Control of Violence: Historical and International Perspectives on Violence in Modern Societies

Control of Violence

Wilhelm Heitmeyer · Heinz-Gerhard Haupt · Stefan Malthaner · Andrea Kirschner Editors

Control of Violence Historical and International Perspectives on Violence in Modern Societies

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Editors Wilhelm Heitmeyer University of Bielefeld Bielefeld 33615, Germany [email protected]

Stefan Malthaner University of Bielefeld Bielefeld 33615, Germany [email protected]

Heinz-Gerhard Haupt Department of History and Civilization European University Institute Florence 50133, Italy [email protected] Andrea Kirschner University of Bielefeld Bielefeld 33615, Germany [email protected]

ISBN 978-1-4419-0382-2 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-0383-9 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0383-9 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2010937925 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

Preface

Are modern societies capable of controlling violence effectively? Media coverage of terrorist attacks, rampage shootings, endless conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, and relentless everyday violence in “fragile” states like Somalia or Colombia tends to suggest a pessimistic answer. Events such as these are disconcerting and upsetting not only because of their overwhelming media presence, but also because they give the impression of being completely new forms of violence that are both unpredictable and uncontrollable. Are we therefore to conclude that the societies in which such acts occur have lost control over violence? Or is this merely a false perception, fed by fear and threat discourses, while in reality our options for controlling violence are greater than they have ever been in history? What are the real problems, and what mechanisms of violence control do we have in the twenty-first century? How do the various social, cultural, and historical contexts differ? A group of researchers from various academic disciplines and different countries spent a year at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at Bielefeld University studying these issues, between October 2007 and September 2008, discussing their findings in a series of conferences with their colleagues in the field. This volume is the result of their work. The book reaps many of the benefits of working in a research group. The collaborative environment created a unique, long-term context for discussions centering on the question of violence control, which in turn gave rise to a common perspective that deeply informs the papers collected in this volume and that is of crucial importance because the spectrum of the contributions is remarkably wide. The papers deal not only with fundamental questions and aspects of violence control—such as the transformation of control mechanisms during processes of modernization; the significance of public discourses and the framing of violence; the relationship between religion and violence; and forms of self-control—but also with three more specialized aspects of violent phenomena which the researchers deem paradigmatic for the discussion of a loss of control over violence, namely school shootings, terrorism, and violence in states in crisis. The cross-disciplinary discussions that arose during the research year are reflected in the integrative thrust of the research topics, which explore the shifting forms, mechanisms, and actors involved in the control of violence. Another common characteristic of the papers, which has been possible not least because of the researchers’ constant and

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constructive “confrontations” with colleagues from other disciplines and research fields, is their critical reflection on entrenched opinions and viewpoints. Thus, the research project demonstrated once again that cooperation across disciplinary, geographical, and cultural frontiers is not only possible, but also effective and extraordinarily productive. It is our hope, therefore, that the working relationships and networks that were formed during the research year and in the course of the completion of this book will not only “informally” outlast the project, but will also continue to serve as a source of cooperation, inspiration, and intrepid projects. We would like to thank all the authors represented in this volume for the generosity and patience with which they submitted their contributions to several reviews both by the editors and external reviewers. We also thank all the reviewers for their support during the review process. We are indebted for important arguments and valuable suggestions to all our colleagues who presented papers or participated in discussions at our conferences and workshops, which were funded by the Thyssen Foundation, the German Foundation for Peace Research, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the German Research Foundation. We thank them for their support. The book could not have been completed without the outstanding translation and editing services of Meredith Dale and his team, nor without the tireless work of Larissa Appelt, Nils Böckler, Judith Scherer, and Martin Winands, who formatted the individual contributions. Our heartfelt thanks to them all. Finally, special thanks are due to our former colleague Barbara Kaletta and to the staff of the ZiF for their dedicated, patient, and kind support during the research year, without which this book would not have been written. We hope that this volume will provide food for further thought about the interrelationships between violence and control, even if—in our own experience—such thought may entail a loss of control of some sort There is not a single idea of any quality that does not stem from an intoxication, a loss of control, an ability to err and thereby renew oneself. (Emil Cioran, The New Gods)

Bielefeld, Germany Florence, Italy Bielefeld, Germany Bielefeld, Germany

Wilhelm Heitmeyer Heinz-Gerhard Haupt Stefan Malthaner Andrea Kirschner

Contents

Part I

Introduction

Control of Violence—An Analytical Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrea Kirschner and Stefan Malthaner Part II

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Mechanisms and Strategies of Violence Control

An End to Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michel Wieviorka Cross-National Homicide Trends in the Latter Decades of the Twentieth Century: Losses and Gains in Institutional Control? . Steven F. Messner, Benjamin Pearson-Nelson, Lawrence E. Raffalovich, and Zachary Miner Self-Control and the Management of Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Charles R. Tittle Self-Control, Conscience, and Criminal Violence: Some Preliminary Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Helmut Thome

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Reading Religious Violence in Terms of Theories of Social Action . . . . Hans G. Kippenberg

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Religion and Control of Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Levent Tezcan

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Gun Violence and Control in Germany 1880–1911: Scandalizing Gun Violence and Changing Perceptions as Preconditions for Firearm Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dagmar Ellerbrock Controlling Control Institutions: Policing of Collective Protests in 1960s West Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Klaus Weinhauer

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Part III

Contents

The Micro-level: School Shootings

School Violence and Its Control in Germany and the United States Since the 1950s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dirk Schumann School Shooting: A Double Loss of Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nils Böckler, Thorsten Seeger, and Wilhelm Heitmeyer Explaining and Preventing School Shootings: Chances and Difficulties of Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rebecca Bondü and Herbert Scheithauer Masculinity, School Shooters, and the Control of Violence . . . . . . . . Ralph W. Larkin Media and Control of Violence: Communication in School Shootings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Glenn W. Muschert and Massimo Ragnedda Part IV

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The Meso-level: Terrorism

Terrorism as Performance: The Assassinations of Walther Rathenau and Hanns-Martin Schleyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bernd Weisbrod

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Party Politics, National Security, and Émigré Political Violence in Australia, 1949–1973 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mate Nikola Toki´c

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Control of Terror—Terror of Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jitka Maleˇcková

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Terrorism: Conditions and Limits of Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friedhelm Neidhardt

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Fighting for the Community of Believers: Dynamics of Control in the Relationship Between Militant Islamist Movements and their Constituencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stefan Malthaner Baseless Jihad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Khaled Al-Hashimi and Carolin Goerzig Part V

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The Macro level: Violence in States in Crisis

Ethnic Riots in Situations of Loss of Control: Revolution, Civil War, and Regime Change as Opportunity Structures for Anti-Jewish Violence in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe . . Werner Bergmann

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Control and Chaos: Paramilitary Violence and the Dissolution of the Habsburg Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Gerwarth Failed States in Theoretical, Historical, and Policy Perspectives . . . . . Jean-Germain Gros Putting Out the Fire with Gasoline? Violence Control in “Fragile” States: A Study of Vigilantism in Nigeria . . . . . . . . . . Andrea Kirschner

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Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Wilhelm Heitmeyer

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Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contributors

Khaled Al-Hashimi Technical University Berlin, Berlin, Germany, [email protected] Werner Bergmann Centre for Research on Antisemitism, Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany, [email protected] Nils Böckler Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany, [email protected] Rebecca Bondü Department of Educational Science and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany, [email protected] Dagmar Ellerbrock Department of History, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany, [email protected] Robert Gerwarth College of Arts & Celtic Studies, School of History & Archive, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, [email protected] Carolin Goerzig EU Institute for Security Studies, Paris, France, [email protected] Jean-Germain Gros Department of Political Science, University of Missouri, Saint Louis, MO, USA, [email protected] Heinz-Gerhard Haupt Department of History and Civilization, European University Institute, Florence, Italy, [email protected] Wilhelm Heitmeyer Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany, [email protected] Hans G. Kippenberg School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany, [email protected] Andrea Kirschner Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany, [email protected]

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Ralph W. Larkin John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, USA, [email protected] Jitka Maleˇcková Institute for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, [email protected] Stefan Malthaner Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany, [email protected] Steven F. Messner Department of Sociology, University at Albany, S.U.N.Y., Albany, NY, USA, [email protected] Zachary Miner University at Albany, S.U.N.Y., Albany, NY, USA, [email protected] Glenn W. Muschert Department of Sociology and Gerontology, Miami University, Oxford, OH, USA, [email protected] Friedhelm Neidhardt Social Science Research Center, Berlin, Germany, [email protected] Benjamin Pearson-Nelson Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne, IN, USA, [email protected] Lawrence E. Raffalovich Department of Sociology, University at Albany, S.U.N.Y., Albany, NY, USA, [email protected] Massimo Ragnedda Dipartimento di Economia Istituzioni e Società, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, Italy, [email protected] Herbert Scheithauer Department of Educational Science and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany, [email protected] Dirk Schumann Department of Medieval and Modern History, Georg-August University, Göttingen, Germany, [email protected] Thorsten Seeger Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany, [email protected] Levent Tezcan Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands, [email protected] Helmut Thome Institute for Sociology, Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, [email protected] Charles R. Tittle Department of Sociology and Anthropology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA, [email protected] Mate Nikola Toki´c The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt, [email protected]

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Klaus Weinhauer Department of History, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany, [email protected] Bernd Weisbrod Department of Medieval and Modern History, Faculty of Humanities, Georg-August University, Göttingen, Germany, [email protected] Michel Wieviorka Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France, [email protected]

About the Editors

Wilhelm Heitmeyer is professor of socialization and director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at Bielefeld University. His research interests concentrate on violence, social disintegration, right-wing extremism, and ethnic-cultural conflicts. He is editor of the International Handbook of Violence Research (co-edited with John Hagan), and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Conflict and Violence (with D. Massey et al.). He is organizer of the international research group “Control of Violence” at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld University (with Heinz Gerhard-Haupt). Heinz-Gerhard Haupt is professor of social history at Bielefeld University and head of the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His work focuses on social history and political history of modern Europe. Recent publications include Neue Politikgeschichte [New political history] (with Ute Frevert, eds.) (2005); Terrorismus in der Bundesrepublik: Medien, Staat und Subkulturen in den 1970er Jahren [Terrorism in the Federal Republic of Germany: Media, state, and subcultures] (with K. Weinhauer and J. Requate, eds.) (2006). He is organizer of the international research group “Control of Violence” at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld University (with Wilhelm Heitmeyer). Stefan Malthaner is a researcher at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at Bielefeld University. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Augsburg University. His work focuses on terrorism and insurgent violence, social movements, and religious communities. He was a member of the Junior Research Group “Micropolitics of Armed Groups” at Humboldt University, Berlin, and fellow of the research group “Control of Violence” at the Center of Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF). Andrea Kirschner was a researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld University, before she became member of the DFG Research Training Group “Self-Making. Practices of subjectivation in historical and interdisciplinary perspective” at Oldenburg University. She received a diploma in social sciences xv

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and a master of arts in peace and conflict research. Her research interests concentrate on violence, migration, and development with particular attention being paid to post-structural research approaches.

Part I

Introduction

Control of Violence—An Analytical Framework Andrea Kirschner and Stefan Malthaner

1 The Social Order and the Problem of Controlling Violence One of the core challenges faced by societies in all cultures and ages is that of limiting, and if possible preventing, destructive violence. The scientific and public debates about the possibility of controlling violence through the framework of the social order provide a particularly striking illustration of the contrasts between optimistic and pessimistic visions of social conditions and development potentials. Violence as such can be employed both to preserve existing conditions and to bring about social change, and its use is not confined to individuals and social groups. Rather, it has been a fixed component of all forms of state order both in the past and in the present. The link between state power and violence has been indissoluble since the early modern era, even in situations where violence is regulated by law. In the words of Walter Benjamin (2007, 281): “Lawmaking is power making, and, to that extent, an immediate manifestation of violence.” The relationship between violence and order, therefore, is a reciprocally constitutive one. According to Popitz (translated from 1992, 63), “Social order is a necessary precondition for containing violence; violence is a necessary precondition for maintaining the social order.” Thus, the concept of controlling violence is not one which has exclusively positive connotations; rather, it is an extremely ambivalent category arising as an element of strategies for enforcing power and maintaining order. These strategies contain elements of force and frequently also of violence. However, control of violence is also a mechanism for structuring social and political movements, within which it serves to defend and assert leadership. Control is based on superior power, which may be political, legal, physical and military, or economic, or may take the form of cultural hegemony (Gramsci 1991). Those who define the types and conditions of control are in a position to control others and to enforce certain standards of behavior—not infrequently by threatening or employing violence. Thus, A. Kirschner (B) Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany e-mail: [email protected] W. Heitmeyer et al. (eds.), Control of Violence, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0383-9_1,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

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the control of violence is by no means a neutral aspect of society. Rather, it is formed and influenced by society’s structures, perceived threats, and discourses about violence—which it in turn influences. Changes in social conditions and the awareness of new threats cause changes in the controlling regime, i.e., in the totality of the rules, forms, mechanisms, and objectives of control within a society. At the same time, changes in the control regime have an impact on social structures and affect the framework within which the forms and mechanisms of control are constituted (Singelnstein and Stolle 2008, 111). The mechanisms and institutions that a society employs in its attempts to limit violence are indicative of fundamental social structures and relationships. In this sense, as Spierenburg points out, control is always a “sensitizing concept:” “It draws attention to the relationships between various mechanisms inducing people to act in a way that is desirable according to a certain standard or ideal. In all societies social control constitutes a major key to understanding violence, conflict, and problems related to the formation and acceptance of social norms.. . .. this crucial function of social control is operative regardless of the period one examines or a country’s political system. It works in the early modern period as well as in recent times and in both democratic and authoritarian societies” (2004, 10; following Herbert Blumer). The modern world, with its faith in technical progress, long believed that social processes were completely controllable. This belief was supported and reiterated in theories of modernization and civilization (Elias [1939] 2009). Against the background of growing prosperity, these theories held that modern societies had been pacified through an increasingly successful combination of control by the state and emotional self-restraint by the individual, and supported this argument by pointing out that, in the western world at least, homicide rates had been declining for centuries (Eisner 2003; Thome 2004; Spierenburg 1994; Dinges 1998). But the twentieth century’s record on violence is not unambiguous. Considering the unparalleled number of casualties caused by wars, civil strife, genocide, and totalitarian and dictatorial regimes in the twentieth century, there are good reasons to doubt the assumption that social development and the consolidation of governmental control mechanisms result in a general decrease in violence (Hobsbawm 1994; Mazower 1998). The role of the rational, bureaucratic state in controlling violence proves to be ambivalent: on the one hand, the state regulates social affairs and limits violence, but on the other hand, it acts as a protagonist of force—indeed violence—both at home and abroad. The organized power of its institutions enables the state to exercise force to a hitherto unprecedented degree. Its violent “interior face” was revealed most vividly in the Nazi, fascist, and communist states of Europe and showed that ideologies such as these are in no way incompatible with modern, rational principles of organization and order in society, industry, and technology, but may in fact have a strong affinity to such principles (Mazower 1998; Bauman 1989). However, this affinity is also apparent in the case of collective acts of violence in non-European contexts, which western societies like to dissociate from their own cultures by interpreting them as an expression of “pre-modern,” unbridled barbarism. The genocide in Rwanda, for instance, was anything but an uncontrolled,

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intoxicated, “pre-modern” outbreak of ethnic violence, even though this interpretation was strongly suggested by the machetes that came to symbolize the events in the media. Rather, the genocide was the product of a modern, systematic, rationally planned, and highly institutionalized and organized form of mass violence that absolutely presupposes the existence of modern governmental structures, colonial control instruments (ethnic categorization), media infrastructures, and an ethno-nationalist ideology (Uvin 1998).

2 Violence and Its Ambivalence Like control, violence can be attributed to that field of ideas, which the philosopher William Gallie (1956) once described as “essentially contested concepts.” What these concepts have in common is that they are judgmental and complex; they cannot be categorized within clearly definable fields of general usage that would point to an unambiguous meaning. The concept of violence has been described by means of a wide spectrum of definitions and explanations that vary in breadth and validity that refer to different subjects, and that involve controversy about the authority to define concepts at all—especially with regard to the question of what ought to be described as violence and what coping strategies ought to be derived from the definition (Heitmeyer and Hagan 2003). But ambiguity is one of the characteristics of violence (Heitmeyer and Soeffner 2004, 11). Accordingly, the different definitions of violence can vary extremely widely and may encompass psychological, cultural, and physical violence and even the concept of structural violence. At the same time, there are numerous other systematologies that may focus on its covert or overt nature or its target, which may be persons or objects (Imbusch 2003, 13– 39). The content of the definition of violence is constantly subject to historical and cultural change as well as social and cultural debate (Liell 2002, 6). The decision whether to apply the concept of violence to social conditions, a protagonist, or an action invariably involves a conflict about the legitimacy of violence as well: a conflict that remains insurmountable because social conventions and rules that govern the legitimate use of violence may change at any time in the course of political conflicts (Weller 2003, 11). In the present discussion, we will follow Heinrich Popitz in taking violence to be “violent action” (Aktionsmacht) that results in deliberate physical injury to others (Popitz 1992, 48). Compared to more wide-ranging concepts of violence, this narrow definition, which limits itself to violence committed against persons with the intent to harm their physical integrity, has the advantage of clearly delineating a manageable field of analysis. The concept of structural violence, which Galtung (1969, 114) defines as a form of violence that “is built into the structure, and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances,” widens the scope of the subject to the point where it becomes too vast to handle, both from a normative and from an empirical perspective (Liell 2002, 7; Daase 1996, 46). In this way, the concept of violence acquires an enormous potential for mobilization, but it simultaneously loses its distinctiveness. Although even a narrowly circumscribed

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concept of violence cannot completely eliminate the problem of imprecise definitions nor the fact that violent actions always take place within social, cultural, and historical contexts, it nevertheless succeeds in limiting the empirical object of study and reduces questions involving normative evaluations of social conditions.

3 Toward an Understanding of Control 3.1 Etymological Origins The etymology of the term “control” is rooted in the Old French contre-rôle, which denotes a “counter-register” that is used to verify an original or an object. The German term Kontrolle/kontrollieren, the French contrôle/contrôler, and the English control/to control have all preserved the sense of control as verification. All three languages, however, also use the term in the secondary, derivative sense of control as mastery or command over something, or as the power and authority to direct and govern. In this sense, “to control” is to rule, guide, and govern. To control something is to regulate and limit it.1 Both meanings are closely interlinked, as the ability to monitor and verify something and to impose penalties is also a mechanism of domination. Nevertheless, each of the two levels of meaning employs a different conceptual logic. Control in the sense of domination refers to the effective action and its result, i.e., the successful supervision and regulation of a situation with the result that it comes “under control.” In contrast, control in the sense of verification and monitoring is initially an open-ended activity that entails either checking whether a behavior or a state of affairs is as it should be (verification), with the option to respond by imposing penalties if it is not, or observing a situation (monitoring) in order to intervene when undesirable developments or actions are noted. The penalties or interventions may or may not be successful. It is clear at this juncture that the two concepts of control also differ in their temporal dimension. Control in the sense of domination is a condition, generally designed to be permanent, in which something can be supervised (controlled) at any time, whereas control in the sense of verification (and penalization) refers to an action that occurs at a subsequent point in time. Monitoring, in contrast, connotes a preceding, preventive activity, where the responses to specific developments come later in the chronological sequence. As we will see later on, the distinction between an initial dimension of control that takes the form of actions by certain persons or groups of persons (actors of control) who aim to monitor, verify, and regulate the actions of other persons (objects of control)—in other words, a dimension that represents an interactive process—and a second dimension of control that takes the form of a condition that governs processes and behaviors is a central issue for the paradigm of the control of violence 1 Etymologisches

Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 24th ed., s.v. “Kontrolle”; The Oxford English Dictionary (1989), 2d ed., s.v. “control”.

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with which we are concerned here. A conspectus of both dimensions must focus not only on the objectives of the control of violence, but also on its efficacy.

3.2 Sociological and Historical Perspectives on Control “Control of violence” is not a clearly defined concept in sociology and historical scholarship.2 Any attempt to develop a definition inevitably brings one up against the established concepts of the social norm and the social order, of power and rule, and of approaches to social control. 3.2.1 Control as State Repression or Social Self-Regulation: Classical Models of the Social Order (Hobbes, Scottish Enlightenment) Limiting violence has always been one strand of the scientific discourse about the state and forms of social order. Two fundamentally opposite models of an order that controls violence must be mentioned here: on the one hand, forced, repressive pacification by a state wielding superior power; and on the other hand, the selfregulation of social relations by mechanisms of socialization, social control, and market forces. Both models were definitively formulated in Great Britain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The political theory of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was developed under the influence of the English Civil War and the Thirty Years’ War on the European continent. Its point of departure was the nightmare scenario of violent chaos in which fear reigns supreme and social life is paralyzed by the ever-present danger of armed assault. Hobbes holds that fundamentally insatiable human desires represent one of the main reasons why conflicts arise in the absence of a state of political order. The citizens’ perpetual feelings of individual insecurity, however, are an even greater factor in the perpetuation of violence. When the individual does not know whether the other represents a violent threat, all must behave as though the threat were real, arm themselves or strike first (Hobbes [1651] 1970, 63–66, 87–90).3 Even banding together in groups cannot eliminate the danger, as the groups themselves are always under threat from other groups of similar strength. According to Hobbes, the only possible solution lies in collective submission to a single, all-powerful state with a monopoly on the use of force. The state disempowers and disarms all other protagonists of force and guarantees the safety of individual citizens by making and enforcing laws internally and by defending its borders externally. Here the control of violence appears as the sole task of the all-powerful state, whose main function

2 The same ultimately applies to “control” in general, although one must take into account hypothe-

ses on forms of control and influence in social relationships (e.g., Oppenheim 1961). However, the term “control” is sometimes used as a synonym for “social control.” 3 It is worth noting that, according to Hobbes, the primary motive in a war of all against all is not malice or greed, but fear. The compulsions of insecurity do not stem from the evil nature of all; in the view of Hobbes, the existence of a few truly evil people is sufficient to force all the others to act as though all were evil (Hobbes [1651] 1970, 63–66, 87–90).

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toward its subjects is coercive. Individual and collective violence is prevented and adherence to norms, agreements, and laws is guaranteed only by the threat and enforcement of punishment. From this perspective, loss of control constitutes the loss of the state’s repressive efficiency, behind which the danger of new civil wars is eternally present. Assuming that human nature is largely unchangeable and that the resultant compulsions arising from insecurity remain largely the same, Hobbes sees no hope that this state of affairs could improve or that the danger of violent chaos could be gradually averted. The containment of violence calls for unceasing vigilance, and it is always provisional and eternally vulnerable to loss of control. Another model of order was developed in the mid-eighteenth century by the authors of the Scottish Enlightenment, most notably by Adam Smith (1723–1790). Here the social order appears not as something imposed from the outside, but as something that comes into being spontaneously in the form of cooperation and normative systems (“moral feelings”) as a result of the social interactions themselves. It acquires efficacy through socialization, habit, self-control, and informal social control (Smith [1759] 1976). It must, however, be borne in mind that Scottish moral theory was developed against a very different historical background than the political theory of Hobbes. The constitutional monarchy in Great Britain had already been consolidated and was going through a period of peace and affluence. Thus, Smith views the market as an initial form of order in which the passions of individuals seeking personal profit are automatically regulated and converted into beneficial cooperation. Governed by an “invisible hand,” the market requires no external sanctions (Smith [1776] 1991). Of particular note with respect to the question of violence control is Smith’s analysis of a second mechanism of social regulation: the creation and enforcement of behavioral norms in social interactions. One of the recurrent themes of the Scottish Enlightenment is that people are born into families and societies whose habits and moral feelings they learn through processes of socialization. In these processes, affect control and conformity to norms develop as the outcome of a self-control that is based on the internalization of norms (moral feelings) and subtle forms of social control. The individual accepts the expectations of others regarding his behavior and internalizes them as an “impartial observer” who acquires an almost absolute authority not only through the fear of losing reputation and being ostracized by the community, but also through the fear of economic disadvantage through being shunned in business dealings (Smith [1759] 1976, 134–156). Hirschman (1977) expresses the logic of these two models of order as the repression of human passions, on the one hand, and the harnessing of these passions, on the other hand; in the latter case, it is precisely the interests of the individual that serve to harness the passions to cooperation (Hirschman 1977, 14–20, 31–42). However, state-imposed order and social self-regulation are not mutually exclusive. The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment stressed the necessity of laws enforced by the state. But law enforcement by the state only becomes necessary when forms of social self-regulation reach their limits. Here the state is not so much an all-powerful, external coercive apparatus as an entity that arises from the institutionalization of social mechanisms of order and that is driven by an interest in

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guaranteed civil and economic rights. Conflicts and competing interests represent a potentially useful element that powers social development. Thus, it is possible to derive an optimistic developmental perspective from this theory: if people are able to learn, then it is possible to increasingly pacify social relationships by stabilizing cooperative relationships and self-control. In the logic of this perspective, loss of control—even over violence—means primarily the disintegration of social relationships and the loss of efficacy of social mechanisms of socialization and self-control. 3.2.2 Power and Rule, Punishment and Discipline: Control of Violence in Modern Societies (Weber, Elias, Foucault) The concept of control is closely linked to the concept of power, which Weber described as the opportunity to enforce one’s own will within a social relationship (Weber [1922] 1968, 53). As in the case of control, power entails possibilities for influencing other actors. The two concepts are thus very closely related. Nevertheless, the relationships they reference are different: Power describes a potential, while control describes an effect that actually occurs. Control aims specifically to guide or limit the behavior of others, while power focuses on ensuring the dominance of one’s own side—enforcing one’s own will even against the will of others. Finally, control connotes a more regulated and stable form of influence, while power is more unstable and thus appears more uncontrolled. Rule, too, implies control, as it represents institutionalized power that has been transformed into a stable relationship between command and obedience. The ruler controls the conduct of his subjects, from whom he is able to demand obedience. Thus, rule is the more narrowly defined term for a special form of control, namely politically institutionalized control. However, this too goes far beyond the mere control of violence and applies to a wide range of different behavior patterns. In being transformed into rule, however, control acquires a specific extension, which is simultaneously a limitation: control as rule—at least in its ideal version as defined by Weber—always presupposes the willingness of the subordinates to obey. This willingness, in turn, is rooted in their acceptance of the order on which rule is based (Weber [1922] 1968, 212–217). Thus, Max Weber’s sociology of rule is only superficially beholden to the logic of repressive order as formulated by Hobbes. It is true that political associations employ physical coercion by means of a dedicated administrative staff in order to secure their own existence and the validity of the order they impose. Thus, the state is, first and foremost, a coercive institution, and the concept of law necessarily presupposes the existence of law enforcers (Weber [1922] 1968, 54). However, the coercive element is supplemented by the willingness of the subordinates to obey—in other words, to acknowledge rule because it is based on an order they accept as exemplary and obligatory ([1922] 1968, 212–217). As a result of this legitimacy of rule, the relationship of control differs in two ways from that described by Hobbes: First, Weber postulates that control is based on an abstract order that places constraints even on the ruler and limits the scope and applicability of his controlling authority. Rule represents the opportunity to receive obedience

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for a specific command by a specific target group (1968, 53). At the same time, the functionality of rule is transformed from external coercion into a mechanism of self-control: it is not the command that causes obedience, but the individual’s compliance with a system of order (reinforced by coercive mechanisms that support it) that is regarded as obligatory and imposes a duty to obey (see also Lemke 2001). Thus, legitimacy relieves rule “of the necessity to commit ever more acts of coercion and violence” (translated from Tyrell 1980, 90), so that coercion and violence can fade into the background and become “latent” without reducing the controllability of rule. Losses of control arise when the legitimacy and obligatory nature of rule are called into question, causing the mechanism of self-control to lose efficacy and once again requiring the social order to be guaranteed through physical coercion. In this case, both state violence and the violent protests of social protagonists against an order they perceive as illegitimate are indications of a loss of control over violence by the state. Second, another control mechanism that is immediately linked to rule in Weber’s view is discipline. Weber cites bureaucratic administrative bodies, standing armies, and economic processes as examples of discipline. Discipline also involves the following of orders, which individuals must carry out in a well-planned and prepared fashion with unconditional disregard for whether or not they personally agree with the order. However, what characterizes the control mechanism of discipline is the development of cognitive structures through practice and training to foster an “undeterred objectivity” whose purpose is to promote rational, uniform obedience in large numbers of people. The emphasis here is not on the acceptance of a social order, but on practice through repetition—in other words, on a specific form of socialization (Weber [1922] 1968, 53, 1148–1157). Norbert Elias, in his theory of the civilizing process, further refines Weber’s subjective-individual and objective-structural elements of rule and control and links them more explicitly by referring to the theories of Sigmund Freud. The development of increasing social control as described by Elias takes place on two parallel planes. The psychogenetic dimension of the civilizing process involves the gradual “civilization” not only of individual behavior, but also of the personality structure of the individual and growing control of instincts and affects. In a complementary sociogenetic process, the modern state’s monopolization of financial and executive resources causes structures of rule and apparatuses of control to develop into ever more differentiated and ever more effective institutions and mechanisms: “The controlling agency forming itself as part of the individual’s personality structure corresponds to the controlling agency forming itself in society at large” (Elias [1939] 2009, 373). External coercion is supplemented here by internalized behavioral norms and self-control. This, however, is not simple adaptation to external expectations; rather, it represents part of a comprehensive remodeling of the personality (Lemke 2001). Similarly to Weber—who, however, associates his concept of discipline most immediately with certain structures (the military, bureaucratic administration) rather than with society as a whole—Elias describes this type of behavior modification as a form of conditioning that causes individuals to internalize social constraints through socialization processes, with the result that these

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processes take place almost automatically (Elias [1939] 2009, 415–416). This kind of self-control is far removed from the autonomous self-restraint of rational selfinterest in the market. Rather, it takes the form of an incorporated constraint and the penetration of the individual by the outer social order. In the process of civilization, control, as the reduction of arbitrariness in individual behavior, is affected less and less frequently by exterior constraints and increasingly takes the form of selfconstraint. The increase of affective control is not, however, a linear one, as Elias pointed out in The Germans (1996). It goes hand in hand with phases of decivilization that once again highlight the precarious nature of control and the impossibility of entirely removing violence from human interactions. According to Elias, therefore, acts of violence come about through losses of control over violence both on the part of the individual (affective control) and the government (monopoly on violence). A counter-thesis was formulated by Zygmunt Bauman (1989), who held that the enabling factors for the Holocaust lay not in the collapse of civilization, but rather in elements that are integral to civilization and the modern age. In his view, therefore, it is not a loss of control, but an excess of control in the form of rationalization and bureaucratization, as well as the concomitant high degree of individual affective control that enabled the mass violence of the twentieth century. The relationship between state rule, self-control, and the formation of the modern subject reappears in a central position in the thought of Michel Foucault, where it is linked to a comprehensive analysis of different forms of control over deviance and violence. In Discipline and Punish (1977), Foucault traces the development of punitive practices since the seventeenth century. He holds that the excessive punitive violence of torturing and executing lawbreakers, which was intended as a demonstrative restoration of the sovereignty of the monarch, was succeeded by the reform-minded concept of punishment as a means of education and of restoring individuals to the status of obedient entities, and by imprisonment as the predominant technique of correction. This in turn gave way to disciplinary measures as a way to subjugate bodies and make them useful (Foucault 1977, 135–141). In the course of this process, the forms, mechanisms, and objectives of control changed along with their function within the state and society. The ruler’s revenge for violations of his sovereignty gave way to the defense and protection of society, which feels attacked as a whole by infringements of the law. According to Foucault, punishment becomes a “generalized function, coextensive with the function of the social body and with each of its elements” (1977, 90). The figure of the ruler as a visible and identifiable agent of control and punishment recedes behind the anonymous character of punishment. At the same time, the violence of the punishment—which in previous times was frequently inflicted in public—is reduced and regulated and finally becomes transformed into a prison sentence that is served away from the public eye. Prisons evolve into a disciplinary system in which individuals are regulated and monitored in every detail of their daily lives and become the “objects of a supervised transformation” (Foucault 1977, 245) and the “development” and “disciplination” of the body (1977, 130–131). In this connection, Foucault points out the central significance of surveillance and of the close relationship between surveillance and domination in control: The “panoptic” mechanism of power is effective primarily

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through continuous visibility, which causes the objects of control, who are aware of their visibility, to control themselves and thus to adopt the “coercive measures of power” and use them against themselves (1977, 200–209). In Discipline and Punish, Foucault paints a gloomy picture of modern societies as “disciplinary societies” in which surveillance and discipline extend beyond the penal system and turn into ubiquitous but largely invisible forms of control (1977, 264–291) whose economic effectiveness makes more violent forms of power obsolete. Foucault here shows how the state safeguards its own existence by disciplining bodies and minds, by intervening in many different public spheres and institutions such as schools, military barracks, factories, and prisons, and even in the ostensibly “state-free” sphere of its citizens’ private lives. Here control becomes more subtle and presupposes a certain degree of freedom of its subjects. In his later lectures about “governmentality,”4 Foucault (2004) refines this perspective, arguing that the control of social relationships and the control of the modern subject in today’s “liberal” European societies are grounded mainly in mechanisms of self-regulation based on individual freedom. While surveillance and discipline remain present, especially in the penal system, as control mechanisms, they do not dominate the overall logic of governmental control. In Foucault’s view, the form of government that is currently dominant is one that is based on the observation and regulation of social relations, one whose concern is not so much to exercise a confining influence as to allow the positive organization of “circulations,” i.e., productive social interactions (Foucault 2004, 36–38, 100). The core of this technique of government are “security dispositives:” relationships of (self-)control that can be initiated or enabled but are based primarily on mechanisms where the phenomena themselves give rise to the developments by which they are regulated (2004, 58–68). Control of violence figures here as the management of harmful developments that adapts scientifically and pragmatically to circumstances and aims to reduce harmful phenomena to acceptable proportions. This form of control may employ indirect mechanisms by acting on remote factors in order to regulate a phenomenon (Foucault 2004, 110). While Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary systems stressed the relationship between mechanisms of power and subjectivation as the subjective dimension of subjugation, his concept of governmentality highlights the freedom of the individual (2004, 101). In a conspicuous echo of the Scottish Enlightenment, he describes individual desires as productive forces whose interplay serves the collective interest (Foucault 2004, 112). 3.2.3 Control, Deviance, and Violence: The Concept of Social Control In general, the term “social control” is applied to structures, mechanisms, and strategies whose purpose it is to cause society’s members to adhere to its valid norms and standards. Thus, “social control” differs from “control of violence” in that it is the 4 Foucault

defines governmentality as “The ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses, and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has its target population, as its principle form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security” (1991, 103).

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wider term that encompasses all kinds of norms and behaviors and is not limited to violence. In its original sense as used by Ross (1896, 1916), the concept of social control was closely linked to the question of how to reconcile individual behavior with the overall interests of modern society, and a wide range of control mechanisms and forms of social integration was studied for this purpose. Put another way, social control in this wide sense of the term denoted a society’s capacity to regulate itself. As a form of control that employed mechanisms of social influence, it was contrasted with forms of state control that applied coercion. In the first half of the twentieth century, the concept was adopted by US sociologists who were studying socialization processes and mechanisms of internalization (Mead 1959) and social control in small groups (Homans 1950) and in face-to-face interactions (Cooley 1922). Subsequently, however, the concept was increasingly adopted in sociological and criminological deviance research. Here the concept of social control was used in a narrower sense to denote those mechanisms and structures with which a society causes its members to comply with its norms, and special emphasis was placed on its formal control mechanisms and instruments (the police, the prison system, schools, etc.). Two strands of theory in the sociology of deviant behavior merit special mention in this context. Both these strands analyzed and developed the question of control in unique ways. The first strand encompasses the social control theories of Hirschi (1969) and Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) and Tittle’s control-balance theory (1995); the other comprises approaches to conflict theory and interactionist perspectives in criminology (Lemert 1967; Becker 1963). The strand of social control theories is based on a human understanding and model of order which, as Jensen (2003) points out, are not unlike those of Hobbes. People are regarded as being fundamentally, or “by nature,” prone to criminal acts, while successful behavior regulation is seen as a product of internal and external control that limits this potential. Thus, losses of control or the weakening of originally effective control mechanisms become the central causative factor in explaining criminality and violence. This approach gained prominence through Hirschi’s Causes of Delinquency (1969), in which he developed a typology of four main forms of social bonds which ensure conformity to norms and which, when weakened or absent, may cause criminal behavior: emotional ties (attachment), individual goals and hopes (commitment), membership of and investment in conventional sequences of action (involvement), and the acceptance of moral and normative concepts (belief). Whereas these bonds represent a combination of internal and external control, the General Theory of Crime published by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) focused mainly on forms of self-control. According to this theory, individuals develop different levels of self-control as a result of interactions and processes of socialization—in other words, they learn to varying degrees to consider the consequences of their actions and to regulate their behavior accordingly. Patterns of high or low selfcontrol solidify into relatively stable personality types, which are more or less prone to criminal and violent conduct. While the first approach interprets violence as the

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result of a loss of control due to weakened mechanisms of normative behavior regulation, the second approach explains violence as the result of the failed or inadequate development of self-control strategies. Tittle’s control-balance theory (1995) deals with control not only in the form of the external or self-control of an individual, but also examines the individual’s control over others. His central argument is that the probability of deviant behavior is affected by the balance between the control to which individuals are subject and the control that they exert over their environment (Tittle 1995, 142). Deficits in an individual’s control over his or her environment lead to predatory, defiant, or submissive forms of deviance, while an excess of control increases the probability of exploitative or decadent forms. The relationship between social control and deviant behavior is a complex one. Overly powerful social control over an individual and the individual’s resultant powerlessness do not, in Tittle’s view, result in a decline in criminal behavior; on the contrary, they may even trigger such behavior. According to this model, social control as a strategy for producing conformity may thus prove to be counter-productive and to result in a loss of control in the sense of the effective regulation and containment of individual behavior. The cause for this loss of control is an individual, emotional reaction to an external control which is perceived as excessive and which may give rise to an increased motivation to commit acts of violence. In a slightly different form, this ambivalent relationship between social control and violence has been the subject of conflict theory since the 1960s, in approaches stressing the role of interactive processes between deviant behavior and society’s reactions and control strategies. These approaches counter the definition of social control as resulting from social self-regulation by pointing out that it is always the powerful strata of society that have the capacity to control and to define norms and deviations. At the same time, the dominant question is no longer that of how mechanisms of social control can effectively prevent deviant behavior. On the contrary, the object of study is the ways in which definitions of norms and deviance, stigmatizing processes, and control strategies can actually contribute toward causing deviance and violence or to entrenching criminal careers (Lemert 1967; Becker 1963). The term “secondary deviance” coined by Lemert refers to this relationship, in which the labeling of certain persons as criminal and the application of certain control strategies by the state (institutional reactions, prison sentences) help to socialize the affected individuals into criminal roles and to trigger corresponding behavior patterns. Thus, this approach does not proceed from the assumption that control is a desirable condition in which criminality and violence can be contained and limited. Rather, it studies certain strategies and mechanisms of social control and their counter-productive effects, the results of which help to produce violence and, therefore, contribute to a general “loss of control.”5 5 Similar

interrelationships between control measures and violence can also be observed in the development of protest movements and violent conflicts. In general, as Neidhardt (1981) points out, the escalation of violence is a circular, interactive process in which both sides incite each other toward increased levels of deviance (and violence). This process results in compulsions, which are difficult for either the state or its adversaries to evade, so that both sides lose control over the process to some extent.

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The approaches described here examine social control from very different perspectives. In one case, social control is the only guarantor of conduct that conforms to social norms. In the other, agencies of control contribute significantly to the genesis of deviant behavior. What both approaches have in common is that—like the majority of research into deviant behavior in general—they are concerned primarily with types of formal state control or with control on the individual level (self-control). Horwitz criticizes this tendency in The Logic of Control (1990) and stresses the significance of informal norms and informal control in communities, families, and other groups. These relationships and social structures contain forms of social control that are at least as effective, if not more so, in regulating deviant behavior and violence.6 In general, formal control mechanisms only intervene in a subsidiary capacity and only to enforce certain norms, while the majority of the rules of conduct are guaranteed by informal mechanisms of control and intervention. In the case of modern societies, however, Horwitz diagnoses a weakening of these informal control mechanisms as a result of individualization processes and the dissolution of traditional social structures and value systems, although these tendencies vary considerably between individual states and social groups. Historical studies, too, tended to focus on informal methods of control. However, the concept of “social control” was not adopted until 1977, when A.P. Donajgrodzki published a study of Social Control in Nineteenth Century Britain. This work concentrated on charitable organizations, educational systems, the Salvation Army, and public markets, arguing that primary social control is exercised not by the police and the legal system, but by many different social institutions. Initially, this concept attracted little interest among historians. It was not until 2004 that Pieter Spierenburg sought once again to draw the attention of researchers to the social significance of social control mechanisms in different societies, stressing that research into social control had to focus not only on the classical field of crime and prosecution, but also on the churches and their normative controlling influence as well as control rituals and controlling institutions that are rooted in popular culture. Like Horwitz, Spierenburg’s chronology of social control postulates a decline in informal types of control and an increase in the significance of formal state mechanisms in the period between 1950 and 2000.

3.3 The Paradigm of Control: Fields of Action, Forms, and Mechanisms of Control When one studies the sociological and historical perspectives on control, it becomes clear that control in modern societies is a multi-layered, complex phenomenon. Control arises as a combination of self-control and external control, of coercion, discipline, and self-regulation, and it is exercised by various different protagonists. Its direct or indirect objective may be the control of violence. And control itself is subject to many different transformative processes, which change the forms, 6 Horwitz

(1990, 5–15); similarly, Garland points out the substantial role of informal control even for the functioning of formal control mechanisms (2001, 5, 124, 170).

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strategies, techniques, and mechanism of violence control along with its functions and the spaces in which it is exercised. How can we define the concept of violence control? 3.3.1 Two Dimensions of Control Within our paradigm of control, we must distinguish between the two dimensions of the concept of control (as outlined above). Control includes state and private— formal and informal—mechanisms and techniques with which social protagonists, social groups, and individuals attempt to limit or prevent certain forms of violent activity or to eliminate such activity (or its causes). In this sense, controlling violence encompasses the various reactive or preventive actions by one or more protagonists that aim to monitor, verify, and intervene in accordance with the normative standards that prevail in a society or a group. These include general rules of conduct and rules governing the settlement of conflicts as well as certain margins for tolerance, i.e., ideas about the extent and the forms of violence that are “normal,” acceptable, and legitimate in a given society and what levels of violence go beyond the level that is culturally and discursively defined as “normal.” Thus, violence control refers to an interactive process of regulation between control agencies and objects of control. This terminology reflects the remarks we made earlier about the significance of control as activities of verification and surveillance. It is possible for these kinds of control strategies to fail or to have unintended, counter-productive consequences such as an escalation of violence. The second dimension of the concept of control describes an objectively or subjectively perceived state of mastery over processes and behavior patterns on the individual, collective, or social level. In this sense, control of violence means to analyze and observe a situation that encourages violence and to control potential or actual protagonists of violence in order to prevent, stop, or reduce violent acts. Thus, control in this sense refers to successful regulation or limitation—in other words, violence, a situation, or certain protagonists are under control. This implies not only effectiveness, but also a certain permanent quality of the regulating and limiting influence. If violence has been reduced by isolated measures but could break out again at any moment, it is not possible to say that the situation is under control. This form of control over social processes can also be guided by the statistical probability of violent acts rather than responding to specific acts of violence that have already occurred. Accordingly, losses of control arise when protagonists or groups of protagonists lose their original relationships of influence or when knowledge about the cause-and-effect relationships of violent acts is called into question, so that they lose control over their own or other protagonists’ behavior or over a situation. 3.3.2 The Field of Action of Control According to our definition, “control” refers primarily to specific acts by individuals or agencies embedded in specific institutional and structural contexts, not to

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forms of control that are directly derived from anonymous social structures or a topdown “controlling state.” Societies and states do not control violence; policemen do. So do private security services, councils of elders, and national representatives in the United Nations General Assembly. So what we are interested in are governmental and social, private, public, and commercial actors of control who have a considerable range of formal and informal strategies and forms of control at their disposal. As we saw above in our overview of historical and sociological perspectives, control of violence is a process that depends on many factors. Accordingly, the strengths and weaknesses of the actors of control and the efficacy of their strategies—i.e., their “control gains” in the sense of the successful containment or prevention of violence—cannot be evaluated in the abstract, but are dependent on various factors and on the concrete context in which violence occurs. The efficacy of control may depend on the means available (coercion, incentives, etc.). In certain contexts, therefore, it may also depend on the threat of potential penalization by state or social protagonists or by a coercive apparatus. It may also depend on the extent to which a group or an individual acknowledges or resists the prevailing norms and the legitimacy, which is ascribed to the controlling actor and the underlying social order. State protagonists who claim to have legal jurisdiction and who are, in general, able to employ powerful coercive measures may superficially appear to have a distinct advantage controlling violence by informal protagonists. This advantage is by no means inevitable, however, and does not apply to all occurrences of violence. Thus, a state that is perceived as over-powerful and illegitimate may trigger protest and even resistance from those it controls, while informal protagonists in a local community may be able to secure compliance by virtue of their high-status positions and moral authority. Although certain protagonists may achieve an increase in control at the expense of losses of control on the part of others, this is not inevitably the case either. For example, Spierenburg shows that, during the nineteenth century, the police, as the central authority for curbing violence, was not alone in gaining influence; rather, informal means of control in the workplace acquired increasing significance in the course of industrialization, while, community sanctions and ecclesiastical discipline remained alive in many regions of Europe. Conversely, however, some modern cities are experiencing simultaneous losses of control on the part of both the state and the informal sector; these are places where the presence of state institutions is little more than ephemeral and where the moral authority of community leaders is in decline (Spierenburg 2004, 9). In certain situations, therefore, there are simultaneous gains and losses of control on the part of numerous different state and informal actors of control. The object of control may take the form of individuals, groups, or whole societies and states. It may also comprise physical spaces, such as public squares that are controlled by video surveillance, or certain time periods. The selection of the object of control depends on the objectives and the temporal dimension of the control. If the aim is to end or contain violence, the acute violence of an actor is the decisive criterion for the application of reactive control strategies. In contrast, if the aim is

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to prevent an act of violence, the selection of the object and the measures of control follows a logic of prevention or anticipation. In the former case, the police responds to a crime that has already been committed in order to prevent a repeat crime. In the latter case, a “puzzle” of specific parameters is assembled that will help to construct a scenario delineating the presumed future behavior of individuals or collectives that have hitherto maintained a low profile (Bigo et al. 2007, 7). In some contexts, for example, adolescents, migrants, the urban poor, members of certain organizations or associations, and even whole states that are deemed to be particularly susceptible to violent internal conflicts (“fragile states”) or to initiating external violence (“rogue states”) are construed as high-risk groups and thus become the object of measures to control violence. It becomes clear, therefore, that anticipatory strategies directed against “potential violent actors” are highly ambivalent because they are invariably based on the fragmentation of the social space into objects requiring protection and “dangerous ‘others’”—a process that involves labeling processes (Cohen and Scull 1983; Cohen 1985) and stereotype formation: “suspicion is selective and contains a large part of preconception as to who and what is suspect” (Lianos 2003, 421). Here, then, control is based not only on physical or legal power, but also on the power of definition. This phenomenon also shows that the field in which control is exercised cannot be limited to objects of control and immediate controlling entities such as the police or the legal system. Third parties too, who may function as mediators or in other capacities for resolving conflicts without violence, must be included in the field of control. Even protagonists from science and the media exert an influence on the control of violence by producing certain forms of knowledge. By trivializing or dramatizing different forms of violence they help to cause public insecurity and denial, influence public expectations of the actions to be taken by the political administration, and legitimize certain strategies of violence control. Thus, state and social protagonists in the media society must deal with the threat scenarios created by the media and must also counteract alternative interpretations of the situation and justify their own control strategies—by, for example, employing measures commensurate to the situation and making astute use of symbols. For example, current scientific discourse is dominated by neuroscientific explanations for violence in which the causes for violence and deviant behavior are traced to the neurochemical personalities of criminals. Like the discursive and political figurations of the late nineteenth century, in which discontent with existing institutions and measures for preventing violence and crime resulted in a shift from social to biological explanations for violence, these new “power-knowledge complexes” can contribute to the legitimization of new control regimes (Becker et al. 2008). Finally, it must be stressed that the interactive relationships between objects of control and actors of control are always characterized by a specific relationship between control and freedom. While interactions of control can result in control in the second sense of the term, i.e., in a relatively stable state of ruling or being ruled, we can nevertheless conclude, following Foucault (1999, 191 f.) that any interaction of control also includes “practices of liberty.” Garland (2001, 146) correctly notes that each punitive form of control “carries a price in terms of the erosion of civil liberties and the reduced power of the

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citizens vis-a-vis the state.” At the same time, however, control is based on certain degrees of liberty that are granted to the objects of control, and on their ability to resist and behave in non-conforming ways: “social control—even in its most formal expressions—has always been based on the ‘regressiveness’ of conformity, that is to say, on the possibility of negotiating via degrees of behaviour seen as ‘suspicious’, ‘dubious’ to the norm” (Lianos 2003, 420). In our view, therefore, the objects of control are not merely the passive recipients of control. Rather, they may offer a greater or lesser degree of resistance to control, depending on the social situation and the possibilities for resistance that it offers, and they may question rules and forms of control and even negotiate them anew. Thus, the relationship between control and liberty is not a simple trade-off except on a very superficial level. 3.3.3 Forms and Styles of Control Different actors of control may employ a wide variety of forms and styles of control. Horwitz identifies penal, therapeutic, conciliatory, and compensatory styles of control, all of which may be employed in conjunction with different forms of control. “Style and form of social control are two separate dimensions of control efforts. Each style can proceed through inaction, resort to the extralegal network or mobilization of social control agents” (Horwitz 1990, 97). Thus, even passivity, i.e., the failure to react, may represent a form of control. As we have seen, forms of formal and informal control may be distinguished on the level of societies and social groups. In liberal democracies, formal controls, which are generally exercised by state authorities, are usually regulated by laws. When a violent act is punishable under an existing law code, it results in sanctions that are intended to have an educational effect on the violent actor and to serve as a deterrent for others. The aim of such sanctions, therefore, is to control violence by preventing (recurrent) acts of violence. In contrast, informal controls are enforced not by invoking the authority of legally defined rules and procedures, but by the authority of persons in society who serve as guides and role models for certain types of behavior (Imbusch 2008, 463). Informal controls may also be exercised by groups that employ rituals and measures to enforce adherence to group norms within a specific cultural context. In eighteenth and nineteenth century villages, “rough music” served as a means of delivering a social rebuke—publicizing grievances and denouncing conditions or actions that were perceived as violations of the norm. Formal and informal types of violence control may strengthen and supplement one another. However, especially under conditions of “hybrid statehood” in postcolonial societies, they may also compete with one another by stipulating different penalties or by regarding a specific form of violent behavior—for example, violence against adulterous wives—as illegitimate within the legal order of the state but as legitimate in a non-governmental order. Here, violence is perceived as “control violence” in the form of a penalty for non-conforming behavior. As a counterpart to external forms of control exercised by others, the concept of self-control refers to forms of internal control on the level of the subject. Here it is once again necessary to distinguish between forms of self-discipline and

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self-guidance. In contrast to self-discipline, forms of self-guidance “modify behavior autonomously and ostensibly in accordance with the individual’s own wishes to conform with anticipated standards, without requiring the presence of an explicit or current threat or a promise of specific benefits” (Singelnstein and Stolle 2008, 70). Thus, self-guidance represents a form of control over liberty. As we have seen, this concept appears in Foucault as governmentality. Here, unlike in Ulrich Beck’s “risk society,” (Beck 1986) modern individuals are not the passive victims of uncontrollable risks, such as becoming the victims of violence or losing their jobs. Instead, since the modern view holds that all risks are essentially controllable, they have the task of autonomously managing such risks. Thus, control in the form of self-guidance is both a promise and a threat: “It is impossible to invoke personal responsibility without victim blaming; the happy news that you are the master of your fate implies that it is your own fault if your fate is not a happy one” (translated from Bröckling 2000, 156). 3.3.4 Strategies and Mechanisms of Control There are many different strategies and mechanisms of control, such as penalties and discipline as informal or legal control strategies; strategies of persuasion and public opinion; mechanisms of socialization, integration, and compensation; and strategies of exclusion. In the emergent welfare states of the second half of the twentieth century and in pre-colonial societies, control through compensation and integration into social groups and associations was of primary importance. Control in the sense of adherence to norms was guaranteed through the incentives of integration and support during short-term difficulties and exclusions. These incentives might take the form of state welfare or of systems for self-help and informal compensation in the event of illness or inability to work. Thus, violent behavior that infringes a legally defined system of norms or a set of informal rules must be evaluated against the consequences of exclusion from the social context. The mechanism of control that is at work here is based simultaneously on punishment (exclusion) and incentive (compensation). The control strategies of exclusion may be temporary or may culminate in the permanent exclusion of “dangerous superfluous members” who are deemed incapable of self-guidance (Singelnstein and Stolle 2008, 112). In this context, then, losses of control consist in the failure of social integration (Imbusch 2008, 465). However, integration and exclusion must always be considered side by side. For example, the concept of citizenship is based on the inclusion of certain groups who are granted rights and promised protection, while it simultaneously involves the exclusion of other groups who are not granted this status (Schwinn 2008). On the aggregate level, the various control actions performed by different protagonists coalesce into a control regime that encompasses the totality of the dominant rules, forms, styles, mechanisms, and goals with which control is exercised within a society. Thus, societies in different epochs and different geographical regions employ different control regimes. While every society is likely to exhibit similar forms and mechanisms of control (socialization and integration, and coercion and

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exclusion), there are variations in the dominant patterns of control in different state and social orders (Janowitz 1975, 84). In authoritarian or totalitarian dictatorships, for example, forms of repressive state control are often more strongly developed. At the same time, there are fewer limitations on violence-controlling state authorities such as the police, the military, and the legal system, which are subject to weaker control than their counterparts in liberal democracies. In democratic states, the legitimacy of state rule is also a more powerful prerequisite for the efficient exercise of violence control by the state, while comparatively extensive use is made of forms of social self-regulation via market processes.

