make the method more understandable to others. In addition to providing a more complete statement of naturalistic inquiry, the ideas that he drew on to develop the method are revealed. Several myths surrounding the method and the grounded theories that can be potentially developed from using it are also exposed. Finally, the case is made that naturalistic inquiry occupies a relatively unique position in the social sciences.
From the author’s study of violent and nonviolent offenders and nonoffenders’ accounts, he drew two main conclusions about the interaction that takes place between the perpetrator and victim when violent crimes are committed. First, these crimes are committed during violent encounters that encompass five stages: (1) role claiming, (2) role rejection, (3) role sparring, (4) role enforcement, and (5) role determination. Second, based on how many of these stages are completed, violent encounters can be divided into three subtypes: (1) engagements, (2) skirmishes, and (3) tiffs. Violent dominance encounters that go through all five stages constitute engagements, those that enter only four of the stages constitute skirmishes, and those that enter only three of the stages constitute tiffs. Thus, for any theory to provide a complete explanation of violent crimes, it must be able to account for not only violent engagements but also violent skirmishes and tiffs.
We owe a great debt to George Herbert Mead for, arguably, analyzing the ‘social act’ more profoundly than anyone else before or after him. While undeniably profound, his analysis, which rests on the principle of ‘sociality’, still suffers from four shortcomings that, to one degree or another, can be traced back to his downplaying the importance of dominance in social action. First, he cannot adequately account for the superordinate and subordinate roles that always arise during complex social action. Second, he can adequately account for the immediate impact of conflict on an unfolding social act, but not its ultimate origin in social action. Third, he makes people’s temporal orientation a constant, when in actuality, it varies depending on the nature of the social act in which they are participating. Finally, Mead obscures some of the basic analytical components of the social act, which he otherwise identifies brilliantly. These four inherent problems in Mead’s analysis of the social act are not only identified, but resolutions for each of them are also provided. It is ultimately concluded that Mead’s principle of ‘sociality’ must be replaced by the principle of ‘domination’ because the latter principle better explains complex human social action.
Across the minor communities that comprise the heart of our larger corporal communities, the problem of violent crime expresses itself in characteristically different ways. All violent crime is a by-product of the struggle for domination that occurs in one form or another among all types of people in every type of minor community. However, the predominant individual type that inhabits a minor community varies along with a minor community's prevailing norm for settling dominance disputes and, in turn, the severity of its violent crime problem. In “malignant” minor communities, the ultraviolent and violent people are the predominant individual types, the prevailing norm for settling disputes over dominance is the proverbial “tooth and claw” and violent crime is rampant. In “civil” minor communities, the predominant individual types are the marginally violent person and pacifist; the prevailing norm for settling dominance disputes involves a variety of nonviolent tactics; and violent crimes are a rarity. In “turbulent” minor communities, there is neither a predominant individual type nor a prevailing norm for resolving dominance disputes, so violent crime is a smaller problem than in malignant minor communities, but still a much bigger one than in civil ones.
• The title of this volume, Experience and nature, is intended to signify that the philosophy here presented may be termed either empirical naturalism or naturalistic empiricism, or, taking "experience" in its usual signification, naturalistic humanism. I believe that the method of empirical naturalism presented in this volume provides the way, and the only way by which one can freely accept the standpoint and conclusions of modern science: the way by which we can be genuinely naturalistic and yet maintain cherished values, provided they are critically clarified and reinforced. The naturalistic method, when it is consistently followed, destroys many things once cherished; but it destroys them by revealing their inconsistency with the nature of things—a flaw that always attended them and deprived them of efficacy for aught save emotional consolation. But its main purport is not destructive; empirical naturalism is rather a winnowing fan. Only chaff goes, though perhaps the chaff had once been treasured. An empirical method which remains true to nature does not "save"; it is not an insurance device nor a mechanical antiseptic. But it inspires the mind with courage and vitality to create new ideals and values in the face of the perplexities of a new world. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
• The title of this volume, Experience and nature, is intended to signify that the philosophy here presented may be termed either empirical naturalism or naturalistic empiricism, or, taking "experience" in its usual signification, naturalistic humanism. I believe that the method of empirical naturalism presented in this volume provides the way, and the only way by which one can freely accept the standpoint and conclusions of modern science: the way by which we can be genuinely naturalistic and yet maintain cherished values, provided they are critically clarified and reinforced. The naturalistic method, when it is consistently followed, destroys many things once cherished; but it destroys them by revealing their inconsistency with the nature of things—a flaw that always attended them and deprived them of efficacy for aught save emotional consolation. But its main purport is not destructive; empirical naturalism is rather a winnowing fan. Only chaff goes, though perhaps the chaff had once been treasured. An empirical method which remains true to nature does not "save"; it is not an insurance device nor a mechanical antiseptic. But it inspires the mind with courage and vitality to create new ideals and values in the face of the perplexities of a new world. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Juvenile Delinquency and Community Organization
- Edwin Sutherland
Exquisite Emotional Sensitivity and Capture
- Beverly Cuthbertson
- John Johnson
National-Mindedness and International-Mindedness.” Pp. 355–370 inMead: Selected Writings
- George Mead
Philanthropy from the Point of View of Ethics
- Alfred Lindesmith
Local Communities in the Metropolis
- Robert Park
Violentization in Larger Social Context
- Lonnie Athens
National-Mindedness and International-Mindedness
- George Mead
The Politics of the ‘Man Farthest Down
- Robert Park
The Unity of the Human Being
- John Dewey
The Reconstruction of Philosophy
- John Dewey
On Theoretical Sociology: Five Essays, Old and New
- Robert Merton
Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist
- Richard Rhodes
Determinism and Responsibility
- Isaiah Berlin
The Quest for Certainty
- John Dewey
The Philosophy of the Present
- Alfred Lindesmith
Masters of Death: The SS Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust
- Richard Rhodes