4 Relationships of Control and Violence and the Ambivalence of Violence Control Control and violence may be interrelated in many different, complex ways.7 An understanding of the causes of violence and the relationships between different factors is always a necessary, though by no means sufficient, precondition for controlling violence (Tittle and Böckler et al. this volume). While an understanding of the causes and manifestations of violence improves the possibilities for eliminating its causes and thus increases the likelihood of preventing certain acts of violence, and while the definition and categorization of violent phenomena may be an important precondition for effective control, control—such as that exercised by a coercive apparatus with deterrent effect—may be effective even in the absence of reliable theories to explain the occurrence of violence. Conversely, adequate explanations and an understanding of the causes of violence and the relationships in which it occurs do not necessarily result in effective control. Even when adequate explanations and efficient strategies for controlling certain kinds of violence exist, it may be impossible to implement them effectively, for example, if certain control strategies are seen as unethical and illegitimate or are irreconcilable with existing laws. Thus, violence control is contingent on numerous preconditions and is strongly dependent on normative criteria.

4.1 Losses of Control as Prerequisites for the Genesis of Violence One preliminary way of approaching the relationship between control and violence consists in a theoretical study of the preexisting conditions that may impede or favor violent acts. Subsequently, one might investigate whether, and if so, in what way, the controllability of such conditions has changed. If one assumes that such factors as the processes of socialization and distribution, an effective state monopoly on violence, and international alliances and treaties are preconditions which, in certain

7 Thanks

are due to Barbara Kaletta for contributing many important ideas and profound preparatory work for this section.

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contexts, are able to impede the genesis of specific forms of violence or to contain acute acts of violence, then the ineffectiveness of formerly efficacious control mechanisms—in other words, a loss of control—may be conceptualized (independently of the construct of violence) as a precondition for the genesis of certain forms of violence. However, the variables of loss of control, on the one hand, and violent acts, on the other hand, are not in an explicitly causal relationship here. In other words, such losses of control do not determine violent acts; they merely limit or open up opportunities for violence. As we have seen, control as “acting on actions” (Foucault) aims to influence decisions to act, and protagonists of violence always have a moment when they are able to decide for or against a violent act (Oppenheim 1961; Tyrell 1980). Additionally, certain forms of violence are driven by reasons that have nothing whatever to do with the actions of violence-controlling authorities (Neidhardt 1989, 234), while violent interactions may develop their own internal dynamics that may resist all forms of control (Eckert and Willems 2003).

4.2 Dilemmas of Control: Control Measures as Triggers or Escalators of Violence Another possible relationship between control and violence can be observed where control measures and strategies, rather than merely failing or being ineffective, themselves become triggers of violence or contribute to the escalation of a violent situation. We have already seen that control, in the context of different control regimes and depending, for instance, on whether it is constitutionally legitimate or exercised by an authoritarian/dictatorial regime, may either subjugate the objects of control or provoke opposition and resistance that can culminate in violence. In this case, the object of the violence is to evade an actor of control that is perceived as excessively powerful and illegitimate. As Neidhardt (1989) shows, control of violence, especially by state authorities, always involves the weighing up of different factors: “The problems in dealing with violence are problems of balance, and solving them is a matter of finding the right dosage” (translated from Neidhardt 1989, 243). Thus, agents of control may either overreact or underreact to problems of violence. However, it is not the nature and extent of the control—“hard” punitive measures on the part of the state or “soft,” therapeutic or conciliatory control styles—that determines the success or failure of violence control and its paradoxical effects, i.e., the triggering or escalation of violence. Rather, it is the perceived appropriateness of the control measures that determine their effect. Whether or not measures to control violence will themselves contribute to an escalation of violence, therefore, depends to a large extent on the prevalent perceptions about whether the form and intensity of certain control strategies is just and appropriate to the observed violent behavior of individuals or groups and can, therefore, be considered legitimate (Neidhardt 1989, 241). Measures to control violence that are perceived as underreactions, however, may not only weaken the deterrent effect on potential perpetrators of violence, but also give rise to a different control dilemma. Garland shows that the under-enforcement of law in Britain contributed to a deep-seated public anxiety and a perceived control

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deficit that culminated in demands for harsher punishments and thus ultimately led to “excessive” reactions on the part of the controlling authorities. However, control dilemmas may be caused not only by a failure to apply the control measures expected by the public, but also by the continual invention of new control strategies and technical measures for preventing violence. Early-warning systems, surveillance technologies, and the continual identification of new risk factors inevitably also give rise to new threats and affect society’s discourse on violence and its expectations of control. As new control formations are never exclusively the result of rationalized procedures, but are always partly a symbolic and emotional response to perceived threats, control always includes “an unintended ‘recursive’ logic of expansion” (Innes 2001). The failure of control strategies and the experience of unintended, escalating consequences is not infrequently followed by extended, refined, and deepened measures and the inclusion of additional actors of control who are connected to one another in increasingly complex networks (Cohen 1985). The desire for violence control—which, unlike social control, is related directly to the basic, existential human need for physical integrity—is almost insatiable and thus contains a tendency toward progressus in indefinitum. At the same time, however, control measures are de facto limited and generally provoke the resistance of the controlled if they exceed a certain level. As violence itself is a “wave phenomenon” (Baacke 1993, 30) that does not feature continually in public discourse, but is cyclically spotlighted in the mass media and in scientific discourse (Butterwegge 1997, 163), our methods of dealing with violence, too, are linked to “control cycles” that reflect political developments, media attention, changed patterns of perception, and public demands for safety. And this gives rise to another control dilemma. Actors and institutions who are given a mandate to control violence or who volunteer to control violence invariably also pursue their own individual or institutional goals, so that they always follow an inherent logic dedicated to preserving the status quo—that may run counter to the goal of controlling violence. This can be seen particularly clearly in the commercial security sector, where actors of control abide less by social norms and standards of order than by their clients’ specifications, and are also less easy to bring to account for their actions (Leander 2006). But even the field of scientific knowledge production which we discussed above, which aims to contribute toward explaining the causes and contexts of violence and thus ultimately also toward controlling violence, cannot fully avoid this dilemma: it is increasingly adapting itself to the capitalist markets and has thus become dependent to some extent on the obligation to follow research trends that receive third-party funding. Accordingly, this field may generate an overly dramatized sensitivity to certain forms of violence and a lucrative range of ostensible solutions that may contribute toward the legitimization of counter-productive control strategies.

4.3 Violence as the Cause of Loss of Control Finally, the third dimension of the issue at hand is that violence may represent one of the causes for a loss of control over violence. This happens when certain actors

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are faced with a reduced range of options for effectively containing or preventing violence by means of available control mechanisms. Forms of collective violence in particular, such as wars, revolts, or civil strife may contribute toward the disintegration of groups or whole societies and thereby destroy not only the social foundations for socializing and normativizing mechanisms of control, but also the economic prerequisites for control through social redistribution and security systems. Similarly, collective violence can weaken the social and political power of violence-controlling agencies and thus prevent access to apparatuses of repression. In extreme cases, the result of this may be anomic conditions in which neither state nor societal instances are capable of effectively containing violence and exercising influence on an increasingly complex network of competing and cooperating actors of violence driven by a wide range of different motives. Violent situations thus become uncontrollable, and a comprehensive, far-reaching, and long-term loss of control over violence manifests itself. More frequently, however, constellations appear in which severe violence results both in processes of reorientation for mechanisms and strategies of control and in transference and postponement on the level of the actors of control. Thus, state authorities may respond to an actual or perceived increase in violence or to the appearance of a new kind of violence by stepping up their repressive control mechanisms as a response to the perceived shift in appropriate control levels that makes such measures appear legitimate. At the same time, the population or the social groups in violent contexts may attempt to satisfy their need for safety and protection by means of increased vigilantism, civil defense societies, or cooperation with warlords and violent actors, so that either violence control is simply transferred to different authorities, or a “battle for control” ensues that further escalates the violence. Studies in cultural anthropology in Latin America, for example, have shown that in societies in which the state was unable to assert its monopoly on legitimate violence, a permanent confrontation developed “between equal or near-equal” actors of violence (Deas 1997). Additionally, Waldmann has shown for Colombia that, in situations in which violent actors and violence are ubiquitous, violence may become a mundane phenomenon in that norms of prohibition and affective barriers erode and the use of violence becomes a normal assertive strategy that no longer attracts any degree of public attention (Waldmann 2003, 157–165). Thus, a high frequency of violence is not necessarily always an indicator for actual or perceived individual and state or societal losses of control over violence.

4.4 The Ambivalence of Violence Control As our remarks so far have shown, violence control is a highly ambivalent process. The ambivalence is rooted in the fact that control itself may be a source of violence, for example, when individual or collective behavior is deemed by the actors of violence control to deviate from the norms that are conducive to serving the interest of the government. Thus, the boundary between legitimate control of violence and illegitimate “controlling violence” fluctuates. This was shown by Rosenbaum and

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Sederberg in their concept of “establishment violence,” which “consists of acts or threats of coercion in violation of the formal boundaries of an established sociopolitical order which, however, are intended by the violators to defend that order from some form of subversion” (Rosenbaum and Sederberg 1974, 542; see also Black 1983). It is hard for the analytical gaze of “neutral” observers to grasp these boundaries; their definition depends on subjective perceptions and on evaluation according to normative yardsticks. If violence in the first case is a deliberately applied method of violence control, the ambivalence lies in the fact that, in a second dimension, violence may escalate as an unintentional side effect of efforts to control it. A third dimension highlights the ambivalence of control as the power of definition and as an activity involving the drawing of boundaries. Thus, measures of preventive violence control in particular are always connected to the labeling and stereotyping of certain persons, groups, or whole societies. This may result in the development of prejudices with disintegrative effects that are difficult to deal with both on the individual level and on that of society as a whole. In this context, control is ambivalent because, although it is based on integration, it invariably also produces exclusion and disintegration.

5 Shifts in Perception Patterns and the Social Conditions of Violence Control The development of processes and mechanisms of violence control must be examined simultaneously on the levels of the state, society, and the subject. On all these levels, historical analyses and present-day assessments point out the growing requirements and problems of violence control as well as changes in perception patterns about the controllability of violence. First, on the social level, informal forms of control aimed at socialization, such as those exercised by families, neighborhoods, associations, or traditional communities appear to have been losing their significance as behavior-forming institutions since the mid-twentieth century. Many studies (such as Rojek 2001; Shrivastava 1992) point out that, in Europe and the United States as well as in post-colonial societies, rapid urbanization and modernization processes have frequently triggered a crisis for informal institutions of control. This is particularly true of traditional extended families, but also affects neighborhoods and church communities. Although the loss of significance of informal protagonists and control mechanisms has not been ubiquitous or uniform, it may be assumed that, as a result of these developments, formal control strategies of state institutions and protagonists are becoming increasingly important. Against the background of the crisis of social institutions or “milieus of enclosure” (prison, hospital, factory, school, and the family), which form the basis of control in disciplinary societies, Deleuze (1995) postulated a transition from the disciplinary society to the “society of control” and thus predicted a fundamental change in the nature of prevalent control mechanisms: “Enclosures are molds, distinct castings, but controls are a modulation, like a self-deforming cast that will

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continuously change from one moment to the other, or like a sieve whose mesh will transmute from point to point.” The sources and mechanisms of control themselves become increasingly opaque and unpredictable from the perspective of the controlled. At the same time, they are also more comprehensive and more accurate, thanks to the advent of new technological possibilities for surveillance and monitoring. The electronic tag becomes the symbol of permanent control in an open milieu (Deleuze 1995, 178). Second, on the state level there appears to be a simultaneous crisis in formal regimes of state violence control both in OECD countries and in the post-colonial states (where the presence of a legitimate state monopoly on violence is the exception rather than the rule). Assessments of the gravity of this crisis vary. The literature draws attention to the decline in state resources for control in the context of globalization (Strange 1996). Some authors hold that this decline results in an additional increase in the significance of alternative government structures—usually referred to as “global governance”—on the supra-national level (for example, Schuppert and Zürn 2008; Nuscheler 2000; Brand et al. 2000; Duffield 2001). Additionally, other writers point out that competing protagonists and forms of violence control frequently become more powerful on the sub-national, local level in this context (von Trotha 2005). The general consensus is that almost every part of the world is showing signs of a crisis of the state monopoly on violence and a “denationalization,” privatization, and commodification of violence control (Schlichte 2000). In many countries, areas of limited statehood are developing in which the monopoly on violence begins to erode and the legitimacy of state rule is increasingly questioned (Risse and Lehmkuhl 2006). Against this background, we can also observe the simultaneous existence of different modern and traditional codes of law and violence in post-colonial states, while the monopoly on violence in western societies, although not explicitly called into question, is likewise being transferred to a noticeable extent from public to private control in the form, for example, of commercial security companies (Schlichte 2000, 162; Leander 2006). While some researchers view these phenomena as a more or less linear process in which the state monopoly on violence continuously loses its civilizing force and thus loses the ability to exercise the effective control on intra-societal violence that it was long believed to hold (von Trotha 1995; Thome 2004), historical studies on the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries suggest that it is unwise to overestimate the penetrative ability of state methods of violence in any era. They also pose the question whether the effectiveness of the state monopoly on violence is cyclical and dependent on specific processes of social and political change (Knöbl 2006). Additionally, it has frequently been pointed out that relationships between state and sub-state protagonists of violence control as well as their ideas of order and the rationales that govern their actions may be characterized both by competition and by cooperation as well as by the awareness of substitutive and complementary functions: “Non-state violence can attack, ignore, undermine, or complement the state. There are no clear lines of distinction” (Translated from Zinecker 2009, 1). Finally, on the level of the modern subject, theories of individualization and civilization have long held that social control is increasingly transferred into

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the individual in the form of various self-control strategies (Elias [1939] 2009). According to this view, extreme, sanctioning modes of control decline in importance while there is an increase in the significance of internal, norm-oriented mechanisms of control that are disseminated by agents of socialization (Eichener 1989, 356). If this thesis of a crisis of the core agents of socialization is correct, however, then the mode of action of self-control too must be questioned, and accordingly, increasing doubt has been cast on the assumption that the growing importance of self-control mechanisms and the declining significance of outside control represents a long-term “historical automatism” as suggested by Elias’s theory of civilization (Franz 2000, 72). Studies that reach the opposite conclusion, especially in the field of youth studies, point out a shortage of norms and values that could serve as an aid to orientation for the younger generations and predict that the result will be an increase in the application of outside control, since “the transformation of outside coercion into internalized self-coercion no longer occurs with sufficient reliability” (translated from Eisenberg 2002, 23). This perspective suggests that there is a crisis of control on the level of the modern subject as well. This crisis results in a “de-internalization of social control” (27). Against this background, James Coleman drew the following conclusions: “If some of these predictions are confirmed by research, they will be of great significance for social control in the future. They suggest declining levels of internalization with respect to norms in future generations, assuming that the family continues to function as the central agent of socialization. This means either that more systems of external control will be applied or that social control will weaken” (1991, 388). While these developmental trends of social control as self-control are fairly general, they nevertheless appear to be very closely linked to the question of violence control. Numerous studies indicate that aggressive behavior and the use of violence frequently originates in feelings of powerlessness (Sutterlüty 2002). These feelings result in a lack of individual control skills, and these skills can only be acquired if the individual is able, to some extent, to control and influence his social and natural environment. Thus, individual perceptions of controllability, i.e., of being able to control circumstances and social processes to a certain degree, and the converse perception of being powerless against one’s environment, are fueled by internal and external capacities for control that are reciprocally related to one other (Thome and Birkel 2007, 46). Given the developments we have outlined here, the mechanisms of violence control on the levels of the state, society, and the subject face a variety of challenges. They are confronted by new forms of individual and collective violence and by the unleashing of violence of types and magnitudes previously unknown. These factors increasingly cast doubt on the control capacities of modern states as well as those of social protagonists and individuals. However, what we are observing appears to be not so much a clear trend to more violence—i.e., a linear and global process of an increase in violence—as various phenomena of “shifting violence” (“bewegliche Gewalt:” Neidhardt 1997, 7): a tendency to violence that is difficult to localize and that is characterized by increases in certain areas and decreasing violence levels in others. This makes it difficult to combat the causes of the violence and restricts the possibilities for predicting future developments.

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Additionally, there have been changes even in the ways in which we perceive and interpret safety and social dangers. David Garland (2001) points out the effects of this perceptual change in the United States and Britain, which he believes is closely linked to general perceptions of a lack of security that is, in turn, characterized by social, economic, and cultural factors in the late-twentieth century. In particular, a general sense of insecurity has permeated not only the working and lower middle classes, but also the educated middle classes in the face of changes and breaks in family structures and of the individualization of job market risks and social security. In Garland’s view, growing concern about crime, which had previously been an issue predominantly affecting the working and lower middle classes, and the weakening of natural controls in neighborhoods and communities, coincided with a pattern of the “under-enforcement of law” and dramatic media reports eroding the psychological and emotional detachment of their recipients. The result was the spread of a deep-seated perception of a “control deficit,” now expanding to the professional middle classes (156).

6 Empirical Fields of the Relationship Between Violence and Control If one takes violence seriously as an exceedingly complex interactive phenomenon that permeates the lives of individuals, that may be functionalized by collectives, and that represents the foundation of state institutions, then any engagement with issues of violence control must consider all three of these levels—the individual, social groups, and the state. In our view, three fields of violence lend themselves particularly well to analysis: school shootings, terrorism, and states in crisis. First, they appear to be particularly incalculable as to when and where they occur and/or as to the identity of the potential perpetrators and the targets of the violence, i.e., the selected victims. Second, some observers hold that these phenomena indicate a new dimension of violence due to the large number of casualties and the general destructive effect caused by these kinds of violence. Third, the causes and triggers of these phenomena appear particularly unclear, and there is a dearth of knowledge about the interplay of different factors. Fourth and final, the phenomena in question are perceived by the public as particularly unsettling, an impression that at times directly contradicts the actually small probability of them actually occurring.

6.1 School Shootings On the micro-level, the phenomenon of school shootings has attracted a high degree of public attention since the end of the 1990s, most notably in the United States, but also in some European countries. Although crime rates at US schools have been dropping since the 1990s along with most other types of crime, including killings of juvenile (Blumstein 2003, 659; Newman 2004), there has been a marked increase in

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the incidence of school shootings (Böckler, Seeger, and Heitmeyer in this volume). School shootings are a type of violence that occurs primarily in highly developed industrial nations. The two countries with the highest incidence—the United States and Canada—are two of the world’s wealthiest nations. In Europe, too, school shootings occur most frequently in countries in the wealthier north and west of the continent, with Finland and Germany leading the field. Although school shootings remain an extremely rare phenomenon, the discrepancy between the publicity given to school shootings by the media and society and the actual threat represented by this kind of violence indicates the presence of a deep-seated insecurity about its controllability. There are many factors that might lie at the root of this insecurity. As the victims at the selected school are chosen more or less at random, school shootings are not only an extremely incalculable phenomenon, but also represent a symbolic attack on the institution of the school as a whole. While Goffman (1972) and Foucault (1977) viewed the school as a “total institution” with permanent and uninterrupted surveillance capabilities, school shootings seem to provide a particularly graphic illustration of the gaps in school control systems (Newman 2004). Additionally, the places where school shootings occur do not conform to the general perceptions and images of typical “violent places.” While larger cities are perceived almost everywhere as places of chaos, crime, and violence, school shootings occur predominantly in smaller suburban or rural communities that are generally viewed as cohesive and strongly family-oriented with a high degree of social control. Additionally, school shootings represent a form of violence with a strong expressive dimension which, thanks to continual advances in electronic media technology, can easily be idealized and communicated to increasingly wide audiences and may thus serve as templates for imitation. Against this background, it is possible to ask a number of questions about the relationship of control and violence and about the possibilities and limitations of control in the case of this form of violence. Was it the schools and families, the central agents of socialization in western societies that failed in these cases? Could such acts of violence have been averted by more attentive teachers, parents, and peers, or by professional early-warning systems and stricter media and gun laws? Or are school shootings a phenomenon that is fueled only by the intrinsic motives of its usually male perpetrators and by a lack of self-control, so that external attempts to control it are fundamentally limited? Even more importantly, is it possible that when this is the case, initiatives to influence the behavior of a “conspicuous” student achieve nothing but to strengthen his or her urge to evade all such attempts at control and heighten the student’s resolve to demonstrate his or her superiority by violently transgressing every available normative boundary?

6.2 Terrorism On the meso-level, we focus on the phenomenon of terrorism—not only because both society and researchers are under enormous pressure to explain it, but also

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because there is a widespread conception in the aftermath of 9/11 that these forms of violence are becoming increasingly unpredictable and uncontrollable. However, instilling fear and uncertainty in one’s enemy by creating a perception of unpredictability and uncontrollability has always been one of the typical characteristics of terrorist violence. Terrorist groups are comparatively weak protagonists who use a strategy of unexpected attacks from the underground to spread fear and uncertainty (Waldmann 1998; Hoffman 2006). Accordingly, “terrorism’s most important resource is the diffuse fear of its opponent” (translated from Vasilache 2006, 155). Thus, terrorism presents special challenges to actors of control not only by its specific forms of organization (cells, networks) and violent practices (suicide attacks); as a strategy of deliberate public taboo breaking, it also creates an obligation to act that governments and agencies of control are unable to avoid. More importantly still, terrorism is based on provoking the ruling powers into overreaction and thereby playing into the terrorists’ hands (Waldmann 1998, 27–40). In this sense, state control measures are part and parcel of the terrorist strategy. And indeed, institutions forced to respond with violent counter-measures always run the risk of generating sympathy for the terrorists and escalating the situation. However, certain forms of current terrorist violence seem to be particularly conspicuous for their randomness and unpredictability. Religious terrorism and transnational networks in particular appear to be beyond the power of national and international state institutions to control. Although even this kind of terrorism has local roots and causes (Coolsaet and Van de Voorde 2008, 23), the network structure of transnational terrorism creates the impression of an absence of local points of reference, as though the phenomenon were “homeless” and “nomadic” (Schneckener 2006, 49). Since the 1990s the number of international terrorist attacks has decreased, but the number of victims has risen steadily, with most of the perpetrators belonging to religiously motivated violent groups (Hoffman 2006). This development, however, is not a linear one. The number of international terrorist attacks dropped by half between 2004 and 2006, while the number of victims decreased by 60%. During the same period, however, acts of domestic terrorism increased by 175% (Coolsaet and Van de Voorde 2008, 20). Because of problems in measuring violence and clearly delimiting definitions and concepts, quantitative statements about terrorist violence must be read with some caution. This makes it all the more important to examine the new challenges for violence control that arise from these issues. Do the police and other internal security authorities still have efficacious measures at their disposal for countering the forms of present-day terrorism, or are we dealing with a new quality and new organizational methods of violence that are completely impervious to police control strategies of the nation-state and that can be contained only through international cooperation and the deployment of the secret service or even the military? Or has the international “war on terror” already created a situation where control of terrorist violence is nothing but an illusion that provides a false sense of security, while the terrorists are increasingly gaining control of future events and are able to dictate the next steps taken by their “adversaries?” What other control methods are available outside of state intervention, and under what conditions can they be effective?

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6.3 Violence in States in Crisis On the macro-level, finally, we examine violence in the context of statehood in transformation, with a view to identifying its impact on control methods. As we have seen, almost all parts of the world exhibit tendencies toward the denationalization, commercialization, and privatization of violence control. It is not in the postcolonial societies alone that the incomplete monopolization of violence control by the state is becoming more and more apparent in the aftermath of the changes in the global system of states that have occurred since the end of the Cold War. Even in the OECD states, the legitimacy of state rule and its ability to impose control is increasingly being questioned. Nevertheless, it is the post-colonial societies that appear to be especially affected by losses of control over violence. Depending on the extent of this loss of control, these societies are described as “weak,” “fragile,” or “collapsed” states (see, for example, Zartman 1995; Clapham 2002; Rotberg 2003; Milliken 2003). These problems are not empirically new, but the discourse “consolidates well-known and observable conditions into an image of growing threats” (translated from Schlichte 2005, 75). In particular, the phenomenon of what are termed “new” wars (Kaldor 1999) has prompted many observers to question the controllability of violence. This form of violence has three essential characteristics: asymmetric warfare, the centrality of sub-national/semi-private protagonists, and the demilitarization of targets, i.e., an extremely high number of civilian casualties. Individually, none of these factors are empirically new. In combination, however, they have resulted not only in changes to the processes of warfare, but also and most importantly—like the so-called fragile states—to a new perception of threat (Münkler 2002). Thus, civil wars have become much more visible and the subject of much more public discourse since the end of the East-West conflict, even though their number has been declining since the early 1990s (Wallensteen and Sollennerg 2000; Schreiber 2002; Marshall and Gurr 2005). This new perception of threats has led to an increase in external interventions that are only partly authorized by international law. Not infrequently, these attempts to regain control produce negative side effects and exacerbate existing escalation dynamics; every form of intervention has an impact on local power structures and, invariably, also serves the intervening power’s other—often competing—interests. Whether and to what extent this means that we are faced with an increasing loss of control over violence or, conversely, whether internal wars and the collapse of states must be interpreted as the battlefields on which various protagonists contend for a monopoly on violence control (Schlichte 2005, 79) is a question that must be examined in a historical context. Are violent conflicts and civil wars, then, signs of a far-reaching loss of control over violence on the part of the state, or are our modern ideals of states with monopolies on violence simply inadequate in the face of real-world conditions—in other words, could it be that state control has never been strong enough to allow us to speak of a loss of control over violence on the part of state authorities? Could another—and under certain circumstances, perhaps a better—way to control violence within societies be found by employing non-state protagonists and informal

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procedures and strategies? Could violent conflicts be halted if only we had an exact idea of their causes and were able to eliminate those causes, or are we dealing with dynamics that are so complex and so autonomous that all interventions are doomed to fail, or even to have counter-productive effects, if they attempt to influence the power balance between the participating actors?

7 Structure of the Book 7.1 Topics and Objectives of This Volume The present publication examines the issue of controlling violence as a reflection of society’s fundamental social and political characteristics and one of the core challenges of modern societies. It sets out to examine the complexity and multidimensionality of different forms of control, their possibilities and prerequisites, and the interrelationships between control and violence, as well as to analyze the social and political contexts in which they occur. Who controls violence in modern societies? Which actors and institutions function as societally authorized or selfappointed controllers of violence? How is violence controlled, what strategies and mechanisms are employed to control it, and what ambivalences and dilemmas do they entail? How is violence and the controllability of violence perceived and discussed in different societies and cultures? Are we really facing new challenges from “uncontrollable” forms of violence? To what extent do control regimes change as debates about violence progress, and how are they affected by new technological options? These questions—which give some indication of the multi-layered complexity of the topic—are examined from an international, comparative standpoint, tackling the subject from the perspective of history, sociology, political science, and criminology. It is our view that this approach is particularly appropriate when examining the question of how to control violence in modern societies, as comparisons between different historical scenarios are indispensable for determining which particular violent phenomena and control mechanisms are specific to contemporary societies and which phenomena already existed in more or less comparable forms in other historical periods. Thus, our task is to assess the specificity of current constellations of violence control and to place them in a context of longterm causal relationships. Including observations about conditions in different parts of the world allows us to make international comparisons of forms and mechanisms, perception patterns and discourses, and of the significance of different protagonists. Although we strive on the conceptual level to identify fundamental mechanisms and overarching tendencies in violence control in modern societies, an empirical analysis of changes in the regimes and forms of violence control naturally requires us to focus on specific violent phenomena. It is only through a precise cultural, social, and historical contextualization of violent phenomena, violence awareness, and control regimes that we can arrive at an improved understanding of violence

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and violence control in different societies both in the present and in the past. Accordingly, this volume is divided into four sections. The contributions in the first section, “Mechanisms and Strategies of Violence Control,” deal with fundamental aspects, forms, and development patterns of violence control in modern societies. On the basis of the conclusions of the first section, the authors of the following three sections examine—from different perspectives, but always on an empirical basis— various aspects of violence control in the three selected phenomenological fields of school shootings (micro-level), terrorism (meso-level), and violence in states in crisis (macro-level).

7.2 Mechanisms and Strategies of Violence Control The first two contributions in this section deal with long-term development patterns and with the extent to which modern societies may be able to effectively contain violence on a permanent basis. Michel Wieviorka explores the fundamental preconditions of violence and postulates that violence is subject to ongoing change. In his view, violence has substituted conflict and thus stems from a principle more fundamental than the social. As a result, present-day forms of violence can no longer be described by means of classical sociological explanations. Wieviorka argues that society must resocialize violence in order to escape cycles of violence and to contain violence in the long term. To achieve this, society must once again place the motives of different types of subject of violence into a social context and must also consider the perspective of the victims. Wieviorka holds that an engagement with the trauma and suffering of the victims and their desire for reparations and compensation can help to improve our understanding of violence in general and can also serve as a necessary prerequisite for abandoning violence. The long-term developmental patterns of violence and control mechanisms are also the theme of the study by Steven Messner, Benjamin Pearson-Nelson, and Lawrence E. Raffalovich. Based on a cross-national sample, they analyze the development of murder statistics in the second half of the twentieth century, focusing especially on the role of the family—an institution that is typically believed to play a key role in mechanisms of informal social control. Building on LaFree’s general thesis that trends in crime at the national level reflect the operation of the basic institutions of a society, the authors argue that profound changes in traditional family arrangements have been responsible, at least in part, for a weakening of institutional control and rising levels of crime and violence. Charles Tittle and Helmut Thome highlight forms of control on the level of the individual. From different perspectives, both authors examine forms of self-control and study the conditions under which they can be effective. Processes of individualization and the weakening of traditional institutions of informal control—a weakening that was diagnosed by Messner, Pearson-Nelson, and Raffalovich in the case of the family—impart a special and growing significance to the concept of selfcontrol. Charles Tittle’s contribution takes a critical look at the self-control theory of Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) and, in particular, its suitability as a theoretical

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basis for control measures. He identifies several weaknesses, which not only suggest that it would be problematic to extrapolate criminological prevention or intervention programs from the theory, but also suggest ways of eliminating these weaknesses. In Tittle’s view, effective control strategies must be based on a more comprehensive understanding of deviance and control. His main argument is that self-control theory holds promise as a beginning for policy formation and effective control strategies but it must be elaborated and integrated with other theories before it is likely to provide effective guidance. Helmut Thome’s contribution, too, deals with theories of self-control, with special emphasis on the concept of the conscience, which has been neglected or deemed irrelevant in many theories. The multidimensional concept of the conscience suggested by Thome encompasses several functions of human activity that are related to the necessity of expressing personal identity, safeguarding long-term personal interests, and sustaining cooperative relationships with others. Additionally, Thome discusses the role of positive and negative self-evaluation (shame and guilt) and their influence on violent actions. Thome argues that conscience as defined in this sense not only has an analytical potential for explaining (violent) crime, but that it can also contribute toward an analysis of more advanced social structures and relationship patterns. The two following studies focus on socio-cultural conditions and challenges of control. The contributions by Hans G. Kippenberg and Levent Teczan deal with the significance of religion for the genesis and control of violence. Religion—not just Islam—is widely believed to play an increasing role in violent conflicts, which may pose specific problems for violence control. One must also ask, however, to what extent religion can help to control violence. Kippenberg stresses that, while religions may prescribe actions that can legitimize violence, such prescriptions do not necessarily lead to a violent result. Rather, the results depend on how the protagonists define their own situation. Violent reactions must be expected only if the autonomy, or the very existence, of the religious community is under threat; in general, however, its powers of collective self-control and its willingness to make concessions are strong enough to prevent violence. Thus, Kippenberg cautions that religions in general should not be unilaterally demonized, emphasizing that misguided strategies for controlling religious groups and inadequate concepts on the side of the organs of control can have unintended consequences and may cause situations to escalate. Levent Tezcan takes up this point in his study of the ambivalent relationship between religion—in this case, Islam—and violence control on three relevant social levels. On the level of the individual, behavior is regulated by religious ideas of morality that aim to ensure harmony within the religious community, but that can also lead to violence against dissenters. On the group level, Tezcan studies the role of the religious establishment, which can exercise its influence on violent groups in discourses about legitimacy but which also feels that these groups undermine its authority. Finally, he describes the ambivalence of state control strategies that attempt to prevent violence by acting on Muslim communities. The contributions by Dagmar Ellerbrock and Klaus Weinhauer deal with discourses about and perceptions of violence control and with the emergence of new control regimes. Dagmar Ellerbrock examines the implementation of state controls

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on firearms in the early twentieth century. Faced with widespread violence that was rooted partly in a historical tradition of weapons ownership in Germany, the authorities were able to implement control measures only after a fundamental perceptual change had occurred. This change was reflected in newspaper reporting of gun violence as shocking and scandalous crimes and by the politicization of gun control in parliamentary debates. Klaus Weinhauer, too, examines forms of violence control in Germany, but he does so in a very different context, focusing on the dynamics of police behavior and police strategies for controlling demonstrations and political protests in the 1960s. He shows that police measures frequently had the effect of exacerbating the situation rather than containing it. The aggressive behavior of individual police officers was partly the result of an organizational culture based on aggressive masculinity and a code of professional ethics rooted in the time of the Weimar Republic. This organizational culture proved to be resistant to the attempts of political and police leaders to reform the system, prompting Weinhauer to discuss not only the contingency of control styles on cultural and perceptual patterns, but also the problem of how to control the controlling institutions themselves.

7.3 The Micro-level: School Shootings Following on these general considerations about fundamental mechanisms and strategies of violence control, the subsequent sections deal with the control of violence in three selected phenomenological areas. Section 2, on violence control on the micro-level, focuses on school shootings and juvenile delinquency, and opens with Dirk Schumann’s comparative historical study of interpretations of school violence and control strategies in the United States and Germany since the 1950s. Invoking the concept of “moral panic,” Schumann shows the ways in which the perception of school violence was related to fears about broader social developments. While the American and German debates differed until the 1970s—America viewed school violence primarily as a school problem, while Germany ascribed it to the effects of developments in society—the discourses converged in the 1990s. The growing sensitivity to school violence was the basis for a growing differentiation of increasingly sophisticated and complex control instruments. The following four contributions focus on the more specific phenomenon of rampage school shootings. The section starts with a contribution by Nils Böckler, Thorsten Seeger, and Wilhelm Heitmeyer, whose analysis centers around the theory of double loss of control. Differentiating between the individual level of the perpetrator and his loss of control over his own life, on the one hand, and society’s loss of control over the shooting, on the other hand, the authors show that school shootings cannot be systematically prevented through control measures. They argue that school shootings should not be regarded as a purely psychological problem. Instead, their analysis of the dynamics of escalation between control, loss of control, and the violent quest for control focuses more strongly on the problems of social disintegration and losses of recognition.

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Next, Rebecca Bondü and Herbert Scheithauer turn to the explicit question of how to prevent incidents of school shooting. In their analysis of the preconditions and limits of control, they identify the phenomenon of “leaking,” in which the future perpetrators allow their violent fantasies or plans to “leak” out in advance, as a crucial early-warning sign and examine possible preventive strategies that may arise from this leaking behavior. They cite the example of the Berlin Leaking Project, in which researchers work in close collaboration with police experts and school psychologists. The authors stress that school shootings can, in principle, be prevented on this basis. However, it is clear that successful prevention requires a dense network of control, which the editors of this volume regard as a problematic issue in its own right: What about students who are unjustly labeled as dangerous? What are the consequences for their social situation in the school? The ambivalence of the concept of control becomes especially clear in this case. Ralph W. Larkin approaches the problem of controlling this form of violence from the perspective of cultural history and highlights the social development of images of masculinity. The history of masculinity in America is characterized by conflict over the definition of what constitutes masculinity. In Larkin’s view, this conflict is part of the dynamic that underlies violence, including rampage shootings at schools. The media and social discourses are also the focus of the last essay in this section, by Glenn W. Muschert and Massimo Ragnedda, who examine the role of communication processes in school shootings. They argue that these communication processes are of crucial importance for violence control, and that much of what can be observed with regard to school shootings is in fact a mass-mediated phenomenon. They present a model for understanding the types of communication that dominate the discourse around school shootings, and analyze in particular the role of performative scripts behind these incidents which have to be recognized by responding control institutions if they are to be effective.

7.4 The Meso-level: Terrorism Section 3 deals with terrorist violence and the special challenges it poses for the authorities and control mechanisms. Terrorism as a strategy of surprise acts of violence, deliberate violation of taboos, and cruelty always generates a compulsion to act and gives rise to dynamics of escalation, which are difficult for control actors to evade. The authors argue that these relationships of (calculated) uncontrollability must be examined from a historical and sociological perspective and that the latest developments—in particular, the much-discussed advent of a supposedly new kind of terrorism—must be studied with respect to their implications for the question of control. They identify the prerequisites and limits of control over terrorist violence and cite mechanisms of control that have received very little attention to date, from internal limiting discourses to the influence of certain reference groups and constituencies.

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Two political killings in twentieth-century Germany—the murders of Walter Rathenau and Hans-Martin Schleyer—form the point of departure of Bernd Weisbrod’s contribution, in which he traces the relationship between the strategic/political aims of terrorist acts and their performative quality. Symbols, rituals, and media coverage form part of the internal logic of these murders and their strategic function and also have an immediate impact on their controllability. In the two cases cited by Weisbrod, communicative battles were waged in the form of public performances in two very different political and social contexts. The two cases show “family resemblances” between terrorist murders both in their “language” and violent practices and in the perpetrators’ voluntaristic and existentialist self-images. Thus, Weisbrod argues, control of terrorist violence can be effective only if it addresses the performative qualities of such violence and its symbolic and emotional aspects. In another historical study, Mate Tokic describes the development of the control strategies of the Australian state to counter the activities of Croatian violent groups in the 1960s and 1970s and examines the conditions under which a policy of relative indifference was transformed into an effective battle against Croatian terrorism. He points out that violence control—especially the control of political violence—is dependent on its political context. Using the example of Croatian separatists in Australia, Tokic shows that the struggle to control terrorist activities was closely intertwined with the struggle for political power and control of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization—a struggle over control of control institutions—and depended on its outcome. Turning to the problem of controlling violence in contemporary societies, Jitka Maleckova critically examines the thesis that terrorist violence today has transformed into a phenomenon distinct from its historical predecessors. Based on available empirical data Maleckova discusses assumptions made by the “new terrorism” school of thought concerning the profile of individual terrorists, the aims and structure of terrorist organizations, the predictability and control of their violent campaigns, and the response they provoke. Her results are mixed. While modern terrorism has certainly developed new features, which have to be analyzed and taken into consideration, it does not necessarily pose a threat that is beyond control. Rather, the available evidence suggests that control mechanisms do have an effect, and are broadly capable of adaptation to new forms of terrorist violence. Friedhelm Neidhardt’s contribution offers a fundamental analysis of the logic of terrorist violence and the conditions and limitations of its controllability. As a phenomenon that is characterized by an out-of-the-ordinary, asymmetrical, clandestine, and non-institutionalizable character, terrorist violence represents a context of action that is difficult to pin down precisely. Provocation and the creation of fear generate compulsions to act and problems of legitimacy for the actors of control, who become part of the independent dynamic of the conflict. All control measures are faced with the dilemma that both by underreacting and overreacting play into the terrorists’ hands. Together with the following two contributions, however, Neidhardt’s contribution points out the significance of reference groups and the

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bonds between terrorist groups and their supporters, both of which represent influencing factors that may limit their violent campaigns. Effective counter-strategies must take these relationships into account as a factor that may help to contain terrorism. However, Neidhardt holds that terrorism as a strategy of violence is fundamentally independent of preconditions and is, therefore, impossible to “conquer” once and for all. The studies by Stefan Malthaner and by Carolin Goerzig and Khaled al-Hashimi focus on different aspects of the relationships between terrorist groups and their social base, examining the forms of control that result from these relationships. Based on the analysis of two Islamist movements—the Egyptian al-Jamaa alIslamiyya and Hizbullah in Lebanon—Stefan Malthaner examines the dynamics of control emerging from the relationship between militant groups and their social constituencies. He argues that control emerges as a result of orientation toward and interaction with a population valued as the militants’ reference group. The effectiveness of this influence, however, depends on the militants’ perspective and the conflict structure, where Malthaner identifies two opposing, self-reinforcing dynamics: on the one hand, a process of violent escalation leading to tensions with the local population, radicalization, estrangement, and eventually a loss of constraints on violent practices. On the other hand, a pattern of development in which support reinforces the militants’ orientation toward a community, inducing self-restraint in their violent campaign, which in turn reinforces the support relationship. Referring to a later historical phase of the same struggles—the cease-fire initiative and ideological revisions of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and al-Jihad in Egypt— Khaled al-Hashimi and Carolin Goerzig analyze the role of internal debate in bringing about and stabilizing the groups’ disengagement from violence. Contrary to conventional counter-terrorism approaches, which argue that terrorist groups should be disintegrated and isolated, al-Hashimi and Goerzig find that it was the groups’ attachment to their followers and to a social base that enabled the debate about the legitimization of violence to emerge and contribute to bringing an end to violence. This inner-Islamic debate now substantially weakens support for alQaeda. It is precisely because it lacks a defined base of support, the authors argue, that the al-Qaeda leadership is able to resist debate and any notion of a truce.

7.5 The Macro-level: Violence in States in Crisis Section 4 deals with changes in state rule and their consequences for violence control strategies. The contributions in this section examine the phenomenon that became the subject of international scientific discourse about two decades ago as “fragile,” “weak,” or “failed” states. However, because the comparatively recent “discovery” of failed states suggests that this could be a new phenomenon, this section is also at pains to draw attention to inconsistencies in the perception of violence in these contexts and, where necessary, to correct one-sided contemporary

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interpretations by means of historical comparisons. The contributions on historical and present-day states in crisis stress that crisis situations in states rarely involve a complete loss of control over violence, but rather cause the reconfiguration of strategies, mechanisms, and actors of violence control. In these processes, the lines between legitimate violence control and illegitimate “control violence” become blurred—which once again highlights the ambivalence of control and the epistemological problem that such lines of demarcation are not readily revealed to the analytical gaze of a “neutral” observer. Rather, defining the differences between control and violence depends on subjective perceptions and evaluations according to normative yardsticks—which especially in times of crisis may themselves be called into question. At the beginning of the section, Werner Bergmann and Robert Gerwarth present two historical perspectives on violent processes in the context of rapid social change. Both authors point out that situations of national upheaval involve not only the weakening of the state monopoly on violence, thereby bringing forth opportunities for protagonists of violence, but also call into question the social order as a whole, both territorial and symbolic. Werner Bergmann shows how the underlying objective of anti-Jewish pogroms in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe was to eliminate insecurity and restore order. Thus, pogrom violence represents a form of “control violence” which comes into being as a result of the weakness of the state apparatus of repression and the existence of a political vacuum. From the perspective of the actors, this form of violence was justified precisely because of the absence of sanctions by the state as the regulatory force, and this justification occurred long before Jewish people were declared “enemies of the state.” Similarly, the protagonists of violence in Robert Gerwarth’s study on paramilitary violence in Austria and Hungary after the dissolution of the Habsburg empire view themselves as instances of control, and aim to restore by violent means a territorial and symbolic order disrupted by revolution and to prevent further losses of control over society. In this context, the protagonists of violence are young men who were socialized during the war to perceive violence as a “form of expression.” Here, too, violence was able to occur because previously effective mechanisms of control had been undermined by war and revolution, while a new control regime had not yet been able to establish itself. The contributions by Jean-Germain Gros and Andrea Kirschner deal with mechanisms of violence control and different manifestations of loss of control in the so-called “failed states” of the twenty-first century. Jean-Germain Gros points out that “failed states” are not a monolithic phenomenon and goes on to develop a typology of four different phenotypes of failed states, each of which entails a different degree of state loss of control over violence. According to Gros, state failure neither leads automatically to violence nor is it synonymous with losses of control over violence, as control is frequently exercised by non-governmental mechanisms. Nevertheless, Gros holds that the state remains the quintessential supervisory body of violence control. And although he concedes that the international community may contribute in many ways to the failure of states, while its options for “fixing” failed states are limited, he believes that, given

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the dangers that emanate from such states, restoring state order in these countries remains the paramount responsibility of the international community. The contribution by Andrea Kirschner takes a different approach, focusing on the non-governmental protagonists of violence who view their role as that of authorities controlling violence. Examining vigilante groups in Nigeria, she shows that such protagonists represent a societal answer to a perceived dysfunctionality on the part of the state in controlling violence and maintaining security. Such groups serve as a means of symbolic orientation where the state as a “national idea” is called into question. At the same time, Kirschner holds that the presence of vigilante groups should by no means inevitably be considered a symptom of an actual failure of the state and its loss of control over violence, even though a superficial examination may suggest that this is the case and this assumption is frequently made in the dominant debates on state failure. Instead, she argues that such groups are interlinked with the state by a multitude of practices and complex relationships of competition and cooperation, so that they simultaneously reinforce and weaken different dimensions of statehood. So, from religion, discourse, and theories of self-control, to rampage shootings, suicide bombings, and states torn apart by civil war, this volume covers a broad spectrum of forms of violence and aspects of control. Guided by a common set of categories and a shared perspective, the diverse strands of our three empirical fields converge around the question of control of violence in modern societies, portraying the phenomenon in its multi-layered complexity while still allowing us to trace coalescing lines of argument. The possibilities of comparison between phenomena and mechanisms—both similar and different—reveal the patterns of control and the effects it generates.

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Marshall, M. G. and Gurr, T. R. (2005). Peace and Conflict 2005. A Global Survey of Armed Conflicts, Self-Determination Movements, and Democracy. College Park, MD: University of Maryland. Mazower, M. (1998). The Dark Continent: Europe s Twentieth Century. London: Penguin. Mead, G. H. (1959). Mind, Self, and Society – From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Milliken, J. (Ed.) (2003). State Failure, Collapse and Reconstruction. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell. Münkler, H. (2002): Neue Kriege. Hamburg: Rowohlt. Neidhardt, F. (1981). Über Zufall, Eigendynamik und Institutionalisierbarkeit absurder Prozesse: Notizen am Beispiel einer terroristischen Gruppe. In H. Alemann and H.-P. Thurn (Eds.), Soziologie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht: Festschrift für René König zum 75. Geburtstag (pp. 243–257). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Neidhardt, F. (1989). Gewalt und Gegengewalt – Steigt die Bereitschaft zu Gewaltaktionen mit zunehmender staatlicher Kontrolle und Repression? In W. Heitmeyer, K. Möller, and H. Sünker (Eds.), Jugend-Staat-Gewalt, Politische Sozialisation von Jugendlichen, Jugendpolitik und politische Bildung (pp. 233–243). Weinheim/München: Juventa. Neidhardt, F. (1997). Gewalt, Gewaltdiskussion, Gewaltforschung. Bielefelder Universitätsgespräche und Vorträge, 7, 19–28. Newman, K. (2004). Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings. Boulder, CO: Perseus Books. Nuscheler, F. (2000). Global governance, Entwicklung und Frieden – Zur Interdependenz globaler Ordnungsstrukturen. In F. Nuscheler (Ed.), Entwicklung und Frieden im 21.Jahrhundert – Zur Wirkungsgeschichte des Brandt-Berichts (pp. 471–507). Bonn: Dietz. Oppenheim, F. E. (1961). Dimensions of Freedom: An Analysis. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Popitz, H. (1992). Phänomene der Macht. Tübingen: Mohr. Risse, T. and Lehmkuhl, U. (2006). Governance in Areas of limited Statehood – New Modes of Governance? SFB 700, SFB Governance Working Paper Series, No 1, DFG Sonderforschungsbereich 700, Berlin, December 2006. Rojek, D. G. (2001). Chinese social control: from shaming and reintegration to “Getting Rich Is Glorious”. In J. Liu, L. Zhang, and S. Messner (Eds.), Crime and Social Control in a Changing China (pp. 89–104). West Port, CT: Greenwood. Rosenbaum, H. J. and Sederberg, P. C. (1974). Vigilantism: an analysis of establishment violence. Comparative Politics, 6(July), 541–570. Ross, E. A. (1896). Social control. The American Journal of Sociology, 1(5), 513–535. Ross, E. A. (1916). Social Control: A Survey on the Foundations of Order. New York, NY: Macmillan. Rotberg, R. I. (Ed.) (2003). State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror. Cambridge, MA/Washington, D.C.: World Peace Foundation and Brookings Institution Press. Schlichte, K. (2000). Wer kontrolliert die Gewalt? Leviathan, 28(2), 161–172. Schlichte, K. (2005). Gibt es überhaupt “Staatszerfall”? Anmerkungen zu einer ausufernden Debatte. Berliner Debatte – Initial, 16, 74–84. Schneckener, U. (2006). Transnationaler Terrorismus. Charakter und Hintergründe des “neuen” Terrorismus. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Schreiber, W. (Ed.) (2002). Das Kriegsgeschehen 2001. Daten und Tendenzen der Krieg und bewaffneten Konflikten. Opladen: Leske + Budrich. Schuppert, G. F. and Zürn, M. (Eds.) (2008). Governance in einer sich wandelnden Welt. Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Sonderheft 41, Wiesbaden. Schwinn, T. (2008). Staatliche Ordnung und moderne Sozialintegration. In P. Imbusch and W. Heitmeyer (Eds.), Integration – Desintegration. Ein Reader zur Ordnungsproblematik moderner Gesellschaften (pp. 469–490). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Shrivastava, R. S. (1992). Crime and control in comparative perspective. The case of India. In H.G. Heiland, L. Shelley, and H. Katoh (Eds.), Crime and Control in Comparative Perspectives. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter.

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Singelnstein, T. and Stolle, P. (2008). Die Sicherheitsgesellschaft. Soziale Kontrolle im 21. Jahrhundert. 2. Aufl. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Smith, A. ([1759] 1976). The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Oxford: Clarendon. Smith, A. ([1776] 1991). The Wealth of Nations: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London: Random Century Group. Spierenburg, P. (1994). Faces of violence. homicide trends and cultural meanings, Amsterdam 1431–1816. Journal of Social History, 27, 701–716. Spierenburg, P. (2004). Social control and history: an introduction. In: H. Roodenburg and P. Spierenburg (Eds.), Social Control in Europe: 1500–1800 (pp. 1–22). Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Strange, S. (1996). The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sutterlüty, F. (2002). Gewaltkarrieren – Jugendliche im Kreislauf von Gewalt und Missachtung. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus. Thome, H. (2004). Theoretische Ansätze zur Erklärung langfristiger Gewaltkriminalität seit Beginn der Neuzeit. In W. Heitmeyer and H.-G. Soeffner (Eds.), Gewalt (pp. 315–345). Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Thome, H. and Birkel, C. (2007). Sozialer Wandel und Gewaltkriminalität. Deutschland, England und Schweden im Vergleich, 1950–2000. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Tittle, C. R. (1995). Control Balance: Toward a General Theory of Deviance. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Tyrell, H. (1980). Gewalt, Zwang und die Institutionalisierung von Herrschaft: Versuch einer Neuinterpretation von Max Webers Herrschaftsbegriff. In R. Pohlmann (Ed.), Person und Institution (pp. 59–92). Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann. Uvin, P. (1998). Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian. Vasilache, A. (2006). Hobbes, der Terrorismus und die Angst in der Weltpolitik. WeltTrends. Zeitschrift für internationale Politik und vergleichende Studien, 51, 147–158. Von Trotha, T. (1995). Ordnungsformen der Gewalt oder Aussichten auf das Ende des staatlichen Gewaltmonopols. In B. Nedelmann (Ed.), Politische Institutionen im Wandel, special issue no. 35 of Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (pp. 129–66). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Von Trotha, T. (2005). Der Aufstieg des Lokalen. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 28–29, 32–38. Waldmann, P. (1998): Terrorismus. Provokation der Macht. München: Gerling Akademie Verlag. Waldmann, P. (2003). Terrorismus und Bürgerkriege. Der Staat in Bedrängnis. München: Gerling Akademie Verlag. Wallensteen, P. and Sollennerg, M. (2000). Armed conflict 1989–1999. Journal of Peace Research, 37(4), 635–649. Weber, M. ([1922] 1968): Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology. New York, NY: Bedminster Press. Weller, C. (2003). Perspektiven der Friedenstheorie. INEF-Report 68. Duisburg. Institut für Entwicklung und Frieden. Zartman, I. W. (Ed.) (1995). Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority. Boulder, CO/London: Lynne Rienner. Zinecker, H. (2009). Editorial. In Dies (Ed.), Violence beyond the state – approaches to theory and forms. Behemoth. A Journal on Civilization, 2(2), 1–3.

Part II

Mechanisms and Strategies of Violence Control

An End to Violence Michel Wieviorka

1 The Subject and Violence There can be no discussion of violence today without involving the notions of Subject or subjectivity, in various ways.

1.1 Objectivity and Subjectivity The first thing that has to be stated is that the threat remains of the disarticulation between objective approaches to violence, which may be quantified and which can claim to be universal as they are theoretically acceptable to all, and subjective or relative approaches, which look at what an individual, a group, or a society considers as such at any given time. A legal definition of violence, centered on the state and, in the words of Max Weber, on a legitimate monopoly of force, appears to enable this problem to be set aside and violence simply to be objectivized. In this context, André Lalande’s Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie (1968), backed up by Montesquieu, mentions the “illegitimate or at least illegal use of force.”1 But when the state entrusts private agents with a substantial part of war-making, as is overwhelmingly evident with the US intervention in Iraq (Makki 2004), and when internal security is likewise handed over to the private sector, a trend currently at work worldwide, the state monopoly of legitimate force is called into question and, thus, the possibility of discussing violence objectively, as in Lalande’s definition quoted above. The advent of the age of victims that began in the 1960s considerably strengthens this process of calling into question, and the upsurge of individual identities has considerable “memory” and “victim” dimensions. Many players nowadays are demanding acknowledgment of and, in some cases, reparation for the crimes M. Wieviorka (B) Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] 1 “When

we, who live under civil laws, are compelled to make some contract not required by law, we can, thanks to the law, set aside violence” (Montesquieu 1758).

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perpetrated upon their forefathers and, at the same time, appearing in the public arena in connection with the harsh injustices they have suffered or, indeed, may still be suffering to this day. Such movements can be cultural, religious, or ethnic, perhaps national, black, or Indian; they may involve the survivors of a genocide or their descendants, or the parents or children of victims of a dictatorship or totalitarian power. Likewise, in several countries, increasingly diverse and effective mobilization is drawing attention to the violence suffered by women, children, the handicapped, or old people. Such players portray past and present violence not so much from the point of view of the threat to order or calling the state into question, but rather as an experience undergone and its consequences on those undergoing it; they speak of the trauma suffered and its effects over time, for example. Here, violence equals negation of or an attack on an individual’s physical and moral integrity, with implications that may affect succeeding generations. This makes it difficult to develop as a Subject; it invades subjectivity and takes the place of a subjectivization process. From this viewpoint, violence affects individual, personal, and collective existences. The tension between the objectivity and subjectivity of violence is not a purely theoretical problem; it can lead to fierce political debate. In France during the 1980s and 1990s, for example, people wondered whether delinquency and crime were increasing objectively, or whether it was in fact the feeling of insecurity that had increased, without any automatic link with an actual increase in crime, as the left claimed (before gradually moving away from this view of the problem). The harder it is to establish a direct link between acts of violence and their representations, the more the understanding of the one and the other falls into two separate registers which ultimately are almost completely dissociated.

1.2 Classical Approaches When thinking about an end to violence, it is not sufficient just to consider the victims and their subjectivity, however important their point of view may be and however considerable may be their ability to mobilize opinion and the media and to appeal to the state and political leaders. One must also look at the players involved in violence. Now, conventional methods of analysis are scarcely ever concerned with their subjectivity. Some people see violence as crisis behavior, a response to changes in their situation causing one or more players to react, often out of frustration. This approach gains respectability with Alexis de Tocqueville, who explains à propos of the French Revolution that violence was especially marked when the population found its situation improving: “One would say,” he wrote, “that the French found their situation the more unbearable as it improved” (Tocqueville [1856] 1998). Above all, though, it was British and American functionalist or neo-functionalist researchers who were responsible for the rise of this thesis, in the form of the theory of relative frustration, in the 1960s and 1970s. The idea put forward by James Davies, for example, and taken up to a considerable degree by Ted Robert Gurr (e.g., 1980), is in fact

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that violence develops when the gap between a group’s expectations and the scope for fulfilling them widens to the point of being intolerable. This type of approach has sometimes produced interesting results. However, in the 1970s various studies revealed its shortcomings and very limited explanatory power. Very differently, a second type of analysis stresses the rational, instrumental nature of violence, including in its collective dimensions—riots and revolution, for example. This may be said to have gained respectability with Thomas Hobbes but really took off in the 1960s, notably through the work of historian, Charles Tilly. For supporters of the thesis of “mobilization of resources,” violence is a resource, a means, which is mobilized by players in order to achieve their ends. Most of the time this idea serves to explain how players excluded from the political field use violence as a way of gaining admission and staying there. Such an idea has the advantage of no longer reducing violence to the notion of reactive crisis behavior; instead, it makes the perpetrator of violence someone who is aware of the issues surrounding the act of violence which, in turn, consequently makes sense. This approach argues that violence should not be separated from the wider conflict in the context of which it may arise, such as industrial action or a farmers’ demonstration. It has considerable explanatory power. Finally, a third type of approach, in fact very wide and diversified, postulates a link between culture and violence. Some writers regard the progress of culture, or rather of civilization, as the opposite of violence, in the tradition of the well-known study by Norbert Elias of the process of civilization, which explains how the modern individual has learned, in court, for example, to control his aggression and check his violent impulses (Elias [1939] 1974, 1975). Other writers stress how some cultures favor violence more than others, possibly through socialization and education—with reference, for example, to the work of Theodor Adorno on anti-semitism (1960). One problem associated with this set of perspectives is that the analysis generally omits political and social mediation and also disregards the historical layer that may separate the time when a personality is shaped and the moment of acting. Conventional approaches to violence should not be forgotten or rejected; they provide a perspective, which may be useful in order to understand a concrete experience of violence. However, they fail to deal with certain dimensions that are nevertheless essential and which the concept of Subject offers a way of comprehending.

1.3 The Subject of Violence Violence may present aspects suggesting a process of loss of meaning: when the player comes to express a meaning that has become lost or impossible and resorts to violence because he is unable to construct the confrontational action that would enable him to assert his social demands or cultural or political expectations, because no political process is available for dealing with them. A lack or loss of meaning does not necessarily lead to a vacuum, a complete lack of meaning and, ultimately, nihilism; such deficiencies often give rise to processes

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of manufacturing a new meaning of a more or less artificial nature, in other words, detached from reality, resulting in excesses and immoderation. In some experiences, for example, violence is based on an ideology from which it originates and which gives it a substitute meaning, as will be seen below with reference to Italian farleft terrorism. Other cases involve a myth, a discursive construction suggesting the possible integration of elements of meaning, which, in fact, become increasingly contradictory. Here, violence develops when the myth disintegrates and ceases to be viable, whereas the player nevertheless endeavors to keep it alive. In the modern world, though, religion often lends a metapolitical meaning to a violent act which then transcends politics, even if it soon becomes established again at that level. Violence has other aspects, which continue to elude conventional approaches. This is the case when cruelty, gratuitous violence, and violence for violence’s sake are involved; when the player not only destroys another but destroys himself, wipes out his existence by murderous, martyr-style acts. Or when the perpetrator appears to attach no personal meaning to his act, presenting himself as not responsible and claiming simply to have obeyed a lawful authority. This was the line of defense put forward by Eichmann in Jerusalem, as described by Hannah Arendt (1966). The concept of Subject may prove particularly useful for taking account of these different aspects, provided that the definition adopted is not too unimaginative or rudimentary. I, therefore, propose to establish five cases, each corresponding to a type of subjectivity that can be linked to violence (Wieviorka 2005). – The Floating Subject is one who, not managing to become a player, resorts to violence: for instance, the young immigrant from a run-down neighborhood setting fire to cars during the October/November 2005 riots as his only way of expressing, if not specific social demands, then at least his desire to build a life for himself. – The Hyper-Subject compensates for the loss of meaning by excess, to which he gives a new, ideological, mythical, or religious meaning. Here, violence is firmly linked to beliefs; it is the serious commitment of a meaning extending far beyond the bounds of the situation in which it is expressed, and aiming even further still. Islamic martyrism can serve as an illustration of this: the player kills, and in so doing extinguishes his own life, combining tremendous despair with a metapolitical vision that reaches beyond life itself. – The Non-Subject acts violently without in any way involving his subjectivity, at least apparently merely obeying orders, as in Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments (1974). His violence has no meaning from his point of view; it is nothing more than a form of submission to a lawful authority. – The Anti-Subject is that side of the Subject that fails to acknowledge the other person’s right to be a Subject and which can develop only by negating the other person’s humanity. This case corresponds to the dimensions of cruelty or enjoyment of violence for its own sake, as an end in itself. Here, the victim is dehumanized, reified, or animalized and is in every respect the opposite of the Subject. The perpetrator of cruel acts who finds pleasure in violence assumes that position and acts contrary to the humanist dimensions on which the concept of

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Subject is normally based—hence the use of the term Anti-Subject. Masochism is a perverted form of this scenario, in which the victim also derives pleasure from his own dehumanization. – The Survivor Subject corresponds to a situation where, before any aggression has actually taken place, an individual may (rightly or wrongly—it matters not) feel that his very existence is threatened, and act violently to ensure his own survival. This typology, briefly outlined here, would certainly deserve to be developed and the proposed terminology is not perhaps the most suitable, but it should be pointed out that until now we have lacked any sociological categories to permit a fuller description of these different cases. It has the advantage of helping us to tackle the most mysterious aspect of violence, which is also the core one: not the frustrations it may reveal, nor the more or less rational calculations made by the person resorting to violence, nor even the culture from which it stems, but the processes of loss of meaning and excess of meaning through which violence may develop, the share of surplus and lack involved, the twisted, corrupted, or sometimes also perverted subjectivity that makes violence possible.

2 Violence and Globalization We can no longer approach the issue of violence today as we would have done only 20 or 30 years ago. The world has changed, considerably, and the processes of globalization are at the heart of these changes. By thinking “globally,” we can approach violence with a fresh or altered perspective.

2.1 The End of the Cold War Let us look at the world as it was in the 1950s or 1960s. Essentially, it was structured by the central conflict between the two superpowers of the day, the United States, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union, on the other hand. The Yalta agreement, signed before World War II was even over, carved the world up into two zones of influence. The Cold War was, thus, a major ideological, economic, and geopolitical confrontation, but it never led either to head-on war or significant unmediated local conflicts. Neither the Korean War nor the Vietnam War pitted the two superpowers directly against each other, nor did they escalate into a much wider world war; they remained localized. Nuclear weapons ensured a degree of prudence between the two blocs and had a deterrent effect; the prospect of their use restrained extremes of action, even in times of high tension, notably the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Warlike violence was, thus, limited throughout the world, as many countries were more or less firmly within the sphere of influence of one or other superpower and everyone knew that a localized war was likely to lead to global conflict. A report by the Human Security Centre in Vancouver, published in October 2005, admittedly forces us to qualify the idea of a world where military violence was

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lessened by the Cold War. Backed up by figures, this report states that many wars were fought by proxy in the Third World in those days and there was also local violence, in some cases very bloody. One should not, therefore, paint too idyllic a picture of that period. But the Cold War did prevent the escalation, spread, or extension of war, at least in its conventional form. It also had the effect of curbing international terrorism, which was carried on mainly by players claiming to support the Palestinian cause who, as will be seen, never went as far as they do nowadays. The end of the Cold War deprived the world of a way of structuring conflict, which avoided military violence far more than it authorized or facilitated it. After that, new splits appeared, civil wars took on quite a different aspect, and mass outbreaks of new or renewed violence began to occur. Organized crime prospered along with globalization. Whereas the number of conventional armed conflicts between states has decreased by 40% since 1992, according to the Human Security Centre report, and the bloodiest conflicts (those causing more than 1,000 battlefield deaths per year) have declined in number by 80%; and coups d’état or attempted coups have declined to 10 in 2004 compared to 25 in 1963, other forms of violence have increased. “Global” terrorism has struck a number of times, frequently killing and injuring dozens of victims in a single attack. Generally speaking, the percentage of civilian victims compared with military victims has increased considerably. Barbarity has become established in all sorts of parts of the world, including in Europe, where one might think that after Nazism, there would be no more mass crimes of a genocidal nature; the break-up of the former Yugoslavia involved violent “ethnic cleansing,” whereas in the Cold War era that country was in fact considered a factor for international stability. The Great Lakes genocide in Africa left more than one million people dead. And in Iraq today, the war in that country continues with extremely bloody daily acts of violence which could presage a civil war. Armed conflicts now take new forms: asymmetrical wars, for example, or crisis management in a supranational or multilateral context. Military interventions, sometimes by UN-appointed multinational forces, are increasing with the aim, in theory, not of winning in order to impose power, but, rather, of bringing situations of extreme localized violence to an end. The break-up of the former Yugoslavia with violence that lasted almost throughout the 1990s, the horrors of Africa’s Great Lakes, with the 1994 genocide, the violence perpetrated by pro-Indonesian militias following the creation of the independent state of Timor (1999 referendum), the disastrous experience of Somalia (1992–1993), the recent war in Lebanon (summer 2006), and the Darfur crisis are all new configurations of war, in which local confrontations and violence, in some cases charged with nationalist, religious, or ethnic significance, end in joint intervention by armies endeavoring, from outside the theatre of operations, to bring peace and re-energize civilian processes of restoring calm and development. Throughout the Cold War, moreover, nuclear weapons acted as a restraint and even promoted peace. Nuclear weapons have since become a factor, or at least a symbol, of major risks, associated with images of destabilization or regional crisis, notably in the Middle East and Asia, and with considerable problems of proliferation.

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Of course, the end of the Cold War does not explain everything, and a more detailed analysis ought, in geopolitical terms, also to cover, notably, the end of colonialism, the decolonization processes, and the ending of dependence for many Latin American societies. But the fall of the Berlin Wall was a turning point. At the time, the Cold War carried the stamp of violence, notably in what were termed the “proxy” wars; its end also meant an ending of these instances of violence. Often it had prevented the intervention of the United Nations (and also of other players, notably NGOs) in a preventive or peacekeeping role. The dawn of a new era brought with it fresh mediations, negotiations, and intervention and, thus, initiated a learning process in negotiated, democratic conflict management. On the other hand, the Cold War kept organized crime at a certain level and held international terrorism in check, because the main players in such violence needed the “sponsorship” of states often themselves within the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union; following its demise, the door was opened to a growth in organized crime and more intense forms of terrorism. The end of the Cold War did not in itself give rise to a fresh period of acts of violence (some of the most spectacular instances of which have been mentioned above), but it did play a large part in some major changes. In the words of the historian Charles Tilly it meant the invention of a new repertoire of violence.2

2.2 The End of the Industrial Age Globalization also meant big changes in the nature of capitalism and its associated forms of domination. The old industrial age, when economic power corresponded more or less directly to social relations located primarily in the factory or workshop, has given way to a phase when production problems seem to be dissociated from problems of economic power. No longer do the bosses hold the central role of dominant players, nor as was once thought do the managers; nowadays that role falls to “global” financial capitalism. Companies’ profits are, therefore, measured by a different yardstick to production, and it is not uncommon for a big group’s share price to rise even as it is announcing mass layoffs and the closure of factories that are still profitable—only not profitable enough. For modern capitalism, the short term prevails over the long term. As Richard Sennett (2007) points out, for example, “In 1960, a company was assessed in terms of predicted profits in three years’ time, whereas in 2000 that timescale has been shortened to three months on average” (437). All the same, conventional forms of work organization have not disappeared. Take the example of the “maquiladora” factories in Mexico, not far from the US border, most of which are dependent on big multinational groups and are part of the

2 Charles

Tilly proposes this concept in The Contentious French (1986), explaining that any population, in a given society, at a given period, has a limited set of collective actions, that is to say, means of acting in concert on the basis of shared interest. That repertoire changes as one moves from one type of society to another.

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global economy. The forms of worker exploitation that still prevail there often seem to date from another age, so harsh are they and so impenetrable by union action or the most basic protection offered by employment law (Lopez 2007). But there, as everywhere else in the world, globalization means the decline of the workers’ ability to take action, a loss of impact and, even more so, of centrality for the labor movement. Economic power and, thus, the “other side” in the conflict for a would-be labor movement player, is now too far removed from the site of production to allow the existence of a relationship comparable to the one that used to pit the working masses and the employers against one another while at the same time binding them, in the days when Taylorism was at its height. Capital can move at lightning speed, and the identifications that formerly inspired workers to want to become their own bosses and, thus, formed the foundation of counter-offensive protest have waned: how can anyone identify with a job, a type of work, a company if there is no job security, if they know they will have to change their line of work several times in the course of their life, and if the company regards them as eminently “expendable?” How is it possible to devise any long-term action involving a high degree of planning and structure if the work organization is constantly moving around and relocating and if the prevailing individualism and flexibility are depicted as the triumphant opposite of the traditional concept of worker solidarity? The end of the old industrial age did not make the world of work more violent; rather, it led to a loss of fighting spirit, an inability to carry on mass struggles and to link them with counter-projects for society or visions of utopia. Nevertheless, it altered the arena of violence. On the one hand, during the 1970s and 1980s violence took the form of far-left terrorism in several countries just emerging from that old order, notably Italy: students, intellectuals, and also, in some cases, workers, became more radical in order to carry on, by means of armed conflict, a fight which no longer had any meaning or reality in the factories. On the other hand, the decline of the core principle of conflict provided by the labor movement left a vacuum which no other player of similar stature stepped forward to fill, either socially or politically. Throughout the world communism did not collapse solely due to the break-up of the Soviet Union, or the exhaustion of its ideology: its disappearance also owes a lot to the decline of the labor movement which it represented, of which it was sometimes the main representative. And if the social democratic model seems to be on its last legs, or irrelevant, in the old industrial societies, the reason is partly that it continues to postulate strong ties between the party and the unions, in historical contexts where the unions have lost most of their power. Now, the lack of a framework for confrontation between the two sides is always a factor in a decline in social or moral standards and violence. When people’s expectations are not channeled into debate and conflicts between players, they degenerate into cynicism or fatalism, on the one hand, and crisis behavior and violence, on the other hand. One of the reasons for the urban riots in France in October and November 2005 was the lack of any forum, in the poorer districts, for putting the demands of young people—mostly from an immigrant background—into a confrontational setting and dealing with them at the political level. Thirty or 40 years previously, those same districts were “red suburbs” where the Communist Party, as

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well as an active, living fabric of associations, effectively channeled social conflict with feedback at political level. Nowadays, the Communist Party has abandoned the field and the old fabric of associations has vanished. The violent rioting, with several hundred vehicles set on fire every night for nearly 3 weeks, was the expression of a keen sense of dereliction and abandonment and also anger, and there was no institutionalized framework for conflict there to give it media coverage. Apart from the experience of the end of the industrial society and the decline of the labor movement, the foregoing remarks lead us to a general hypothesis that can serve as a basis for the analysis: the arena for violence is widening, while the scope for organizing debate and a framework for conflict to deal with social problems is shrinking, lacking, or vanishing. Conversely that arena becomes smaller when the conditions of institutionalized conflict permit a negotiated solution, even in circumstances of great tension between players. Violence is not conflict; rather, it is the opposite. Violence is more likely to flash when a player can find no-one to deal with in his attempts to exert social or political pressure, when no channels of institutional negotiation are available. This proposition should be considered as an analytical tool, not as a hard-and-fast rule—there are situations, experiences, or circumstances where conflict and violence go hand-in-hand. We have linked it to globalization because the more the latter is uncontrolled, purely neoliberal, and knows no borders, the more it undermines the institutions and representative bodies set up to deal with social demands within a framework of conflict. So why not wait for first attempts at establishing courts of law and supranational means of regulating economic life, or perhaps the advent of the alter-globalization movement in the hope that they will, in time, help to redefine the image of globalization and its consequences?

3 An End to Violence: The Victims’ Perspective The analytical bases described above correspond only to certain forms of violence and certain problems and, moreover, in no way permit an approach that could claim to be exhaustive. Our aim here, as throughout this contribution, is more to introduce a type of sociological approach rather than to supply systematic, heavily documented information about a particular topic. Not only does this approach indicate how one may tackle so important an issue as violence, or at least some aspects of it; but also it can extend the analysis of violence by looking at the conditions that may enable us to deal with it. Let us, therefore, return to the first of the points just made, the growing importance of the victims’ point of view.

3.1 Three Registers Democracies are increasingly sensitive to the victims’ viewpoint, and the themes of suffering, trauma, forgiveness, and reconciliation hold a considerable place in the public arena of democratic debate. What does an end to violence mean in a

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democracy when one is a victim, a descendant of victims, or a survivor? For such individuals and groups, the life-marking experiences of mass killings, genocides, slavery, the slave trade, and other crimes against humanity obviously did not come to a sudden halt on the day when barbarity was ended; they left their marks. An end to violence in fact means dealing with the present-day repercussions of past sufferings. That which is destroyed or altered, in that family of experiences, is not onedimensional; it in fact refers, according to eminently variable conditions, to three separate registers. The first of these is collective identity. Mass destructions not only liquidate human beings, but also, to a greater or lesser degree, a culture, a way of life, a language, a religion—hence the use sometimes of the neologism, “ethnocide.” The destruction of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices, for example, eradicated the Yiddish culture from central Europe and almost wiped out the language. Admittedly the language still exists, but it no longer has the slightest link to living communities, as in the days of the shtetl, the Jewish settlement in central and eastern Europe. It is true, as the work of the historian Jacob Katz showed, that such communities had already been eroded by the modern world and abandoned by many of the people who lived in them even before World War II. But Nazism acted with unprecedented force, practically annihilating that identity, with the result that it would never again contribute anything new, alive, or dynamic to humanity. All that remains is something that has been repressed, with only survivors left to try to keep traces of it alive, at the risk of lapsing into a “lachrymal” past, as it has been termed by the Jewish historian, Salo Baron. That identity fills museums and memories, it has its own memory, but that which gave it meaning has been lost, it no longer corresponds to a constantly evolving history. Here, reparation is impossible; that which has been destroyed cannot be brought back, and irremediably belongs to the past alone. The second register concerns individual participation in modern life. Crimes against humanity do not only affect groups external to modernity; on the contrary, those affected may be directly involved in modernity, or at least in contact with it and likely to be to some extent a party. What is concerned, therefore, is also a person’s ability to exist as an individual and to have access to money, consumer goods, work, housing, health, etc. Being a victim or the descendant of a victim, thus, means not only having been attacked in one’s cultural being and physical integrity; it also means having been treated as a slave whereas, within the same society, other people were free; it means having been deprived of one’s property, one’s rights, the sense of belonging at civil or national level to a larger collective entity than one’s group alone. To carry on the example of Nazism: the German Jews were highly integrated with German society and the German nation, almost assimilated, and when the Nazis told them they had been rejected by society and the nation, many of them failed to understand what they were being told. The great historian and sociologist, Norbert Elias (1991), who fled to the UK in 1935, relates in an autobiographical work how his parents refused to listen when he advised them to flee Germany: “nothing can happen to us, we’ve done nothing wrong, was the gist of what they said to him”. When individual participation in modernity is denied in this way by extreme violence, what is at stake is not only a collective identity, membership of a group, but

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an identification, more or less assumed with universal values to which one has been a party, or which have been held up as something for everyone to aspire to, and from which one has been shut out and forcefully expelled. Lastly, there is a third register, which has to do with personal subjectivity, that ability of any human being to be a Subject. Extreme violence annihilates or at any rate severely affects the Subject. It dehumanizes the person, treating him like a thing or an animal, or it may demonize him, attributing evil powers to that individual—in the way that women, in the past, were often called witches. This is why the survivors of a barbarous tragedy sometimes feel they cannot go on living; they have ceased to believe in the humanity of the personal Subject, they have experienced its negation within themselves and they have seen it vanish from their persecutors. How can anyone live after Auschwitz, it has often been asked?

3.2 Dealing with Threefold Destruction If we consider the three registers just described, putting an end to extreme violence means being able to deal with the threefold destruction that has affected first of all a collective identity; second, individuals inasmuch as they participate in modernity; and third, Subjects whose humanity is denied. What can the survivors or descendants of a collective identity defined by destruction do? If all they can put forward is that destruction, and the loss of any way of bringing back to life the collective being that has vanished, then any action they may take, insofar as they are able to express demands, will go no further than calling for acknowledgment of the barbarity that their group has suffered, with material compensation according to the case. If, on the contrary, they are able to advance a positive principle, whatever that may be, the strands of a culture that still has a hope of revival, a view of justice for the society in which they live, a demand for democracy, then the community or group concerned can move forward. Here, an end to violence means creating a “positive” identity, a principle that does not trap people in an identity which is “negative” because it has been destroyed and belongs only to the past. How can one rebuild in the case of the register of individual participation in modernity? Only a full and complete acknowledgment of that which has been prohibited or denied and the resulting wound can provide a satisfactory answer to the victims and those who claim to represent or embody them. The answer here is in the hands of those who hold the power to decide on such an acknowledgment, but who may have ideological or political reasons for not granting it. It may be a matter of protecting persecutors, avoiding re-opening very recent wounds, establishing or maintaining a precarious peace, going along with a consensus that has effected the transition from dictatorship to democracy relatively smoothly. Silence and obliviousness are generally justified by the overriding interests of the community; but they also obviously work in the interests of the persecutors and the guilty parties, to the detriment of the victims. The West German experience for instance, especially from the 1960s on, suggests that a country which decides to undertake the work on

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itself required by a recent past of extreme acts of violence and mass crimes comes out better than a country which refuses to do so. Debating the past and developing a policy of truth and forgiveness, as South Africa tried to do after apartheid, is the best way of helping the former victims to come back into the fold of the national community. Lastly, can negation be reversed when the victims have been devastated as personal Subjects and deeply dehumanized? If their predominant feeling is that it is no longer possible for them to take back control of their lives and continue living, then the only outcome is a descent into madness or suicide. Among the worst of cases is that where the victim feels, after the event, that his or her own behavior contributed to the negation, their own humanity, and that of others, that they played a part in their own debasement, which may spill over into a kind of inversion, being trapped inside a repugnant image of self which turns into a disgusting character that becomes their public image. Symmetrically it has been found, for example, from knowledge gathered about the Nazi concentration camp experience that in conditions of extreme violence the resources provided by faith or by a previous political commitment increase the likelihood of remaining a Subject despite the dehumanizing environment, as well as making it more likely for the person to rebuild their Subject afterwards. For the three registers of this analysis, the core of the end to violence is the same: it lies in the ability of the group, the individual, or the Subject to move forward. Irrespective of the register, three main attitudes are possible. The first of these involves shutting oneself up in the past, either in the barbarity experienced or in the time that preceded it, which will ultimately then be recalled as a golden age—before the disaster. In Sigmund Freud’s terminology, this attitude is one of “melancholy.” It may lead to demands for reparations, but is much less likely to evolve toward acknowledgment and forgiveness. The second attitude, on the contrary, tries to forget the past, to distance oneself as much as possible from past history, either the period of extreme violence or before that, in an attempt to merge completely into the society or nation in which one lives. In this case, there can be no debate about the past. Finally, the third attitude is to go through a period of “mourning,” again a Freudian concept, and to show that one is able to move forward and live fully in the society and in the nation, while still keeping alive the memory of the earlier experience and its destruction. This third attitude links the past, the present, and the future and is eminently favorable to opening up debate and processes of the “truth and reconciliation” type that have developed throughout the world, in particular in Latin America, following the South African example initiated in 1993. This requires great moral and political strength on the part its promoters. Nelson Mandela talked about this on a number of occasions, for example, with Bill Clinton, who relates their conversation, thus (Clinton 2004: 3): I said, ‘Madiba [Mandela’s colloquial tribal name, which he asked me to use], I know you did a great thing in inviting your jailers to your inauguration, but didn’t you really hate those who imprisoned you?’ He replied, ‘Of course I did, for many years. They took the best years of my life. They abused me physically and mentally. I didn’t get to see my children grow

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up. I hated them. Then one day when I was working in the quarry, hammering the rocks, I realized that they had already taken everything from me except my mind and my heart. Those they could not take without my permission. I decided not to give them away.’ Then he looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘And neither should you.’. . . I asked him another question. ‘When you were walking out of prison for the last time, didn’t you feel the hatred rise up in you again?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘for a moment I did. Then I thought to myself, They have had me for twenty-seven years. If I keep hating them, they will still have me. I wanted to be free, and so I let it go.

3.3 Acknowledgment in a “Global” World Crimes against humanity, to confine ourselves to this particular form of violence, have taken place and still take place in arenas that do not necessarily coincide with the framework of modern-day states and nations. One immediate consequence is that the debates they may give rise to, and likewise their legal, political, and institutional processing, cannot, therefore, be restricted to that framework. In a “Westphalian” world, the state provides continuity between the past and the future, and it is within the state that decisions on the granting of rights are made, the processes of political debate take place, steps toward reconciliation or forgiveness are taken, reparations are approved, and so on. This in no way excludes international processes or the institution of courts like the one at Nuremberg to try Nazi criminals after World War II—but such courts exist by virtue of an agreement between states. However, acts of extreme violence, including those that took place in another age, often need to be analyzed and dealt with at “global” level. Looking at the contemporary consequences of the slave trade from the victims’ point of view, for example, means taking into account the historical dimension of the problem—nearly 15 centuries—and considering the role of all sorts of players in different parts of the world, in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas (Pétré-Grenouilleau 2004). Thinking about the major “humanitarian” crises, the ethnic cleansing of the Great Lakes and the Balkans or the killings in Darfur, means bringing into focus processes inherent in Rwanda, former Yugoslavia, or Sudan and also, necessarily, regional and international, geopolitical, and economic dimensions. And if the survivors and descendants of the victims, some of whom have become refugees or exiles, are to emerge from such tragedies and rebuild their lives, that requires the involvement of many players, several of whom are external to the strictly local scene—humanitarian NGOs, international justice, international organizations like the UN or the EU, etc. What these survivors or descendants, the bearers, as Dipesh Chakrabarty (2007) says, of “historical wounds” may demand or hope for may involve the responsibility of several states, for acts for which not all of them are necessarily accountable, states moreover which may no longer exist or whose frontiers have greatly changed since the time of the acts of violence. Today’s players are not those of yesterday, yet accountability for the past is nevertheless likely to be unduly or wrongly laid at the door of one or other of them, so much so that many politicians now feel vexed by the demands for repentance that are made of them. The concept of descendant itself raises problems: how far can

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one postulate continuity down through the centuries in order to legitimately present oneself as a victim on the grounds of being a descendant of victims? The notion of survivor likewise deserves to be examined: in situations of extreme violence, why should they be representative of all the victims, as if they formed a homogenous group? Such questions make one’s head spin, as Jacques Derrida (1999) indeed showed with reference to forgiveness; how should one respond to the moral demand to forgive the unforgivable? It is neither straightforward nor easy to arrange forgiveness and make it meaningful in a situation whether both victims and persecutors belong to the same nation state and where perpetrators and direct survivors of extreme violence still live. And what should one do if those who can ask forgiveness are not the guilty ones, but simply people in positions of power who personally are guilty of no wrongdoing in connection with the violence? Or if, those who can grant forgiveness is merely more or less distant descendants of the victims? Or if, moreover, the state is not the sole or even the main framework within which these questions should be asked? Was the state that was the Federal Republic of Germany in Cold War days more answerable for Nazism than the German Democratic Republic? Is the state of Israel entitled to represent the victims of Shoah and if so, to what extent? Is it right for heads of state to forgive or to ask forgiveness in place of and on behalf of the victims, of all victims, including those not seeking forgiveness?

4 Dealing with the Violent Player: Subject Policies? Countering violence conventionally means linked policies of repression and prevention, either within the state framework (by mobilizing the police, the courts, schools, etc.), externally (diplomacy, war), or perhaps by combining the two dimensions. The latter is all the more necessary as globalization is blurring the points of reference, and the fight against organized crime and terrorism today, for example, calls for “global” strategies. We believe that our typology of the Subject of violence can make a useful contribution to developing these considerations. – If violence, at least in the dimensions that can be established, corresponds to the Floating Subject, that is to say, the difficulty or the impossibility of converting expectations or demands into action, then the most important thing is to establish or re-establish the conditions that allow conversion to take place. Such a proposition carries on very directly from the remarks made above about the opposition between violence and institutionalized conflict. It in fact means that the best strategy for reducing or preventing violence is to promote the training and development of social or political players responsible for the management—no matter how confrontational—of relations between them: the exact opposite of a breakdown in relations. At the global level, this means more and more players and institutions filling the supranational space all the time. At state level, it means forms of democracy that can resolve the contemporary crisis of political representation and allow the development and recognition of social and cultural players (see the analyses in Wieviorka 2007b).

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The same idea applies on smaller scales. Within a company, for instance, the presence of powerful, well-organized unions, while often regarded as a source of problems by management, is in fact also and above all the management’s best bulwark against the risks of a loss and breakdown of social or moral standards; union representatives are in fact a channel for bringing internal problems to light, avoiding the unspoken resentments that fuel a crisis, and negotiating; they also provide some predictability. Refusing even to allow a framework for conflict to exist does not lead to order and peaceful industrial relations; it is more likely to promote crisis behavior, starting with violence. – If violence concerns the Hyper-Subject, with its overabundance of meanings, it calls for symmetrical efforts. Here the problem is not one of a lack of meaning or of a framework for conflict; it has much more to do with the overload that turns a virtual conflict into war and violent breakdowns in relations. What those who can bring any influence to bear on the situation then have to do is to stop the dimensions corresponding to this meaning overload, be they ideological or religious, from over-determining action and preventing any debate or discussion, political or social process, or negotiation. Any intervention on their part is more likely to have some effect if it takes place at a very early stage, before the player has become so wrapped up in their own logic as to permit no concessions and to grant unqualified primacy to the absolute and radicalism. The Floating Subject requires bottom-up strategies, from the absence of conflict and mediation toward the building or strengthening of confrontational relations. The Hyper-Subject requires the opposite, top-down strategies, back down from the metapolitical to the political, from complete breakdown—notably religious— to debate and institutionalized conflict. A significant kind of intervention here may involve efforts to lend weight to those who, within the same ideology, or the same religion, can accept moderation, debate, and conciliation of their sense of identity with universal values of right and reason. This is the case, notably, in western democracies, whenever moderate Islam is respected and recognized there and is also encouraged not to allow Islamism to blight and weaken it. Once they have embraced a mindset of radical purity, violent players are not generally likely to relinquish their beliefs and give up the “all or nothing” that has become their way of thinking. The only way of ending violence in this case is, therefore, by force, repression, and calling in the army and the police. – It is hard to accept the hypothesis of the Non-Subject, for whom violence is meaningless, merely the expression of submission to a lawful authority. Such a hypothesis in fact takes away the violent player’s sense of responsibility, turning him into an automaton, a bureaucrat untroubled by conscience in the service of a machine, someone acting without convictions or passions, who unquestioningly accepts the order or instruction to act. Let us give this hypothesis the benefit of the doubt, though, let us admit that there are some people or situations, which it can explain. The only way to end violence here is to delegitimize the authority involved or, at least, the practices concerned. The admittedly light-hearted

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ordeals of “ragging” new students, for example, were tolerated in France for a long time, being anchored in a “tradition” itself rooted in certain educational establishments. It took energetic political intervention to delegitimize and ban ragging, and, thus, to make any continuing perpetrators aware of their responsibilities. Much more generally, anything in education, which can raise the sense of individual and collective responsibility, conscience the idea that the individual is accountable for his acts, can only serve to limit the space available for Non-Subject violence. – Cruelty and the violence of the Anti-Subject occur only in very specific conditions. They may, for example, accompany conventional warfare whenever a strong sense of impunity goes hand-in-hand with fear of the enemy, as was the case with the American forces facing the Japanese during the War in the Pacific (notably Dower 1986) or during the Vietnam War (notably in the My Lai massacre where 500 unarmed civilians were brutally killed by an American unit on March 16, 1968), or, to cite a recent example, at Abu Ghraib, in Iraq. Preventing cruelty means putting in place safeguards to prevent players from resorting to pure violence as an end in itself. This applies to the military authorities, in time of war, who must not, in theory and according to the law of war, permit any meanings other than instrumental to occur outside their control and responsibility. It applies to those in charge of armed conflict organizations, who must avoid the dilution of meaning in relation to political ends that the recourse to pure violence implies for their members—unless pure violence is to be used as a means of terrorizing the enemy. And in the case of common cruelty, on the part of criminals, for example, this seems so remote from the problems that can be solved by conventional political responses that it requires different resources to combat it: repression, admittedly, and education, but perhaps also religious, moral, or humanist values, of the kind referred to, for example, by Nelson Mandela at his meeting with Bill Clinton. – The violence of the Survivor Subject, as Jean Bergeret explains, is “dominating and archaic;” it is based on “a primitive fantasy that simply asks the question essential to the individual’s survival: ‘The other person or me?’ ‘Him or me?’ ‘Survive or die?’ ‘Survive at the risk of killing the other person?’” (Bergeret 1995, 46). The problem here is not an end to violence or, as Bergeret says, “controlling violence.” It is a matter of knowing that those who resort to violence do not have the personal resources or the mental models to deal with the situations in which they find themselves. To Bergeret, juvenile violence, the anger, and the hatred felt by France’s “suburban youth,” which come into this category, owe a lot to the shortcomings of adults, who are unable to provide them with suitable identity models. Today, violence is a taboo. Perhaps the last one. This has not always been so, and not that long ago it even had a certain legitimacy, be it extolling revolution, supporting national liberation movements, showing understanding of terrorist groups, or identifying with guerrilla warfare. Rather than analyzing it, intellectuals either supported it or opposed it, according to their political sympathies. The more it is held to be evil personified, the more violence appears meaningless to the point

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where, in its most decisive manifestations, it seems to be a product of barbarism or frenzy. The social sciences must not allow themselves to be swayed into accepting the half-baked ideas that reject violence without analyzing it from the point of view of the inhuman, the incomprehensible, and the absurd. Yet, they must also resist the idea of giving meaning to destructive and sometimes self-destructive modes of behavior. They must, therefore, tread carefully and acknowledge that any manifestation of violence, however insignificant, is linked to a meaning, but that link is twisted, perverted, is lost, or artificial. It is all the more difficult to follow that path given that the world in which we operate is no longer “Westphalian.” Violence is a particularly stimulating challenge for the social sciences, as it forces the researcher to do a balancing act and to produce findings ranging from the most personal, private, and subjective to the most general, international, and “global.”

References Adorno, T. (1960). The Authoritarian Personality. New York, NY: Harper. Arendt, H. (1966). Eichmann à Jérusalem. Rapport sur la banalité du mal, Paris: Gallimard. Bergeret, J. (1995). Freud, la violence et la dépression, Paris: PUF. Chakrabarty, D. (2007). Histoire et politique de la reconnaissance. In M. Wieviorka (Ed.), Les Sciences sociales en mutation. Auxerre: Editions Sciences Humaines. Clinton, B. (2004). My Life, London: Hutchinson. Derrida, J. (1999). “Le Siècle et le pardon,” conversation with M. Wieviorka. Numéro 9, Le Monde des débats. Dower, J. (1986). War Without Mercy. Race and Power in the Pacific. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Elias, N. ([1939] 1974, 1975). Sur le processus de civilisation, vol. 1, La civilisation des mœurs, vol. 2 La dynamique de l’Occident. Paris: Pocket. Elias, N. (1991). Norbert Elias par lui-même. Paris: Fayard (translated from German, 1990). Gurr, T. R. (1980). Handbook of Political Conflict. New York, NY: Free Press. Human Security Centre (2005). Human Security Report. Vancouver, Canada, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Lalande, A. (1968). Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie. Paris: P.U.F. Lopez, E. (2007). En quête d’identité. Mondialisation, figures de la féminité et conflits sociaux à la frontière Mexique/Etats-Unis. Paris: Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales. Makki, S. (2004). Militarisation de l’humanitaire, privatisation du militaire. Paris: CIRPES. Milgram, S. (1974). Soumission à l’autorité, Paris: Calmann-Lévy. Montesquieu, C.-L. de S. (1758). L’Esprit des Lois. Amsterdam: La Compagnie. Pétré-Grenouilleau, O. (2004). Les traites négrières. Essai d’histoire globale. Paris: Gallimard. Sennett, R. (2007). Récits au temps de la précarité. In M. Wieviorka (Ed.), Les sciences sociales en mutation (pp. 437–448). Paris: Editions Sciences Humaines. Tilly, C. (1986). The Contentious French. Harvard: World Belknap. De Tocqueville, A. ([1856] 1998). The Old Regime and the Revolutio. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Wieviorka, M. (2005). La Violence. Paris: Hachette-Littératures, coll. Pluriel. Wieviorka, M. (Ed.) (2007b). Le printemps du politique. Paris: Robert Laffont.

Cross-National Homicide Trends in the Latter Decades of the Twentieth Century: Losses and Gains in Institutional Control? Steven F. Messner, Benjamin Pearson-Nelson, Lawrence E. Raffalovich, and Zachary Miner

1 Introduction In an essay published in the Annual Review of Sociology in 1999, Gary LaFree (1999) lamented two limitations in the criminological literature that seriously hindered our understanding of the macro-social determinants of criminal violence in general and homicide in particular. He observed that much of the quantitative research to date had been based on cross-sectional designs.1 While these designs provide useful information about the relationships between levels of theoretically relevant social structural variables and levels of homicide, they are not well-suited for identifying the dynamic processes associated with lethal violence. LaFree also faulted researchers for adopting ahistorical approaches. These approaches tend to treat “social processes as if they were independent of history” (1999, 158). As a result, the interpretations of crime patterns informed by such approaches are typically insensitive to fundamental transformations in the larger macro-social setting. The situation in the discipline has changed appreciably in the 10 years since the publication of LaFree’s essay. Researchers have increasingly employed longitudinal designs based on data not only for single nations, but also for multi-national samples as well. The designs of these multi-national studies—pooled, cross-sectional time-series designs—have two very advantageous features. They typically yield relatively large numbers of observations, thereby increasing the degrees of freedom for multivariate analyses. In addition, it is often possible to implement “fixed-effects” modeling with such data. Fixed-effects models greatly facilitate causal inference by statistically controlling for all time-invariant national characteristics, which lessens

S.F. Messner (B) Department of Sociology, University at Albany, S. U. N. Y., Albany, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] 1 For reviews of the cross-national research on homicide up through the mid-1980s, see LaFree and

Kick (1986) and Neuman and Berger (1988). Gartner (1995), LaFree (1999), Messner (2003), and Neapolitan (1997) update these earlier reviews with citations to studies conducted in the late-1980s through the 1990s. More recent research is cited below in conjunction with model specification.

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the problem of omitted variable bias (Jacobs and Richardson 2008; Neumayer 2003). There has also been a growing interest in understanding current patterns of homicide in a larger historical context. This has been reflected in empirical analyses of trends in homicide for periods that encompass multiple centuries (Eisner 2003, 2008; see also Gurr 1981; Spierenburg 1998), as well as in theoretical efforts to develop explanations of the consequences of large-scale social transformations for changes in levels of lethal violence. Such transformations include broad cultural shifts from collectivism to individualism (Dicristina 2004; Messner et al. 2008; Thome 2007; see also Huang 1995) and the emergence of democratic political institutions (Karstedt 2006; LaFree and Tseloni 2006). The present study continues the exploration of cross-national patterns and trends in levels of homicide guided by both descriptive and explanatory objectives. At a descriptive level, we examine trends in homicide over the period extending from 1950 to 2005—a time span encompassing more than half a century for nations with complete data. We go beyond prior studies that have examined “raw” homicide trends or trends based on moving averages by applying spline regression. Spline regression is a useful smoothing technique to extract the systematic trends in timeseries data and to identify the significant “break-points” in the trends. On the basis of the spline regression analyses, we address the following questions: How prevalent were appreciable, sustained increases in levels of homicide? And among nations characterized by increasing homicide levels, how prevalent were noteworthy reversals in the upward trends, which might be suggestive of homicide cycles?2 Which nations exhibited features of homicide cycles, and what can be learned from the timing of increases and reversals in homicide levels? Our second overarching objective is to assess a possible explanation for changing levels of homicide by drawing upon arguments that were originally advanced by Gary LaFree (1998) to account for the rise and subsequent fall in levels of street crime in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Following in the general Durkheimian/Parsonian tradition as applied in criminology (see Messner et al. 2008), LaFree’s general thesis is that trends in crime at the national level reflect the operation of the basic institutions of a society. When institutions lose legitimacy, crime rates increase; when new institutional arrangements take root, crime rates fall. We focus in the present analysis on the institution that traditionally has been assigned primary responsibility for informal social control—the family. The chapter is organized as follows. We begin with a description of the data sources, variables, and measures. We then describe patterns in homicide trends with reference to the results of the spline regression analysis. Finally, we estimate dynamic multivariate models based on a pooled, cross-sectional time-series dataset 2 LaFree

and Drass (2002) examined pooled, cross-sectional time-series data to identify “crime booms” for a large cross-national sample. They report that only about a third (35%) of the nations in their sample satisfy all three of their criteria for a “boom:” positive direction, rapid growth, and sustained change. As explained below, we relax the criterion of “rapid growth” given our focus on “appreciable, sustained increases” in homicide in contrast with “booms.”

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to assess the “family legitimacy” hypothesis for observed changes in homicide levels during the period under examination.

2 Data Sources, Variables, and Measures As noted, the objective of our spline regression analysis is to describe the systematic trends in homicide rates for a period extending over half a century. The homicide data are taken from the cause of death statistics reported by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is widely regarded to be the most reliable source of information on homicide for cross-national comparison (LaFree and Tseloni 2006, 32). WHO records homicides within the category of “external causes of morbidity and mortality” in its International Classification of Diseases (ICD). A death is classified as a homicide if it results “from injuries by another person with intent to injure or kill” (see http://www.who.int/whosis/mort/download/ftp/documentation.zip). We recorded homicide rates, expressed per 100,000 population, for nations reporting to WHO between 1950 and 2005.3 Our maximum sample contains 43 nations, but as explained below, not all nations are included in the analyses due to erratic data reporting and missing data on other variables. In addition, as is well-known, the nations reporting to WHO tend to be drawn disproportionately from the highly developed western societies (Stamatel 2006; Butchart and Engstrom 2002). Our samples cannot, accordingly, be regarded as representative of the universe of nations during the time period under investigation. These samples do, however, reflect considerable variation in socio-cultural settings and geographic locations. A list of nations is provided in Appendix. Our second, explanatory objective requires the specification of multivariate regression models. Model specification is complicated by the diverse array of theoretical arguments that have been put forth to explain cross-national variation in homicide (contrast, e.g., Antonaccio and Tittle 2007; Butchart and Engstrom 2002; Neumayer 2003; Savolainen 2000) and the ever-present problem of data availability, which is exacerbated when relatively long time periods are considered. Nevertheless, Gartner (1990) provides a useful framework for organizing the various 3 Gary

LaFree generously provided us with WHO homicide data from 1950 to 2000. We updated this data file with observations for additional years extending to 2005 where available. The ICD— currently in its tenth revision (ICD-10)—is periodically updated and categories are often changed in these revisions. This occurred for homicide deaths with the implementation of ICD-10. In ICD10, there is a separate category entitled “Sequelae of assault,” which indicates, “the cause of death, impairment or disability [is] sequelae or ‘late effects,’ which are themselves classified elsewhere. The sequelae include conditions reported as such, or occurring as ‘late effects’ 1 year or more after the originating event.” This category had previously been grouped with the other deaths that were classified as “homicide” (ICD-9 and before). In ICD-10 this category was moved to a separate sub-category under the broader heading of “Sequelae of intentional self-harm, assault and events of undetermined intent.” For our purposes, we have included in the analyses those deaths classified as “Sequalae of assault.” We combined across categories when updating LaFree’s homicide data to encompass more recent years. An account of the development of ICD is available at: http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/HistoryOFICD.pdf.

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hypothesized determinants of homicide. She proposes that these determinants can be grouped into four categories representing general contexts: the material, the integrative, the demographic, and the cultural. The material context refers to conditions that produce or reflect economic stress and affluence/deprivation. The integrative context refers to features of social ties that can exert social control. The demographic context refers to the contours of population structure. Finally, the cultural context encompasses norms supportive of violence, sometimes reflected in violent practices that are legitimated (e.g., capital punishment, warfare).4 We selected variables to represent these groupings of socio-cultural determinants, relying on the practices and findings of past research, within the constraints of data availability. Our strategic independent variable, the divorce rate, is a commonly used indicator of family instability and represents the “integrative context.” To maximize sample size and diversity, and to permit analyses over a long period of time, we employ the crude divorce rate, i.e., the number of divorces per 1,000 population. The data sources for the divorce measure, along with much of the additional demographic data described below, are the United Nations Demographic Yearbook and files obtained from the United Nations Statistics Division (2008).5 The divorce rate is a very robust predictor of homicide rates in cross-sectional analyses based on sub-national units for the United States.6 Moreover, Gartner (1990) presents highly suggestive evidence of an effect of divorce on cross-national trends in homicide. She estimates the effect of divorce rates, along with other independent variables, on sex- and age-specific homicide rates using data for a sample of 18 developed nations for the 1950–1980 period. Because the time-varying covariates in her models are only available for 5-year intervals, she “collapses” the homicide data into multiyear brackets, yielding seven time points for sex-specific analyses and five time points for age-specific analyses. She finds that the divorce rate is “by far the most important risk factor” for both males and females in the sex-specific analyses (1990, 100). The divorce rate also is significantly related to homicide rates for older children and adults, but not younger children (see also Hunnicutt and LaFree 2008). Our analyses provide for a more comprehensive assessment of the dynamic effect of divorce rates on total homicide rates by using finer temporal resolution (annual 4 Gartner

does not include a category for the “political context.” Subsequent research has considered the effects of democracy and democratization on homicide rates. See Karstedt (2006) and LaFree and Tseloni (2006). 5 We are very grateful to the UN Demographic Yearbook team at the United Nations Statistics Division for providing us with electronic files containing data on divorce rates, infant births and deaths, population size, sex ratio, and age structure to supplement figures retrieved online from the United Nations Demographic Yearbook. We also appreciate their expert technical assistance concerning the interpretation of these data. The demographic data from the UN are available from the authors upon request. Information on age structure for the United Kingdom for the years prior to 1982 were obtained from the Office for National Statistics, the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority (United Kingdom 2008). 6 See the extensive review of the literature by Parker et al. (1999) for evidence on the effect of the divorce rate on homicide rates in the United States. See Stretesky et al. (2004) for more recent evidence of the divorce effect on homicide rates for US cities.

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data) for an appreciably larger and more diverse sample, and for a much longer time frame.7 The “material context” has been most commonly represented by indicators of the level of economic development, economic growth, and income inequality. The effects of indicators of economic development and growth are rather mixed, although there is some evidence that both are associated with lower levels of homicide in cross-sectional studies (e.g., Antonaccio and Tittle 2007) as well as in longitudinal studies (Neumayer 2003). We measure the level of economic development in terms of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in constant dollars.8 We converted the measure into natural logarithms account for skewed distributions. When expressed as a first difference, this measure reflects short-term economic growth (the annual percent change in GDP/capita). The GDP data are available for download from the Penn World Table website (Heston et al. 2006). Income inequality has been regarded as a robust predictor of national homicide rates on the basis of the cross-sectional literature (Messner 2003; Antonaccio and Tittle 2007), although there is evidence to suggest that its effect may be conditioned by indicators of the generosity of the national welfare system (Pratt and Godsey 2003; Savolainen 2000). The scant evidence based on longitudinal data has been mixed (contrast Neumayer 2003 with Jacobs and Richardson 2008). In any event, the available data on income distribution are not sufficient to allow us to model annual changes in income inequality for an appreciable sample of nations over the time period of interest. We note that Pridemore (2008) has recently argued that poverty, rather than income inequality, is the more important economic determinant of cross-national variation in homicide rates, and he proposes that the infant mortality rate can be regarded as a useful proxy for poverty. In his cross-sectional study of 46 nations circa 2000, he reports a significant positive effect of the infant mortality rate on homicide and no significant effect of income inequality. The validity of the infant mortality rate as a proxy for poverty has yet to be established, but we nevertheless collected data on infant mortality rates for purposes of sensitivity 7 We

recognize that cross-national variation in divorce rates reflects to a large extent the legal and regulatory context. For an extensive discussion of these issues, see the essays in Adams and Trost (2005). A striking example of the impact of legal change in our dataset is an abnormally low number of divorces in Germany in 1978, which reflects the impact of Germany’s Marriage Law Reform Act, passed in 1976. The law established longer “waiting periods” for divorces, which created a 1-year artificial suppression of the divorce rate. We re-estimated the regression analyses reported below with this data point omitted, and the findings for the divorce rates are unchanged. It is of course possible that there are other anomalies in the data that have gone undetected and which bear upon substantive conclusions. We note, however, that the divorce rate is one of the few indicators of family structure that can be used for cross-national, longitudinal analysis, and as noted, there is suggestive evidence that despite measurement error, it may indeed be a useful predictor of homicide trends. Moreover, legal changes pertaining to divorce can themselves be regarded as manifestations of the changing meaning of marriage. Increases in divorce rates concomitant with revisions of the law are thus in some instances indicative of important cultural transformations in the institution of the family. See Cherlin (2004, 852). 8 The specific measure of GDP per capita is the Laspeyeres Index, which is a fixed-base index with 1996 serving as the reference year.

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analyses. The infant mortality rate refers to the number of infant deaths per 1,000 live births. We include three features of population in our primary models: total population size, age structure, and the sex ratio. Total population size is expressed in natural logarithms; the sex ratio is measured as the number of males per 100 females.9 The source for these variables is in most cases the United Nations Demographic Yearbook, supplemented with data from WHO in a few instances.10 The effects of these variables on homicide rates in previous research have been inconsistent (e.g., Jacobs and Richardson 2008; Pridemore 2008; Neumayer 2003), but we include them as controls in deference to conventional practices. An additional population variable that often appears in the cross-national homicide research is urbanism. Once again, the results for this variable have been mixed (e.g., Jacobs and Richardson 2008; Pridemore 2008), but we collected data on the urban population as a percent of the total population to serve as a control (World Bank 2008). Data for the urbanism measure are missing for a fair number of nation/time points. We accordingly estimate models with and without this predictor. The remaining context—the cultural context—has received the least attention in the literature given the difficulties in finding relevant information and devising plausible measures. A few studies have indicated a role for general value orientations, religious values, and values supportive of legitimate violence (for relevant citations, see Messner 2003, 705; see also Antonaccio and Tittle (2007) concerning religion). We do not attempt to capture the effects of cultural factors directly in our regression analyses, but the fixed-effects estimator controls for any time-invariant cultural differences across the nations in the samples.

3 Describing Systematic Trends in Homicide 3.1 The Technique of Spline Regression Modeling Spline regression has been applied effectively for smoothing time-series data in the analysis of trends in homicide rates for US cities (Messner et al. 2005; PearsonNelson 2008). This statistical method helps remove the “noise” that masks the “true” or “systematic” component in the trends. In addition to generating a statistical function that yields predicted values for the smoothed trend, spline regression can be 9 The

recorded sex ratios for Trinidad and Tobago for 1992, 1993, and 1994 diverge widely from that nation’s time series and are implausible. We accordingly omitted these observations. 10 Following the advice of UN personnel, we used estimated data—including population figures— wherever possible, given that these are best for time-series analyses (personal correspondence). When such data are not available, census and other representative survey data have been used instead. Technical details about data sources and estimation procedures used by the UN are provided in the individual data tables of Demographic Yearbook (http://unstats.un.org/ unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2.htm). We used linear interpolation for total population size and age structure when there were gaps in the UN data of less than 4 years. With larger gaps, we used population data from WHO where possible or treated the data as missing.

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used to identify points along the trend line where the slope changes significantly at an imposed level of significance. This characteristic is particularly useful for studying cyclical patterns in homicide because the presence of a cycle implies a distinct upward turning point and a distinct downward turning point. Spline regression allows us to identify changes in the trend line even with trends in which it is not clear how many knots (or break-points) there may be in the trend (Marsh and Cormier 2002). The mathematical procedure allows for various functional forms, including linear, quadratic, and cubic. The method can thus be applied both when the number of knots is unknown and when the functional form of segments between knots is also unknown. This flexibility is especially useful with data such as the homicide trends for individual countries, since it is impossible to predict a priori the best-fitting functions for the trends or the number of knots in the trend. The problem of estimating the number of knots and the shape of each segment between the knots can be solved by creating a large number of possible knots and trying multiple functional forms along the trend line and then relying on stepwise regression to determine those knots that are statistically significant and that yield the best functional form of the segments (Marsh 1986; Marsh and Cormier 2002). Spline regression models are based on dummy variables that are subject to continuity restrictions so that the regression segments between the series of knots always remain connected. A single equation is allowed to express the entire series of data points in a series (Marsh 1986). This attribute is especially useful for longitudinal data that are not linear. A model for an unknown number of knots with unknown functions can be expressed as (see Marsh 1983, 723–728): y=

3  j=0

β0,j tj +

k  3 

βi,j (t − ti )j Di + ε.

i=1 j=0

In this case, y is the dependent variable, t is time, D is the dummy variable, and ε is the usual error term. The dummy variable is equal to zero until the point in the trend line where t is greater than ti (where i = 1, . . . , k), when the dummy variables are equal to one. There are k knots indicated by ti . Stepwise regression is used to select the location of the knots at an imposed level of statistical significance as well as the functional form (linear, quadratic, or cubic) of each of the segments between the knots. A large number of steps are generated by the stepwise regression procedure and variables are added to (or subtracted from) the model at each step to select the knot location and functional form according to the level of significance (see Marsh and Cormier 2002, 53). The present research follows the example of Messner et al. (2005) and PearsonNelson (2008) and uses a significance level of 0.05. The significance level applies both to inclusion (i.e., the significance level to enter the model or SLE) and to deletion (i.e., the significance level to stay in the model or SLS). We note that the number of knots, the timing of break-points, and the form of the function fit for any given trend line is likely to vary depending on the level of significance imposed. As a result, our spline regression analysis is best regarded as an inductive technique for

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discovering potentially suggestive patterns in the data rather than a means of formal hypothesis testing. In our application of spline regression, we are interested in determining which nations exhibited “an appreciable, sustained” increase in homicide during the latter decades of the twentieth century, and among this group of nations, which nations also exhibited a “noteworthy” reversal. There is no theoretical framework to provide formal criteria for these determinations, and thus we make use of the following rules of thumb for exploratory, descriptive purposes. For a nation to qualify as having had an appreciable, sustained increase in homicide rates, there must be at least one spline segment with a positive slope that endures for at least five consecutive years (“sustained”). There must also be an increase in the homicide rate of at least 33% (“appreciable”) when the highest fitted value is compared with the lowest fitted value for a spline segment with a positive slope or joined segments that are rising with no fitted value below the initial “upturn point.” For a nation with an upward homicide trajectory to be classified as one with a notable reversal, there must be an observed break-point at which the positive slope becomes negative (the “downturn point”), followed by a negative slope that persists for at least 3 years. The utility of spline regression techniques for uncovering the underlying patterns of homicide rate trends can be illustrated with a few examples. Below is the homicide trend line for Iceland from 1950 to 2005. The raw homicide rate trend is quite volatile because Iceland has a relatively small population, and the raw rate is highly sensitive to small changes in the number of homicides. Judging the general pattern of the trend line using the raw homicide rates is difficult because of the jagged trend line. However, the application of spline regression techniques indicates that the expected rate is a linear segment that gradually inclines during the second half of the twentieth century. According to our classificatory criteria, Iceland is an example of a country that demonstrates an appreciable increase in the expected homicide trend, but not a cycle, since there is no reversal (Fig. 1). A typical cyclical pattern is illustrated by Denmark. The general pattern of a decline followed by an incline and then another decline could be discerned from the raw data, but the spline regression function clearly highlights three linear segments. Additionally, removing the “noise” locates both the estimated low point (or upturn point) and the estimated peak of the systematic trend line (or downturn point). In this case there is an inflection point in the expected homicide rate at 1959 that marks the end of a downward slope and the beginning of the appreciable increase, which lasts until 1992. Once the trend line of the expected homicide rate reaches 1992, a linear decline follows until the last year of available data (Fig. 2). Norway is another country that experienced a cyclical pattern in the expected homicide rate trend. However, in this case, the pattern incorporates two curved segments, joined by two linear segments. Norway’s expected homicide trend line rises from the first year of available data (1950) and continues to increase until reaching the highest peak in 1986, with a brief interruption in 1984 and 1985. Since 1986 is the highest point in the trend line, and the slight drops in 1984 or 1985 never return

Cross-National Homicide Trends in the Latter Decades of the Twentieth Century Iceland 3.5

Homicide Rate and Expected Rate

3 2.5 2

Homicide Rate Expected Rate

1.5 1 0.5 0 2004 2001 1998 1995 1992 1989 1986 1983 1980 1977 1974 1971 1968 1965 1962 1959 1956 1953 1950 Year

Fig. 1 Spline regression results for homicide rates in Iceland

Denmark 1.6

Homicide Rate and Expected Rate

1.4 1.2 1 Homicide Rate Expected Rate

0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 1998

2001

Fig. 2 Spline regression results for homicide rates in Denmark

1995

1992

1989

1986

1983

1980

1974

1977

1971

1968

1965

1962

1959

1956

1950

1953

Year

73

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S.F. Messner et al. Norway 1.8

Homicide Rate and Expected Rate

1.6 1.4 1.2 1

Homicide Rate Expected Rate

0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 2004 2001 1998 1995 1992 1989 1986 1983 1980 1977 1974 1971 1968 1965 1962 1959 1956 1953 1950 Year

Fig. 3 Spline regression results for homicide rates in Norway

to the initial levels, 1986 is recorded as the point of reversal into the downward trend, which continues until 2000 (Fig. 3). Venezuela provides an example of a country that experienced an appreciable increase in the expected homicide rate trend, but did not meet the criteria for a downturn. Venezuela’s expected homicide rate increase begins with the first year of available data and continues steadily until 1997, when the rate of increase becomes greater. We identify the upturn date at the beginning of the period—1950—because the initial linear segment is positive, extends over 5 years, and entails an increase of over 33%, even though a sharper incline is initiated in 1997. With respect to a reversal, the 1-year decline that starts in 2003 does not extend long enough to meet the criteria for a cycle, which requires at least 3 years of decline (Fig. 4). A final example is Japan, which did not experience an appreciable, sustained increase in the expected homicide rate trend during the period under investigation. There is a brief rise that starts in 1952 and ends in 1955, but since the expected homicide rate did not increase by one-third during this period, nor did it last for at least 5 years, the criteria for an appreciable increase are not met. After 1955, Japan’s expected homicide trend follows a curving pattern of decrease until the last year of available data (Fig. 5). As noted earlier, our maximum sample of nations with homicide data is 43, but in some cases the available time-series is insufficient for meaningful spline regression modeling. We invoked the following criteria for selecting cases for these analyses. To be included, a nation must have at least 40 years of data with no “big holes,”

Cross-National Homicide Trends in the Latter Decades of the Twentieth Century Venezuela 40

Homicide Rate and Expected Rate

35 30 25 Homicide Rate Expected Rate

20 15 10 5 0 2004 2001 1998 1995 1992 1989 1986 1983 1980 1977 1974 1971 1968 1965 1962 1959 1956 1953 1950 Year

Fig. 4 Spline regression results for homicide rates in Venezuela

Japan

Homicide Rate and Expected Rate

2.5

2

1.5 Homicide Rate Expected Rate 1

0.5

0 2004 2001 1998 1995 1992 1989 1986 1983 1980 1977 1974 1971 1968 1965 1962 1959 1956 1953 1950 Year

Fig. 5 Spline regression results for homicide rates in Japan

75

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i.e., periods with more than three consecutive years of missing data. A nation must also have homicide data at least as recent as the year 2000. The reason for first criterion is obvious: estimating trends and specific features of trends becomes problematic when there are big gaps in the time-series. In addition, we are interested in describing trends that extend approximately to contemporary times and that include the decade of the 1990s, a period of significant changes in homicide rates for many nations (Eisner 2008; LaFree and Drass 2002). See the Appendix for the listing of nations included in the spline regression modeling.

3.2 Results: Cross-National Patterns in Homicide Trends We begin the descriptive analysis by considering the prevalence of appreciable, sustained increases in homicide and the reversal of these trajectories. Applying the criteria outlined above to the results of the spline regression modeling, the data indicate that such increases in homicide were observed in 33 of the 35 nations (94%), i.e., in all nations but Japan (a nation with a decreasing trend) and the Dominican Republic (a nation with an essentially flat predicted trajectory). Moreover, the magnitudes of these increases are noteworthy. To illustrate, we have computed the percentage increase in homicide rates by comparing averaged values for 5-year periods centered on the low points and high points in the modeled trends. The median value is 98%, equivalent to an approximate doubling of the smoothed homicide rate. The spline regression results also indicate that a clear majority of the nations with an upward trajectory also exhibited a significant reversal. A distinct downturn point can be identified in 24 of the 33 nations with increases in homicide trends (72.7%). Accordingly, similar to the patterns that have been observed with data for major US cities, cyclical trends in homicide rates, rather than steadily increasing trends or trends that rise and stabilize, appear to be the norm rather than the exception at the national level when the latter decades of the twentieth century are examined (Joanes 2000; see also Zimring 2007). It is also interesting to consider the possibility that this period was one of increasing homicide rates overall even though homicide levels were cyclical for many nations. In other words, perhaps the “normal” level of homicide was recalibrated at a higher level. We addressed this issue by computing the ratio of the predicted homicide rates for the most recent period averaged over 5 years to the predicted homicide rates for the 5-year period centered on the low point of the cycle. For about a quarter of the nations classified as having had a homicide cycle, this ratio is approximately one or less than one, indicating either a return to the “takeoff” level or a net decrease. The median value, however, is 1.6, indicating that the homicide rates for a typical nation at the end of the period were about 60% higher than they were at the low point for the period. This is perhaps suggestive of upward recalibration in homicide, although it is impossible to know whether some of the “latecomers” with respect to rising homicide levels had yet to reach a downturn point at the last observation point, and whether those nations with negative

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77

slopes near the end of the period have continued their downward trajectory in more recent years. In addition to considering the prevalence and magnitude of homicide cycles, it is also highly instructive to examine the timing of the key parameters of these cycles, i.e., the upturn and downturn dates. Previous researchers have called attention to the “synchronization” of rising violent crime rates, including homicide, across many nations (Fukuyama 1999, 31–32). Indeed, on the basis of his examination of European trends in homicide rates in the 1960–1990 period, Eisner (2008) concludes that the high degree of synchronization in these trends implies that some of the key causal factors affecting national homicide rates are likely to be those that extend beyond the boundaries of nation-states. We used the results of the spline regression to identify the estimated dates of any appreciable, sustained upward climb in homicide rates for the respective nations, along with the dates of any noteworthy reversal. The results for the upward climb are presented in Fig. 6, which lists nations by year and decade of the estimated upturn in homicide rates. The specific year of the break-point is indicated in parentheses, although we caution against placing much emphasis on the precise year. These dates are obviously estimates, and we thus concentrate on general patterns. Costa Rica (1960) Portugal (1960) Germany (1950)

Sweden (1961)

Iceland (1950)

Austria (1962)

Ireland (1950)

Bulgaria (1962)

Norway (1950)

Spain (1963)

Venezuela (1950)

United States (1963)

Israel (1954)

Canada (1964)

France (1970)

Netherlands (1956)

Hungary (1965)

Greece (1970)

New Zealand (1956)

Australia (1967)

United Kingdom (1970)

Mauritius (1957)

Italy (1967)

Colombia (1971)

Finland (1958)

Mexico (1969)

Poland (1973)

Trinidad and Tobago (1980)

Denmark (1959)

Switzerland (1969)

Singapore (1976)

Uruguay (1980)

Chile (1997)

l__________________l___________________l___________________l__________________l__________________l 1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

Fig. 6 Nations by year and decade of upturn in homicide rates

The figure reveals a concentration of observations in the 1950s and 1960s, although a fair degree of dispersion can be detected as well (the standard deviation of year of upturn is just over 10 years). Of particular interest in the listing is the evidence for geographic/cultural patterns in the timing of the homicide upturn. The Nordic nations and other northern European nations appear to have been in the vanguard for increasing homicide rates. In contrast, the South American nations of Chile and Uruguay, along with the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, are clearly “laggards” or “latecomers” in rising homicide levels. To explore more systematically the possibility of geographic/cultural patterns, we have organized the

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nations into the following five geo-cultural groupings suggested by the clustering in Fig. 6: Anglo-America/U.K./Oceania: Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand; Central/South America/Caribbean: Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela; Eastern/Southern Europe: Austria, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland; Nordic/Northern Europe: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden; Other (Asia/Africa): Israel, Mauritius, Singapore. Using this classification, we conducted a one-way analysis of variance of year of upturn by geo-cultural region. The results, reported in Table 1, reveal that the Nordic/Northern Europe nations do indeed emerge as the vanguard, with a mean year of upturn of about 1954. The “other” category encompassing Asian/African nations follows, although this is essentially a residual category with a heterogeneous mix of nations. The Anglo-American/United Kingdom/Oceania nations are next (mean = 1964) followed by the eastern/southern European nations (mean = 1966). The Central/South American/Caribbean group has the latest average year of upturn (1972), approximately 20 years later than the average for the Nordic/Northern European nations. Although the sample is not a random one, it is useful to apply a test of statistical significance as a rough guide in interpreting whether the observed differences are likely to have been generated by chance. The F-ratio for the one-way ANOVA is 4.344, which is highly significant (p < 0.01). Table 1 Estimated timing of homicide rate upturn by geographic/cultural area Geographic/cultural area

Mean year of upturn

Standard deviation

Number of nations

Nordic/northern Europe Asia/Africa Anglo-America/UK/Oceania Eastern/southern Europe Central/South America/Caribbean

1954.2 1962.3 1964.0 1966.1 1972.4

4.7 11.9 5.2 4.3 15.2

8 3 5 10 7

These geographic/cultural patterns in the timing of the upturn are intriguing, and they are consistent with speculations that at least some of the determinants of rising homicide levels transcended national boundaries and policies in the sense of reflecting social and/or cultural conditions that are likely to be shared to a greater extent by similarly grouped nations. Moreover, the general pattern seems to be consistent with LaFree’s thesis about a prominent role for the institution of the family. Although changes in traditional family arrangements occurred in many nations in the latter half of the twentieth century, the Nordic countries were very much in the vanguard in this institutional domain, as well as in the timing of homicide increases (Amaro 2005; Forsberg 2005; Kiernan 2000; Trost and Levin 2005).

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Austria (1990) Italy (1991) New Zealand (1991) United States (1991) Colombia (1992) Denmark (1992)

Chile

Poland (1992)

Costa Rica

Finland (1993)

Iceland

Portugal (1984)

Mexico (1993)

Israel

France (1985)

Switzerland (1993)

Mauritius

Singapore (1985)

Bulgaria (1996)

Spain

Norway (1986)

Greece (1997)

Trinidad and Tobago

United Kingdom (1977) Australia (1988)

Hungary (1997)

Venezuela

Germany (1978)

Netherlands (1997)

Canada (1975)

Sweden (1989)

Ireland (2002)

Uruguay

l__________________l___________________l___________________l__________________l__________________l

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

No reversal observed

Fig. 7 Nations by year and decade of reversal of increase in homicide rates

Following identical procedures to those in the analysis of year of upturn, we have organized nations by the year of reversal for those nations that exhibited an increase in homicide rates (see Fig. 7). The results reveal an even more striking concentration of observations in a single decade—the 1990s. This difference in concentration/dispersion for year of upturn and year of downturn is reflected in the standard deviations for the respective distributions. The standard deviation of year of upturn is 10.3, whereas the corresponding figure for year of reversal is 6.5. The only geo-cultural pattern that seems readily apparent in Fig. 7 is the representation of Central/South American/Caribbean nations among those classified as “no reversal.” This could of course reflect the fact that these nations are generally “latecomers” in the initiation of homicide increases; hence, any cyclical downturn might occur beyond the time frame under observation. The differing distributions of nations for year of upturn and year of downturn imply that the periodicity in homicide cycles varies across nations, given the greater spread in starting point compared with the concentration of the year of reversal. This is reflected in the univariate statistics for the length of time between year of upturn and year of downturn. The mean number of years for the rising phase of an estimated homicide cycle is 27, with a standard deviation of 10.4 years.

4 Dynamic Modeling of Homicide Rates 4.1 The “Family Legitimacy” Thesis Our second overarching objective is to assess the extent to which the observed changes in cross-national homicide rates can be accounted for by changes in the

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institution of the family. We draw specifically on Gary LaFree’s arguments about the role of declining legitimacy of the family in explaining the rise and then fall of US crime rates over approximately the same period as that under investigation here.11 LaFree hypothesizes that the traditional family was subject to challenges on two major fronts, one reflecting ideological developments and the other transformations in the economy. At the ideological level, the traditional two-parent family came under attack from feminists and other critics of the conventional order as the “bastion of male dominance” (1998, 84). Greater acceptance of sexual freedom and sexual experimentation also stimulated alternative intimate relationships outside of marriage. With respect to the economy, the emergence of an information society placed greater emphasis on knowledge and skills related to the service sector, thereby facilitating and accelerating trends toward increased female labor force participation and the “depopulation” of American homes (see also Cherlin 2004; Fukuyama 1999). The end result of these developments, LaFree hypothesizes, was that “the legitimacy of the traditional family declined enormously” (1998, 85). Moreover, newly emerging family and non-family arrangements were insufficiently developed to assume the functions previously associated with the traditional family. Accordingly, as familial institutional controls eroded, levels of crime climbed. LaFree goes on to speculate that the downturn in US crime rates beginning in the 1990s reflected the stabilization of family structures, as non-traditional family forms became increasingly institutionalized (e.g., blended families, dual-career families, single-parent families, and gay families) (1998, 151). In his words, the capacity for adaptation “is the genius of institutionalization” (151). He points specifically to the leveling off and then decline in divorce rates as suggestive evidence of such adaptation in the realm of the family. The objective of our dynamic modeling is to assess formally LaFree’s “family legitimacy” thesis about the link between divorce rates and homicide rates in a multivariate framework with data for a cross-national sample. We conduct time-series analyses to determine whether the divorce rate, as an indicator of family instability and lack of legitimacy, helps explain some of the changes in homicide rates described above.

4.2 Statistical Procedures Our model specification is determined by the temporal structure of the data. Unit root tests indicate that country-specific homicide rates and divorce rates are difference-stationary processes, so they are measured as annual change (Raffalovich

11 LaFree

focuses on declining legitimacy in two institutional realms in addition to the family: the polity and the economy. He maintains that distrust and collective protests undermined political legitimacy, while inequality and inflation undermined faith in the economy.

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1994).12 Following Raffalovich (1999), we estimate a fixed-effects variable parameter time-series regression model:  βi,k Xk,i,t + εi,t , Hi,t = βi,0 + βi,1 Hi,t−1 + βi,2 Di,t + k=3

where Hi,t is annual change in the homicide rate for country i in year t, Di,t is annual change in the divorce rate for country i, Xk,i,t are annual change in control variables,  i,t is a stochastic error term. βi,0 , βi,1 , βi,2 , and the βi,k are parameters to be estimated. Random-effects models are ruled out by the possible correlation of random effects with excluded variables that vary across countries. Instead, we use fixed-effects models to control for unmeasured between-country sources of variability. For all models, the effect (βi,1 ) of the lagged dependent variable (Hi,t−1 ) is allowed to vary among countries. This models a unique dynamic process for each country. The effects of exogenous variables are net of these country-specific dynamics. In addition, we tested whether the effect (βi,2 ) of divorce (Di,t ) varies among geographic regions (it does not). Homicide rate distributions in cross-national samples are typically highly skewed, and as a result, researchers in cross-sectional analyses often convert these rates into natural logarithms. Skewness is not much of a problem with annual change scores. However, the meaning of a given change in the level of homicide might be different for nations with widely divergent levels of homicide. We accordingly estimate regression models with the dependent variable expressed as both annual changes in homicide rates in the original metric and annual changes in logged homicide rates. The change scores for logged homicide rates reflect proportional change. Models are estimated with the iterated generalized least-squares procedure in Eviews-6 (QMS 2007:495–506). We use robust standard errors throughout, correcting for both heteroscedasticity and cross-sectional interdependence. Examination of residual correlograms indicates no residual autocorrelation for any country in either level or log specifications of changes in homicide rates. The variable parameter time-series regression models can be estimated with an unbalanced design, and thus nations do not need to have complete data to be 12 Differencing

the variables (measuring them as annual change) removes all trend components. Therefore, we are analyzing short-run relationships between independent and dependent variables. This is necessary to mitigate the problem of spurious regression: regression with differencestationary variables will find “significant” relationships even when the variables are in fact independent. An exception is if the variables are “co-integrated” (i.e., share the same randomtrend component). We conducted co-integration tests. The results indicate that divorce rates and homicide rates may be co-integrated, suggesting that divorce rates increase homicide rates in the long-run as well as in the short-run (the latter results are reported below). The implications (if any) of this tentative finding are not immediately apparent to us, but the issue warrants further attention in the future. We thank Christoph Birkel for bringing this to our attention.

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included in the analyses. We exclude those nations that do not have observations for at least eight time points on the dependent variable (homicide rates) and the independent variable of primary interest (divorce rates) because such cases do not contribute much information to the modeling of change. The Appendix identifies the sample of nations included in the dynamic regression analyses.

4.3 Results The results of the regression modeling of changes in homicide rates in the original metric are reported in Table 2. Model I includes controls for changes in the level of economic resources (Ln GDP/capita) and three features of demographic structure: percentage of the population in the high risk 15–24 age group, sex ratio, and population size. Model II adds the annual change of infant mortality rates as a possible proxy for the growth or decline in levels of poverty. Model III substitutes changes in the relative size of the urban population for the infant mortality rate. Finally, Model IV is based on the full set of control variables. The finding of greatest theoretical interest in Table 2 is the significant positive effect for the divorce rate. Consistent with the family legitimacy thesis and Gartner’s results for a smaller sample of nations and a shorter time period (1990), increases in the divorce rate are associated with rising homicide rates, and thus decreases in the

Table 2 Regressions of changes in homicide rates on changes in divorce rates and control variables Independent variables

Model I (N = 1285)

Model II (N = 1282)

Model III (N = 1132)

Model IV (N = 1129)

Constant

Infant mortality

–0.004 (0.007) 0.113∗∗ (0.034) –0.665∗∗ (0.206) 0.028 (0.017) 0.019 (0.031) 1.517∗∗∗ (0.393) –

0.008 (0.009) 0.108∗∗ (0.034) –0.724∗∗∗ (0.211) 0.021 (0.016) 0.018 (0.030) 1.364∗∗∗ (0.367) –

Urban (%)

–

–0.009 (0.009) 0.113∗∗ (0.034) –0.744∗∗∗ (0.207) 0.025 (0.017) 0.018 (0.031) 1.462∗∗∗ (0.389) −0.009 (0.004) –

Log likelihood

−2198

−2163

0.007 (0.009) 0.109∗∗ (0.035) –0.695∗∗ (0.212) 0.023 (0.016) 0.018 (0.030) 1.397∗∗∗ (0.368) 0.005 (0.006) 0.024 (0.019) −1909

Divorce rate GDP/capita (Ln) Age 15–24 (%) Males/females Population (Ln)

∗∗ p

0.023 (0.019) −1941

< 0.01 ∗∗∗ p<0.001 (two-tailed test) All variables are measured as annual change. All models include country-specific intercepts (fixed effects) and country-specific lagged dependent variable (dynamics).

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divorce rate tend to accompany falling homicide rates.13 This effect is highly robust, with the coefficient exhibiting little change as model specification is altered and sample composition varies due to data availability. Moreover, with the fixed-effects estimator, the potential influences of time-invariant differences across nations are effectively controlled. With respect to the measured time-varying control variables, the coefficient for economic growth is consistent with that observed by Neumayer (2003) in his timeseries analysis over the 1980–1997 period. Economic growth is associated with decreases in homicide levels. Total population growth is also significantly related to changes in homicide rates. An increase in population is accompanied by an increase in homicide rates. The remaining control variables (age structure, sex ratio, infant mortality, and percent urban) exhibit no significant effects on changes in homicide rates. In Table 3, we report the results of regressions with the dependent variable expressed as the annual change in logged homicide rates. The results indicate that Table 3 Regressions of changes in logged homicide rates on changes in divorce rates and control variables Independent variables

Model I (N=1285)

Model II (N=1282)

Model III (N=1132)

Model IV (N=1129)

Constant

Infant mortality

0.002 (0.003) 0.041∗∗ (0.013) −0.347∗∗∗ (0.076) 0.016∗ (0.006) 0.005 (0.011) 0.763∗∗∗ (0.171) –

0.004 (0.004) 0.037∗∗ (0.013) −0.408∗∗∗ (0.088) 0.014∗ (0.006) 0.005 (0.011) 0.685∗∗∗ (0.167) –

Urban (%)

–

−0.001 (0.003) 0.041∗∗ (0.013) −0.376∗∗∗ (0.076) 0.014∗ (0.006) 0.005 (0.010) 0.714∗∗∗ (0.169) −0.005∗∗ (−.002) –

Log likelihood

−1837

−1833

0.003 (0.004) 0.036∗∗ (0.013) −0.400∗∗∗ (0.090) 0.013∗ (0.006) 0.004 (0.011) 0.673∗∗∗ (0.168) −0.002 (−.002) 0.012 (0.008) −1613

Divorce rate GDP/capita (Ln) Age 15–24 (%) Males/Females Population (Ln)

∗p

∗∗ p

0.014+ (0.008) −1618

∗∗∗ p<0.001

< 0.05 < 0.01 (two-tailed test); + p < 0.05 (one-tailed test) All variables are measured as annual change. All models include country-specific intercepts (fixed effects) and country-specific lagged dependent variable (dynamics).

13 In

a pooled, cross-sectional time-series analysis based on data for nine nations in east-central Europe 1990–2003, Stamatel (2009) finds no significant effect of divorce rates on homicide rates. She speculates that the discrepancy between her findings and those of Gartner reflects distinctive features of household arrangements for these nations during the communist era (Stamatel 2009, 1442).

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increases in divorce rates are positively associated with proportional increases in homicide rates, while increasing economic resources, as reflected in GDP per capita, have the opposite effect. Population size and age structure also emerge as significant predictors of changes in logged homicide rates. Increases in total population and in the relative size of the “high risk” age 15–24 population are associated with proportional increases in homicide rates. Similar to the findings in Table 2, the sex ratio is not significantly related to homicide rates in any of the models. The coefficient for infant mortality rates is surprisingly negative in Model II, but this effect falls well below significance in the final model with percent urban included. The results for percent urban are also contingent on model specification. The coefficient is significant (one-tailed test) in Model III, but not in Model IV. Overall, the pattern of results for the dynamic regressions of logged homicide rate offer consistent support for the family legitimacy thesis, and they are reasonably consistent with those of other cross-national studies of homicide.

5 Summary and Conclusions We explored trends in homicide rates for a diverse sample of nations over a period of approximately half a century. Applying the techniques of spline regression in an effort to extract the systematic component from the “noise” in the time-series, our analyses indicate that sustained increases in lethal violence were virtually universal in the latter decades of the twentieth century for the nations under examination. In addition, these increases were typically substantial, with a doubling of homicide rates a common occurrence. It thus appears that homicide was one of the forms of violence which rose substantially at some point over the past several decades throughout many parts of the world. At the same time, the majority of nations that exhibited an appreciable upturn in homicide rates also exhibited a distinct turnaround, suggestive of cyclical patterns in lethal violence. These cycles tend to unfold rather slowly; the time between upturn and downturn extends for about 30 years on average. The observed patterns for homicide trends are thus in accord with Fukuyama’s speculations that “in the social and moral sphere . . . history appears to be cyclical, with social order ebbing and flowing over the space of multiple generations” (1999, 282). These cyclical patterns notwithstanding, there is some suggestion of an upward drift in the level of homicide. Most nations had not returned to the lowest levels of the period by the end of the observation period. This conclusion must be regarded as tentative, however, because the extent of the downturns in homicide might have been underestimated in our analyses due to sample censoring of the data. The timing of the respective phases of homicide cycles is also quite instructive. Nations varied with respect to the timing of the upturn in homicide rates, and this variation is characterized by a geo-cultural imprint. Specifically, Nordic and northern European nations were in the vanguard, whereas Central/South American and Caribbean nations tended to exhibit the rise in homicides decades later. These findings are consistent with the general claim that homicide rates respond to

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socio-cultural conditions that are likely to be shared by similar nations, and they are compatible with the more specific hypothesis that profound changes in traditional family arrangements were responsible, at least in part, for a weakening of institutional control and rising levels of crime. Our dynamic regression models provide further evidence suggesting a prominent role of the family in explaining national homicide trends. In a series of fixed-effects regression models for the pooled, cross-sectional time-series dataset, the divorce rate is a significant and robust predictor of homicide rates. Increases in divorce rates are associated with increases in homicide rates, and correlatively, decreases in divorces rates tend to accompany decreasing homicide rates. These effects are observed when changes in homicide rates are expressed as both differences in levels and differences in proportions, and they are net of economic and demographic controls. Taken as a whole, our analyses lend considerable support to LaFree’s arguments about familial institutional control and levels of crime at the national level. Challenges to traditional institutions are initially disruptive, weakening social control and stimulating crime, but as new social arrangements become institutionalized, the social order is strengthened, stabilizing and ultimately reversing the upward trajectory in crime. Of course, these arguments are also quite compatible with Durkheim’s classic insights about the anomic consequences of rapid and profound social change for non-normative behavior more generally (for the specific application of Durkheim’s concept of anomie to homicide, see Dicristina 2004 and Thome 2007). The results of the spline regression modeling concerning the timing of the downturn in homicide rates are also quite revealing. The clustering of nations with respect to the year of downturn is much more pronounced than that for year of upturn. One possible explanation for these patterns is the potential convergence in institutional structures and cultural orientations that are likely to affect homicide rates. As nations become more interconnected over time due to cross-border population flows and the exchange of goods and information, greater similarity in crime trends, as well as trends in social phenomena more generally, might be expected. The differential clustering of year of upturn and year of downturn in homicide rates also raises the possibility of asymmetry in the causes of homicide trends. Some of the factors of primary importance for explaining the downturn in homicide rates might not be the same as those that have great explanatory power for rising homicide levels. Blumstein and Rosenfeld (1998, 1208) have noted this possibility in their analyses of epidemic-like trends in city homicide rates in the United States. They propose that whatever the instigating forces of homicide increases might be, the recovery might be affected by “reactive forces” that entail a deliberate response to the growth in homicide (see also Messner et al. 2005). These reactive forces might include strategies for responding to crime through the criminal justice system, such as implementing new forms of policing and new policies pertaining to incarceration. Combining these insights with the results of our analyses for a cross-national sample, perhaps challenges to institutions responsible for informal social control, such as the family, are particularly important instigating forces underlying increasing homicide rates, whereas the policies and practices of institutions of formal social

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control emerge as key reactive forces. It is further plausible to speculate that deliberate policies and practices relating to formal social control might be subject to appreciable diffusion, as policy makers become aware of and respond to the ways in which their counterparts in other places are addressing the challenge of rising crime. Such diffusion processes might account for the greater concentration of the timing of downturns in homicide rates in contrast with that observed for the timing of homicide upturns. We acknowledge that there are important limitations associated with the analyses reported above. Given our interest in examining a reasonably diverse set of nations over an extended period of time, we have been confronted with significant constraints on the variables that can be considered. As data increasingly become available for longitudinal analyses over more and more recent years, it would be particularly important to extend the focus to examine the effects of economic inequality and political efforts to “decommodify labor” through social welfare policies, given past theorizing and research pertaining to these factors in the cross-national homicide literature. Moreover, we have been forced to try to capture institutional dynamics associated with the family through a single, crude indicator. A particularly frustrating limitation is that no direct measures are available to reflect the potential institutionalization of non-traditional family forms. The findings and interpretations pertaining to familial institutional dynamics must accordingly be regarded with due caution. Finally, much work remains to clarify the mechanisms that link divorce and homicide at the level of nation-states. Following closely within the Durkheimian tradition, LaFree’s institutional legitimacy thesis postulates that as the legitimacy of the family (and other social institutions) declines, people are less likely to follow the “rules, laws, and norms” of the society (LaFree 1998, 6). The effects of the divorce rate on homicide rates are thus conceived of as being contextual rather than compositional. A high divorce rate reflects a weak institutional order, which is presumably consequential for all members of society and not only those who experience divorce or who are members of disrupted families. Yet, the processes through which a weakened institutional order influences the specific actors within a society who commit the homicides that ultimately generate the homicide rate have yet to be explicated fully. Clarifying the micro-level processes that underlie the observed macro-level relationships between divorce rates and homicides is a daunting but critically important challenge for future research. The methodological and theoretical limitations noted above notwithstanding, our analyses reaffirm LaFree’s insights about the utility of adopting a longitudinal framework for studying serious crime, such as homicide, and of paying attention to large-scale social dynamics, such as challenges to major social institutions and institutional adaptations. Systematic trends in homicide rates can be identified and contrasted across nations, and changes in homicide rates can be modeled with reference to theoretically meaningful variables. Our analyses thus underscore the benefits to be gained by simultaneously linking time and space in the quantitative study of lethal violence. We encourage other homicide researchers to pursue and extend these lines of inquiry in the years ahead.

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Appendix: Nations Included in the Sample Australiaa Austriaa Belgiuma Bulgariaa Canadaa Chilec Colombiac Costa Ricaa Czech Republicb Denmarka Dominican Republica El Salvadorb Estoniab Finlanda Francea Germanya Greecea Hungarya Icelanda Irelandc Israela Italya

Japana Luxembourgb Mauritiusa Mexicoa Netherlandsa New Zealanda Nicaraguab Norwaya Panamab Polanda Portugala Singaporea Spaina Swedena Switzerlanda Thailandb Trinidad and Tobagoa United Kingdoma United Statesa Uruguayb Venezuelaa

a

Included in both dynamic regressions and spline regressions Included in dynamic regressions only c Included in spline regressions only Note: Data for Germany prior to reunification pertain to West Germany b

Acknowledgments We are grateful to Susanne Karstedt, Christoph Birkel, and an anonymous reviewer for comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.

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Self-Control and the Management of Violence Charles R. Tittle

For purposes of this chapter, violence is accepted as “individually exercised actions resulting in damage, injury, or death to self or others even though such actions may not necessarily be intended or expected to produce such effects.” Understanding the causes and manifestations of violence is necessary for its effective control. In this sense, control implies the ability or capacity of an individual or an entity to influence the actions of others (cf. Tittle 1995, 43). Saying that we need to understand violence to control it means that we need verified theories that explain it and permit its prediction. This is not to say that all control is impossible without theoretical understanding. For instance, even without explaining violence, one might reduce its occurrence by making violent behavior impossible, perhaps in the case of a known violent person by incarcerating that individual, or by making violence more difficult, perhaps in the case of a social group by tight control of weapons. Nor is it necessarily the case that understanding leads to effective control. As an illustration, even if we somehow knew, without any doubt, that violence results from specific forms and degrees of strain in human relations (Agnew 1992), we might not be able to eliminate or alleviate those strains. Finally, understanding the causes of violence and having the ability to intervene effectively may not produce greater control because certain interventions might be prohibited because they are unethical or because they violate cherished rights. Nevertheless, the likelihood of effective control of violence would be considerably enhanced were scholars able to develop and verify, through extensive empirical research, a general theory that provides explanations of violent behavior with enough accuracy to permit precise predictions. Criminological theory holds many clues for explaining misbehavior, including violence. However, no theory provides full, verified explanation. Nevertheless, one contemporary theory has attracted much attention because of its broad possibilities and because of the degree of empirical support it has enjoyed. Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory (1990) would have to be regarded as one of C.R. Tittle (B) Department of Sociology and Anthropology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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the most popular of current theories, judging by the degree of research interest and the extent to which its theoretical premises have been integrated into other contemporary explanatory schemes. By now Hirschi seems to have altered somewhat the original concept of low self-control that he and Gottfredson made famous (Hirschi 2004; see also Piquero and Bouffard 2007), but the original theory, with its notion of self-control as the convergence of six specific dimensions, continues to provoke discussion and research (examples of recent work include: Antonaccio and Tittle 2008; Burt et al. 2006; Cauffman et al. 2005; Chapple 2005; Doherty 2006; Felson and Staff 2006; Ribeaud and Eisner 2006; Wright and Beaver 2005). Despite various potential weaknesses in the theory of self-control that have been identified by critics and researchers, it appears to hold much promise, particularly in helping to explain and predict violence. This potential has been acknowledged by many theorists whose own theoretical schemes have been modified to accommodate ideas about self-control (examples: Agnew et al. 2002; Colvin et al. 2002; Tittle 2004). Yet, not all theorists share this enthusiasm, with at least some (Wikström 2006; Wikström and Treiber 2007) directly questioning the general import of self-control, offering instead the insight that morality, something largely dismissed by self-control theorists and many other contemporary criminologists as well, overshadows self-control in explaining and predicting misconduct. According to Wikström, self-control comes into play only in very limited circumstances, when an individual “perceives an action alternative that involves breaking a moral rule, and when he deliberates over whether to act upon this alternative or not” (Wikström 2006, 101). However, until the challenges posed by Wikström and other critics have been verified by research, self-control theory must be taken seriously as offering one of the more potent accounts of criminal, especially violent, behavior.

1 Self-Control Theory Self-control theory aims to explain “force or fraud undertaken in pursuit of selfgratification” (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990, 15). Assuming that, because it is inherently gratifying, no special motivation is necessary for such behavior, the theory contends that individuals are differentially vulnerable to temptations (opportunities) for misconduct. Their vulnerability depends on their degree of self-control, defined generically as the “tendency to avoid criminal acts whatever the circumstances in which they find themselves” (87) but with low self-control being more specifically reflective of six inclinations: impulsivity, insensitivity, and physicality (in contrast to intellectuality) as well as being prone toward risk-taking, shortsightedness, and being non-verbal (90). Such personality-like characteristics are said to be mainly residue from an early childhood in which caregivers did not fulfill the requirements for successful socialization. Presumably, caregivers who succeed in producing children with strong self-control: (1) care enough about the children to monitor and correct their behavior, (2) actually monitor them, (3) recognize

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misbehavior when it occurs, and (4) express disapproval or otherwise discipline the children when misbehavior occurs. Those with low self-control, which is theorized to be more or less stable through the life course after having been set in childhood, tend to ignore potential negative consequences of criminal behavior that are almost always present (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990, 95, 190–191). As a result, they are more likely to succumb to temptations, which are omnipresent and plentiful (Gottfredson and Hirschi 2003). Thus, weakly self-controlled individuals are much more likely than others to end up committing violent acts. The main reason for criminal behavior, and many other outcomes such as accidents, erratic employment, risky sexual behavior, and unstable marriages, then, is low self-control. Even though the “effects of low self-control can be counteracted by situational conditions or other properties of the individual” (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990, 89), the theorists contend that in the long run weak self-control will likely result in considerable misbehavior, far exceeding that manifest by those with stronger self-control. Showing their belief that counteracting conditions or properties are of minimal import, the self-control theorists go on to state that low self-control is not only a likely cause of misconduct, but is the cause (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990, 232). Though the theorists soften this stance later (Hirschi and Gottfredson 1995, 140), self-control is still said to supersede all other potential causes of criminal behavior and to operate largely without contingencies and without interactions with other presumed causal variables featured in competing theories (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990, chaps 7 and 8). Indeed, many of the variables set forth by other theories, as well as variables traditionally identified in research as predictors of crime, are said to have a spurious relationship with criminal behavior because they are themselves products of self-control. Thus, weak social bonds, under-achievement, deviant peer group influence, poor occupational or intellectual skills, and inadequate or noxious social relationships are supposedly reflections of weak self-control, such that taking self-control into account will negate associations between those variables and criminal outcomes.

2 The Research Evidence Perhaps because of its sweeping nature, self-control theory has stimulated much research and continues to do so. The body of relevant work is now so large that it is impractical to cite more than a fraction of it in any one paper. However, in a comprehensive meta-analysis of research up to the year 2000, Pratt and Cullen (2000) concluded that self-control is one of the best and most robust predictors of criminal behavior available, with almost all studies—regardless of method of measurement of self-control, the kind of crime, the nature of the sample, or the cultural context— demonstrating at least a modest association between self-control and crime. Since that time, numerous additional studies have reported confirming evidence (see as examples: Benda 2005; Cauffman et al. 2005; Chapple 2005; Doherty 2006; Felson

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and Staff 2006; Longshore et al. 2005; Schoepfer and Piquero 2006; Tittle and Botchkovar 2005a; Tittle et al. 2003; Vazsonyi and Crosswhite 2004; Vazsonyi et al. 2001, 2004). Thus, if the current body of research evidence is indicative, those who would try to understand, predict, and manage violence must consider the part played by self-control.

3 Uncertainties Yet, despite the strong research support described above, there are good reasons to question whether applying the principles of self-control theory, as it is currently formulated, to the management of violence would be possible or effective. First, most of the supportive evidence concerns only the main hypothesis of self-control theory—that low self-control is implicated in misbehavior. The research about other aspects of the theory, particularly how self-control is formed (see Hay and Forrest 2006; Latimore et al. 2006; Pratt et al. 2004; Turner and Piquero 2002) and potentially changes (Arneklev et al. 1998; Burt et al. 2006; Hay and Forrest 2006; Raffaelli et al. 2005; Turner and Piquero 2002); whether self-control affects criminal behavior by means of the causal mechanism the theorists have set forth (Nagin and Paternoster 1993; Piquero and Tibbetts 1996; Higgins and Ricketts 2004; Tittle and Botchkovar 2005b); and whether the exercise of self-control is subject to personal agency (Nagin and Paternoster 1993; Piquero and Tibbetts 1996; Tittle et al. 2004) provides much weaker and less confirming evidence. As a result, it is not clear from the theory, or the research, just how potential controllers might manipulate or use self-control in efforts to manage violence. Second, though low self-control may be implicated in violence and other criminal behavior, research confirms that it does not stand alone. Indeed, the predictive coefficients are generally quite modest (usually between 0.20 and 0.30) (see Pratt and Cullen 2000), and other variables have been found to predict misconduct independently of self-control, sometimes substantially exceeding the predictive capacity of self-control (for example: Tittle and Botchkovar 2005b; Antonaccio and Tittle 2008; Tittle et al. 2010). Moreover, much research suggests that the potential effects of self-control may be contingent on various conditions, including some of those specified by rival theories (examples: Baumeister and Exline 2000; De Li 2004; Giner-Sorolla 2001; Lynam et al. 2000). Hence, it seems that control of violence may require that other things besides self-control be taken into account. It would appear from current evidence that effective intervention to control violence depends on going beyond self-control theory in identifying the main variables that can affect violence, parceling out their effects relative to self-control, and showing how they interrelate with self-control in accounting for and predicting violent outcomes. In other words, we do not yet have a complete and adequate general theory to account for violence or other crimes or to draw upon in fashioning effective interventions. And, as I will argue later, without the kind of understanding that comes from adequate general theory, intervention may have inadvertent, dangerous consequences.

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4 Toward a More Adequate Theory One step toward a more complete theory that could guide effective control of violence may be to elaborate self-control theory and perhaps integrate it with other theories (see Tittle 1995). Toward that end, I identify some potential issues with the current formulation of self-control theory and suggest ways that possible weaknesses might be overcome or minimized. One should recognize, however, that Gottfredson and Hirschi are not likely to accept the “weaknesses” to be identified as valid, nor are they likely to take kindly to any efforts to elaborate their theory— certainly not to efforts to integrate it with other theories. The style of the self-control theorists is bold and uncompromising, leading them to “man the barricades” rather than go to the negotiating table. Indeed, the role of a theorist, according to Hirschi, is not to seek modification or accommodation but to “remain at all times blind to the weaknesses of their own position and stubborn in its defense” (Hirschi 1989, 45). For him, at least, knowledge grows from competition among theories, not from accommodation. Obviously, for others, including me, such a defensive philosophy is not enough (Tittle 1985, 1989, 1995, 2004). In my opinion, knowledge grows when a theory is treated as a collective product of the community of scholars. To be sure, theories begin with somebody’s formulation but after that they are fair game for others to use, mold, expand, and refashion in response to research evidence— all in a collective effort to produce a better product to serve the ends of science more adequately. Following that more accommodating philosophy, I suggest here some ways that self-control theory may be improved to more adequately serve as a basis for understanding and perhaps managing violence, as well as other misbehaviors. Because so many aspects of self-control theory are identified that seem to need modification, some may conclude that I do not appreciate the theory. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, of all the theories in the contemporary criminological repertoire, self-control theory may hold the most promise for explaining criminal behavior and for achieving crime control goals. Self-control theory compares very well, logically and empirically, with its competitors. Indeed, were self-control theory not relatively successful, it would not now be the focus of so much discussion, research, and efforts like this one to improve it.

5 Potential Weaknesses Self-control theory is now about 18 years old. During that time numerous commentators, critics, and researchers have raised various issues. Six of those issues seem especially relevant because without their being addressed, self-control theory appears inadequate for explanatory purposes and as a basis for effective ameliorative action. In the following pages, those potential problems will be outlined and ways suggested they might be overcome.

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5.1 Neglect of Contingencies One major potential problem with self-control theory, and one that may well account for its failure to predict outcomes more strongly, is its neglect of contingencies that may affect the operation of self-control as it bears on criminal and violent behavior (see Akers 1991; Barlow 1991; Benson and Moore 1992; Geis 2000; Grasmick et al. 1993; Reed and Yeager 1996; Tittle et al. 2004). A contingency is simply a condition under which some causal variable works with more or less force. It is unlikely that any variable or process works the same way, with equal degrees of effect, under all conditions. To achieve maximum effectiveness, a theory must identify its contingencies, specify how they affect the operation of the main causal variable (that is, in what direction and to what degree), and explain why the contingent variables have the effects they do (see discussion in Tittle 1995, 35). Stated in statistical language, a theory should specify any interactions between its main causal variable and other variables that might come into play. The self-control theorists, however, do not concede the need for contingencies. They seem to believe that with one exception, low self-control works basically the same for all people under all circumstances; that is, it does not interact with other variables in generating misconduct. The one exception is opportunity. The self-control theorists imply in their original statement that criminal opportunity is necessary before crime can occur, and since crime reflects weak self-control, selfcontrol can have no effect without criminal opportunity. In the original statement the presence of opportunity appears like an absolute precondition, much as water is a precondition for human life. However, by logical extension, one might infer that availability of opportunities is a continuous variable; that is, some individuals may be exposed to “golden opportunities,” others to not so golden opportunities, and still others to very few opportunities at all for criminal behavior. If so, then one could conclude that self-control theory implies an interaction between criminal opportunities and self-control in the production of criminal conduct. Unfortunately, the theorists do not define opportunity, so it is unclear how this interaction is to be assessed. Various scholars have used different indicators, including exposure to delinquent peers, idleness, cohabitation, time spent with potential victims, perceptions of chances of committing various acts without a likelihood of short-term negative consequences, and possession of the tools making a given form of misconduct possible (see Higgins and Ricketts 2004; Tittle and Botchkovar 2005a, for reviews). In fact, in a more recent statement, Gottfredson and Hirschi (2003) downplay the role of opportunities, noting that opportunities for some forms of force or fraud are almost always present. And, since low self-control renders one vulnerable to all kinds of misconduct, opportunities for any type of crime are likely to result in some offending. So, in effect, as originally stated, self-control theory is contingent-free. Although the theorists acknowledge that the operation of self-control may sometimes be subverted, they do not identify potential subversive elements or show how they might interact with self-control in allowing criminal behavior. Research, however, suggests that self-control may be quite contingent (examples: Baumeister and Exline 2000; Burton et al. 1998, 1999; Giner-Sorolla 2001;

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Keane, et al. 1993; LaGrange and Silverman 1999; Lynam et al. 2000; Nagin and Paternoster 1993; Nakhaie et al. 2000; Tittle and Botchkovar 2005a; Tittle et al. 2004; see also Pratt and Cullen 2000). For instance, recent studies (Antonaccio and Tittle 2008; Tittle et al. 2010) find that self-control works about the same as elsewhere in Russia and Ukraine but not in Greece. Such cross-national variation contradicts the theorists’ position that self-control is impervious to cultural influences (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990, chap. 8) and it converges with other research in showing that self-control does not operate alone. Apparently, the effects of selfcontrol sometimes vary by socio-demographic characteristics and they also seem to depend on additional theoretical variables. Although self-control does appear to be unusually general in its effects, performing reasonably well in many kinds of circumstances (see Tittle and Botchkovar 2005a for a review of the evidence), the theory would probably be more effective, especially in guiding crime management programs, if it paid more attention to contingencies. For instance, if it turns out that people can decide whether to exercise self-control or not (Tittle et al. 2004), instead of it simply being an automatic response to opportunity, then the factors that go into generating that desire to exercise self-control will be crucial. Similarly, if the exercise of self-control is sensitive to whether others in a social context are exercising it, as may be implied by the work of Lynam et al. (2000) about community context, by the work of scholars noting variations in self-control effects according to peer relations (Nakhaie et al. 2000), or by other reasoning (Tittle and McCall 2006), then the focus of management efforts will necessarily have to be different than if self-control is a simple expression of personal tendencies. This is especially true if degree of “criminal opportunity” is a contingency for self-control to affect misconduct, which it may be if, as Baumeister and his associates claim (Baumeister and Exline 2000; Muraven et al. 1998; Schmeichel and Baumeister 2004), the effectiveness of self-control varies with the frequency with which it is exercised. According to research by the Baumeister group, overuse of self-control in the short run may lead to its fatigue, like a muscle, although regular exercise of selfrestraint over a longer time span may strengthen one’s capacity for self-regulation. Therefore, the general degree of criminal opportunity, and consequently the likelihood of self-control being exercised, may be relevant. And, criminal opportunities may have relatively little to do with the individual, being instead a reflection of community structure and organization (Cohen and Felson 1979; Felson 1998; Wilcox et al. 2003). If so, ameliorative programs that ignore the larger social context may be limited in what they can accomplish in controlling violence through promoting self-control.

5.2 Limited Hegemony A second potential problem in using knowledge of self-control to manage violence is the interconnection of self-control with other theoretical variables. As already noted, the predictive coefficients for self-control, though persistent, are not high, showing that most of the variance in the measures of criminal behavior is left

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unexplained by self-control. And, as important as self-control seems to be, it has not been shown to supersede other variables such as social bonds, moral beliefs, peer influences, and criminal attraction. Research suggests that all of those variables may have independent influences on criminal behavior, at least under some conditions, and it also suggests that some other variables may have more effect than does low self-control. Morality, for instance, has consistently been shown to be a strong predictor of criminal behavior (examples: Evans et al. 1997; Longshore et al. 2004, 2005; Piquero and Tibbetts 1996; see review of evidence in Tittle et al. 2010), and recent research suggests that it is largely independent of self-control in ability to predict measures of crime (Antonaccio and Tittle 2008; Schoepfer and Piquero 2006; Tittle et al. 2010). Moreover, even making allowances for potential tendencies toward cognitive consistency in measuring morality and criminality in surveys, predictive coefficients for measures of morality still appear to be superior to those of selfcontrol—even controlling factors that may overlap and absorb much of the effect of morality (Schoepfer and Piquero 2006; Tittle et al. 2010). Similarly, in the few studies that have included it, criminal attraction itself, which some might call criminal motivation, shows stronger predictive strength than self-control, often even reducing substantially the magnitude of self-control’s effects (Nagin and Paternoster 1993; Piquero and Tibbetts 1996; Tittle and Botchkovar 2005b). Similarly, but to a lesser extent, social bonds, at least under some conditions, appear to exercise some influence on crime that is independent of self-control (see review in Welch et al. 2008; as well as De Li 2004). Moreover, peer influence, which is often taken as a proxy for the effects of social learning, remains an independent, strong predictor even controlling self-control (see, for example: Akers 2000, chap. 4; Chapple 2005; Hwang and Akers 2003; Tittle and Botchkovar 2005a). Hence, research implies that effectively employing ideas about self-control to control violence will depend on developing a more comprehensive theory that integrates self-control with other causal elements. It will not be enough for such an integrated theory to note simply that other things besides self-control are relevant. Really useful integrated theories must show how and why various causal streams come into play as well as the conditions under which one or other of those streams is likely to predominate. And, of course, such a theory must show how those causal flows interlink in producing violent (and other) outcomes. The current version of self-control theory is a start, but it is not a finish.

5.3 Sources of Self-Control May Be Incomplete or Mistaken One aspect of self-control theory that is of particular importance if it is to guide efforts to control violence is its specification of the sources of self-control and its argument about potential changes in self-control after childhood. Gottfredson and Hirschi contend that little manipulation of levels of self-control is possible after those levels are set in childhood. They do grant that some modification or enhancement may occur in school but in general they contend that self-control is stable

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throughout the life course—at least in a relative sense (see Burt et al. 2006). That is, those whose self-control is low relative to others soon after leaving childhood will always have low self-control relative to others, even though general degrees of self-control may increase or decrease somewhat over the life-course. On one hand, the idea that whole cohorts can experience changes in self-control over the life course implies that self-control can go up, as it currently seems to do when people move from adolescence to adulthood, and it also implies that those with low self-control can experience some absolute improvement in their ability to restrain themselves. If absolute levels of self-control are key to control of violence, then organized programs to improve levels of self-control after childhood may hope for some success. While self-control theory seems to focus on absolute self-control, the relativity notion ironically implies that whatever brings about changes in levels of selfcontrol for whole cohorts, be it planned or not, may result in reductions in crime. Unfortunately, one can also imagine that relative deficiencies in self-control may portend unusually high levels of offending, even beyond the amount expected from an individual’s absolute level of self-control. This seems particularly likely if the exercise of self-control is somewhat volitional or if strong expectations by others for the exercise of self-control are perceived as straining by individuals with lesser selfcontrol. Thus, for example, an individual with a score of 60 on a 100-point scale of self-control surrounded by others with an average score of 85 may find opportunities for self-gratification especially plentiful because others are not availing themselves. In addition, such an individual may find the self-control expectations implied by the behavior of those with higher self-control to be straining in a way that may provoke unconventional coping (Agnew 1992). Therefore, the 60-score individual in a context with others of higher self-control may be more likely to offend even than an individual with a self-control score of 30 who faces fewer opportunities for crime and fewer expectations for self-restraint that he/she cannot fulfill. Thus, if it turns out that relative levels of self-control, rather than absolute degrees, are most predictive of violence, then amelioration through changes in child care protocols will not matter much. However, to my knowledge no research has yet addressed whether relative or absolute self-control is more important. Extant research has tried to determine if absolute levels of self-control among individuals predict criminality under various conditions, not whether overall levels of self-control within social contexts where individuals are embedded is a condition for the operation of individual levels of self-control. In addition, even research about the conditions supposedly producing self-control has been limited, with much of it lacking the stronger longitudinal data necessary for drawing firm conclusions. The evidence at present suggests that initial self-control may not stem entirely from the caregiving actions the theory lays out and that other influences may intervene at various points in the life cycle to change an individual’s level of self-control, including learning from experience to anticipate negative consequences from behavior undertaken without forethought (Arneklev et al. 1998; Burt et al. 2006; Cochran et al. 1998; Feldman and Weinberger 1994; Gibbs et al. 1998, 2003; Hay 2001; Hay and Forrest 2006; Hope et al. 2003;

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Perone et al. 2004; Polakowski 1994; Pratt et al. 2004; Raffaelli et al. 2005; Turner and Piquero 2002). The child-rearing regimen set forth in self-control theory may neglect some important elements, such as gradually granting autonomy to children, and the specified regimen may include some elements that are unimportant or irrelevant. Moreover, constant punishment or correction of misconduct theorized by Gottfredson and Hirschi to produce people with strong self-control may actually produce people with expedient rather than moral orientations toward conformity. If the only reason for self-control is the fear of being caught and punished, the person is likely to offend when those possibilities are absent or perceived to be absent. Hence, self-control may be of little import relative to morality, as Wikström contends. So, a person interested in controlling violence might well wonder whether high self-control without morality is better than weak self-control with morality and whether the child-rearing regimen specified by Gottfredson and Hirschi is especially conducive to the combination of high self-control and weak morality. Finally, some genetic and biological forces unattended in self-control theory may set the parameters and limits within which child rearing can produce strong selfcontrol (Moffitt and Caspi 2006). At least for a few individuals, who in the end may account for a good proportion of violence, various neuropsychological deficits may make the development of self-control extremely difficult (Moffitt 1993), no matter the child-rearing regimen. Even if self-control theory turns out to be correct about the influences of particular kinds of child rearing in shaping self-control, it is difficult to assess the implications for potential modification of self-control later in the life course. For one thing, it is unclear just how much absolute stability the self-control theorists envision. On the one hand, they maintain that little change occurs after childhood (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990, 107–108), yet by presenting the relativity notion (that is, that even if change occurs, people will retain their self-control positions relative to others) (see Burt et al. 2006) they concede that some overall change may occur. Research confirms this ambiguity. Some data have shown substantial stability but other research indicates change. Overall, it seems likely that there are variations in self-control over the life course and that they reflect differential “maturity” (or learning) as well as dependence on contextual variables like peer group example and expectation, collectively shared ideas about the exercise of self-control, role models, or institutions encouraging self-control (see Tittle et al. 2004). Therefore, using self-control theory to fashion effective programs for management of violence must wait for further theorizing and research to establish exactly how self-control comes about and how it may change. Interventions based on the statements of the original self-control theory may well fail, and they might even exacerbate the situation. For instance, if constant monitoring of children with subsequent punishment of misconduct actually leads to expedient, external orientations, that is, conformity out of fear of punishment, widespread encouragement of such parenting may in the long run produce more people who avoid violence only when they are being watched by rule enforcers or those who disapprove. Since

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surveillance of adults is skimpy at best, an absence of moral orientation (internal guidance) might actually lead to greater overall levels of violence. In addition, if the social support theorists (Colvin et al. 2002) are correct, consistent coercion implied by the self-control regimen might well produce self-controlled, conforming adults but at a high cost in mental health.

5.4 Causal Mechanism May Be Incorrect When people employ remedies for problems without understanding the causes of the malady or how the remedy supposedly works, they are simply shooting in the dark, as likely to miss as to hit and as likely to hit the wrong thing as the right thing. That is why just identifying and manipulating “risk” factors is insufficient (Farrington 2000; Loeber et al. 2006). Low self-control definitely seems to be a “risk factor” that predicts criminal behavior to some degree in the general case, but to try to use that “risk factor” knowledge per se for management of violence is not promising. If a risk factor is to be effectively employed, it must be derived from a theory that explains why and how it produces the outcomes of interest. Self-control theory attempts to do that by asserting that low self-control leads to crime because it renders individuals unable or unlikely to contemplate and react to the long range negative consequences of their misbehavior. As the theorists put it: “So, the dimensions of self-control are, in our view, factors affecting calculation of the consequences of one’s acts. The impulsive or short-sighted person fails to consider the negative or painful consequences of his acts” (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990, 95). Relatively little research has tried to determine whether failure of deterrence is the connecting link between low self-control and criminal behavior (see Higgins and Ricketts 2004; Nagin and Paternoster 1993; Piquero and Tibbetts 1996; Tittle and Botchkovar 2005b; Wright et al. 2004). That which has been conducted, however, challenges the idea (see Tittle and Botchkovar 2005b for a review and presentation of original data). From a policy standpoint, that is bad news. If it were as Gottfredson and Hirschi suggest, then an obvious intervention technique might involve efforts to enhance awareness and fear of negative sanctions among those with low self-control. But if the research is correct in failing to find lack of deterrence to be the causal mechanism linking self-control to criminal behavior, a program that tries to enhance awareness and fear of sanctions may not work. And, it may be unnecessarily costly as well as potentially dangerous. So, if self-control theory is to be used to help control violence, another causal mechanism may have to be identified. But, this raises the obvious question of what the actual causal process might be if it is not failure to anticipate and take into account potential bad consequences? To my knowledge, theorists have offered no guidelines. Nevertheless, one alternative possibility may be that low self-control implies a tendency toward gratifying oneself despite potential costs. As such, some people with low self-control may actively seek out temptations in the hopes of gratification and in full knowledge that the behavior at issue may be costly. Many of

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those with low self-control, rather than failing to think about sanctions and costs or being insensitive to them, may deliberately put themselves at risk. They may provoke fights, go to places known to be dangerous, keep weapons, and the like, all in the hopes of gratifying themselves in the face of potential costs. Indeed, for some, potential cost itself may provide part of the gratification. In describing characteristics of low self-control, the theorists identify risk-taking as one dimension that presumably helps define low self-control, which then leads to behaviors (crime) that can produce gratification, but research suggests it may be one of the more important dimensions (see, for example Grasmick et al. 1993; Arneklev et al. 1993). However, risk-taking itself may be gratifying, regardless of whether force or fraud is involved. Therefore, the connecting link between low self-control and crime may be the strength of one’s desire for gratification and the thrill of risk taking—which I will dub, following Katz (1988), the “risky thrill syndrome.” A risky thrill syndrome is different from simple attraction to crime. In some research scholars have tried to measure inherent criminal attraction by questions about the degree to which committing various acts is perceived as “appealing” or “useful.” Yet, people can perceive that a criminal act might have strong inherent potential to gratify them if gratification were needed, while at the same time recognizing their own low personal need for gratification as well as low personal tolerance for risk. The risky thrill syndrome proposed as the intervening link between low selfcontrol and crime involves individual variations in need, or desire, for gratification, or “thrills,” along with a tendency to find risk-taking fun or pleasing. Corresponding somewhat to Ellis’s notion of arousal capacity (1987), some people are easily satisfied, with minimal need for gratification: almost anything will pacify them. Others are hardly ever satisfied; they have such a high need for gratification that ordinary things do not fill the bill. Correspondingly, some people are highly gratified by taking risks—the greater the potential loss or danger, the more fun it is. Others are terrified by risk; to them it is not fun and is, in fact, distressing or painful. Thus, the individual with low self-control needs gratification (thrills) more than others and finds gratification especially in risk-taking. As a result low self-control is likely to produce crime regardless of cost; not because the individual with weak selfcontrol is insensitive to cost, but because he does not care or actually seeks to defy the odds. This proposed alternative causal mechanism for self-control theory may prove to be completely wrong, or it may lack enough logical power to inspire researchers. It is offered as one possibility to encourage other thinkers to propose and test additional ones. Hopefully, the real causal mechanism will turn out to be something else—because the risky thrill possibility has an especially onerous implication for using self-control in combating violence. “Needing” gratification and experiencing risk-taking as thrilling may not be learned phenomena. To the extent that they are genetically or biologically linked, it will be very difficult to change them. For example, how would one go about molding someone’s inherent craving for thrills or perceptions that risk-taking is a thrilling activity? Inhibiting gambling among the addicted has never been easy.

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5.5 Perhaps Too Individualistically Oriented A fifth potential deficiency of self-control theory, and one that is particularly pertinent to efforts to use the theory in trying to control violence, is its narrow focus on individual-level variations in criminal behavior. Generations of sociological criminologists have argued that there is a reality sui generis. Community, or group level phenomena, are thought not only to influence behaviors of individuals within them, but they are assumed to generate and reflect collective outcomes that go beyond simple aggregation of individual characteristics. Attempts to control violence will have to look beyond individuals to that larger ecological level if they are to be successful. After all, if some attempted intervention, particularly an effort or program to improve self-control, is effective, its success will be registered mainly in falling crime rates—a collective marker. If self-control is, as the theorists seem to maintain, largely set in childhood with little possibility of modification later in the life course, the notion of interventions to improve individual’s capacities for self-control is unrealistic. Even if self-control could be changed, successful interventions for individuals are much less likely to matter as much as successful changes in community organization that bear on overall levels of self-control and misbehavior. Yet, self-control theory almost completely ignores the possibility of larger collective structures. I think this is a mistake. For one thing, despite the impact the theory has had, self-control thinking has not pervaded the full scholarly community, especially the sociological segment, because of this neglect of macro-level phenomena. Many criminologists define their objectives as explaining aggregate levels of crime or deviance (crime/deviance rates) in larger social units (see Akers 2000, 4–5; Akers and Jensen 2003; Sampson 2006; Wilcox et al. 2003), and they tend to view individual-level theories like self-control as of little consequence for their work (Felson 1998; Messner and Rosenfeld 2001). Instead, macro-level social analysts are drawn to collective properties as both independent and dependent variables, and the sociological literature bearing on crime has spawned a number of such properties that are thought to be sui generis but to affect both individual behaviors and collective expressions. They include “collective efficacy” (Sampson et al. 1997), “social disorganization” (Bursik 1988; Sampson and Groves 1989; Shaw and McKay 1942), “interdependency” (Braithwaite 1989), “effective guardianship” (Cohen and Felson 1979), or “capacity for self-regulation” (Bursik and Grasmick 1993, 1995). Aggregate outcomes that are presumably explained and predicted by those collective properties include such things as overall health, economic wellbeing, or crime rates. But, sociologists generally contend that supra-individual properties also affect individual behaviors (Durkheim 1933 [1893]; Sampson 2006). Hence, collective outcomes are partly expressions of simple aggregated individual phenomena but they also reflect something else. Many scholars prefer theories with multi-level applicability (see, for example, Jensen and Akers 2003, 16; Sampson 2006, 32; Short 1998; Wilcox et al. 2003), and, in recognition of the advantages of multi-level explanations, some individualistically oriented theorists have tried to apply their theories to larger social

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units as well as to individuals (examples: Akers 1998; Agnew 1999; Tittle 1995). Self-control theory would be far more useful in trying to fashion programs for reducing violence if it had an ecological-level analog. Patty McCall and I have been developing ideas about supra-individual aspects of self-control that may be manifest in community or contextual properties (Tittle and McCall 2006). If our arguments prove to be correct, and the results of our analyses of cause of death data over four decades in US cities suggest they should be taken seriously, then the prospects for managing violence through application of self-control ideas are much brighter than otherwise. We contend that self-control among individuals may be linked to community or ecological-level phenomena in two separate ways, both of which bear on potential intervention. First, simple aggregation effects may provide interventionist avenues. Second, community analogs for self-control may involve emergent contextual characteristics and processes that Sampson (2006, 32), drawing on the work of Sorenson (1998), calls social mechanisms. In addition, both aggregation effects and emergent community processes concerning self-control may interact or interlink to produce what we refer to as “collective discipline,” which we theorize to have potent effects on individuals’ levels and exercise of self-control as well as on shared community expressions of self-control. We define collective discipline as “the capacity and tendency of a social unit to promote reflective (mindful, or contemplative) behavior among participants (either residents or temporary sojourners)” (Tittle and McCall 2006). It is our contention that a social unit’s degree of collective discipline strongly affects its crime rate as well as rates of such things as unemployment and family dissolution. If we are correct in our thinking, then efforts to combat violence will most likely be successful when they focus on ways to strengthen collective discipline. Consider, first, the “aggregation” aspects of collective discipline. 5.5.1 Aggregated Self-Control of Individuals Research suggests that the bulk of crime is typically committed by recidivists who constitute a relatively small portion of any given population (Thornberry et al. 2003; Wolfgang et al. 1972). According to self-control theory, those high crime prone individuals are most likely characterized by especially weak self-control. Moreover, the proportion of the population that are high-rate, low self-controlled offenders is probably different in different social contexts. Therefore, one can surmise that the rate of violence or other kinds of crime varies with the proportion of the population, either long-term residents or migrants, with low self-control. Therefore, rates of violence might be reduced by altering the proportion of a population with poor selfcontrol. One way to lower the proportion of low self-control individuals in a context is by selective incapacitation; another is to permit in-migration only of those with demonstrated strong self-control. These, of course, are theoretical examples because both raise specters of authoritarianism that may be unacceptable. There is another way that the relative size of the poorly self-controlled population is relevant to rates of violence or other crime. Evidence suggests that crime rates

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reflect opportunities for crimes to occur, with opportunities at least partly reflecting careless guardianship (Felson 1998). Weak guardianship, in turn, to some extent probably indicates widespread weakness of self-control (Schreck et al. 2006). The doors of the residences of those with poor self-control are more likely to be left unlocked and their cars are likely to be left with keys in the ignition. In addition, those unable to regulate themselves are more likely to show cash unnecessarily, to respond to fraudulent schemes, to visit dangerous locales where they might be assaulted, to utter imprudent or provocative remarks that might cause others to become angry, or to keep unconventional hours when ordinary protections against possible violence are not in place. In a less obvious way, then, the poorly selfcontrolled help elevates crime rates where they are numerous because those with low self-control help create temptations for others to engage in criminal behavior. Thus, even if people with low self-control do not commit more crimes than others, a population with large proportions having low levels of self-control may nevertheless experience elevated rates of crime, especially violence.

5.5.2 Emergent Structures and Processes Of more potential importance than aggregated effects are emergent community structures and processes. Sampson and his associates (see Sampson 2006; Sampson et al. 1997) have hypothesized and demonstrated that neighborhoods and communities often vary in the extent to which residents share notions about intervening in potential problems (“collective efficacy)” and that such processes operate at a “meta-individual” level. In a similar way, McCall and I suggest that residents of a city or other population unit may share expectations for the exercise of selfcontrol as well as collectively develop processes and institutions for generating stronger self-control in the population (together constituting “collective self-control consciousness.” We further theorize that there are three elements involved in cultural attitudes and feelings about mindful action. First, a “self-control culture” is one in which most people value self-control, admire efforts to develop and exercise it, and attempt to help other people develop it. Second, the kind of culture implied here involves collectively shared expectations that individuals will want to practice reflective behavior. Finally, a culture of self-control encompasses a pattern of social reaction in which residents of a community or social collectivity: (a) socially reward, through informal recognition, granting of prestige, and bestowing of honor, individuals who, in fact, exercise non-impulsive behavior, and (b) formally and informally impose negative sanctions on those who fail to contemplate the potential consequences of all types of behaviors they might perform. Further, we suggest that in any social context institutional infrastructures arise that have to do with the development of self-control and with cultivating shared values about the worth and importance of desiring to exercise self-control. Such infrastructures incorporate ways of reinforcing actual exhibition of strong self-control. Moreover, such “self-control related” institutional infrastructures may be broad and interlinked.

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Self-Control Values While we are not aware of any data actually demonstrating differences in the collective value placed on self-control among communities or other social units, it seems likely that such variations are there to be measured and studied. Simple observation suggests that some cities are known for hedonism while others have reputations as beacons of self-discipline. Las Vegas is widely thought of as a place where hedonism is not only tolerated but is encouraged. Most people think of it as a city of “fun” where the usual restraints on behavior are loosened. Indeed, advertisements brag that “whatever happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas,” implying that it is acceptable for people to drink too much, gamble, engage in sexual indiscretions, keep odd hours, get married or divorced in short order, and spend money freely on frivolous things without folks back home (outside Las Vegas) finding out. This shared notion of acceptable hedonism may not, of course, apply to regular residents of Las Vegas who staff the business establishments, run the schools, build houses, and engage in other ordinary activities. Still, many residents of Las Vegas probably moved there to participate in a culture of hedonism and some may have remained there after having first visited to have fun. Moreover, being exposed to a social climate in which hedonism is encouraged, at least for some people, and finding it necessary to tolerate it, may lead a substantial proportion of Las Vegas residents to share the larger idea that relaxation of self-constraint is an acceptable if not desirable occurrence. Moreover, it may lead to much imitation, or alternatively, it may lead some who cherish self-control to leave the city. Therefore, the population of Las Vegas, compared with populations of some other cities, probably has a weaker sense that self-control is a good thing for people to have and to want to exercise, and in that city, relative to some others, there are probably fewer social rewards for those who actually demonstrate reflective action. In other words, at least on the surface and relatively speaking, it appears that Las Vegas has a weak culture of reflective behavior, which is one element of a larger, emergent community property of “collective self-control consciousness” (weak, in this case). Whereas Las Vegas prides itself for embracing hedonism, Salt Lake City, by contrast, is known for self-discipline and self-restraint. Having been established for religious purposes by Mormons, Salt Lake City is still heavily influenced by their presence and actions. People there are encouraged to exhibit hard work, family responsibility, thrift, and personal integrity while avoiding pleasure-seeking through alcohol, tobacco, frivolous activities, and artificial stimulants like caffeine. Visitors can easily sense this distinct cultural climate. Hence, at least on the surface, this city seems to score highly on at least one of the components of an overall emergent property of “collective self-control consciousness.” These two cities are, perhaps, anchors on a continuum from low to high “collective self-control consciousness,” with most falling somewhere in between. With appropriate measurements, one might be able to array a large number of communities or collectivities on such a continuum.” If so, we might anticipate that position on that continuum would then reflect or help predict a number of aggregate

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consequences corresponding to individual behavioral outcomes that Gottfredson and Hirschi hypothesize are products of low self-control. Such consequences might include: crime rates, rates of unmarried births, unemployment, marriage and divorce rates, and even such things as community neatness. Institutional Infrastructures Social units may also differ with respect to institutional arrangements bearing on the exercise and reinforcement of self-control. Some structural arrangements probably promote the development of reflective action, foster the notion that self-control is something that people ought to want to have and exercise, and reward those who, in fact, show restraint in the face of temptation (see Wilson and Herrnstein 1985, chap. 15). As noted previously, Gottfredson and Hirschi maintain that individuals mainly acquire self-control early in life, due to practices of their caregivers,1 although the research does not necessarily confirm that view. However, even if they are correct about self-control being largely set in childhood, it may still be possible for people to learn, at all points in the life cycle, to appreciate the value of selfcontrol, even if they do not themselves possess it. Moreover, people may be able to learn, even late in life, to want to reflect before they act, as well as to expect others to want to do the same, and they may be able to learn to anticipate social rewards that might accrue to those who show self-restraint. Therefore, some types of community arrangements and institutional processes may converge in helping to produce self-control in youth and in developing a climate of social desirability for the appreciation and exercise of reflective action among who spend time there. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990, 102–105) suggest that social arrangements and conditions such as single parenthood or parental illness, the extent to which a specific set of caregivers work outside the home or are otherwise away from the children, the number of children relative to the number of caregivers, and the stability of the marriage may bear on the effectiveness of child rearing. Such factors, however, are not entirely individualistic because their prevalence in a community or social context may be affected by larger social conditions or social organization. Some of those conditions, such as the economic necessity for parents to work, may to some extent reflect the individual family’s position in the social structure. Economic necessity and other relevant conditions, however, may, to some extent, reflect transcendent community characteristics or processes. For example, the strength and stability of families and the value placed on effective parenthood may reflect both cultural notions about parental responsibility and mutual reinforcement among members of a community. Family structure and functioning, as well as the shared values people may hold about reflective action can also be an expression of

1 They do, however, leave a little room for schools and other social institutions to add to or substitute

for the work of caregivers (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990, 105–107).

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the community-wide influence of institutions like religion. Consequently, it could be expected that some social units will, in the aggregate, produce larger numbers of members with high self-control and/or with appreciation for the value of reflective behavior while other communities may spawn larger proportions having weak self-control and/or less esteem for the virtue of self-control. In a similar way, institutions like education, law enforcement, or even community-based recreation may have differential impacts on the development of self-control in children as well as on the shared values concerning the importance of people wanting to exercise the maximum self-control of which they are capable. In social contexts where there are cultural expectations for teachers, police officers, and recreational supervisors to act as surrogate parents, it might be expected that children will be more closely monitored when outside the range of familial caregivers (cf. Sampson et al. 1999). And, it might be expected that such community-designated surrogate parents could be instrumental in correcting misbehavior in a way that supplements the work of regular caregivers. Furthermore, just as helping to shame others may lead to stronger consciences and fear of being shamed by those who participate in a shaming process (Braithwaite 1989), the more actively people promote reflective behavior, especially in trying to nourish its growth in others, the more likely are they themselves to value it, to expect others to exercise it, and to reward those who do show restraint. Furthermore, social units may vary in simple characteristics that negatively influence the effectiveness of community socialization of the young or general reinforcement of shared values for reflective behavior. For example, the student–teacher ratio; the number of police officers available for, or assigned to, “peace-keeping” duties where they can engage citizens in situations other than strict law enforcement; and whether social units contain organized and supervised recreational programs may all have indirect consequences for the development of self-control among young people and for the social support for a culture of “self-control consciousness.” Finally, various community conditions, some structural and some cultural, may indirectly affect the extent to which people in a given context actually exercise the self-control they possess. Thus, people who face many temptations requiring them constantly to exercise their self-control will likely wane in their ability to do so. By contrast, those with good self-control who are infrequently called upon to restrain themselves should be able to do so more effectively in those relatively rare circumstances where they are faced with temptation. Applying to the community level the insight of Baumeister and his associates (Muraven et al. 1998; Schmeichel and Baumeister 2004) that the effectiveness of self-control depends on the frequency and intensity with which the person is called upon to employ it, one might expect communities with equal levels of aggregated self-control nevertheless to vary in rates of behavior presumably stemming from weak self-control, such as theft, violence, risky sex, or erratic work patterns. Such variations may flow from differences in aggregate temptations to misbehave, or from another point of view, particular “routine activities” (Cohen and Felson 1979; Wilcox et al. 2003). In some social contexts, there are more consumer goods, greater availability of illegal drugs, more people vulnerable to assault, rape, or homicide, and more lethal weapons (Felson 1998).

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In addition, communities or collectivities vary in the extent to which there are “capable guardians” to protect property and discourage physical attacks on people. Both “opportunities” and “guardianship” are linked to cultural notions and structural arrangements. Variations in those characteristics imply that some communities will more frequently challenge individuals’ self-control and as a result produce a weakening of its exercise and a corresponding increase in misbehavior. Interlinkages The proportion of a population that actually possesses strong self-control, the extent to which the population as a whole shares a culture of reflection, and the nature of institutional arrangements in the social context that bear on self-control or on the culture of reflection all appear to be intertwined and mutually reinforcing. As a result, collective self-control consciousness may feed on itself, thereby sustaining its strength or helping to create an upward or downward spiral in intensity as change begins to occur (see LeBlanc 2006). When collective self-control consciousness is weak, all the parts going into its make-up described above may work together to keep it weak or lead to further weakening, and when it is strong, all the parts may tend to converge in keeping it strong or lead to its strengthening. For example, a culture of reflective behavior may owe much to simple imitation (see Akers 1998). In social contexts containing large numbers of people with weak self-control, who may frequently engage in self-gratifying acts, even those with stronger self-control may find it hard to promote and maintain values for reflective behavior, and they may be influenced to act irresponsibly. In the same way that some otherwise conforming youth may be influenced to imitate the ways of “life-course persistent offenders” who appear to be enjoying the fruits of irresponsible behavior (Moffitt 1993; see also Akers’ social learning theory, 1998 and 2000, for arguments about the force of imitation), the moderately or even the well selfcontrolled may be tempted to emulate self-gratifying behavior of the less controlled (see Tittle et al. 2004 for an argument that those with high self-control sometimes choose not to exercise it) when the less responsible are numerous and obvious in their actions. And, as the actual display of reflective behavior goes down, the cultural and institutional system that might otherwise stimulate and sustain collective self-control consciousness may also deteriorate. In short, the development and exercise of self-control may depend on social contexts. Hence, communities or other social entities may possess varying degrees of “collective discipline,” defined as the capacity and tendency to promote reflective behavior. McCall and I have theorized that “collective discipline” is expressed in both aggregate and emergent forms, which can be conceptualized as a composite. Aggregate forms include direct expression of self-control by individuals as well as individual vulnerabilities to victimization. Emergent forms include a shared culture of reflective behavior as well as institutional arrangements favorable to the development of self-control and to the promotion and sustenance of a collective self-control consciousness. If our arguments are sound, we should find that just as low selfcontrol by individuals presumably increases their chances of engaging in criminal

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or deviant behavior, variation in collective discipline should affect rates of violence and other community characteristics. Therefore, an expanded theory in which self-control is positioned as crucial to individual conduct while social structural features centered around self-control are portrayed as essential for patterns, or rates, of behavior in social units may be justified. Such a theory would enhance the power of self-control thinking, satisfy the demand of scholars for multi-level theories, reaffirm the import of sociological processes for individual behaviors, and provide an additional tool for understanding phenomena such as variations in crime rates. An expanded theory might also go well beyond the idea that collectivities simply vary in collective discipline. In particular, it might provide explanations for why and how collectivities show such variations. No doubt a multi-level theory would draw on existing research and theory concerning communities and neighborhoods, particularly that concerning collective efficacy (see Sampson 2006). The literature implies that emergent collective or community features are influenced by socio-economic characteristics; racial composition; demographic features, such as age and gender; residential stability; more or less random historical events, including political decisions and activism by some residents; and spatial arrangements, including location relative to various economic activities as well as proximity to other kinds of collectivities. Moreover, many of those influences on emergent community properties are said to bear a reciprocal relationship with the properties themselves. Thus, a larger self-control theory will necessarily be complex. More comprehensive theorizing might also attempt to work out potential connections among and between other collective properties that have been identified and collective discipline. No doubt, some aspects of collective discipline, as we have conceptualized it, overlap with modern notions of social disorganization, particularly the idea of collective efficacy. The same processes that allow some communities to share the idea that they can and should intervene in potentially disruptive activities may be operative in helping people develop shared values about self-control and its exercise as well as activating systems of reward and punishment for displays of strong or weak self-control. Moreover, just as collective efficacy seems to require a basic degree of community bonding or cohesion to emerge and operate, so might collective discipline. But, it is likely that as with collective efficacy, cohesive bonding is probably necessary but is not a sufficient condition for effective collective influence on crime or other outcomes. Regardless of the specifics of a theory about self-control as it interfaces with community structures and processes, it seems likely that self-control and its exercise are strongly intertwined with larger, supra-individual ecological phenomena. If so, then policy initiatives to reduce violence need not be individualistic (such as training caregivers for more effective parenting, psycho-therapy to try to alter individuals’ levels of control, or long-term incarceration of those with weak self-control). This is probably an advantage because individualistic solutions do not seem very practical.

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6 Assumptions on Which Self-Control Theory Is Based May Be Misleading The final potential deficiency in self-control theory that may make for difficulty in using it for effective management of violence involves its assumptions. All theories contain non-problematic elements. Such “taken for granted” principles set the parameters within which the causal processes set forth by a theorist supposedly operate. Assumptions, however, may be wrong, and when they are, the theoretical processes that depend on them may be wrong as well. Intervention based on a theory with false assumptions may be doomed from the start. It is important to recognize a distinction between “assumptions of necessity” and “assumptions of convenience.” An assumption of necessity is inherent to an argument; it must be true for the theoretical premises to unfold as specified by the theory. In other words, in such a case, the theory has no validity or worth unless the assumption is true; it is simply impossible to change the assumption while retaining the causal processes of the theory. Assumptions of convenience, on the other hand, are simply declarations by the theorist. They are not inherent in the theorizing but are things the theorist wishes to “hold constant” in order to spell out various theoretical implications. Assumptions of convenience are equivalent to a theorist saying: “let’s imagine that such and such is true (assumption), then, given that ‘truth’ and the causal mechanisms central to the theory, what would we expect concerning the interconnection of variables x, y, and z?” An assumption of convenience potentially can be changed. For instance, having worked out the interconnection of x, y, and z under a given assumption, a theorist might then say, “but what would be the implications for the interrelationship of x, y, and z if the assumption were something else?” An assumption of necessity, however, cannot be altered. Unfortunately, consumers of theories (and sometimes theorists themselves) confuse the two kinds of assumptions. Assumptions not at all inherent to a given line of theorizing are often taken as if they were necessary, simply because the theorist declared them. For example, it is commonly observed that theoretical integration cannot occur because various theories to be integrated contain “incompatible” assumptions (Hirschi 1989). Such conclusions are usually drawn without regard to the distinction between fundamental and convenient assumptions. The classic example is the allegation that control theories, such as Hirschi’s social bond (which he calls social control) theory, cannot be integrated with motivation theories like general strain theory. The argument goes something like this: Theories emphasizing control (usually referred to simply as control theories) assume that all people are motivated toward criminal behavior (because it is gratifying), so the explanations put forth to explain criminal behavior focus on constraints that may prevent those more or less invariant motivations from being expressed. On the other hand, theories that try to account for criminal behavior by explaining levels of criminal motivation (usually simply called motivation theories) assume that attraction to criminal behavior is variable and that the strength of such motivation is central

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to whether an individual offends or not. Since people cannot be constantly attracted to criminal behavior while at the same time experiencing different degrees of attraction to criminal behavior, the two kinds of theories are regarded as incompatible for integration. However, in reality, attraction to criminal behavior (motivation) may vary, as well as the degree of constraint on expressing such motivation in actual criminal behavior. Therefore, an integrated theory could specify the conditions under which motivation is weak or strong as well as the conditions under which constraint is weak or strong. Such a theory could also specify various combinations of those conditions that might signify different probabilities of actual criminal conduct. Thus, the two types of theories only appear incompatible if one accepts the social control theorist’s declaration of convenience that criminal motivation is constant across individuals. It is not a fundamental assumption. In thinking about self-control theory as a possible guide for managing violence, we must consider its assumptions: first to determine if they are fundamental or convenient, and second, to contemplate whether they are likely to be true or false. My reading of self-control theory suggests that three of its assumptions, none of which are fundamental, are incorrect. The first assumption is presumably shared with all “control” theories. That is, all (or at least the vast majority of) individuals are supposedly attracted to criminal behavior in more or less equal amounts. From that assumption, it follows that variations in actual criminal behavior must be due to constraints, either those inside the person or those in the external environment. In the case of self-control theory, the inside and outside constraints are closely linked. Those who would normally be constrained by anticipating negative consequences of misbehavior (outside constraints) are usually not constrained when their personalities and habits (low self-control) make it difficult for them to anticipate the possibility of negative consequences. Since people’s attraction to violence is presumably inherent, the only hope of controlling violence is to strengthen self-control so that people can more readily recognize and anticipate external consequences (or alternatively to incapacitate those with low self-control). And since self-control is theoretically shaped mainly in childhood, managing violence implies some focus on child-rearing practices. The second assumption of the theory is that misbehavior (in our present discussion, violence) always, or almost always, has bad consequences, some by the very nature of the misbehavior (such as provoking a counterattack, jeopardizing friendships, or losing status among those who do not endorse violence) and some because of specific sanctions deliberately put in place to try to control misconduct (such as police surveillance or legal penalties). If such an assumption is true and fundamental, it again points toward either improving self-control so that tempted people can recognize those inherent costs or toward incapacitating them so they cannot hurt others. It does not make room for other possibilities such increasing the costs of violence (perhaps by making it socially unacceptable, as apparently happened for domestic assault as a result of efforts by women’s groups) or helping people, even those with low self-control, to better recognize the costs attached to violent behavior (perhaps by increasing police presence or response time or by advertising

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the potential negative outcomes). After all, if misbehavior carries inherent negative consequences, that aspect of the issue takes care of itself. The third assumption of self-control theory is that individuals have little personal agency in matters of constraint. Most of the time, the weakly self-controlled presumably cannot avoid criminal actions through deliberate choice. According to the theory, the typical individual is similar to an automaton: the person is inherently motivated toward misconduct because it is gratifying, opportunities for force or fraud sometimes present themselves (not because the individual seeks them out, but because chances to gratify oneself through force or fraud are omnipresent), and if the individual has low self-control, he/she will see mainly the gratification and not the potential costs of misconduct and as a result will usually go for the gratification. In self-control theory the person is largely incapable of deciding to behave outside the basic limits set by his or her degree of self-control. Those with low self-control cannot exceed their limitations and those with high self-control are too rational to choose to ignore constraints. For instance, the poorly self-controlled person is highly unlikely to conclude that suppression of violence is the right and moral thing to do and then act on that conclusion, and the strongly self-controlled person is highly unlikely to decide that violence is advantageous and then use it to accomplish personal goals. In both cases, the actors seem to be bound by their control structures. This is remarkable because self-control theory is supposedly rooted in the classical rational choice perspective in which the individual is supreme as a decision-maker who weighs the costs and benefits and then acts to maximize benefits. If people actually are not free agents, then ameliorative policy based on self-control implies change in the formative process or later incapacitation of those with weak self-control. Other things like moral education, enhancement of potential costs, or elevating awareness of damage or costs from violence are futile. In my judgment, these assumptions are not fundamental and they may well be incorrect. Personal experience tells us that attraction to criminal behavior is not invariant among people. What some people find gratifying (such as beating someone up), others find abhorrent. Moreover, we know that criminal behavior does not always, and maybe not even most of the time, produce bad consequences for the perpetrator. The idea that crime does not pay is a childhood parable used to inspire conformity. It only takes a brief look at the statistics on probabilities of arrest and conviction for various known criminal acts to conclude that most of the time perpetrators of crime, including those who commit acts of violence, escape legal penalties. And ethnographies tell us that many people benefit enormously from their willingness to use violence for their own purposes (Anderson 1999; McCall 1994). In addition, as noted before, some systematic data confirm that people are differentially attracted to criminal behavior. Finally, it does not seem at all obvious that people with low self-control cannot overcome that limitation if they have strong motivation to do so (witness instances of recovered alcoholics and gamblers), or that those with high self-control are necessarily bound to conform (cf. Tittle et al. 2004). As many have observed, white collar or corporate criminals may be prime examples of highly self-controlled people who use that self-control in illegal ways to promote their own ends.

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Therefore, effective use of self-control to manage violence may require ignoring the assumptions of self-control theory, which appear to be assumptions of convenience in any case.

7 Conclusion Much research indicates that self-control is a key variable in explaining and predicting criminal behavior, including violence. However, recognizing that self-control is important is not sufficient for creating effective policies to reduce or control violence. To be successful, policies must flow from well-developed and confirmed theory that correctly specifies the contingencies under which causal processes work with greater or less force, shows interconnections of different causal mechanisms suggested by various theories in the field, correctly identifies the causes of the important independent variables, specifies how effects associated with different variables come about, spells out multi-level propositions, showing their interlinkages, and identifies essential assumptions that must be taken into account. Self-control theory does not yet qualify on these grounds but it holds promise of becoming that kind of theory through logical and empirical elaboration of its premises and integration with other extant theories. When fully elaborated and integrated, a theory with self-control as a key central concept may well provide the guidelines needed to design interventionist programs that can significantly reduce violence.

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Felson, M. (1998). Crime in Everyday Life: Insights and Implications for Society, 2nd Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge. Felson, R. B. and Staff, J. (2006). Explaining the academic performance-delinquency relationship. Criminology, 44, 299–319. Geis, G. (2000). On the absence of self-control as the basis for a genrral theory of crime: a critique. Theoretical Criminology, 4, 35–53. Gibbs, J. J., Giever, D., and Maretin, J. S. (1998). Parental management and self-control: an empirical test of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 35, 40–70. Gibbs, J. J., Giever, D., and Higgins, G. F. (2003). A test of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory using structural equation modeling. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 30, 441–457. Giner-Sorolla, R. (2001). Guilty pleasure and grim necessities: affective attitudes in dilemmmas of self-control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 206–221. Gottfredson, M. R. and Hirschi, T. (1990). A General Theory of Crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Gottfredson, M. R. and Hirschi, T. (2003). Self-control and opportunity. In C. L. Britt and M. R. Gottfredson (Eds.), Control Theories of Crime and Delinquency (pp. 5–39). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Grasmick, H. G., Tittle, C. R., Bursik, R. J. Jr., and Arneklev, B. J. (1993). Testing the core empirical implications of Gottfreson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 30, 5–29. Hay, C. (2001). Parenting, self-control, and delinquency: a test of self-control theory. Criminology, 39, 707–736. Hay, C. and Forrest, W. (2006). The development of self-control: examining self-control theory’s stability thesis. Criminology, 44, 739–774. Higgins, G. and Ricketts, M. L. (2004). Motivation or opportunity: which serves as the best mediator in self-control theory? Western Criminology Review, 5, 77–96. Hirschi, T. (1989). Exploring alternatives to integrated theory. In S. F. Messner, M. D. Krohn, and A. E. Liska (Eds.), Theoretical Integration in the Study of Deviance and Crime: Problems and Prospects (pp. 37–49). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Hirschi, T. (2004). Self-control and crime. In R. F. Baumeister and K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Application (pp. 537–552). New York, NY: Guilford. Hirschi, T. and Gottfredson, M. R. (1995). Control theory and the life course perspective. Studies in Crime and Crime Prevention, 4, 131–142. Hope, T., Harold, G. G., and Pointon, L. (2003). The family in Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime. Sociological Focus, 36, 291–311. Hwang, S. and Akers, R. L. (2003). Substance use by Korean adolescents: a cross-cultural test of social learning, social bonding, and self-control theories. In R. L. Akers and G. F. Jensen (Eds.), Social Learning Theory and the Explanation of Crime (pp. 39–63). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Jensen, G. F. and Akers, R. L. (2003). Taking social learning global: micro-macro transitions in criminological theory. In R. L. Akers and G. F. Jensen (Eds.), Social Learning Theory and the Explanation of Crime (pp. 9–37). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Katz, J. (1988). The Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. New York, NY: Basic Books. Keane, C., Maxim, P. S., and Teevan, J. J. (1993). Drinking and driving, self-control, and gender: testing a general theory of crime. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 30, 30–46. LaGrange, T. C. and Silverman, R. A. (1999). Low self-control and opportunity: testing the general theory of crime as an explanation for gender differences in delinquency. Criminology, 37, 41–72. Latimore, L. T., Tittle, C. R., and Grasmick, H. G. (2006). Child rearing, self-control, and crime: additional evidence. Sociological Inquiry, 76, 343–371.

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Self-Control, Conscience, and Criminal Violence: Some Preliminary Considerations Helmut Thome

Within democratic societies, acts of interpersonal violence which are defined as illegal or “criminal” are generally also defined as “immoral.” However, even those criminological theories which interpret criminal behavior as emanating from certain personality characteristics have often failed to consider states of “conscience,” or various features of “moral consciousness,” as specific elements within the set of conditions that might foster or prevent violent crime.1 This conspicuous absence even applies, with few exceptions, to theories of self-control, though in the history of thought as well as in psychological theorizing conscience (in various terminologies) has always been considered to be a major force in controlling personal conduct. Drawing upon this tradition—or some aspects of it—I will explore possibilities for bringing “conscience” back to our attention and for using it as an explanatory or interpretive concept that might be helpful in our understanding of interpersonal violence. My starting point, Section 1, will be the “General Theory of Crime” advanced by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990), who consider lack of self-control to be the major factor in allowing or prompting people to engage in various kinds of criminal (or otherwise “problematic”) behavior, including acts of violence. After indicating some of the problems inherent in their approach, I will propose an expansion of the concept of self-control in the direction of the human agency concept which includes moral competence and commitment among the dimensions it seeks to integrate. Section 2 takes a look at various facets and forms of positive or negative H. Thome (B) Institute for Sociology, Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] 1 There are some notable exceptions to this (e.g. Grasmick and Bursik 1990; Trasler 1993; Piquero

and Tibbetts 1996), but even in these cases the notion of “morality” (moral beliefs, commitments, feelings) has not been elaborated to any great extent. In more recent years, some renowned criminologists like Schoepfer and Piquero (2006), Antonaccio and Tittle (2008), and Wikström and Treiber (2007) have re-emphasized the importance of morality to our understanding of crime but, still, little progress has been made to relate these concepts (e.g., those of shame and guilt) and corresponding measurement operations to pertinent psychological research and broader theories of moral development. (I will address Wikström’s ideas more specifically in another paper under preparation). W. Heitmeyer et al. (eds.), Control of Violence, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0383-9_5,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

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self-appraisal and considers the differentially protective or aggravating impact they may have on aggressive or violent conduct. In this context, the distinction between shame and guilt is particularly relevant. The third section explores additional—and occasionally ambiguous—features of both the conceptual meaning and the social praxis of “conscience.” In this the cognitive–developmental approach to the analysis of moral conscience is taken as a major point of reference.

1 Modifying and Expanding the Concept of Self-Control Hirschi and Gottfredson define self-control as “the tendency to avoid acts whose long-term costs exceed their momentary advantage” (1994, 3). So lack of selfcontrol is a disposition to disregard long-term costs and to seek immediate gratification. The authors view lack of self-control as a stable personality trait and the most important factor in the explanation of criminal conduct and other forms of misbehavior. They also assume that this trait gets fixed in early childhood (mainly by the way parents or other caretakers treat their children) and persists throughout the life course. It is still a much-debated question whether their General Theory of Crime is simple in the sense of being parsimonious or simple in the sense of being simplistic. In a thoughtfully reasoned conference paper (included in this volume) Charles Tittle, for example, offers some stimulating reflections upon “potential weaknesses” that mark Gottfredson and Hirschi’s General Theory of Crime. I largely agree with his critique and in particular want to emphasize the following points: Tittle first directs our attention to the neglect of “contingencies that may affect the operation of self-control,” i.e., moderator variables that interact with selfcontrol (Chapter “Self-control and the Management of Violence” by Tittle, this volume, 7). These include cultural influences as well as community structures and situational inducements or constrictions that shape opportunities. But self-control is also affected by its own history: if people control their impulses too rigidly and persistently explosive outbursts are likely to happen eventually. I suppose that this relates to what Tittle has in mind when he observes that “people can decide whether to exercise self-control or not” (p. 97). Such a “decision” would imply a selfcontrolling act on the meta-level by which the gratification one expects to obtain by acting impulsively (on the base-level) has been given priority: Sometimes, on some specific occasions, one has to let go or else those constantly oppressed desires might force their way into behavior without any control at all. Apart from such “moderators” there are other factors, beyond self-control, which have an independent and occasionally even stronger influence on criminal behavior. Among these, Tittle specifically points to “morality” as a factor that “has consistently been shown to be a strong predictor of criminal behavior” (p. 98). People who are generally disposed to exercise low self-control may still adhere to their moral beliefs in situations where morality is obviously at stake—which should always be the case when it comes to hurting or harming somebody in one way or another. (The conceptual relationship between “self-control” and “morality” is discussed later in greater detail.)

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Tittle offers some interesting observations regarding the causal mechanisms that relate lack of self-control to criminal behavior. According to Gottfredson and Hirschi (who apply a rational-choice framework) deterrence via perceived external sanctions (in particular the risk of getting fined or arrested) should be the major factor inducing persons with sufficient self-control to abstain from criminal behavior. The empirical evidence for this assumption is mixed at best, as Tittle observes. He then considers alternative possibilities, noting for example that “for some, potential cost itself may provide part of the gratification” (p. 102). This hypothesis (which concurs with everyday experience), in my view, raises doubts about the feasibility of making risk-taking an element in the definition of low self-control. One should clearly distinguish between willingly accepting or seeking risks and the tendency to deny or not see the risks involved in a certain course of action. Rather than indicating lack of rationality, risk-taking may indicate a carefully pondered choice regarding the rank ordering of preferences. One also has to consider the possibility that in “risk societies” (Beck 1992) the future has become less certain and thus it might be wiser to reduce the time-horizon in calculating “long-term” benefits or costs (how “long” is long term, anyway?). Tittle identifies several assumptions that are foundational for self-control theories which he—rightly, I think—disputes. One of these is the dictum “that individuals have little personal agency in matters of constraint” (p. 113). “(T)he poorly selfcontrolled person is highly unlikely to conclude that suppression of violence is the right and moral thing to do and then act on that conclusion, and the highly selfcontrolled person is highly unlikely to decide that violence is advantageous and then use it to accomplish personal goals” (p. 113). Tittle points to statistical evidence on probabilities of arrest and conviction for reported criminal acts, to conclude that “most of the time perpetrators of crime, including those who commit acts of violence, escape legal penalties” (p. 113). By now a number of studies have become available showing that crime may indeed offer more than immediate gratifications (see, e.g., Morselli and Tremblay 2004). Tittle also points to white collar or corporate criminals as “prime examples of highly self-controlled people who use that self-control in illegal ways to promote their own ends” (p. 113).2 And it is well known, of course, that many acts of killing are being done “cold bloodedly” after careful planning. Despite its manifold weaknesses, Tittle is not prepared to dismiss Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory altogether; instead he seeks to improve it by developing a more integrated theory that takes into account additional concepts and perspectives as indicated above. He points to numerous studies that provide evidence that “self-control is one of the best and most robust predictors of criminal

2 In

this context an observation reported by Messner and Rosenfeld might be of interest: “(C)onsiderable evidence indicates that so-called ‘nonviolent’ white-collar criminals kill and maim more people each year in the United States than do violent street criminals” (Messner and Rosenfeld 1997, 29). So, for example, unsafe or defective merchandise is reported to have caused some 30,000 deaths in a single year.

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behavior available,” regardless of, among other things, the method used to measure self-control (cf. the meta-analysis by Pratt and Cullen 2000). This assessment is called into question by a recent study by Bornewasser et al. (2007), who note, first, that several ways of testing the (presumed) uni-dimensional quality of the (most widely used) Grasmick scale (Grasmick et al. 1993) have led to contradictory results. Where the tests were based on Cronbach’s alpha (i.e., internal consistency) the results regularly supported the assumption of uni-dimensionality; if, however, confirmatory factor analyses were applied, the results pointed to multidimensionality. In their own study Bornewasser and his collaborators measured each of the six aspects that went into the standard Grasmick scale separately without pulling them together into a single scale. They also measured various forms of problematic or delinquent behavior (self-reports) among various groups of young and older people. In a series of bivariate regression analyses they found that “riskseeking” was in the majority of cases the only predictor which proved to be significant in the expected direction; others like impulsivity or self-centeredness produced mixed results.3 From a completely different angle, Bernd Marcus (2003, 2004) has criticized previous research on the General Theory of Crime for not recognizing or not taking seriously enough the uni-dimensional and behavioral character of the concept of self-control. He emphasizes the distinction between a trait and specific behavior (Marcus 2004, 37) and, above all, between self-control as a trait of differential control (over universal impulses) and motivation (39). For example, a preference for sensation or risk-seeking (as already mentioned above) does not “mean” or indicate that there is a lack of control of impulses—some people like bungee-jumping, others do not. Nevertheless, one “should expect sensation seeking and low selfcontrol to be positively correlated in empirical investigations. This is simply the consequence of the fact that many activities, and most prominently criminal ones, are both thrilling and also promise immediate gratification at the expense of longterm negative consequences” (40). Marcus maintains that “the idea of differential motivation as an explanation for crime is one that the authors of the GTC explicitly reject” (40). At this point I should like to return to my opening observation: Criminal behavior as defined by law is, in most instances, also considered to be morally wrong. Apart from the legal or moral quality of a specific act commissioned in a specific situation, compliance with the law in general may be seen as a prima facie moral requirement (except where a legal rule is determined to contradict a moral principle).4 Morality

3 Since delinquent behavior is typically measured as a count variable which often takes the value of

0, ordinary least squares methods may not be appropriate. Bornewasser et al. therefore use logistic regression and Poisson models in their analyses (2007). They assume that much of the previous research in this field may have produced artifactual results stemming from inappropriate statistical methods used in analyzing the data. 4 Wikström goes so far as to conceive of crime as “acts of moral rule breakings defined in law” (Wikström and Treiber 2007, 241)—which I think is a somewhat problematic mingling of analytical concepts that should be kept distinct.

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may be introduced into an explanatory model designed to account for criminal or otherwise deviant behavior in various ways: (1) as an impact factor that influences behavior in addition to (and independently of) self-control; (2) as a source of selfcontrol; (3) as a component of an expanded concept of self-control. Ad 1: The first variant can be construed in the following way: A person with low self-control and a desire to achieve or get something which he can obtain only by unlawful behavior may experience anticipatory guilt feelings that inhibit him from actually engaging in such behavior. Within a rational-choice framework anticipatory guilt feelings can be construed in terms of immediately payable costs that may outweigh any short-term gains one might expect to receive from a criminal act. A second interpretation might be that a morally committed person has developed a set of need dispositions which, in general, render unlawful or immoral behavior less attractive. Ad 2: Morality not only gives direction to a person’s conduct but may also help to strengthen self-control. Strong moral commitments entail an ongoing practice of reflective thinking about right or wrongdoing through which impulse control is routinely exercised and gradually shaped into a stable pattern of conduct. Ad 3: One of the routes toward amending self-control theory might be to desist from limiting “self-control” to a single analytical dimension (the propensity to consider or not to consider the long-term utilities of one’s conduct and to act accordingly, i.e., ultimately the dichotomy of rationality/irrationality), but to expand it (as implicitly suggested by Tittle) to a multi-dimensional notion of human agency. Starting from a critique of Elias’s conception of affect control (Thome 2001, 2004) and drawing upon a similar suggestion advanced by Eisner (1997), I proposed conceptualizing self-control as the individual’s generalized capacity to respond adequately to certain functional requirements that he or she routinely has to face in everyday conduct: (a) personal identities need to be expressed, (b) long-range personal interests must be pursued, and (c) cooperative relationships (solidarities) must be preserved or built up, and none of these requirements must be fulfilled at the cost of neglecting the other. Along these lines, I propose a three-dimensional concept (see Fig. 1). The first dimension takes up the idea of affect control: the capacity to control impulses and emotions without suppressing them, i.e., allowing the person to express his or her feelings while taking into account the normative requirements encountered in a given situation. This might be called expressive competence. The second component is of a strategic nature: the capacity to use one’s personal abilities and the opportunities offered (and the constrictions imposed) by the situation to obtain one’s goals, including the capacity to evaluate immediately available rewards in terms of their consequences for long-term objectives; this we might call strategic or instrumental competence (the dimension that is the sole focus in the General Theory of Crime). The third component or dimension refers to moral consciousness,

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Resources - economic - social - cultural

capital

Dimensions of Control

Objects of Control Internal Nature Environment - social - natural

Expressive Compentence

Human Agency Self-Control

Instrumental Compentence Moral Competence and Motivation

Fig. 1 Analytic dimensions of self-control in the perspective of human agency

the capacity and willingness to balance one’s own personal interests against those of others (and the larger community) while taking into account given social norms and, on a higher level of competence, universal principles of moral conduct (principles that might contravene group-based norms). This involves the capacity for “role taking” (as sociologists like to call it) or “sympathetic empathy” (as psychologists put it). We might refer to this as normative or moral competence that comprises not only a cognitive component (judgment on what is right or wrong) but also a motivational component (commitment to act accordingly). These two might be less congruously related to each other than Kohlberg postulated (cf. Nunner-Winkler 2004 and Section 3 below). To the extent that this integrative capacity of attending to and balancing each of these functional requirements against the other two is lacking, the probability rises that the individual will resort to deviant behavior including criminal and violent acts. Durkheim’s pathological types of social organization (excessive individualism, anomie, and “fatalism,” i.e., oppressive over-regulation) refer to structural conditions that, in a given population, impede the development of sufficient measures of (integrative) self-control among a relevant number of persons. Sampson’s “self-efficacy” and Tittle’s “control balance” are two other relevant concepts here: it seems plausible that a person cannot acquire or maintain selfcontrol independently from the measure of control she has over her social and natural environment.5 This way we can forge a link to theories that concentrate on macro-structural or community characteristics relevant to deviant or criminal behavior. Additional dimensions or further differentiations might be considered. For example, expressive competence may be specifically directed (a) toward bringing forward unique aspects of one’s personal identity or (b) toward confirming one’s belonging to a certain group or collectivity. Both operations require sufficient language proficiency including knowledge about the meaning of gestures and symbols and

5 One may also reconsider Turner’s assumptions about “real-self” constructions shifting from their

anchorage in institutions to a new anchorage in impulse (1976).

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technical capabilities in handling them. It has often been observed that various forms of “analphabetism” were at the root of violent outbursts.6 The struggle to preserve or regain personal or collective identities that have become threatened is particularly prone to causing people to resort to means of violence. “Wherever identities are at issue, violence is on the agenda” (Luhmann 1998, 797). The psychiatrist James Gilligan, drawing upon 20 years of work with prison inmates, contends: “I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed” (quoted in Wilkinson et al. 1998, 589). Gottfredson and Hirschi, in their concept of self-control, only attend to instrumental rationality, reducing the dimension of self-expression to manifestations of uncontrolled affect, i.e., absence or lack of instrumental rationality. In a rather flimsy argumentation they expressly reject “conscience” as an explanatory concept. Below I quote the decisive passage from their book (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990, 88), breaking it up into successive parts to add brief comments: (1) “The concept of conscience comes closer than criminality to self-control, and is harder to distinguish from it. Unfortunately, that concept has connotations of compulsion (to conformity) not, strictly speaking, consistent with a choice model (or with the operation of conscience).” Here Gottfredson and Hirschi seem to follow an orthodox Freudian concept of the super-ego that relentlessly forces ego into conformity with pre-ordained commands or rules of conduct. Within the psychoanalytic tradition there are other models to be found (e.g., that of Erich Fromm) which depart from this interpretation, and there are other theoretical models of moral consciousness which offer alternative perspectives—in particular those originating in the works of Piaget and Kohlberg (see Section 3 below). (2) “It [conscience] does not seem to cover the behaviors analogous to crime that appear to be controlled by natural sanctions rather than social or moral sanctions, and in the end it typically refers to how people feel about their acts rather than to the likelihood that they will or will not commit them. Thus accidents and employment instability are not usually seen as produced by failures of conscience, and writers in the conscience tradition do not typically make the connection between moral and prudent behavior.” It is certainly correct to note that lack of self-control may foster not only criminal behavior but also other types of problematic behavior. On the other hand moral rules also cover various forms of behavior and everyday conduct which are not regulated by law. Still, self-control may indeed cover a larger array of problematic behavior than conscience. But if there are so many different forms of behavior considered “problematic,” we would certainly also like to

6 The German subtitle of Barry Sanders’ A is for Ox (1995) is “Die Pistole ist das Schreibwerkzeug

des Analphabeten” or “the gun is the pen of the illiterate.” Luhmann observes that violence is a first-rate communicative act, exactly because it raises fear (1998, 797).

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learn under which conditions one of them is more likely to be chosen than the other (and for unemployment, there are obviously many other causes that would need to be considered, apart from lack of self-control or moral failure). Moral consciousness might add some discriminatory power to self-control and opportunity structures. (3) “Finally, conscience is used primarily to summarize the results of learning via negative reinforcement, and even those favorably disposed to its use have little more to say about it.” Underlying this contention is, again, a rather restrictive conception of conscience, about which I will try to say more in the following sections.

2 Self-Esteem, Guilt, Shame, and Aggression In their article on “The Dark Side of High Self-Esteem” (1996), Baumeister et al. take issue with the “conventional wisdom” that regards low self-esteem as an important cause of violence. Based on an interdisciplinary review of evidence they arrive at the conclusion that it is not low but high self-esteem that fosters violence. “In contrast to the low self-esteem view, we propose that highly favorable self-appraisals are the ones most likely to lead to violence” (7–8). At first glance, this position seems to be irreconcilable with the observation that violence is often a means of gaining or regaining self-respect (see the statement by James Gilligan quoted above). However, in the course of their argumentation the authors introduce a number of qualifications that render both positions compatible. The most important qualification is that it is not high self-esteem as such which causes violent acts, but rather: “the major cause of violence is high self-esteem combined with an ego-threat. When favorable views about oneself are questioned, contradicted, impugned, mocked, challenged or otherwise put in jeopardy, people may aggress. In particular, they will aggress against the source of the threat” (8). If this source, i.e., the “evaluator” inflicting the ego-threat, is not available or otherwise an unsuitable target “displacement may become comprehensible as a way of asserting superiority over someone else” (11). The question that needs to be answered at this point is: Is it really the case that people with high self-esteem are more likely than people with low selfesteem to experience ego-threats and to use violence as a form of self-affirmation? Baumeister’s answer may be read either as a conditioned “yes” or a qualified “no.” The condition is that the positive self-appraisal is inflated, unstable, or insecure. In common parlance however (and also in psychodynamic theory, I assume) the latter two characteristics contradict the definition of high self-esteem. Of course, we could always propose definitions that depart from linguistic conventions and, in the present case, allow for high self-esteem to be unstable or insecure. But this would change the logical status of the concept of self-esteem: it would no longer be conceived as a personality trait but as a fluid personality characteristic that takes on different “values” or appearances depending on the given situation, particularly the perceived self-esteem of other actors involved. One might still think that there was

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some average level of stability or sureness around which the actual level varied, but it would hardly have predictive power. Considering specific features of social environments, Baumeister et al. point to the possibility that “conditions of scarcity” may transform the negotiations for gaining self-esteem into zero-sum games. In such circumstances: “Gaining esteem requires taking it away from others. This analysis greatly expands the range of acts that can constitute a threat to others. If the amount of self-esteem is fixed, then positive claims by one person are sufficient to constitute a threat to others” (Baumeister et al. 1996, 11). From here one could easily proceed to find theoretical connectives with various forms of structural anomie theory (Merton 1968; Messner and Rosenfeld 2007) and social analyses such as those offered by Fred Hirsch (1976) or Frank and Cook (1995): Where monetary success is a major source of selfesteem, what counts is not the amount of money one has earned but rather how many competitors one has left behind and how many of them are still running ahead (antagonistic competition). From this we can derive a general hypothesis: Structural anomie fosters precarious forms of self-esteem which in turn are conducive to violent crime (on the concept of structural anomie, see Thome 2007b). Baumeister et al. (1996) also offer some brief but interesting remarks on the role of shame as one of various types of affect that mediate between ego-threat and aggressive or non-aggressive ways of coping with it. They find: “Thus, research on shame suggests on the one hand that this global feeling of being a despicable person often leads to a tendency to withdraw or hide from others. . .. On the other hand, there is evidence that shame-prone people tend to externalize blame and become angry and aggressive toward others” (10). Shame and self-esteem seem to interact here: shame coupled with high self-esteem more likely leads to aggression; coupled with low self-esteem it is more likely to lead to withdrawal (see also Baumeister and Bushman 2003). The antisocial potential of shame has also been emphasized in a review article by Tangney: “Across a range of studies, we have found that individuals prone to the ugly feeling of shame are also prone to feelings of outwardly directed anger and hostility” (1995, 1140). Compared to shame, “guilt is the more adaptive response to the inevitable transgressions of everyday life” (1136). This, according to Tangney, applies to both the relationship one has with others and the way one looks at oneself: “Results [from research] clearly indicate that proneness to shame is associated with an array of psychological symptoms, whereas proneness to shame-free guilt is essentially unrelated to psychological maladjustment” (1141). This—once again— appears to contradict conventional wisdom. So we have to take a closer look at how “shame” and “guilt” have been conceptualized by Tangney (and others). Tangney draws upon a famous study by Helen Lewis (1971), also referred to, approvingly, by Baumeister et al. (1996). Lewis departs from the traditional notion that shame depends on “the public exposure of one’s frailty or failing, whereas guilt may be something that remains a secret with us, no one else knowing of our breach of social norms or of our responsibility for an immoral act” (Tangney 1995, 1133). Lewis, Tangney, and perhaps the majority of contemporary psychologists in the United States propose a different criterion for discriminating between shame and guilt, in

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Lewis’ words: “The experience of shame is directly about the self, which is the focus of evaluation. In guilt, the self is not the central object of negative evaluation, but rather the thing done or undone is the focus. In guilt, the self is negatively evaluated in connection with something but is not itself the focus of the experience” (quoted from Tangney 1995, 1134). To support this view, Tangney points to empirical evidence showing that “among both children and adults, shame and guilt were each most likely to be experienced in the presence of others, [and] ‘solitary’ shame was about as prevalent as ‘solitary’ guilt” (1995, 1133–1134). On the other hand, she also observes that “shame experiences were more likely to involve a sense of exposure and a preoccupation with others’ opinions . . .whereas guilt experiences were more likely to involve a concern with one’s effect on others” (1135–1136). This is, after all, not as far apart from conventional interpretations as it seemed at first glance. In another paper, Tangney and her colleagues state even more clearly: “Because shame involves this sense of exposure and disapproval from sources outside of the self, self-directed hostility is easily redirected out toward others involved in the shameeliciting situation. Observing others may be held in part responsible for the ugly feeling of shame” (1996, 798). So it seems that the imagined or acutely experienced disapproval of others is likely to shift the focus of one’s own negative appraisal from the “thing done” to the entire self—and thereby incites aggressive reactions or, in other cases, withdrawal. Tangney also notes that guilt might become fused with shame and that “it is guilt with an overlay of shame that is most likely to lead to the interminable rumination and self-castigation (maladaptive guilt) described in the clinical literature” (1996, 750). The severity of the problematic behavior might play a role here. I would assume that the negative emotional reaction—be it shame or guilt—is more likely to focus on the self (and not just the specific act) and elicit aggressive or otherwise maladaptive responses (a) the more severe the transgression or failure has been and (b) the lower the chances are for making up or repairing the damage (done to others) or the degradation (inflicted upon oneself). I would further speculate that in the case of shame (compared to guilt) lower levels of severity suffice to involve the entire self—precisely because shame comes through the real or imagined exposure to others. Another factor that might account for focusing negative self-appraisal either on the entire self or conversely on the specific behavior is the degree of autonomy versus heteronomy that marks a person’s conscience (see Section 3 below). So I see little merit in defining “shame” as a negative evaluation focused upon the self and, on the other hand, “guilt” as a self-administered negative evaluation focused upon the “thing done.”7 Shame and guilt should be defined

7 In

the psychological literature on shame and guilt it is often unclear whether a statement saying that “shame” focuses on the self while “guilt” focuses on the transgressive act is meant to give a definition or, rather, meant to offer an empirical proposition claiming, e.g., that the negative evaluation of the entire self is a likely consequence of the experience of “shame”—a term whose semantic meaning would then need to be explicated without making use of the distinction between behavior versus self as the focus of negative evaluations. See, for example, the following statement by Tangney et al.: “Shame is a painful, ugly feeling that involves a global negative evaluation of the entire self. When people feel shame, they feel devalued as a person” (1996, 806). Saying that shame

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in a way that keeps them within the reach of the semantic meaning attached to these terms in common understanding and theoretical literature. It then becomes an empirical question under which circumstances and to what extent feelings of shame and guilt focus on the entire self or instead on the specific act—with differential consequences on the likelihood of inciting reparative, aggressive, or otherwise maladaptive reactions. With regard to the problem of definition, an interesting conceptual distinction is offered by Piers and Singer, who suggest: “Whereas guilt is generated whenever a boundary (set by the super-ego) is touched or transgressed, shame occurs when a goal (presented by the ego ideal) is not being reached. It thus indicates a real ‘shortcoming.’ Guilt anxiety accompanies transgression; shame, failure” (Piers and Singer 1971 [1953], 24; see also Gibbard 1992, 138). The problem with this proposal is its lack of definiteness. Aronfreed (1968, 252), for example, points to situations where a “failure” to achieve something may have harmful consequences for someone else. Depending on the severity of these consequences, a person may experience guilt even though he has done his best and receives no blame from anybody. Aronfreed offers the following solution to the definitional problems: “The aversive state that follows a transgression may be described as guilt to the extent that the quality of the transgressor’s affective experience is determined by moral evaluation of the transgression” (1968, 245). The “core meaning of the term moral . . .can be abstracted both from common usage and from certain traditional distinctions which have been made in moral philosophy. The abstraction is one that designates evaluative cognition as moral when it makes reference to the consequences of an act for others” (ibid.). The consequences that are to be avoided—passively or actively—are those that are, in a very broad sense, harmful to others. Shame, in contrast to this, is not bound to moral evaluation, and is defined as follows: “The aversive state that follows a transgression may be described as shame to the extent that its qualitative experience is determined by a cognitive orientation toward the visibility of the transgression. . .. Common self-observation suggests that some of our actions result in the experience of shame even when they are unknown to others, because they expose to us what we feel ought not to be visible. . . Of course, the experience of shame in the absence of surveillance still requires that salience of the visibility of transgression, either to ourselves or to imagined significant others” (249). Aronfreed here applies the term “transgression” in such a way as to include instances of what Piers calls “failure,” i.e., actions or characteristics which do not violate moral norms but which the person still wishes to keep invisible. According to Aronfreed’s conception, neither intentionality nor high levels of internalization are included within the criteria that define either shame or guilt, but they both may stir up awareness and salience of the problematic character of a transgression or failure. Aronfreed’s reflections are in line with universalistic conceptions of moral thinking. But he also notes that in any specific culture or subculture other rules of

and guilt might become fused occasionally (as cited above) makes little sense if shame and guilt have previously been defined in terms of an opposition (self-focused versus behavior-focused).

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conduct, i.e., conduct having no conceivable impact upon the well-being of others (concerning for example cleanliness, sexual behavior, or achievement at school), may also be placed in a moral context by being associated with notions of “good” and “bad” (or “evil”). A potent indicator for the “moral” nature of a behavioral rule is the indignation or outrage it may elicit in persons who have witnessed the transgression. Another interesting observation is offered by Baumeister et al., who note that the “harm” perceived may reach beyond any specific physical or emotional injury or pain to include inequities or disadvantages on the side of the other person or seemingly undeserved benefits (“positive inequities”) for oneself (1994). A person may feel guilty without having willingly contributed to such a state of affairs; it may be sufficient just to see oneself as being part of a collectivity or system which works that way. This could carry us to the notion of “existential” or “survivor guilt” (cf. Hoffman 1976, 140–142), which I do not, however, want to pursue here. Aronfreed’s and Baumeister’s conceptions thus add clarity to the distinction between shame and guilt without overlooking the complexities and multifaceted nature of empirical phenomena. Besides, as I understand it, they do not conflict with the insights of Lewis and Tangney (and other researchers) into the behavioral consequences of guilt and shame experiences—consequences which are mediated by the degree of involvement of the entire self or, alternatively, focus on the specific act of failure or transgression. Beyond the issue of defining conceptual boundaries regarding shame and guilt, what is most important to the sociologist is indeed the question of what are the varied social–environmental conditions that may precipitate the experience of shame or guilt, and what are the behavioral consequences prompted by shame or guilt feelings. Drawing upon Erikson, Gilligan, for example, notes that coercion or other forms of violation of autonomy tend to produce feelings of shame (Gilligan 2003, 1159). The German sociologist Sighard Neckel relates shame to social status and argues that shame may be the consequence of “distinctions” aspired to but not achieved (Neckel 1991). Just as people under specific conditions experience “existential guilt” (as outlined above), people living at the bottom of a rigid social hierarchy may experience “existential shame.” Piers and Singer propound another interesting hypothesis—that of a shame–guilt cycle. Guilt forms a defense against active aggressive wishes to harm others—the very wishes and impulses that are caused by shame (Piers and Singer 1971, 1168). Guilt can foster passivity, which can easily cause failure and resulting shame, which in turn prompts aggression, which might induce further feelings of guilt, and so on. In a similar vein Gilligan proposes a “negative feedback or homeostatic system” (2003, 1173): the conditions that create or intensify feelings of shame (for example, punishment or humiliation) also decrease feelings of guilt. Helen Lewis also notes that: “Guilt can also be a defence against the feeling of inadequacy in shame” (1971, 91). One example confirming this is a statement made by Eric Harris, one of the two students who committed the Columbine High School shootings in 1999 that left 13 people dead. In his diary the following note was found: “It’s MY fault! Not

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my parents, not my brothers, not my friends, not my favorite bands, not computer games, not the media. IT is MINE.”8 From a sociological perspective, the conceptual distinction between shame and guilt feelings, coupled with the hypothesis that shame propels aggression or withdrawal whereas guilt motivates reparative behavior and the acceptance of punishment, is particularly relevant in view of the assumption that in postindustrial (postmodern) societies mechanisms of shame rather than guilt come to the fore (see, e.g., Giddens 1991; Scheff 1995).9

3 Some Additional Reflections on the Concept of “Conscience” Though conscience continues to be a legitimate concept or object of theoretical reflection within theology and philosophy, this can hardly be said with regard to sociology. In psychology it is still used as a condensation or topical term but it lacks independent analytical meaning, which has been captured instead by more technical terms like the super-ego or ego-ideal within psychoanalytic thinking or, most prominently, by the multi-dimensional concept of “moral consciousness” branching off into “moral judgement” and “moral motivation” which are both assumed— according to cognitive–developmental theory—to evolve over various stages of rising competence. In empirical research, the techniques employed to measure “moral attachment,” “moral beliefs,” or “moral emotions” (like shame or guilt feelings) regularly capture only part of the conceptual richness absorbed by the term “conscience” during the course of its historical development (see, e.g., Kittsteiner 1991). To my knowledge, the last systematic treatment of conscience (“Gewissen”) offered by a renowned sociologist is to be found in an article by Niklas Luhmann published in 1973. Even though Luhmann reclaims the functional importance of “conscience” as materializing in acts of imposing norms upon oneself (“SelbstNormierung”)—something required to preserve personal identity and sustain social interaction—he severs its conceptual ties with moral systems and moral obligations, and locates its sources primarily within the personal biography which is constantly being reconsidered under the premise of coherence and consistency in the face of demands emerging from the social environment.10 He seeks to relegate conscience

8 Jefferson

County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO), Columbine Documents, p. 26,012. Cited from Peter Langman, “Eric Harris: The Search for Justification.” http://www.schoolshooters.info/eric-harrissearch-for-justification.pdf. 9 The sociologist Thomas Scheff even claims that all social interaction is pervaded by either actual shame or embarrassment signals or, much more frequently, by the anticipation of such signals (1995, 1056). 10 Though Luhmann’s “Selbst-Normierung” is reminiscent of a notion proposed by Kohlberg (and others) of voluntary or volitional self-commitment (“Selbstbindung” in German), he (1) does not consider previous stages in the development of moral consciousness which the individual has to pass through in order to reach this higher level of self-commitment, and (2) he disregards the

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to the private sphere and warns that moral discourse is likely to be divisive and disturb the smooth operations of social (sub-)systems in a functionally differentiated society (see the discussion in Thome 2007a). Apart from such theoretical reflections, problematic facets of “conscience” easily come to mind: consider, for example, instances where people are mutilated or killed because somebody (not necessarily a religious fundamentalist) followed the calling of his conscience. A strong conscience based on strong commitments does not apparently guarantee peaceful behavior. A person may be committed to values or ideals that, in his eyes, morally justify the use of violence in contravention of universalistic moral principles (which however might justify the killing of a brutal dictator, for example). On the other hand, such a possibility should not be taken as pretence to generally distrust or ridicule any appeal to conscience. Also, it would seem rather unlikely that a religious fundamentalist, a right-wing extremist, or a leftist guerrilla would commit violent acts out of a lack of self-control. As already indicated, psychological literature has pointed to behavioral or emotional maladjustments (pathologies) that may emanate from an overly suppressive conscience. Strong impulses that, over an extended period of time, remain suppressed by a strong super-ego may occasionally veer into violent aggression. Aside from pathological forms, the ordinary regulative functions of conscience have often been described as being above all inhibitory rather than “enabling.” In philosophy and the history of thought we also encounter various forms of ambivalence or tension inherent to the concept of conscience. On the one hand, conscience is conceived to be the guarantor of the individual’s autonomy and selfdetermination, on the other hand it is conceived as the representative (the “voice”) of some (internalized) authority imposing its will upon the person. Perhaps it is exactly this broad range of possibilities and meanings that renders the notion of “conscience” a useful heuristic device. The social philosopher Rüdiger Safranski who wrote a study on the concept of evil (“das Böse”) remarked in an interview that when thinking about this concept he sought to recharge our descriptive terms with the wealth of meaning that were, as he put it, to be found inside the facts of human life (Der Spiegel, 1996, no. 52, see also Safranski 1997). The concepts we use in scientific discourse, he said, were notoriously more trivial, more innocent or innocuous (“harmloser”) than reality. Just like the idea of evil, conscience too might be a concept (or heuristic) that opens up routes to deeper layers of self and identity. Turning to the cognitive developmental approach in the study of moral consciousness (Piaget, Kohlberg, and their followers), we find that the term “conscience” is brought in mainly as a thematic label to direct attention to the connectives between perceptive reason (“Vernunft,” cognition) and motive forces arising from certain emotions and/or commitments. Various types of conscience are distinguished depending upon the manner in which reasoned judgment is combined with driving

idea that self-commitment is still experienced as an obligation (to adhere to universalistic moral principles) implying “oughtness.”

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or merely concomitant emotions.11 The most famous distinction in this context is that between heteronomous and autonomous conscience. The first type is most prominently exemplified by the Freudian concept of the super-ego, conceived as an internalized authority outside the reach of self-reflective considerations, which rigidly prescribes a certain course of action or non-action. By not following these prescriptions the person incurs severe punishment, the “warm glow” of his pangs of conscience. Anticipatory guilt feelings may force the person to act in accordance with preordained rules. In contrast to this, a person who has advanced to the autonomous type of conscience is able reflectively to distance himself both from the pressure of his impulsive desires and from preordained rules commanding specific actions or non-actions. Regard for underlying principles (second-order desires) replaces the literal and punctual obedience to rules. These universal moral principles enjoy intrinsic validity and are respected out of reasoned insight into their legitimacy; morality and self appear to be inextricably intertwined. According to this model of voluntary self-commitment, Nunner-Winkler explicitly contends that moral conduct is not motivated by emotions, neither by positive ones like sympathetic empathy nor by negative ones like anticipatory guilt feelings (Nunner-Winkler 2003, 583). By following her moral convictions a person maintains or enhances her self-esteem, violating them raises feelings of remorse or regret (rather than shame or guilt) and the desire to engage in reparative behavior.12 It is acknowledged that this model applies only to persons who (already) have “moral identity” (Nunner-Winkler 2003, 6), which in my view renders the argumentation somewhat circular.13 Nunner-Winkler summarizes these ideas by constructing a typology of “conformity motives” based on a cross-classification of two analytical dimensions, called (1) “ego-syntony” and (2) “morality” (2004). The first dimension refers to judgmental processes about the legitimacy of normative or, more specifically, moral rules: Are these judgments based on one’s own consciously reasoned insight and understanding of their validity, or do they follow from quasi-automatic response habits or compulsively rigid super-ego controls? The second dimension refers to the content

11 In

this section I heavily draw upon several papers by Gertrud Nunner-Winkler, in particular “Sociohistoric changes in the structure of moral motivation” (2004). 12 A. Gibbard (1992, 296) expressly notes that he does not distinguish guilt and remorse (1992, 296). He refers, however, to another author (Gabrielle Taylor) who “insists there is a crucial difference: that guilt is an emotion of self-assessment, whereas remorse is not. Guilt concentrates on oneself, and involves feeling disfigured by a transgression. In remorse, the thought concentrates on the deed, seen as one’s own action.” It is noteworthy in this context that Tangney often rephrases “guilt as a sense of remorse or regret” (e.g., in Tangney et al. 1995, 349). 13 On the basis of empirical research, Nunner-Winkler reports that children gain moral insight before they experience feelings of shame or guilt (1999). She interprets this result as supporting the assertion that moral feelings are not constitutive to morality. A lively discussion on these matters among more than two dozen philosophers, social scientists, theologians, and psychologists is to be found in the journal Erwägen, Wissen, Ethik 14, no. 4 (2003). Psychoanalytical literature reports feelings of shame and guilt appearing as early as age two years (see the review article by Hauser (2007)).

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H. Thome Table 1 Nunner-Winkler’s typology of conformity motives Morality

Ego-syntony

High

Low

High

(1) (a) Respect for the moral law (b) Second-order volition bound to moral judgment (3) (a) Super-ego dictates (obligation) (b) Conformity need-disposition

(2) (a) Orientation toward punishment/reward (b) Strategic cost-benefit calculations (4) (a) Super-ego ideals (ambitions) (b) Amoral response habitus

Low

Source: Nunner-Winkler (2004)

of the actor’s intentional state, his willingness to follow moral or rather non-moral rules or interests (see Table 1). This typology raises several questions: (1) Is there a historic evolution from low to high ego-syntony and from high to low commitment to moral rules? (2) If yes, is there a causal nexus between these two processes? For example, does high ego-syntony on average lower the willingness to conform to moral rules if they contradict one’s own personal interests or impulses? (All the more so, perhaps, if “self-care” has been accepted as an element in the set of universalistic moral principles.) In a Durkheimian type of analysis one might give the following interpretation: Shifting the balance from low to high ego-syntony implies the erosion of collectivism, which in turn reduces the propensity to resort to means of violence in interpersonal conflicts (cf. Thome 2007b; Thome and Birkel 2007). Moving from high to low “morality” (in the first row of Table 1) implies shifting the weights from “moral” or cooperative individualism to “egoistic” or disintegrative individualism—which might, once again, reinforce the propensity to resort to violence. (3) What are we to make of a morality not defined in terms of universalistic principles following, for example, Rawl’s or Kohlberg’s conceptions but defined in a more particularistic manner in terms of a specific religion or political ideology? Their presumed validity may also be based on self-conscious reflections and second order volitions. This would, contrary to Kohlberg’s assumptions, imply that voluntary self-commitment (“Selbstbindung”) does not depend exclusively on the post-conventional level of moral judgment.14

14 Anton Leist even maintains that self-autonomy and universality are incongruously related to each

other and that without bringing in non-individual elements self-commitment alone cannot assure compliance with moral norms (2003).

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(4) In which way or to what extent are these motivational types anchored in personality structures and how are they variously and fragmentarily applied to different social contexts and situations? A person does not consistently act according to the highest level of moral consciousness she, in principle, has achieved. It is an empirical question whether or not attachment to moral norms or principles is the only (or major) avenue for constituting a unitary self-perception; it appears possible, or may even be the most regular case, that an attachment to other types of values outside the moral sphere (e.g., striving for professional excellence) serves this identity-constitutive function as well (cf. Nunner-Winkler 1985, 467; Blasi 1993a). This raises the question of how the different “value spheres” are related to each other and how they are ranked as criteria for choosing among alternative routes of action.15 Theoretically, according to philosophers like Kant or Habermas, moral criteria cannot be topped, they can only be dropped. One may decide not to follow a specific moral norm in a given situation, but this can be done only in one of two ways: either one applies a higher-order moral principle or one disregards or relegates morality into a lower-ranked position. For example, under specific circumstances lying may be morally justified by the higher-ranked moral principle of not inflicting harm on another person. But one may also lie in order to secure financial gain at the cost of someone else. One may personally value economic well-being more than “being moral,” but this cannot be justified by applying a criterion inherently superior to moral principles. Rational-choice theorists, for example, work on the assumption that moral principles are adhered to in “low-cost situations” only. This, however, would imply low moral motivation as the regular case. Another perspective is taken by Mordecai Nisan in his conception of “moral balance” (1986, 1993) or Arturo Blasi’s interpretation of identity and self-betrayal (1993b). Individuals differ in how they integrate within their own personal identities moral and non-moral orientations, concern and care for others, and concern and care for oneself. Typically, there is no fixed hierarchy regarding the precedence of moral or non-moral values that would apply to all the decisions involving conflicting values in any situation or set of circumstances the individual has to face. This even applies to persons whose self-identities are centered on their moral convictions. People consciously or unconsciously construct “moral balances” based on their record of moral behavior in the past and its likely continuation in the future. Depending on this record they might reach the conclusion that in a given situation one is justified to prioritize a non-moral value of self-interest (self-realization) without violating some minimal standard set for personal moral balance.

15 At

this point, one might consider Max Weber’s notion of different spheres of values outside morality: “die Ethik (ist) nicht das Einzige, was auf der Welt ,gilt‘, . . . neben ihr (bestehen) andere Wertsphären, deren Werte unter Umständen nur der realisieren kann, welcher ethische ‘Schuld‘ auf sich nimmt” (1973, 504). This translates as: “Ethics is not the only thing that counts in this world . . . alongside it there are other spheres, whose values can sometimes only be realized by those who are prepared to burden themselves with ethical ‘guilt.’”

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As already indicated, there is some discussion as to the role of emotions relative to the role that self-reflective reasoning plays in such processes of decision-taking. Empirical evidence demonstrates that at least after the decision has been taken feelings of self-accusation may arise in both instances of “self-betrayal”: in cases where the non-moral value has been satisfied at the cost of the moral value, but also in such cases where the moral value has been given priority over the non-moral value (as long as the non-moral value, too, is constitutive to the self). Apart from situations where moral and non-moral values oppose each other, there are other situations where one moral domain (e.g., caring for one’s family) comes into conflict with another (e.g., engaging in a time-consuming political struggle against ethnic discrimination). And here again, even though the person may be certain that the decision she has taken is indeed the intrinsically correct one, she might still experience guilt feelings because she had to neglect (though by perceived necessity) the other (moral) concern (Edelstein and Nunner-Winkler 1993, 13).16 This demonstrates that guilt feelings may derive not only from a heteronomous, but also from an autonomous conscience, but the exact content of those experiences, the occasions that give rise to them and their behavioral consequences may still differ widely. Some philosophers and social scientists (like Charles Taylor, Martin Seel, Hans Joas) present yet another model of moral commitment which departs from the dichotomy of autonomous versus heteronomous conscience by reconstructing a type of conscience that is rooted in the experience of self-transcendence. Such an experience need not be of a religious nature, but the question has probably been elaborated most extensively within this context. A good example is given by Paul Ricoeur in his reflections on “theonomy” (1996, see also Joas 2004): those who believe in God and are imbued with and empowered by the spirit of divine love (based on their own experiences) are strongly motivated (without feeling pressured into it) to transmit this love into their encounters with other people. Acting in this way is not a “duty” but an inclination linked to an external reference, to something considered to be greater than oneself (Taylor). In this conception, the functional capacities of conscience are not reduced to passing judgment, inflicting sanctions, or imposing reparative actions (all of which remain important, though); rather, conscience is conceived primarily as a source of empowerment: to act in a way which transcends self-interest.17 Nunner-Winkler believes that social changes during the last decades have opened up better chances for individuals to advance to the autonomous type of conscience (2004). But she also notes a risk in that: conformity based on high ego-syntony appears to be somewhat fragile. The self-administered translation of moral principles into specific norms and concrete behavior leaves ample room for interpretations that have tacitly been shaped by one’s own personal interests. There is a risk “that 16 This

might be interpreted within the scheme of cognitive dissonance theory. we have to keep in mind that experiences of self-transcendence do not always pave the way toward love and peace. Bandura et al. even observe: “The massive threats to human welfare stem mainly from deliberate acts of principle rather than from unrestrained acts of impulse” (1996, 372).

17 Again,

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with increasing self-proximal expedience of moral conformity, even formerly reliable barriers to amoralism will be torn down. Ultimately it is often a fine line between situatively appropriate flexibility and sheer opportunism for—as Luhmann remarks—‘good reasons are plentiful’” (Nunner-Winkler 2000, 239).18 That is, there is only a tenuous barrier separating adequate “flexibility” in the face of specific circumstances present in a given situation and, on the other side, blinkered opportunism guided by selfish interests. This is reminiscent of Bandura’s theory of “moral disengagement” (Bandura et al. 1996) and the criminological theory of “techniques of neutralization” already mentioned in Section 2 (for a recent review of the literature see Maruna and Copes 2005). Disengaging oneself from a specific “universe of moral obligations” does not imply disengagement from all moral obligations. One may speak of multiple universes of moral obligation or of one “universe” subdivided into different layers, segments, or fragments—some of them fitting nicely together, others vehemently opposing each other. Moral rules adhered to and even taken for granted by the members of a specific group or culture may contravene universalistic moral principles. In their routine activities, people not only move within and across functionally differentiated social domains, they also belong to different groups, communities, or subcultures which might maintain divergent or even contradictory moral rules. This does not necessarily lead to confusion, anomie, or conflict, but it may do so, and it may activate, among other things, the application of neutralization techniques (mentioned above). When interviewing violent perpetrators detained in a German prison, it became quite clear to me that some of them kept shifting around between different moral (sub-)universes or had ordered these into hierarchies that suited their need to justify what they had done or planned to do. In one case, robbing a supermarket had been recognized by the perpetrator (a young member of a non-German ethnic group) to be morally problematic in general. But in this specific case (both before and after carrying out his plan) it did not appear to him to be unjustified on moral grounds, because in his view it had to be done as part of defending his honor and duty as a father following an intra-ethnic family conflict that the other side had taken to court. As a defendant seeking to maintain his status as a father he had to pay a lawyer; and since he did not have enough money to do this he finally decided to rob a supermarket (allegedly without hurting anybody). Though this project was merely the culmination in a long record of less serious criminal offenses, the young man, when asked to indicate to me what he thought was most characteristic of him, gave only one response: “I am a good boy,” and insisted that he had no other answer to the question “Who am I?” He was not just trying to fool or impress the interviewer, he sincerely wanted to believe it himself. He strongly agreed that every decision should conform to the basic principles of right and wrong, but he also explained that

18 Our translation. Original: “daß mit einer zunehmend ich-näheren Verfügbarkeit der moralischen

Konformitätsbereitschaft auch ehedem zuverlässige Barrieren gegen die Amoral geschleift werden. Schließlich ist oft nur ein schmaler Grat zwischen situativ angemessener Flexibilität und schierem Opportunismus, denn—wie Luhmann anmerkt—‘gute Gründe gibt es viele’.”

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it would definitely be more important to him to be faithful to a friend than to abide by the law.

4 Concluding Remarks I argued in the first section that it makes little sense to play off the concept of “self-control” against the concept of “conscience” (moral judgment and moral commitment). The two can be related in different ways. The approach emphasized here is to integrate both within a wider concept of human agency which refers to capacities and commitments that have to be balanced out to serve at least three functional requirements: (1) the expression of self-identity and belonging, (2) the instrumental or strategic competence to pursue one’s interests, (3) a willingness to abide by moral and other types of social rules which help to maintain cooperative social relationships. To meet these requirements, the actor must have access to certain resources; he has to be in control not only of himself, he also needs to exercise some measure of control over his social and natural environment. The distinction between personal capacities and moral commitments carries over (second section) into the distinction between shame and guilt as conceived by Piers and Singer (1971 [1953]), Aronfreed (1968), Lewis (1971), and others. Guilt follows the transgression of a moral norm the person herself is committed to: harming another person or a deed (or omission) considered “bad” for some other reason; shame follows the experience of failure, a demonstrated weakness or lack of competence perceived (in reality or imagination) by significant others. Though shame and guilt may intermingle, the standards on which a person may “fail” and subsequently experience shame cover a broad range of behavior beyond the moral sphere. It is probably the case that people in general experience (or anticipate) shame more often than guilt. In modern (widely marketized) societies where “success” and standards of “excellence” gain prevalence in many spheres of social life, and where the “inner-directed” personality loses ground relative to the “outer-directed” personality (David Riesman) the avoidance of shame may become more urgent and, in case of conflict, may even prevail over the avoidance of guilt. These observations are immediately relevant to criminologists who have learnt from psychological research (quoted in Section 2) that the experience of shame—contrary to guilt—may trigger violent reactions. This should direct attention to possible pitfalls connected with strategies like “reintegrative shaming” or other situational crime prevention models that apply techniques that make the presumed or actual offender feel guilty or ashamed. Section 3 reflects upon several other conceptual issues, primarily those related to the cognitive–developmental approach in the analysis of moral consciousness. With respect to our general thematic concern, two points are particularly relevant here. First, we note that contrary to earlier assumptions entertained by Kohlberg, the (motivational) level of moral commitment may diverge from (or lag behind) the (cognitive) level of moral judgment. Second, the presumably highest level of moral reasoning (based on unforced insight concerning universal principles of justice and

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harm avoidance rather than on particularistic rules of moral appropriateness that apply within specific cultures or social groups) lends itself to alternative interpretations of what might be morally required or permitted in a specific situation—that is, it may pave the way to the temptations of “moral disengagement” and invite the application of rationalization or neutralization techniques. This, in turn, might motivate the researcher to look out for alternative, less cognitivistic conceptualizations of moral consciousness and to pay (once again) more attention to different forms of social practices and emotions supporting, stimulating, or undermining personal commitment to moral obligations. When researching or theorizing about the impact of conscience on deviant or aggressive behavior, criminologists can profit a great deal from following Tibbetts and Gibson’s advice to take a close look at the extant psychological literature (2002, 11–19). They should not, however, neglect to do their own qualitative fieldwork (while keeping an eye on ethnographic studies). We obviously need to know more about how different groups of people (not just those who have already been labeled “deviant”) define their moral obligations and construct a moral balance in specific situations and shifting biographical contexts. How do reflective reasoning and feelings of shame or guilt interact, how are they communicated (if at all) to others (and to whom specifically)? Under which circumstances are moral arguments considered to be inappropriate, illegitimate, or even embarrassing—and when are they felt to be essential? Conscience should not only get studied in cases where it has failed, but also where it has routinely—or under exceptional circumstances—worked out in a positive way. My interviews with violent offenders suggest that it is often the disruption of daily routines, the failure to find a “rhythm”—the ordered sequence of movements and activities that carries a person through the day—that may propel him to create his own inverted normalcy (and rhythm) by engaging in deviant, even violent, conduct.19

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19 On

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Reading Religious Violence in Terms of Theories of Social Action Hans G. Kippenberg

The prevalent view in Europe today is that religions are intolerant (Greeley 2003, 77–80). From the 1970s onwards, there has been no shortage of news to lend this view plausibility. There can be no doubt that religions have a potential for violence, and this observation is not new. When he contemplated the violence inflicted by faith communities in the age of the European religious wars, Thomas Hobbes (1588– 1679) sought the solution in a strong state. As the highest authority on earth, the sovereign must control the religious communities and keep them, together with the theologians and clergy, in check (1651). In the twentieth century, Carl Schmitt went on to draw the conclusion that it was the task of the modern state to neutralize the yearning of the religions for salvation (1979 [1932]). Hans Blumenberg (1983) gave this idea a new twist with the assertion that the legitimacy of the secular modern age consists precisely in this task. A completely different view arose, however, even during Hobbes’ lifetime. In his book “On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law” which was read throughout Europe, Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694) maintained that religion is the most important and most solid bond of human society. Without religion, the states would lose their inner solidity, and the citizens would have no conscience (Pufendorf 1991, chapter 4, §9). Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) discovered this book and extended its thesis. In order to recognize his duties, a human being needs neither philosophers nor theologians. The study of the sacred writings that contain the revelations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam brings no relevant knowledge. It is not the judgments of one’s reason, but of one’s heart that are the best teacher (1762). While Hobbes had considerable reservations about the conscience, on political grounds, Rousseau regarded it an infallible authority, which prescribes the maxims of societal behavior in a reliable and obligatory manner. But what is in fact correct? Is the social bond, where this is based on religions, something bad, something dangerous to society—or is it something good, something socially productive?

H.G. Kippenberg (B) School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

W. Heitmeyer et al. (eds.), Control of Violence, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0383-9_6,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

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As long as one could assume that in the modern nation-state religion was a matter for the individual, this problem lacked all urgency. One protagonist was the celebrated sociologist of religion, Peter L. Berger, who predicted in 1967 that religions in the modern world would retreat into the private sphere, and that they would continue to exist in the public sphere only in the form of political rhetoric (Berger 1967, 134). This may be how things looked for a time: communal religion may have seemed to be the loser in the modern age. But a different verdict is required today. The continuous expansion of religious communities in the United States and the runaway growth of Protestant communities worldwide bear witness to the new situation—as does the wave of new mosque-building in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.

1 On the Connection Between Monotheism and Violence It was Jan Assmann, a scholar of ancient religions, who identified a close connection between monotheism and violence. He interpreted the remarkable link between the biblical Moses and Egypt as a faded reminiscence of a reform by Pharaoh Echnaton, who wanted to replace the many Egyptian deities with the one sun god Re (Assmann 1998). The attempt to impose an exclusive monotheism failed in Egypt, but succeeded later in Israel: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods besides me. (Exodus 20:2–3)

The “counter-religion” of Moses could only be the true worship of one God as opposed to the false worship of many deities. Even in Israel, it was not possible to enforce this without violence. But Assmann does not regard the relevant biblical narratives as instances of violence that was actually inflicted. They do not tell us how monotheism was in fact enforced, but how people remembered its ascension, Assmann argues (2003, 36). The language of violence that monotheism speaks is a “semantic paradigm” that has taken on a life of its own and does not per se generate violence (Assmann 2006, 21). When acts of violence are attested in Judaism, the victims are persons who have fallen away from the Jewish faith; violent activity directed at people outside Judaism arises only at a later date, and are the outcome of manipulation. The semantic dynamite that lies in the sacred texts of the monotheistic religions is kindled, not in the hands of the believers, but in the hands of the fundamentalists whose aim is to get political power and who make use of it in order to win over the masses to their side (Assmann 2006, 57). Assmann’s reconstruction has initiated a broad and lively discussion. Its great merit is that it takes seriously, both historically and systematically, the violent aspect of monotheism and offers an acute and precise reconstruction of a long tradition of violent religious language. One must, however, ask critically whether Assmann does not define too narrowly the violence practiced in Jewish monotheism, when he limits it to the case of apostasy. Another important case is the violence practiced by

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the Jewish community against enemies who wanted to destroy it. After the Jews returned from Babylonian captivity in the fifth century BCE, they received from the Persians the privilege of an autonomous legal community and were allowed to establish a province in Palestine, which was administered under regulations derived from the social legislation of the Book of Deuteronomy (Nehemiah 10). This community added to Assmann’s “Mosaic distinction” between the true God and the many false gods, a societal differentiation between freedom and slavery. All members of the community were morally obliged to ensure that their fellows were protected from permanent enslavement (Kippenberg 1983). When the temple in Jerusalem was desecrated in the second century BCE by Hellenistic rulers in collusion with apostate Jews, who sought to deprive the community of its sacred ordering, Jews started resisting. When a fellow Jew was willing to offer a pagan sacrifice on the orders of a royal official, the priest Mattathias, the father of the Maccabees, slew both the apostate and the official. “Thus he burned with zeal for the law, just as Phinehas did against Zimri son of Zalu” (1 Maccabees 2: 23–26). Then he cried out: “Let everyone who is zealous for the law and supports the covenant come out with me!” and fled with his sons into the mountains, in order to organize the struggle against the apostates and the Hellenistic ruler (1 Maccabees 2: 27–28; Schäfer 1983, 62–77). The Book of Daniel interpreted the dramatic events of the desecration and defiling of the sanctuary as a turning point in Israel’s history and as the prelude to a new age of salvation. Those who died on behalf of the ancestral laws in the fight against the godless were regarded as martyrs who would be awakened to eternal life (Daniel 12:2; 2 Maccabees 7:9 and 14). From that time on, violence in defense of the Jewish faith community against its enemies became a religious ideal (van Henten 1989). We see therefore that monotheism had already put a script for action into the hands of believing Jews in classical antiquity, justifying communal violence against pagan authorities when the community was threatened—as occurred in the Maccabean revolt. Yet, we see the very same Jewish insurgents making a treaty of alliance with the pagan Roman senate, when this political body granted the Jewish community independence and self-administration (1 Maccabees 8:17–30). The biblical justification for such a treaty was found in God’s covenant with Noah and his descendants, which also included pagan nations (Genesis 9:1–17; Schmidinger 2003, 23–26). Other monotheistic instances of violence likewise argue against there being an automatic link between monotheism and violence. There is a link between them, but it is neither necessary nor impossible—it is contingent (Makropoulos 2004). Monotheistic worldviews and ethics are misconceived when we assume their validity independent of the situation of the believers. Since they are quite diverse and the religious tradition is quite capable of maintaining contradictory ideas side by side, believers have to choose those they regard as appropriate to their situation (Joas 1996, 235). The practical effects of religious worldviews and ethics depend on how believers frame their situation. But also the reverse is true: the frame they select determines the way they act. Understanding this relationship is crucial for understanding and coping with religious violence.

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2 American Scenarios of Violence: From Jonestown to Waco and from Waco to the Freemen of Montana The first case I wish to examine from the perspective outlined above was the murder and mass suicide committed by the North American Peoples Temple group in 1978. An American community of young and to show how dangerous adherence to the cult might be old, men and women, poor and wealthy, and— most unusually—white and black, who had become disciples of the minister and healer Jim Jones, aspired to become a new kind of society, without discrimination against the old, women, or black people; and they rejected the sexual norms of bourgeois America. The response to that challenge was anger: relatives launched public campaigns against Jones and his “cult,” as they called it; apostates fomented the rage; the media published reports about sinister practices inside the community. Citing practices of forced persuasion among American prisoners of war in Korea, parents commissioned psychologists to undo the “brainwashing” of their kids. After failing to avert the newspapers’ attacks through the courts, Jim Jones emigrated with his community to the small socialist country of Guyana in South America. The practice of exodus or hijra, abandoning all relations of kinship and social obligations, is a well-known pattern in the rise of religious communities that reject the dominant culture. But even in Guyana they were not safe in their attempt to establish a counterculture. A delegation of concerned relatives showed up, led by a congressman, and exerted pressure on the community. After some members started giving in, announcing their departure for the United States and thus endangering the continuance of the community, the tensions discharged in a bloody confrontation on the airfield that left five dead. One hour later the “white night” began: the members of the community committed suicide by poison and killed each other by means of firearms—an act that fitted with earlier statements by Jim Jones that believers should prefer a self-inflicted death to forced subjugation under the destructive powers of this world. By morning more than 900 were dead. The group’s adversaries regarded the outcome as a confirmation of their misgivings: Jim Jones was a false prophet; the persuasion of the followers must have been generated by brute force. For years “Jonestown” was cited as proof how dangerous adherence to a ‘cult’ might be. Among the first to break that spell was Jonathan Z. Smith. If historians of religions continued to treat Jonestown as un-understandable, he contended, they were abrogating their academic responsibilities (Smith 1982, 104). Scholars responding to his appeal performed an unbiased investigation of the event and 10 years after the event published a reading of what had happened that contradicted the received wisdom. Listen to the conclusion John Hall drew from his investigation: The key to understanding mass suicide at Jonestown lies in the recurrent dynamics of conflict between religious communities claiming autonomy and external political orders. In the general case a demand to submit to the external order forces a choice within the community between the sacred and evil. The choice brings religious conviction to a question of honor, and is the seedbed of martyrdom. (Hall 1987, 296)

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Rebecca Moore and Fielding McGehee III (1989) came to a similar conclusion, as did David G. Bromley later (1998). Salvation and Suicide by David Chidester (1998) addressed the manner by which Jim Jones and his community were denied the status of authentic religion and examined how that “cognitive distancing” occurred. Crucial was the concept of “cult”—an American stereotype for exotic religions such as “voodoo” that has been in use since the beginning of the twentieth century. Religions labeled as “cult” are turned into a psychiatric illness; the believers deserve to be treated as mentally ill. The concept of “cult” still determined the official attitude toward alternative religious groups when the Waco incident occurred in 1993 (Hall et al. 2000; Newport 2006). A community of Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists was suspected of illegal activities. When law-enforcement agents made an unannounced incursion into the compound, the members resisted violently. The FBI sealed off the community and, over loudspeakers, ordered the followers to leave the compound. When nobody came out, the agents assumed that they were being held against their will by their leader. After a standoff lasting weeks, the head of the team decided to launch a hostage rescue operation, with the backing of the administration in Washington. The community defended itself, fire broke out, and by the end 74 people had died. In order to understand the course of events the Department of Justice of the Clinton administration commissioned an investigation. Reports were also prepared by scholars of religion. Lawrence Sullivan (1996) focused on the tacit assumptions underlying the operation. The people in charge were convinced that a genuine faith must be personal and internal; a conviction allowing for violent actions does not merit the designation “religion.” “Without taking into consideration the religious motives of the actors, the attitudes and actions of the participants are miscast in the terms of a ‘hostage and rescue operation,’” he wrote (Sullivan 1996, 227). The Adventists, on the other hand, understood the confrontation with the law and the subsequent siege in terms of the Book of Revelation. When their leader started explaining verses of the book on the phone, the agents dismissed it as “Bible babble.” Historians of religion from a nearby college, who knew this type of community very well, were not allowed to take part in the negotiations. So the people in charge remained unaware that they were staging the godless Babylon and through their own actions corroborating the Adventists’ belief that they lived in an age of increasing power of evil. Another report, by Nancy Ammerman, emphasized that the community’s belief was similar to dozens of other Christian millenarian groups, and laid the blame for the violent outcome on the law-enforcement officials who “fell victim to the images inherent in the label ‘cult’” (1995, 285). Both scholars of religion, Sullivan and Ammerman, provided ample evidence that the FBI missed the opportunity to integrate knowledge of religious communities into its interactions with the later perpetrators/victims. This conclusion was substantiated 2 years later, in 1995, when a similar situation arose again. The Freemen of Montana, a Christian group likewise claiming to live in the “Last Days,” refused to pay taxes to the wicked state. When their conflict with officials escalated, they found their belief confirmed that the government in Washington must be the satanic power,

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the “Babylon” of the Book of Revelation. For months, the FBI laid siege to a ranch belonging to the group. But this time the FBI engaged religious experts who advised the FBI to abstain from any action that the Freemen could interpret as a confirmation of their own definition of the situation. This time the conflict was brought to an end by negotiation (Wessinger 2000, 158–217). Two years later, representatives of the American Academy of Religion and members of the FBI’s “Critical Incident Response Group” met for an exchange of ideas. At this meeting, according to a report by Catherine Wessinger, “the agents said they were receptive to using religious studies scholars as advisers and as ‘worldview translators’ in cases involving religious groups” (Wessinger 2000, 202). There cases contain lessons for understanding religious violence and coping with it. First, there was no causal and compelling relationship between the faith of the believers and the violent outcome of the conflict. The cases confirm the hypothesis that beliefs are not activated independently of the situation in which believers happen to be. Whether a belief is put into practice or not depends on the definition of the situation. “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences,” states the Thomas Theorem that is fundamental to the theory of social action (Thomas and Thomas 1928, 572; Esser 1999, 63; 2000 and 2001). Second, external conditions do not dictate the manner in which they are interpreted; a situation must be “framed” by the actors choosing from a variety of transmitted beliefs and practical models those that adequately interpret the conditions and provide guidance for action. The authority of a given tradition is not inherent to it, but derives from the situation in which it is validated. When law-enforcement defines that situation in terms that ignore the religious framing of the situation inside the community (e.g., as a hostage-taking), any possibility of preventing escalation is lost.

3 Scenarios of Religious Violence in the Middle East Conflict These cases and their investigation can help us understand the conflict in the Middle East. The victory of Israel in the Six-Day War created a situation that the opposing sides interpret very differently. In modern international law, military occupation does not constitute a legitimate acquisition of territory. After Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza in the Six-Day War, the UN Security Council demanded that all involved states in the region recognize one another and that Israel withdraw its troops from the occupied territories. But the famous Resolution 242 contains an inexactitude. The English wording ran “Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;” in French, of equal rank in the United Nations, it reads “Retrait des forces armées israéliennes des territoires occupés lors du récent conflit.” Is Israel required to return all occupied territories as the French version suggests or is there some latitude for negotiations? The answer can be found in the drafting process of the English version on which the Security Council voted. The definite article was omitted deliberately in order to allow Israel

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to have a secure border that need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 1949.1 The inaccuracy coincided in Israel with the emergence of a new religious movement that wanted something different than corrections to the Demarcation Line. Religious Zionists interpreted the military occupation of biblical land as part of the messianic process. The end of exile approaches, Israel begins to be restored in the Promised Land including the occupied territories. Following this definition of the situation, they established new settlements in what they called Judea and Samaria. The Labor government was divided over this issue, while the Likud government that succeeded it in 1977 not only supported settlements, but also planned and organized them itself (Gorenberg 2006). On the issue of the charge of unlawful annexation of the West Bank by Israel the new Prime Minister Menachem Begin said: “You can annex foreign land. You cannot annex your own country.” Judea and Samaria are regarded as part of the land of Israel, where the nation was born (Quigley 2005, 176).

3.1 Israel’s Wars of Redemption and Settlements in the Occupied Territories The unexpected victory created a situation that enabled a revolutionary religious definition. From its very beginning in the nineteenth century, the Zionist enterprise of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine has met with resistance from Orthodox Jews. Only the Messiah could put an end to exile and restore Israel to the Promised Land. Before that time Jews in Palestine were only allowed to study the Bible and to pray; a Jew who settles in Palestine and cultivates its soil betrays the covenant with God (Ravitzky 1996, 43–45). It was in the Orthodox camp that a new reading of secular Zionism was developed. At his Yeshiva, Rabbi Abraham Isaak Kook (1865–1935) taught an interpretation of Zionism that resembled Hegel’s philosophy of history: the messianic process advances independently of the secular intentions of the Zionist settlers. His son Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook (1891–1982), who succeeded him, attracted great attention through a sermon he held shortly before the Six-Day War in 1967 (Aran 1997). All of a sudden during his speech he began to shout, rocked by grief. Nineteen years ago, he told his audience, when the news came that the United Nations had voted in favor of partitioning the land and created a Jewish state, the entire nation celebrated; but he sat alone and could not accept that the verse had been fulfilled: “They have divided my land.” And he began roaring: “Where is our Hebron, where Shechem, where Jericho, where Anathoth? They are torn from Israel” (Gorenberg 2006, 21–23). Three weeks later, Israel’s troops corrected that state of affairs. No wonder Kook and his adherents saw the military success as a stage in the redemption of the biblical Land of Israel. Students and rabbis from his school were prominent in organizing 1 http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/240/94/IMG/NR024094.

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Jewish settlements in biblical places—against a hesitant Labor government. What they needed was the approval of the army, since the territories were under martial law. The “Bloc of the Faithful” (Gush Emunim), as the adherents of Kook’s doctrine came to be called, organized settlements but encountered increasing resistance on the part of Palestinians (Aran 1991). Between 1981 and 1987, there were more than 3000 violent attacks on Jews, mostly by rock-throwing Arabs; the settlers retaliated with a growing number of violent acts. The intifada that erupted in December 1987 was preceded by a slow but incremental increase in intercommunal violence, as Ehud Sprinzak, professor of political science at the Hebrew University, reported in his study on the ascendance of Israel’s radical right. The intifada has simply greatly increased the intensity of these clashes (Sprinzak 1991, 148). The religious settlers interpreted the Palestinian resistance as a new manifestation of the eternal hate of gentiles for the chosen nation. This framing of the situation determined the manner in which these settlers dealt with their Palestinians neighbors. While a preceding secular generation of Jewish settlers entertained peaceful relations with them, the religious settlers, representatives of the occupying power and empowered by martial law, saw themselves as the genuine owners of the land. The messianic framing of the situation determined their everyday attitude toward the Palestinians, including a disregard for international law prohibiting any occupying power from establishing settlements for its own population in occupied territories. In this situation tensions increased inside Israel too, in particular when peace negotiations were imminent (Sprinzak 1999). The settlers and the Rabbinical Council of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza declared that returning already redeemed parts of the biblical Land of Israel to the Palestinians would be apostasy. After the treaty of Oslo in 1993 the tensions discharged in acts of violence. In 1994 a Jewish settler named Baruch Goldstein carried out a massacre among Muslims praying in the Cave of Machpelah near Hebron, a tomb of Jewish patriarchs and sacred to all three Abrahamic religions. A commemorative volume celebrating “Baruch, the Man” was published the following year (Sprinzak 1999, 259–266), and a tombstone was erected praising him: Here lies the saint, Dr. Baruch Kappel Goldstein, blessed be the memory of the righteous and holy man, may the Lord avenge his blood, who devoted his soul to the Jews, Jewish religion and Jewish land. His hands are innocent and his heart is pure. He was killed as a martyr of God on the 14th of Adar, Purim, in the year 5754.2

When, in 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin expressed readiness to negotiate over Biblical territories, the heads of the Rabbinical Council of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza discussed the Halakhic ruling that a Jew who betrays the community through acts that result in the loss of innocent lives may be killed without a trial (Sprinzak 1999, 254). In 1995 a student of the Bar Ilan University assassinated Prime Minster Rabin, claiming to be acting in accordance with that ruling. The conflict between the state of Israel and the adjacent Arab states over the partition of Palestine, recognition of Israel, and the return of occupied territories 2 http://www.fact-index.com/b/ba/baruch_goldstein.html

(accessed September 29, 2009).

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has shifted to become a struggle between two communities claiming the same territory on religious grounds—a shift that has created tensions and frictions within the Jewish community itself.

3.2 Struggling for Palestine as Islamic Waqf A similar shift occurred on the Palestinian side. The Palestinian Liberation Organization was established in the 1960s on the model of the anti-colonial liberation movements and claimed to represent all Palestinians, Christians included. Its goal was an Arab state in the borders of the former British Mandate. But not all the relevant Palestinian groups joined the umbrella organization. The Muslim Brothers in Gaza did not regard the time as ripe for an armed struggle, saying that there first had to be a fight against destructive western cultural influences and a re-Islamization of society and the individual; only at an advanced stage of that process, they said, could an armed struggle against Israel be waged. Under present conditions, jihad was put into practice by creating and running Islamic social institutions—mosques, schools, libraries, hospitals. This ethic of activist solidarity turned Islam—especially in Gaza—into a social power. In the beginning Israel supported the Muslim Brothers as an apparently apolitical opponent to the PLO (Abu-Amr 1994, 35–36). With the decline of the power and solidarity of the Arab nations after the Six-Day War, the PLO lost some of its reputation inside Palestine. A younger generation was frustrated by the alternative of joining either a weakened secular movement or an apolitical Islam. A third option came in 1987, when Palestinians started the uprising (intifada) and the leaders of the Muslim Brothers in Gaza decided not to cede its coordination to the PLO and its United National Command. Instead they created a movement of their own: Hamas (an Arabic acronym for harakat al muqawama al-Islamiyya or “Islamic Resistance” Movement, which literally means “zeal”). Already in its first communiqué Hamas gave the clashes with the Israel Defense Forces a distinct religious meaning. Those who were killed had, it said: offered their lives in the path of God to uphold their nation’s glory and honor, to restore our rights in our homeland, and to elevate God’s banner in the land. This is a true expression of the spirit of sacrifice and redemption that characterizes our people . . .. A nation that welcomes death shall never die. (Hroub 2000, 265)

In its Charter, published in August 1988, Hamas presented itself as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine (Article 2). It strives to raise the banner of God over every inch of Palestine (Article 6): Palestine is Islamic land that has been entrusted to generations of Muslims until the Day of Judgment. (Art. 11). Nationalism (wataniya) . . . is part and parcel of religious ideology (Art. 12). There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except though struggle (jihad) (Art. 13). (Hroub 2000, 273–275)

While Gush Emunim activated the concept of eretz Yisrael to claim the occupied territories for Jewish settlers, Hamas claimed them as Islamic waqf, as trust—a concept elaborated in the conflict with Jewish claims during the 1930s (Krämer 2002, 137).

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In 1991 Hamas established a military wing, named after the martyr Izz al-Din al-Qassem (a Palestinian martyr of the 1930s who had propagated jihad against foreign occupation by British troops and Jewish settlers as a personal duty). The violence performed by the cells of the new brigade, often suicide attacks, was not independent of external conditions. The first campaign of attacks was triggered by the massacre committed by Dr. Baruch Goldstein in 1994; another one in 2000 by Ariel Sharon’s claim of Israel’s sovereignty over the Temple Mount—a place sacred to Muslims and administered by them. As Robert A. Pape (2005) has shown, campaigns of suicide attacks in Palestine, Lebanon were triggered by acts of aggression and humiliation at the hands of an occupying power. The violence was backed by a religious understanding of history. After the defeat of 1967, apocalyptic thinking and writing enjoyed a revival among Sunnis in the Arab world. It provided an explanation of how the small state of Israel could be able to defeat the much bigger Arab armies and conquer Jerusalem and the West Bank. Here too, a messianic interpretation of the present situation provided the key. At the end of time, before the Mahdi arises, the Dajjal (a kind of Antichrist) seizes power, and rules over a world filled with injustice and tyranny—as is occurring now in Jerusalem. As David Cook points out in his study of contemporary Muslim apocalypticism, the Sunni authors knew and adopted parts of the Protestant premillennarian vision of the end of time, according to which Jerusalem is the capital of the Antichrist before he comes to be defeated in battle at Armageddon, in northern Israel (2005, 184–200).

3.3 American Protestants Looking for a Restoration of Israel in Palestine Jews and Palestinians both defined the new situation in Palestine after 1967 in religious terms from which they derived scripts for action. Instead of stating their claims in terms of a mutual recognition of states, both sides based them on religious grounds. This change occurred in American policy as well. While the Carter Administration was convinced that any establishment of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories was inconsistent with international law, his successor President Reagan declared in an interview in 1981: “I disagreed when the previous administration referred to them [settlements] as illegal—they’re not illegal” (New York Times, Feb. 3, 1981). He regarded the territories not as occupied, but as contested; not only the Palestinians, but also Israel too had valid reasons to claim them. This new framing of the conflict by the United States converged with a Protestant religious current in the United States that has grown steadily over the course of the twentieth century: premillennialism. The new government of President Reagan acclaimed the idea of a restoration of Israel in the Holy Land; the Islamic concept of the land as endowment of the Prophet, as waqf, provoked only irritated reactions. It is, however, wrong to see the preferential treatment given to Israel as linked mainly to a Jewish Lobby (Mearsheimer and Watt 2007). Rather, it is the fruit of one particular type of Protestantism, which has become a powerful force in domestic US politics. The

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Protestant commitment to a restoration of Israel was rooted in a specific eschatological scenario. American Protestants believe that the biblical promises to Israel did not pass to the Christian church—a widespread view in Christian theology—but still applied to the Jewish people. The process of the restoration of Israel had begun in keeping with the unfulfilled prophecies; we are now shortly before the start of the final millennium. Because of this eschatological conviction, which had been spreading in the United States since the nineteenth century, Protestants followed the political events surrounding the foundation of the state of Israel with breathless excitement. In his book On the Road to Armageddon, Timothy Weber describes the impact that Israel’s occupation of biblical land had on these Christians, “For the first time, [the Protestants] believed that it was necessary to leave the bleachers and get onto the playing field to make sure the game ended according to the divine script” (2004, 15). This view has become extraordinarily popular in the United States since the 1970s, thanks to books and DVDs (such as Left Behind) (Forbes and Kilde 2004). Today, between 40 and 50 million Americans sympathize with an eschatological scenario of this kind, and they constitute a powerful reservoir of voters who believe that history is advancing on the road to Armageddon and that the restitution of Israel is part of the preordained end of the world. They expect that one of the next steps would be the re-establishing of the Jewish temple, and some say openly that the Islamic Dome of the Rock must be destroyed first (Gorenberg 2000). Despite their conviction that at the end of time the Jews will have to convert to Christianity or suffer annihilation there are close ties between the Jewish settler movement and American fundamentalists.

3.4 The Semantics of “Resistance Fighter” Versus “Terrorist” The transition to a religious conflict had an impact on concepts and definitions of the enemy. On June 8, 1977, an Additional Protocol (I) to the Geneva Convention was adopted, to apply the rules of the Convention to an instance that had not previously received consideration, namely to armed conflicts in which people fight against colonial rule, foreign occupation, and racist regimes in pursuit of their right to self-determination, as defined in the Charter of the United Nations. This meant that Palestinian resistance organizations too had a right to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention—assuming that they themselves observed it. The new legal situation provoked vigorous counter-reactions in Israel and the United States. Two conferences were held in Jerusalem and Washington with the declared goal of mobilizing the west to fight against terrorism. The organizers, who included Benjamin Netanyahu, emphatically rejected the “idea that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”—since “That is what the terrorists want us to believe.” In reality, they said, terrorists were intentionally and deliberately killing innocent persons and this meant that terrorism had to be defined differently: Terrorism is the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends. (Netanyahu 1986, 9)

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George P. Schultz, US Secretary of State from 1983 to 1989, attended the second conference, and accepted the new definition. In his contribution, he wrote that if one grasped the meaning of this definition, it would not be difficult to distinguish between terrorists and freedom fighters. For example, the fighters in Afghanistan (the mujahedeen) and the Contras in Nicaragua were not killing innocent persons: they were resistance fighters, not terrorists. This kind of notion of terrorism became a crucial element in the new scenario of violence. In 1983, the US State Department published a definition of terrorism: The term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

This definition avoids considering the legitimacy of resistance against foreign occupation and the illegitimacy of state violence against innocent civilians. It suspends the dialectics of “one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” (Kennedy 1999). Instead, it sets up two opposing categories: genuine freedom fighters, supported by the United States, and brutal terror organizations listed annually by the US State Department and persecuted globally. While in moral reality freedom fighters are bad and good at the same time—perpetrators and heroes—this definition allocates them to two camps: the adherents of civilization and the manifestations of evil. This split profoundly affects the rhetoric used. Speaking of “terrorists” erases any incentive to understand the other’s point of view, deflects attention away from policies that may have contributed to their grievances, repudiates any calls to negotiate with them, makes force and violence the only adequate and proper means of dealing with them, and puts the terrorist outside the international legal order. The notion of “terrorist” has become a metaphysical category (Kapitan 2003, 47–66); the annihilation of these persons morally required violence.

3.5 September 11, 2001: War in the Way of God (Ghazwa) In one sense, the attackers of September 11, 2001, were ordinary terrorists. But in this case too, one must give specific consideration to the significance that the young Muslims attributed to their action: they carried it out as a campaign of war like the one Mohammed waged from Medina against external and internal enemies when he was building up Islamic structures. A declaration by the “World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders” in 1998 gave reasons for attacking the United States (Lawrence 2005, 58–62): when the United States sent troops to Saudi-Arabia in 1990 they defiled the most sacred Islamic places and plundered its wealth (oil); the United States had inflicted great devastation on the Iraqi people, and were continuing to do so by means of their embargo, altogether one million people had died as a result of this;

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the United States was seeking to destroy Iraq and break up the other states in the region into small defenseless entities, in order to guarantee Israel’s superiority over its Arab neighbors.

These reprehensible American deeds are seen as a declaration of war against God. Now, the highest obligation of all believers is the defense of Islam, as the declaration states in the form of a fatwa (hukm): On the basis, and in accordance with God’s will, we pronounce to all Muslims the following decree: To kill the American and their allies—civilian and military—is an individual duty incumbent upon every Muslim in all countries, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Holy Mosque [i.e., the Qa‘ba in Mecca] from their grip, so that their armies leave all the territories of Islam defeated, broken, and unable to threaten any Muslim. (Lawrence 2005, 61)

On September 11, 2001, the attacks were not directed arbitrarily at civilians (as the definition of terrorism suggests). The targets were the centers of US power: economic (the World Trade Center), military (the Pentagon), and political (the Capitol, which was spared only because the plane crashed in Pennsylvania). The perpetrators enacted these attacks in the form of a raid (ghazwa), echoing the actions of the Prophet defending Medina and its rising Islamic order against enemies (Kippenberg and Seidensticker 2006). Warfare against the godless world was no longer restricted to the defense of Islamic territories, but was seen as an ethical principle, an ethic of commitment. The Spiritual Manual allows us to retrieve the subjective meaning the perpetrators and their sympathizers attributed to the attacks (Kippenberg and Seidensticker 2006). They understood the attack in terms of a ghazwa in the time of the formation of an Islamic state, in particular the War of the Trench in AD 627. Like Sayyid Qutb, they conceived the contemporary situation in terms of the beginning of Islam. The Prophet had first to establish the true religion in the hearts of men in Mecca, before he established it by force in the form of a state and public laws in Medina (Qutb 1985, 29–30; Damir-Geilsdorf 2003, 181–190). Since the external social world of today is entirely dominated by pagan forces, the subjective interior intention of the believers is the last resort of divine truth. Only secretly and gradually can an autonomous community of believers arise and challenge the Satanic power.

3.6 The US War Against Islamic Networks When President George W. Bush declared war on terror, he signed an internal memorandum in February, 2002: “Subject: Humane Treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees.” The Commander in Chief and chief executive of the United States determined as follows: None of the Provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world, because, among other reasons, al Qaeda is not a High Contracting Party to Geneva.. . . Of course our values . . . call for us to treat the detainees humanely, including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment. (Danner 2004, 105–106)

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Then he reaffirms the order issued by the Secretary of Defense: requiring that the detainees be treated humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva. (Danner 2004, 105–106, italics added)

Without the limiting clause, the ill-treatment during interrogations in the prison camp at Guantanamo and in Abu Ghraib would scarcely have been imaginable. After the attacks on September 11, the American President issued executive order 13224 which has frozen the assets of terrorist persons and groups and forbade donations to persons or groups that practiced terrorism, threatened to practice it, or supported it. An appendix lists 27 natural and juridical persons associated with al-Qaeda, but the executive order explicitly envisaged that the State Department and the Department of the Treasury would expand it. More and more persons and groups were indeed added subsequently, although a connection to al-Qaeda was not always discernible. This applies above all to Hamas and Hezbollah, which organize the resistance to Israel in Lebanon and Palestine. This made the Middle East conflict part of the war against terror. A new section in the Treasury Department, the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center, was given the task of tracing and stopping flows of money (Burr and Collins 2006, 9–10). The list grew ever longer, and runs to more than one hundred pages of very small print today. Since the zakat tax, which is a religious obligation for every Muslim, also supports jihad, this widened the war against terror to encompass virtually every Muslim charitable organization. After an attack by Hamas in August 2003, the President and the Treasury Department added to the list five Palestinian aid organizations, which supported Hamas.3 The criminalization of Islamic charitable organizations brings the war deep into impoverished Palestinian Islamic milieus and threatens the existence of Muslim families. Western media pay too little attention to this war, and this is why it is particularly valuable to look briefly at how Zaki Chehab describes its consequences (2007, 153–154). He takes the example of the family of Ahmed Abu al-Kheir in Nablus, with its 11 members, and shows what the freezing of the assets of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in the United States meant for them. A traffic accident had made Ahmed Abu al-Kheir unable to work, and his family received a small sum from the Foundation, between $55 and $85 a month, paid out by the local zakat committee in Nablus. In 2000, this charitable organization collected over 13 million dollars in donations, which were distributed in Palestine via Hamas. Hundreds of poor Palestinian families, orphans, handicapped persons, and students received support in this way. After the prohibition, this aid dried up. The Bush administration justified its ban by arguing that the organization’s money was going to Hamas, and that Hamas used it to support schools where children were encouraged to become suicide attackers; furthermore, Hamas had recruited suicide attackers by promising financial support to their families. According to the head of the zakat committee in Nablus, however, these funds were not in any sense given to 3 http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/js672.htm.

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Hamas as an organization; their distribution followed the principles which governed the distribution of zakat funds in general, though some members of the committee were Muslim Brothers.

4 Options Beyond the Cycle of Violence In order to understand today’s forms of religious violence, we have to study contemporary forms of religious community. Alongside the familiar social forms of synagogue, church, and mosque, a modern social matrix of regional, national, and transnational networks has come into existence. Existing legal forms permit laypersons to establish religious associations not only independently of state privileges, but also independently of traditional religious authorities. In these networks, contemporary issues, urgent concerns, humiliating experiences, and intense expectations of the adherents of the religion are addressed and expressed and brought into relation with the views and practices of their faith. Such networks have spread above all in those parts of the world where the state is weak or does not exist at all or where state structures have collapsed due to crises and wars. In addition, the dynamics of the market economy deprive individuals of the firm social bonds of family, neighborhood, village, and tribe by means of which they were protected from various kinds of risks. Believers, convinced that they are the core of a new order that serves the common weal, create institutions such as hospitals, schools, welfare, militias, and establish a cultural enclave (Sivan 2003). Religious communities are becoming the cradle of new social orders. It is improbable in the foreseeable future that the faith communities will give up their role as actors in civil society and withdraw from the fields of crisis and conflict. Nevertheless, it is not correct to assume that defining a situation in terms of messianism or apocalypticism necessarily intensifies crises and conflicts, and is therefore a bad thing. A religious definition of a situation does not determine the practical response. Often believers experiencing suffering and injustice regard their fate as a test of their faith, proudly describing themselves as destitute, downtrodden, and poor, and abstaining from resistance or violence. Quietism or activism are both enabled by messianic or apocalyptic world views (Kippenberg 2008). The political conditions in the globalized world intensify tensions between weakening state institutions and alternative religious communities. The terminology politicians apply to communities that are in conflict with state authorities or the legal system makes it seem absurd to negotiate a solution to conflicts with them. The labels of fundamentalism or terrorism deny them any claim to genuine religion or justified resistance; they never can be partners to a treaty. This view has biblical roots: When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you . . . and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy. (Deuteronomy 7:1–2)

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The history of Judaism reminds us that this kind of violent language did not determine a corresponding praxis of the community. On the contrary, the history of Judaism is an example of how despite such language, it was possible for Jews to make treaties with gentiles. This also holds true for Islam. After years of violent clashes the Egyptian Jama‘a al-Islamiyya revised its violent strategy and agreed a truce with the state (Fawzi and Lübben 2004). A religious community like Hamas that is responsible for social institutions must take much more account of the damaging consequences of violence and opt for ethics of responsibility. This may be less true of a group of young men like the Hamburg cell, which rejected social Islam and was fiercely resolved to fight. The distinction between the two types of ethics is fundamental. Jihadists are convinced that they live in a world submerged in paganism, that Islam is no longer represented by certain territories or institutions, and that the mind and intention of the true believer is the sole last resort of divine truth in this world. In contrast Hamas and other Islamist groups see their enclave as an Islamic order in a godless world and feel responsible for its survival. Preserving that enclave is part of their commitment. Besides these two types of definition of the situation of Islam one has to take into account that the very same value of brotherliness can be the foundation of different practices. Adherents of world-rejecting religions must choose between two types of ethics: ethics of responsibility or ethics of commitment. Defining a situation and choosing the script for action are two steps (Esser 1999). Max Weber already reflected on the issue of how these believers behave under the “conditions of a world which are inimical to brotherliness.” His answer brings ethics into play: For there seems to exist no means of deciding even the first question: Where, in the individual case, can the ethical value of an act be determined? In terms of success, or in terms of some intrinsic value of the act per se? The question is whether and to what extent the responsibility of the actor for the results sanctifies the means, or whether the value of the actor’s intention justifies him in rejecting the responsibility for the outcome. (Gerth and Wright 1946, 339)

A widespread misunderstanding holds that the distinction between an ethic of responsibility and an ethic of conviction denotes an antithesis between conduct based on ethics and conduct based on power politics. Wolfgang Schluchter has vigorously refuted this, and has shown that Weber does not regard the ethic of responsibility and the ethic of conviction as related to different values. “There can be . . . no ethical action without a value of conviction.” Consequently, an ethic of responsibility can exist only “where the belief in the validity of particular absolute ethical values, on which the value of conviction of an action is based, is already present” (1988, 198). This, however, means that the two types of ethic are equal in rank. It is only the believer himself who can decide whether–—with an appeal to pure conviction—responsibility for the consequences is denied, or whether responsibility for the consequences justifies the means that are chosen.

5 Conclusion Religious violence performed collectively by religious believers is coordinated by a shared definition of the situation and a common script for action. As shown by

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the cases described above, the definition does not exclude non-violent scripts. Lawenforcement that seeks to prevent escalation has to “read” the violence in terms of the definition of the situation and the scripts of the perpetrators. Translators of world views and ethics may be able to supply information that assists the search for alternatives to violent intervention.

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Religion and Control of Violence Levent Tezcan

1 Introduction If we ask what is at the heart of the current discussion of religion, the answer is obvious. Without outbursts of violence committed in its name, religion would never have gained the public prominence it now enjoys. The undeniability—at the empirical level at least—of the relationship between religion and violence has triggered an avalanche of research revolving around the question: Does the religion cause violence? At the same time, the search for the causes of violence has provoked a second question: What is the role of religion in control of violence? If the sacred (as the core area of religion) had not borne a substantial relationship to violence, religion would never have gained the relevance it has enjoyed in human history. However, it does not necessarily follow that the institution of religion is a primary cause of violence and without religions we would have a better prospect of a peaceful society. Here I prefer the anthropological idea that there is an intimate relationship between religion and violence that cannot be attributed onesidedly to religion. Religion draws its importance as an instrument of regulation from the fact that violence is an undeniable part of social life. The essence of this intimate relationship is found in the fundamental religious rite of sacrifice. Sacrifice is the cult act of offering a gift. It can be blood sacrifice (human and animal) or bloodless (cereals) (overview: Krech 2004). An awareness of being separated from others in the instrumental world of labor is specific to the human species, and religious activity represents the attempt to reconnect to a state where that is not the case. This is actually the foundation of Durkheim’s theory of religion: a society that is separated through division of labor finds wholeness in religion. The sacred—which Bataille (1997), following this tradition, identifies as the core of religion—means exactly this experience of mergence and losing oneself (in some sort of ecstasy), which is usually staged in sacrifice and festival. In that sense sacrifice is to be understood as a (controlled) ritual for leaving the world of causality and

L. Tezcan (B) Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]

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utility behind. Violence is played out ritually in a strongly controlled way that avoids channeling it outside community. Not until the advent of the warrior society (for Bataille early Islam) is sacrifice transformed from its wasting and intra-communal form into an instrument of accumulation of power by channeling it outwards. Similarly, René Girard also focused on the intrinsic connection between the sacred and violence. In brief, mimetic rivalry (for Girard a basic social operation) is triggered by human desire, mainly by envy. Desire quickly loses its attachment to the specific object and is transformed into a kind of abstract desire. Now we desire because others desire the same object too. Especially in periods of social crises this mechanism brings forth destructive results; the unity of the community is endangered by violence brewing. In order to ensure communal harmony, the violence produced by mimetic desire is channeled onto a victim. The community vents its fury through violence unleashed. The ritual of sacrifice repeats and recalls in a veiled manner the original act of building communal harmony by physically destroying the other. The origins of the phenomenon of scapegoating are also to be found here. According to Girard—and specifically relevant to the debate on control of violence—“Religion has had always a goal: It aims to prevent backsliding to mimetic violence” (Girard 1987, 86). The primary goal of religion thus seems to be to prevent violence. Through the example of the biblical Genesis story Girard shows that the very constitutive moment of social life (in the anthropological sense) is based upon the prohibition of revenge on Cain after he murdered his brother. Monotheistic religions have their common roots in the ban on human sacrifice in this archetypal sense.1 Whatever variants are considered, it is obvious that sacrifice reflects the intimate relationship between the sacred and violence. I would like to explore further this idea that religion in the form of sacrifice exercises a primary form of control of violence which works intra-communally by committing the violent act symbolically on a specific object (often an animal but refined in the form of asceticism, or self-chastisement or self-blaming). This may be sufficient evidence for the intimate relationship between religion and violence, without even considering the individual or collective empirical appearance of this relationship. The question is now if and how the fundamental relationship between religion and violence observed on the anthropological level is expressed empirically. As already mentioned at the beginning there are apparently many concrete expressions of violence in the name of religion. In “Is Religion the Problem?” (2004; see also 2001), Mark Juergensmeyer observes that deadly conjunction in almost all

1 According

to Girard, despite the empirical history of the Church, Christianity as documented in the Gospels includes a programmatic rejection of mimetic mechanism (Girard 2002, ch. 3). Unlike all other religions, which have always involved the mechanism of violent sacrifice, he says that Christianity rejects unity achieved at the expense of a victim. Nietzsche, on the other hand, believed that Christianity relocated the mechanism of guilt to the inside. For Nietzsche the resulting self-blame brought forth a culture of resentment against those who do not blame themselves, those without a bad conscience, in order to assure itself of its moral superiority (Nietzsche 1999, vol. 1, 127; see also Deleuze 1985, 167).

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world religions (2004, 4). He rejects the position of those who “deny that religion is the problem,” when they talk about “religion being ‘used’ for political purposes” (2004, 2 ff.). Other authors similarly stress the relationship between religion and violence (Meddeb 2002; Kippenberg and Seidensticker 2004; for an overview see Schulze 2007). But the strong connection assumed between violence and religion is not uncontested. For Baudrillard we are “far beyond ideology and politics now.” Because “no ideology, no cause—not even the Islamic cause—can account for the energy which fuels terror” Islam as a religion cannot much help in fighting terrorism (Baudrillard 2002, 9 ff.). This stance has immense consequences for the discussion of control of violence, because if religion is only a simulation in power game the strategies of control of violence would operate in other areas than religion. However, the first position has attracted much more attention in the scholarly debate. I am not going to unfold my argumentation on the anthropological level here. On the basis of the basic explanations above I will deal with the subject through three issues where the mechanisms and effects of control of violence can be examined empirically. These are 1. Affect modulation concerns individual behavior. Here I seek to translate the anthropological debate into empirical spheres. The objective of control is to prevent intra-communal disharmony. The tool of control is ethics, which connects social control with self-control in specific modes. Control of violence is mediated, but can lead to consequent violent effects against “deviancy” (control as trigger). 2. Armed violence and theological legitimacy deals with struggles over use and control of violence at the group level. The objective of control is to regulate the use of armed violence by terrorist groups through the tool of theology. Control of violence implicitly involves the question of authority: Who is authorized to read the sacred texts and to decide how to act in the name of the religious community? Use of violence challenges the authority of the religious establishment. Violence and its control serve as a tool—for the challengers to gain control and for the establishment to keep it. 3. Religion and governability deals with government policies in some European countries, which aim to engage religious struggles for the sake of control. The objective of control is to create accountable partners within migrant communities. The tool used here is integration policy designed to bring formal institutions of control (state apparatus) together with informal ones (religious communities). Here violence is seen as indicator for loss of control. These three issues were chosen because analytically they are the areas where the relationship between religion and control of violence becomes practically visible: individual behavior, group relations, and state policies. They can of course be dealt with separately, as has been the case until now. But I would like to get to grips with the interconnectedness of the topics in order to provide an overview of the phenomenon. There is also a systematic relationship between them, although loose

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and not immediate. It is the second aspect (violent terrorism) that has gained the most political and scholarly attention. The third aspect, government policy for tackling religious control of violence, is set to attract increasing interest (see Section 3), while the first aspect, affect regulation, has hardly been touched on in the discussion. This is rather strange because religion operates primarily not through cognition but by addressing affect and emotion. Especially in the case of Islam (the empirical point of reference here) control of bodily behavior is the main field of affect modulation. And it is worth remembering that religions all claim to care for the moral health of the community and to contribute to social integration. So it is legitimate to ask how and through which mechanisms regulation works, and what the costs of a specific kind of regulation are. It could be the case that theological control of violence by religious leaders can coexist with forms of social regulation that indirectly cause other forms of violence. This is exactly the point to which my contribution aims to draw attention. The same issue is also important for the third area of control (government) where (like to the second area) securitization is coming to dominate politics. I do not claim to show the relationships between the three areas, where much more work is needed. But I can contribute to developing an awareness of the problem. Focussing politics too narrowly on fighting the obvious violence (such as terrorism or youth violence in schools) can lead to toleration or neglect of oppressive forms of social behavior produced by specific religious ethics. Control or condemnation of violence in one area does not automatically allow conclusions to be drawn about control possibilities in other areas.

2 Affect Modulation and Control of Violence The first issue where I would like to trace forms of control of violence concerns individual conduct, specifically affect regulation and ethics. Of course, regulation of behavior via a specific affect regime does not concern only the issue of violence. Regulation of behavior via religious commandments aims first of all to distinguish between forbidden and permitted and establish a particular organization of social life. Monotheistic religions use the term sin to designate practices, which are to be banned. The general principle is that social life would be endangered if individuals were able to do what is forbidden without fearing sanctions. From the religious point of view the world is always full of temptations. Individuals are supposed to use specific ethical tools against temptation. Although the sinful act itself must not necessarily be violent, its performance violates the social order as the religion has conceived it. We have already seen how Rene Girard shows that religion tries to stamp out the violent effects of mimetic rivalry. Control of violence in this context means forestalling the forbidden act. Influencing the individual’s behavior in this sense has been always one of the preferential tasks of religions, especially the monotheistic ones. Moral commandments and ethical tools and practices control and channel desire and affect, which is the aim of control of behavior via sanctions (this-worldly as well as otherworldly).

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Jan Assmann, the renowned German Egyptologist, draws our attention to a specific sense of the relationship between violence and monotheistic religion (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). For traditional pagan religions violence is a “matter of political authority; it is related neither to the issue of God, nor to the issue of truth” (2007, 23). It is (exclusive) monotheism that connects the violence with the subjects of God and truth. The crucial point is the conduct of life and regimentation of behavior on the basis of truth. According to Assmann, “The utterly new thing about exclusive monotheism is that it must be regarded as more than a matter of cult or general relationship to the world. Monotheism aims to govern the whole conduct of life, feast day as well as everyday, every nut, bolt and screw” (2007, 46). In this regard it seems clearer why the monotheistic God acts jealously and watches carefully over his rules (2007, 33; also Preuß 2002, 103 ff.). Although Assmann acknowledges the violence in the sacred texts himself, his approach helps to bridge the anthropological level with the level of conduct of life. There are endless empirical findings, examples of how the contemporary Islamic awakening (the specific sort of Islamic religiosity at stake here) strives to dominate individual behavior and the organization of social space. Turkish sociologist Binnaz Toprak documents in a very recent study how the exclusion of those who are not comfortable with strong religious commandments functions practically— even in a secular state as Turkey (2009). It seems typical for a strong religious ethic (both in the orthodox and the more radical fundamentalist forms) to prevent sinful behavior by banishing all possibilities of temptation from social space. Of course, Islamic ethics in general has a place for the inner responsibility and subjective discipline of the individual. Mysticism especially places great emphasis on the subjective dimension of responsibility. But in many contexts the fundamentalist and strongly orthodox versions seem to enforce mainly the option of controlling the environment, primarily by externalizing the instance of responsibility. The principle of this kind of Islamic ethics is to prevent any friction by eliminating in advance any possibility of its occurrence. One example taken at random from a flood cases that have led to heated debate. The Mufti of Australia, Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali, stated that women who did not wear a headscarf attracted sexual assault. This idea is actually not a minority position but the dominant one in the most Muslim countries. What made it controversial was its application in the western world: “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside . . . and the cats come and eat it . . . whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat?” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6090136.stm). In fact the mufti was suspended immediately after making that comment (after reports and protests against him). Nevertheless, his statement exactly mirrors the logic of a certain orthodox Islamic affect regulation. The cat eating the meat symbolizes the violent act that threatens if the rule (to cover the body) is disobeyed. The goal is indeed to enforce a specific affect modulation to prevent conflicts, which could otherwise disturb communal life. In the example above, it is interesting that the human body is a piece of meat without will. If the body had will, the starting point for modulating affect and organizing responsibilities would be totally different.

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The same logic is at work in other everyday situations, such as not shaking the hand of the other sex and separating the sexes in social space (for a wide range of examples see Beck and Wiegers 2008; for Turkey see Toprak 2009). The idea referred to here is simple, and goes back to a saying of Muhammad: “Whenever a man is alone with a woman the Devil makes a third” (Hadith, Ahmad and AlTirmidhi 3118, narrated by Umar ibn al-Khattab, http://muttaqun.com/dating.html). Another example is that people who disobey the commandment not to eat in public during the month of Ramadan are attacked publicly or discriminated, even in a secular society like Turkey (not by law but sometimes by municipal authorities). An effective mechanism of religious organization of the outside world (behavioral as well as spatial) externalizes the task of control totally to the regulation of the environment. Here individuals are kept safe from the temptation that it is assumed would otherwise cause disharmony in the community. This mode of affect regulation is a specific regime of control, which aims to prevent situations which could lead to conflicts with a violent outcome rather than directly controlling violence. An example of the sociological idea that religion provides the glue that holds the social order together. The question is how well that works and what the consequences of a particular type of regulation are. The regulation regime described above stands in total contradiction to a regime that works primary by exposing individuals to each other in time and space with all the possibilities of temptation, as is the case in modern mass societies. In this second regime of affect modulation, individuals are forced to control their desires, and if they articulate them, to do so in mutual agreement. Remembering that global mass societies are intensely interconnected by production, transport, and especially telecommunication (and thus inevitably exposed to one another), the question of how and at what cost does this regime of externalization regulate social order and prevent conflict in society becomes extremely relevant. The problem of modern societies is not so much whether “evil” (temptation) is present (because it is always everywhere), but rather how the individual is prepared by his or her belief to deal responsible with “evil” or “temptation” (however defined). Here it is indeed possible to opt for an ethic which charges the individual with the control of their own affect (even in the face of the “temptation” of “uncovered meat”) rather than trying to prevent seduction by eradicating any possible encounter. I am not asserting that such an ethical orientation cannot be found in Muslim societies. Actually, even among the Islamic orthodoxy there are several moderate interpretations that distance themselves from the radical regulation principle (e.g., Bardako˘glu 2006, the director of Turkish Office for Religious Affairs, http://www.zaman.com.tr/haber.do?haberno=305001). Another version of regulation, which differs totally from the one described above, prevails among Alevis, a Muslim group in Turkey that has preserved parts of Sufi tradition (and is regarded as “heretical” in some quarters). Their motto, totally contrary to the Sunni maxim, is “Be Lord of your hand, tongue and haunches.” Here individuals are primarily responsible for their own affect regulation. Alevi men and women dance together in their religious rituals and separation of sexes is not used

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as a mechanism of social regulation. For the same reason they feel much more comfortable than orthodox Sunnis in modern societies where temptation is a natural part of everyday life. I hope these examples have given an impression of the range of regulation of behavior through religious ethics. What is to be controlled here is primarily the individual’s behavior, which is expected to conform to the regime of forbidden and permitted. Otherwise society will fall into chaos and the social order will be endangered by violence. We should not reject that argument out of hand. As Girard shows, there is no doubt that envy (desiring what the others desire) threatens social cohesion. Supplying a regime of affect regulation via mechanisms of forbidden/permitted and sanctions has been the main duty of religion throughout human history. But at this general level we are unable to estimate the effects of such regulation. The examples described above show that alongside the dominant orthodox Sunni ethics there is a different basis on which such a control regime can be based. With externalized control, self-control is largely subjugated to a social environment organized according religious rules that forestall any possibility of deviance. The community as a moral unity takes over the authority for control. Here control causes certain types of violence or the threat of violence against those who do not conform with this type of social regulation. Lifestyle can be a reason to be attacked violently. Attacks on unveiled women, men in shorts, or people eating in public during Ramadan are the effects of such an ethical regime ruling in a complex modern world.

3 Armed Violence and Theological Legitimacy A second area where control of violence can be studied concerns armed violence committed in the name of religion. This is exactly the form of violence that has attracted most political and media attention and the area where most open competition over legitimation and control of violence takes place. We will see later (in Section 3) how some European governments try to engage the intra-faith (here Islamic) struggle over interpretation of holy texts. Here I focus only on the main catalyst of the violence and religion debate, namely armed violence committed by Muslim groups. So control of violence appears here at the group level; it works as a challenge to a religious establishment that claims to possess control over the legitimate use of violence. The form of control is the intellectual statement claiming religious authority, as the proper tool of theological legitimacy. That can be best studied through the opposition between the self-empowerment violent actors claim and the rationalization of the use of violence by the religious establishment. Like the Bible, the Koran contains explicit references to violence. On war there are contradicting commandments (Firestone 1999), so both proponents and opponents of violence are armed with texts allowing them to claim God on their side. I intend to analyze the intra-religious struggle over control of violence using the concept of self-empowerment, which exactly expresses what really threatens the religious establishment. Used specifically in this sense by Schulze (2007, 90 ff.),

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the term draws attention to general changes in the field of religion that have been ongoing for the last 20 years and are not confined to Islam. As Schulze points out, self-empowerment causes huge problems in religion because it immediately comes into conflict with institutional authority. Schulze draws our attention to two main traditions in Islam, whose interaction becomes much more radical against the background of the modern tendency toward self-empowerment: (a) a rather moralistic approach following the commandment to stand up against injustice, to provide justice immediately by active behavior; (b) the position rather preferred by lawyers (and the religious establishment) to bear injustice rather than cause disharmony in the community.2 Although it was a risk due to the apparent sympathy among Muslim populations for the September 11 attacks on the United States, large parts of the religious establishment ultimately pushed for condemnation of terrorist suicide attacks committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. The arguments against violence in the name of religion expressed in fatwas issued by leading religious authorities revolve mainly around the following questions: When is violence permitted by religion? What forms of violence are considered legitimate? Who is authorized to decide about the legitimacy of a violent act? Let us take as an example the position on terror formulated by Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti (January 31, 2004): Islam has forbidden violence in all its forms. It has forbidden hijacking airplanes, ships and other means of transport and has forbidden all acts that would undermine security.. . . Jihad was made lawful not to shed blood or to take revenge but as a kind of worship of God and one of the religious duties for defending the Islamic nation.3

This statement articulates two central aspects of the issue of control of violence. On the one hand, there is the question of legitimacy and authority. I will address this aspect first. But the Mufti also mentions that jihad is “a kind of worship of God.” Here self-empowerment comes into play. Of course in the broader sense “jihad” means effort or struggle without any specific element of armed struggle. Aware of this, the Mufti embeds the historical praxis of jihad as armed struggle in the idea of “defending the Islamic nation.” Both aspects—theological legitimacy and worship of God—are contested. Lawful means, first of all, that war is declared by a legitimate authority. This is the legitimate ruler as seen by the religious class responsible for delivering theological clarity. In the moralistic version, however, jihad appears as a personal duty for each individual. Individuals have to fulfill their religious duty because the authority has lost its legitimacy (e.g., by allowing American soldiers on the holy soil of Islam).

2 Here

we can connect the specific debate on religious violence to the broader debate on fundamentalism. Modern fundamentalism is distinguished precisely by its drive to bypass traditional authorities and customs (Marty 1991; Riesebrodt 2001; for a case study on Turkey’s new religious intellectuals Tezcan 2003). 3 http://www.islamagainstterrorism.com/docs/Terrorism%20and%20Suicide%20bombings.pdf. Other prominent statements can also be found on the site.

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Lawful also means not attacking innocent civilians, non-combatants, women, and children. The classical concept of jihad was a struggle between armies required to spare the life of non-combatants. The Mufti, representing mainstream orthodox Islam, seeks to prevent any disruption of manageable relations between states through actions by small groups that are not accountable politically. Challenging political structures also means challenging the legitimacy of the status of the religious establishment. Here too, counter-positions also claim legitimacy in the name of God, either by citing other historical examples or verses from the Koran or by classifying cases in a differentiated scheme. In an example of the latter, Yusuf al-Qaradawi (2004), an internationally prominent Islamic scholar from Qatar, considers the suicide attacks by Palestinians against Israeli civilians to be lawful because these “are militarized”. At the same time, by considering this permission to be limited to the Palestine case, he also tries to assert intellectual control over suicide attacks. Al Qaradawi had previously condemned Al-Qaeda for their fuel tanker suicide bombing of a centuries-old Jewish synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba in April 2002.4 The possibility of legitimate exceptions to the taboo on killing is in fact offered by the verse of the Koran most often cited by Muslim participants in the debate: “Whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind” (Al-Ma idah 5:32; emphasis added). This is the same as the last point in the Grand Mufti’s statement. Fighting as worship of God means to fight without the feeling of revenge that would debase the fight in the eyes of God. Here too, the opposite position is also expressed. The manual of the 9/11 suicide bombers claims that the act is worship of God not just as verbal statement, but also in its very structure (see Kippenberg 2004; for the manual see also Nerial et al. 2005). We should dwell on this point because here the self-empowerment aspect is especially apparent. Theological control of violence through an establishment that claims to own the privileged access to the truth is challenged less by violence in general than by suicide attacks. Never before did the notion of the martyr (be it in the Sunni sense or the Shiite sense) designate an act of self-murder. Islamic criticism of suicide attacks cites a saying of Muhammad, “ . . . and whoever kills himself with an iron weapon, then the iron weapon will remain in his hand, and he will continuously stab himself in his belly with it in the Fire of Hell eternally, forever and ever.”5 But what is the difference between suicide attacks and the strong ideal of warrior martyrdom on the battlefield? In the classical concept of the martyr, the warrior

4 http://www.islamfortoday.com/qaradawi02.htm

(viewed April 4, 2007). in Fatwa-online, where Muslim religious authorities make statements concerning suicide attacks (viewed April 4, 2007): http://www.fatwa-online.com/fataawa/worship/ jihaad/jih004/0010915_1.htm.

5 Cited

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is expected to sacrifice his life courageously and without hesitation. The promise of heavenly reward offered compensation for paying the ultimate price in a deadly game. Yet, for all its preparation for death, the classical understanding lacks something, which is essential for modern suicide bombers. Classical martyrs went into battle with huge uncertainty. They had to face death but were not allowed to kill themselves deliberately, that being the preserve of God. The whole economy of belief depends essentially upon this unpredictability. If the warrior died he attained the status of martyr; if he survived he became an honorable veteran (ghazi). The classical concept of the martyr makes no sense without this possibility of survival, which underlines the radical randomness of human fate. Hubris has to be avoided. This is a mighty God who carefully guards His power, for which no-one may dare to compete. This is the reason why traditional scholars (clerics) were unwilling to unambiguously bless suicide bombings, even though for long time the positive resonance among some parts of the Muslim populations also made it difficult to express clear condemnation. It is striking that even the manual for suicide bombers never addressed the suicidal nature of attacks (Nerial et al. 2005, 7). Fatwa-Online makes no bones about it: “But as for what some people do regarding activities of suicide, tying explosives to themselves and then approaching disbelievers and detonating them amongst them, then this is a case of suicide and Allaah’s refuge is sought. So whoever commits suicide then he will be considered eternally to Hell-Fire, remaining there forever” (Fatwa-Online, ibid). Unlike established authorities which seek to balance God’s will, on the one hand, with the security of Muslim countries, on the other hand, suicide bombers take matters into their own hands. On their way to God they negate every possibility of contingency with a radical self-empowerment. In an act of absolute trust in God they paradoxically trust not even in God, because God is incalculable. God never guarantees death in the fight. The modernity of the suicide bomber is based on their desire for a certainty that would not have come easily in the pre-modern world. The suicide bomber disposes of his own body and fate in a sovereign gesture. Actually, in a certain way they mirror exactly the sovereign gesture by which the superpower presents its power nowadays—transcending international arrangements, law, and political reason. The suicide bomber even deactivates God, actually taking his place. I believe this is why large parts of the religious establishment condemn suicide bombing. Such total self-empowerment not only endangers the security of Muslim countries, but also undermines the (often intertwined) political and religious authorities. Here we can see a parallel to Nietzsche’s thesis at the end of Genealogy of Morals: Resentment as a cultural tool (deployed by the priest) aims to prevent a second type of nihilism, the ultimate self-destroying type (Nietzsche 1999, vol. 5, 411). According to Nietzsche this was the historical function of the priest. Intellectual control of killing and dying is the source of the power and legitimacy of the priest, also for Islamic clerics serving a “state apparatus” now challenged by a “nomadic war machine”—in the term used by Deleuze and Guattari (1992). Like the Christian priest, the Islamic priest saving his authority also saves individuals from this ultimate nihilism.

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In this section I dealt with control of violence in terms of armed violence, particularly terrorism and suicide attacks. My reflections concentrated on the group level of control of violence. How does Islamic orthodoxy try to keep control over the use of violence? Self-empowerment through violent acts put the question of religious authority on the agenda. Violence threatens the orthodoxy with loss of control, while the orthodoxy tries to ban it with theological tools. In this context control of violence seems to be a struggle over theological authority. It is exact this authority, which makes religious leaders appear as allies in national policies and global efforts to counter religious violence. In the last part of my contribution I turn to the question of how some governments in Europe orientate their policies toward Muslim organizations and try to follow similar strategies on the national level.

4 Religion and Governability: Religion as an Agent of Integration in the Age of Multiculturalism The last issue I address concerns government efforts to engage intra-faith communication concerning control and authorization of violence. The focus of this section is the policy turn in some European countries designed to influence community life among Muslim migrants. Here we find a third area of control of violence that concerns relations between state institutions and group representatives. Control exercised here does not directly affect individual behavior in everyday life, nor is this the theological struggle over who may speak with authority—at least not directly. Governments cannot decide what might be right from an Islamic point of view. As well as lacking the legitimate authority, the secular structure of their politics prohibits proactive religious policy. This seems to have been changing for some years. At the geopolitical level the US administration made concerted efforts over the past decade to support “moderate Muslims.”6 Other national governments are also setting out to tackle the war of ideas in their own territories (Tezcan 2007). In European countries there have been a dearth of Muslim institutional structures recognized by the governments. Of course, there have been Muslim associations since immigration began, but they were not sought as partners for integration policy. Until religion entered political perception as one of most important security risks, multicultural approaches to integration had not paid specific attention to religious actors. Two processes—an emerging significance of religion in migrant self-understanding and new security challenges due to religious violence—have led some European governments to move toward developing new programs that aim to include religious actors as an important partner for integration and security policies. This policy is distinct from the policy of repression (that has by no means disappeared). I would class it as one of the liberal power technologies, which seeks to support practices which are compatible with political aims rather than only banning 6 For example, Outreach 2004, a strategic paper by USAID (USAID 2004); see also “Win the War of Ideas” in the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (NS – CT 2006).

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unlawful behavior. This power strategy, which Foucault called the security dispositif (2004), operates through identifying and modifying power relations within a milieu, thus impacting the milieu by shifting the specific shape of the community in a certain direction. I believe we can observe this phenomenon within the integration policies that are becoming an essential supporting pillar of security politics. This is actually a local translation of the global concept of clash (and dialog) of civilizations, seeking to respond to multiethnic tensions. Alongside restrictive regulations, which of course still exist, a policy of supporting religious identity in order to provide structures capable of preventing violent extremism within Muslim migrant communities has emerged (Tezcan 2007). In this context Islamic identity becomes a crucial aspect of integration policy and a common denominator for issues concerning Muslim migrants. Accountability of migrants is at stake here, and religion represented through accountable organizations currently seems to be one of the proper instruments, possibly the most important. Let me present some of the contours of this shift in two empirical cases, government policies in Great Britain and Germany. The first and most notable step seems to have been taken by British officials. In 2001 there were riots in several British cities (Bradford, Oldham, Burnley), where a lack of community coherence was identified as the cause (Cantle et al. 2001). But the reference groups addressed in the discourse were still defined by their ethnic identities (Asian, Black, Pakistani, etc.). There seems to have been a shift after September 11 and the London bombings of 2005. In cooperation with mosques and other British Muslim representatives the government coordinated an ambitious project, “Preventing Extremism Together: Working Groups” (PET – WG 2005). The program identifies the shift explicitly: (2.2) The central question is where faith sits alongside other identities in the context of public policy. How and why is faith as important, or more important than race, when understanding and planning responses to needs of British Muslims? (47) (2.3) It is important that sites where faith-based communities gather, including places of worship, have the capacity to function as a resource to the local community, including members of all faiths. (56)

The aim of the project reads: “Locating community needs around mosques and encouraging them to function as community centres” (ibid). Parallel to the redefinition of the community as the Islamic one, certain problems are also re-framed. Classical social problems such as unemployment and low educational attainment among migrants are approached as social problems of Muslims.7 The substance of 7 Meanwhile

some communities resisted this policy. One example from Northampton, “Muslims in the town are part and parcel of everything that goes on here. They are concerned about all the issues that affect the wider community. Concerns around education, health, housing, youth provision etc. are mainstream issues that need to be addressed by statutory agencies.. . . However, these inequalities have to be addressed in the mainstream, not by the use of one-off money, with a specific agenda that could be divisive and a cause for resentment at a time when the country is going through a financial crisis.” (http://www.mcb.org.uk/features/features.php?ann_id=1824, April 2009).

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the problems has remained largely unchanged but they are now articulated in terms of religious identity, which is considered as both cause and solution for security deficits. Integration policy now addresses faith rather than race or class. The British government took several measures to support and evaluate the program. The Leadership Development Project promotes proper teaching of imams; Women’s Voices works to strength the position of women in local communities; the goal of the Bradford Citizenship Madrassas Project goal is “to develop a citizenship curriculum to supplement traditional Koranic training for 8–13 yr olds, promoting British citizenship and acceptance of key shared values” (PVE – WHM 2007, 10). Rather than expanding the list of examples, I would prefer to draw attention to the ways the project seeks to further, foster, and direct religious identity among migrants in a manner which differs from classical types of prevention: (1) “To promote links between Muslim communities here and overseas to develop joint projects to support the promotion of shared values and to tackle violent extremism” (ibid.), (2) under “Supporting and nurturing civic and theological leadership” central and local government are called to support activities “promoting Islamic awareness amongst Muslim communities and local communities more widely” (PVE – PF 2007, 10). Politicians apparently believe that one of the reasons for security problems is weak religious awareness among young people who could be attracted by extremism. At that point the government practically adopts the common position of conservative religious groups (Muslim or not) that a society without religion would be dominated by criminality and moral decadence. Consequently, as a fundamental tool in the fight against extremism, government should help religious institutions and organizations to “connect to young people, address their needs and concerns,” as the Department for Communities and Local Government formulates it (Choudruy 2007, 33). The government’s approach is ultimately to provide support to existing structures in order to define identifiable contours in the migrant community. Where the theological and organizational leadership of Muslims is challenged by extremists, strengthening their established authorities by integrating them into structures of accountability and responsibility is seen as the urgent task of government. Another example of countering religious violence through religion can be found in the German Interior Ministry’s experiment, The German Conference on Islam (GCI), which started in 2006 and is due to finish in 2009. The underlying idea is to work out better ways to tackle problems triggered by demographic change, ghettoization tendencies, religious radicalism, and so on. Like the new strategies in Britain, this political program also aims to shape the religious field in particular ways—but less proactively than in the British case. The German government takes up the long-standing interfaith dialogue between Christian churches and Muslim organizations and attempts to transpose this precursor of inclusion of Islam into accountable relationship with operative results. In fact the interfaith dialogue has prepared the ground for Muslim groups (even groups known to be fundamentalist) to become more socially acceptable. For a long time interfaith dialogue remained a marginal issue. But since religion emerged as a public power with violent dimensions, dialogue has come to be regarded as part of a general integration and security

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policy. Its most significant expression is found in the coalition agreement between the governing parties, where dialogue is addressed in chapter VIII, Security of Citizens: We will conduct an intensive dialogue with the major Christian churches as well as with Jews and Moslems. An interreligious and intercultural dialogue is not only an important part of integration policy and civic education; it also serves to prevent and combat racism, anti-Semitism and extremism. The dialogue with Islam is especially important in this connection. Within this context, clearly naming the differences which separate the partners in dialogue is a vital sign of mutual respect. This dialogue will only succeed if we better integrate young Moslems in particular both into society and into the world of work. (Koalitionsvertrag 2005, English translation, 112)

Religious organizations naturally have a strong interest in grouping individuals by religious affiliation. On the pretext of helping to prevent violence, they can claim more attention, recognition, and resources in competition over representation of migrants. Their primary interest within the GCI consists in the desire to restrain debate (and the work of the organization as a whole) to issues of institutional representation that can be resolved by legal regulation. The government, on the other hand, insisted that integration of Islam cannot be dealt with as merely a judicial arrangement. This was only the starting point for the process, at the end of which a “social contract with Muslims” should emerge. This aim was later given up due to public criticism. The main problem for the government (here mainly the Interior Ministry) turned out to be the issue of cooperating on security and integration with organizations whose political and cultural orientation is seen to be problematic. This problem is most obvious in the GCI discussions on “Islamism and Security” where one participant, Milli Görüs (IGMG), is under surveillance by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is also part of the discussions. The government sought to overcome this ambivalence by organizational means. The GCI has three main working groups: (1) German Social System and Value Consensus; (2) Religion in the German Constitution; (3) Economics and the Media as Bridges, while “Islamism and Security” is discussed at a lower level. Each working group has three main types of participants: representatives of Muslim organizations; prominent Muslim migrants in different fields, and finally representatives of government (additionally scientific experts). The role of the prominent individuals is largely to counterbalance the organizations. Indeed, simultaneously supporting and curbing the power of Muslim organizations currently seems to be the core strategy deployed in the GCI. The GCI ended recently (in 2009), so it is too early to draw significant conclusions. Concrete work has been done at the local level and such experiences have been by now picked up by the GCI. To give an example, an agreement on “Confidence Building Measures” was reached in 2005 between two Muslim umbrella organizations (DITIB/Turkish Islamic Union and ZMD/Central Council of Muslims) and two security agencies (the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution). Mosques and security agencies have been cooperating to establish an early warning system against extremist and violent tendencies among Muslim migrants.

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The Conference on Islam and police dialogue with Muslim organizations are not the only long-term strategy the German government is following with regard to control of violence. Several pre-existing arrangements (pre-dating the focus on religious violence) will be re-evaluated as part of a general policy connecting together security and integration policies. The role of imams as community leaders in particular is being enhanced (Malik 2005). Despite differences in policy design we can observe a general tendency if we compare the two strategies. German inclusion of religion into general integration policy oscillates between institutional (support) politics and fear of a “parallel society.” Ultimately its operation seems rather subdued in comparison to the energetic community support work of the British government. What both have in common is the shared identity politics of Muslim organizations and government policy. Both share the idea that religiosity outside of institutional structures can be dangerous for Muslim community and for society as a whole. So the shared conclusion of both is to actively include Muslim groups and Muslim identity in the struggle against violent extremism. The appearance of religion as risk fosters (seemingly) paradoxically the attraction of religion. It is apparent that the main outcome is that the migrant turns out to be first and foremost a Muslim. To some extent social integration becomes integration in the modus of religion in what some critics call the “confessionalization of integration policy” (Malik 2007).8 Creating accountability within migrant communities is the main objective of control of violence via governmental dialogue. The means of control is religious identity bound in organizational structures of Muslim groups. The form of control is dialogue establishing lasting communication between officials and Muslim organizations. By binding them into control policy, threats produced by the milieu are to be fought through forces internal to the milieu. The most important result of dialogue policies seems to be to support the politics of religious identity.

5 Conclusion The starting point for these reflections was empirical observations in three areas where control of violence can be observed in all its diversity. These areas in turn relate systematically to three central spheres of social interaction: the individual, groups, and the state in dialog with groups. Before I draw conclusions from the above analyses I would like to note a number of restrictions. The relationship between the three spheres is loose. They are neither talking about the same specific countries, nor dealing with same organizations and religious currents. Making such kind of concrete connections—to allow control of violence to be related to particular religious currents or even more specifically to organizations—would be a task for further research. Such a venture will be more productive if the analysis is conducted

8 On

the other hand, some politicians are aware of this lopsidedness. Armin Laschet, Minister of Integration in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, stresses that government deals with religious groups as partners in cases of religious issues (Laschet 2008).

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at the level of particular countries and based on case studies. None of that was possible here. My aim was to convey an overview of the different areas where control of violence appears as a concrete issue and to raise awareness of possible connections (or parallels) between different areas. So what might these connections be? As I said earlier, the three levels do not deal with the same countries or geographic areas, nor is the connection that these are roughly equivalent cases. The specific type of affect modulation mentioned here is, for example, observed to a greater or lesser extent in all countries. The second area, armed violence and theological legitimacy, concerns a global struggle that adapts, on the one hand, to a globalized form of violence and, on the other hand, to global communication of and about religions. In the third area the focus is on European integration policies attempting to exert local control over the global effects of a violent development trend. To the extent that our interest stretches beyond identifying empirical manifestations of control of violence, we find a connection between the areas in the way all three ultimately relate to specific variants of conservative Islam. This relationship cuts both ways. On the one hand, the violence or threat of violence in all three areas emerges from aspects of the conservative variant. To say that does not mean that Islamic conservatism per se promotes violence. Seen empirically, the violent Islamic currents are characterized by their conservative orientation in moral matters. At the same time it is the conservative variant whose endeavors to control violence have been addressed here. I would like to flesh that out in terms of the three main issues. With respect to affect modulation, we find a conservative moral concept that seeks to organize social life according to religious ideas in such a way that the individual never gets into a situation of having to deal autonomously with temptation in the first place (in other words being exposed to temptation and having to find the right way of dealing with it). This is the form of conservative moralism (rather than of conservatism per se) that found its unbridled expression in the Islam of the Taliban, but was already known in various forms in the moral regime of the Iranian Guardians of the Islamic Revolution and the Wahhabism that has spread to many Muslim countries. The typical conservative concern that moral decline threatens social cohesion adopts repressive forms here. Unable to cope with the diversity of lifestyles in the modern world, this produces a degree of rigidness that is probably greater than that found in pre-modern societies. This type of social control, which is supposed to ensure peaceful order, itself ultimately triggers organized violence against “deviants.” The challenge for conservative Islam will be how to contain the pathologies that emerge from its core. The foremost question here is the very old problem—not just for Muslim countries—of the tension between social cohesion and individual liberty. Unlike the first, the second issue relates directly to control of violence. When is violence in the name of religion legitimate and who has the authority to decide? The globally rather conservative Muslim establishment is challenged by another conservative movement, this time armed, which claims to possess the authority to issue the call to arms in the name of Islam. Controlling this violence—which is exercised independently of state structures and orthodox authorities—is a vital class

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interest for the religious class, who see it as a threat to the Muslim umma. This kind of attack also gave the superpower its excuse to occupy the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan. Because violence in the name of Islam also raises a question of creed—whether and when the use of violence is supported by Islam—the means of the debate is theology. The connection between the first and the second is not predefined, and can only be uncovered empirically. We can at least say that the same class that condemns armed violence in the name of religion can also be responsible for a form of social control that has the effect of promoting violence against “deviants.” Of course, the desire for an Islamic condemnation and control of violence is understandable. The question is whether too close a focus on the control of violence could strengthen longer-term structures that promote a problematic cultural attitude out of which oppression against the other emerges. The possibilities to counteract restrictions on individual liberty within the parameters of a security policy are notably small—and now even smaller after the “democratization mission” of the Bush Administration. In the third case of control of violence, governments have the possibility to ensure that security integration of (above all) conservative organizations does not occur at the expense of sacrificing individual liberties in the name of a rigid moral regime. Then cooperation for sake of control of violence takes place within liberal regimes. Politicians are working to tie political inclusion to acceptance of democratic values and norms. Conversely, however, a danger of restriction of liberties can emanate from a security policy in whose name Muslim organizations are constantly placed under suspicion and always having to prove their willingness to integrate (Schiffauer 2008). It also seems to me problematic that control of violence through religious organizations foregrounds the religious identity of migrants as a quasi-ethnic quality. In all cases it turns out that the question of control of violence has to be addressed in terms of the costs of each particular type of control.

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Firestone, R. (1999). Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Foucault, M. (2004). Geschichte der Gouvernementalität, Vol. 1. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Girard, R. (1987). Das Heilige und die Gewalt. Zürich: Benzinger. Girard, R. (2002). Ich sah den Satan vom Himmel fallen wie einen Blitz. Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag. Juergensmeyer, M. (2001). Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Juergensmeyer, M. (2004). Is religion the problem? Global & International Studies Program. Paper 21. Santa Barbara: University of California. Kippenberg, H. G. (2004). Terror als Gottes Dienst. Die “Geistliche Anleitung” als Begründung und Koordination der Gewalttaten des 11. September 2001. In H. G. Kippenberg and T. Seidensticker (Eds.), Terror im Dienste Gottes. Die “Geistliche Anleitung der Attentäter dese 11. September 2001 (pp. 67–85). Frankfurt/M.: Campus. Kippenberg, H. G. and Seidensticker, T. (Eds.) (2004). Terror im Dienste Gottes. Die “Geistliche Anleitung der Attentäter des 11. September 2001. Frankfurt/M.: Campus. Koalitionsvertrag von CDU, CSU, and SPD (2005). Gemeinsam für Deutschland. Mit Mut und Menschlichkeit. http://www.cducsu.de/upload/koavertrag0509.pdf. English translation published by Press and Information Office of the Federal Government. http://www.fesdc. org/documents/Koalitionsvertrag2005_engl.pdf. Krech, V. (2004). Sacrifice and Holy War: a study of religion and violence. In W. Heitmeyer and J. Hagan (Eds.), International Handbook of Violence Research (pp. 1005–1021). Dordrecht: Kluwer. Laschet, A. (2008). Das Grundgesetz ist nicht verhandelbar. Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 38, September 21, 2008. Malik, J. (2005). Ausbildung und Rolle der Imame, in der Moschee. http://www.anawatistiftung.de/seiten/100jahre-11-19.pdf. (Viewed July 2007) Malik, J. (2007) Islamkonferenz zwischen Religion und Politik. Blickpunkt Bundestag-Online. http://www.bundestag.de/blickpunkt/101_debatte/0701/0701033.htm. (Viewed July 2007) Marty, M. (1991). Fundamentalisms observed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Meddeb, A. (2002). Die Krankheit des Islam. Heidelberg: Wunderhorn. Nerial, Y. et al. (2005) The Al Qaeda 9/11 instructions: a study in the construction of religious martyrdom. Religion, 35, 1–11. Nietzsche, F. (1999). Kritische Studienausgabe, 15 Vols. Munich: de Gruyter. Preuß, U. K. (2002). Krieg, Verbrechen, Blasphemie: zum Wandel bewaffneter Gewalt. Berlin: Wagenbach. Riesebrodt, M. (2001). Die Rückkehr der Religionen: Fundamentalismus und der “Kampf der Kulturen”. München: Beck. Schiffauer, W. (2008). Zur Konstruktion von Sicherheitspartnerschaften. In M. Bommes and M. Krüger-Potratz (Eds.), Migrationsreport 2008 (pp. 205–273). Frankfurt/M.: Campus. Schulze, R. (2007). Islamistischer Terrorismus und die Hermeneutik der Tat. In W. Sahr and L. Tezcan (Eds.), Konfliktfeld Islam in Europa (pp. 77–109). Baden-Baden: Nomos. Tezcan, L. (2003). Religiöse Strategien der “machbaren” Gesellschaft. Bielefeld: Transcript. Tezcan, L. (2007). Kultur, Gouvernementalität der Religion und der Integrationsdiskurs. Soziale Welt, Special Issue 17, 51–74. Toprak, B. (2009): Türkiye de farklı olmak. Din ve muhafazakarlık ekseninde ötekile¸stirilenler. Istanbul: Metis.

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Documents NS – CT (2006). National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. USA: The White House. http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nsct/2006/nsct2006.pdf. (Viewed November 2007) PET – WG (2005). Preventing Extremism Together – Working Groups. London: Home Office. PVE – PF (2007). Preventing Violent Extremism. Pathfinder Fund. London: Home Office. PVE – WHM (2007). Preventing Violent Extremism – Winning Hearts and Minds. London: Department for Communities and Local Government. USAID (2004). Muslim World Outreach and Engaging Muslim Civil Society. http://www.usaid. gov/policy/cdie/8-31.pdf. (Viewed November 2007)

Gun Violence and Control in Germany 1880–1911: Scandalizing Gun Violence and Changing Perceptions as Preconditions for Firearm Control Dagmar Ellerbrock

1 Contexts, Categories, Questions Gun violence is always a disturbing experience, and sometimes a final one. Recent rampage shootings—as a very specific form of gun violence—scare societies, frightening politicians, teachers, parents, and school students. School shootings have occurred in many countries in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: the United States, Finland, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. In Germany the shootings at secondary schools in Erfurt in 2002 (Schulze 2002) and Winnenden in 2009 hit the headlines. As different as these countries are, as distinct the societies and circumstances, as diverse the reactions and responses to these terrible incidents, in one respect there are great similarities: In all cases school shootings provoked a fundamental debate about violence, and the possibilities and strategies for controlling it (Newman 2004). Sometimes these debates stressed individual factors, family, or school events (O’Toole 2008), sometimes they ended with calls for stricter gun laws or the prohibition of brutal video games. Whatever the conclusions of those debates, they all underline that gun violence is seen as a serious challenge to society, and reveal that the way the challenge was met depended on many different factors and conditions (Bondü and Scheithauer 2010). Since context, traditions, and customs are obviously crucial to the way politicians and society react to gun violence, these factors need specific analytical attention if we are to understand violence and control measures. Arising out of a research group examining the relationship between violence and control, this essay examines violence and its connection to control from a historical perspective. “Violence” as a central category in this analysis has been the subject of numerous studies (Bufacchi 2009; Bufacchi 2005; Imbusch 2002, 2005; Heitmeyer and Soeffner 2004; von Trotha 1997; Hofmann 1985; Renn and Straub 2002). Classical and recent studies offer many diverging understandings of the concept (Schumann

D. Ellerbrock (B) Department of History, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

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2002; Nunner-Winkler 2004; Wettmann-Jungblut 2003, 17–23). Historical studies analyze violence as a modern concept as well as a pre-modern phenomenon (Braun and Herberichs 2005; Jaeger 2005; Eriksson and Krug-Richter 2003; Schumann 1997, 2001; Sieferle and Breuninger 1998; Lindenberger and Lüdtke 1995; Mommsen and Hirschfeld 1982). The understanding of violence not only varies with regard to focus, but also shows a great variety of definitions due to the different traditions of different disciplines (Garver 1981). In addition to political, sociological, and historical analyses there are also psychological, linguistic, and legal studies, which are all important for different aspects of the concept of violence (Renn and Straub 2002). As a result the category of violence has experienced a conceptual broadening, to cover verbal and psychological violations, and structural and cultural transgressions (Galtung 1975; Hennig 1989), and ended up provoking fundamental criticism for lack of systematic precision (Fuchs 1992). Groebner (2007) offers a sophisticated discussion on distinguishing between real experienced violence and images of violence. Although there may be contexts where a structural understanding of violence is helpful in order to focus on the victim perspective (Garver 1981; Honderich 2003), a narrow definition makes more sense in many cases (Imbusch 2004, 132). For that reason violence is defined here in a narrow sense that stresses physical harm, following Popitz who defines violence as “deliberate hurting of others” (Popitz 1992, 48). In terms of firearm use, violence is therefore understood as all injuries caused by guns (For the connection between guns and violence in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s see Blumstein, 2002). Departing from Popitz, the aspect of intent is left out here, because in many historical cases of gun violence, involve accidental shootings—even accidental deaths—and reports of injuries caused by negligence. These proved crucial for the analysis and are included in the discussion. Control is a similarly complex category to violence. This becomes obvious if we focus on the aspect of power. Control is as closely linked to power as violence is. Control sometimes even occurs in the form of violence. Here the twofold character of both “violence” and “control” becomes obvious. Even states, as important control agents, can become violent actors. Charles Tilly describes the process of state-building as racketeering, thus identifying the potentially violent character of states (Tilly 1985; Lindenberger and Lüdtke 1995; Hanagan 2002; Radkau et al. 2004). Modern German history offers many examples of this kind of violent state activity (Wildt 2008; Baberowski et al. 2006; Berlekamp and Röhr 1995; Dams and Stolle 2008; Ziemann 1998; Knöbl 2000; Geyer 1995). At the same time the establishment of modern statehood undoubtedly contributed essentially to the reduction of many forms of violence. The establishment of the modern state monopoly of physical violence must be seen as a crucial factor in containing violence. This relationship is evidenced by statistics showing growing violence in failed states, and by long-term analyses showing homicide rates declining (Eisner 2001, 2002). While it is obvious that the setting up of modern police departments and a public police presence resulted in a notable reduction in violence, on the other hand, just very police forces can become a source of violence themselves (Browning 1999; Reinke 1993; Lüdtke 1982).

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The relationship between violence and control becomes even more complex if the connection to legitimacy and justice is taken into account, since violence can be both a means to protect a legitimate order and a way to threaten it. Consequently, violence contains destructive as well as productive potential—and the same applies to control. So violence and control are ambivalent categories in themselves and are intertwined in quite complex ways (Kirschner and Malthaner 2010). Making the picture even more challenging, many important cultural categories such as “honor” or “masculinity” are closely connected to violence and are equally capable of containing, controlling, or exacerbating it (Findeisen and Kersten 1999; Schreiner and Schwerhoff 1995; Frevert 1991). Structural factors like migration and economic conditions are associated with violence in the same ambivalent way—potentially controlling or worsening it. That is the conceptual background that every historical analysis has to keep in mind. The way violence and control are inseparably interwoven with social structures, cultural traditions, and power structures will be explained in detail later. Since environmental factors are crucial to the specific character of violence at any time, a careful analysis of the context and a close reading of the dynamics of the interaction are indispensable to understanding the preconditions for control efforts and rating their effectiveness (Renn and Straub 2002). In view of the described ambivalence of the category of violence and the entanglement of violence and control, control is understood here as a corresponding category to violence. In the context of firearms, control is understood as all measures that aimed at reducing bodily injuries caused by guns. This study of gun violence during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Germany follows four lines of inquiry: First, it specifies what was seen as violence and asks whether this understanding changed. Second, it examines the contextual, structural, and cultural factors that influence the occurrence of violent behavior. Third, it examines the actors: Who acts violently, when, and why? And who was relevant in establishing which control regimes? Fourth, it analyses the kinds of control measures that were debated and the ways and means by which control was exerted. This historical case study identifies the mechanisms that are crucial for the perception of violence and uncover some of the mechanisms of violence control relationships. It shows how public attention and communication, information, and scandalization are important triggers for violence control. It will also reveal how the violence control relationship is closely associated with political, social, and technological factors and therefore needs to be continuously renegotiated.

2 New Century—New Violence? Occurrence and Perceptions On February 7, 1911, Johann Hermann Eschenburg, President of the Senate of Lübeck and Senator for Foreign Affairs (Meyen 1959), wrote a letter to Imperial Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg explaining that for 30 years no complaint had been filed under an 1881 police edict prohibiting the carrying of weapons

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hidden in canes.1 Therefore, one could suppose that gun violence was unknown in the prosperous Hanseatic port. But Eschenburg went on to report that during the preceding years there had been widespread observations of young men and even schoolboys acquiring firearms, carrying them, and causing a lot of trouble. Guns had caused so many serious injuries that the Senate of Lübeck was requesting a national law to control them—and thereby to control the violence caused by their misuse. The short dry letter Eschenburg sent to the German capital is rather surprising: First, it is striking that Lübeck had not prosecuted anybody for gun crime even though the city had an applicable edict and the people of Lübeck had suffered considerable gun violence. Even if there were no prosecutions simply because the police edict formulated norms that did not apply to modern forms of gun violence, there is still the question why the Lübeck police department or the Senate did not modernize the edict to protect the people against gun violence. The second notable point is the Senate’s willingness to delegate its legal competencies to the national jurisdiction. This haste is quite exceptional and unknown in other instances, where there was often a grim quarrel over jurisdiction. So at this point the state government in Lübeck had noticed rising gun violence, but not yet rated it as a serious problem. The local administration took no action of its own against violence, but was keen to pass the problem to the national government. Linking the Lübeck situation to the questions presented above, one could argue that the police edict of 1881 was a control tool for certain forms of violence. Since it had not actually been used we must assume that the kind of violence the edict addressed no longer occurred in the city or had been successfully eliminated by the order, or as the last possible option, that the government had no interest in preventing this kind of violence. Since the Senate recognized rising gun violence and was proposing a national law to counter, the last possibility—that the government had no interest in reducing gun violence—can be excluded. It is more likely that the Senator was talking about two different form of violence at the same time. On the one hand, there was the violence that had led to the police order, which seemed to be only an echo of former days, not of any relevance for the daily life and police work in the Lübeck Eschenburg lives in. On the other hand, at the same time there was the gun violence the Senator mentioned. Since Eschenburg’s letter draws no clear picture of the violence in Lübeck at the beginning of the twentieth century, it will be helpful to look at the broader context. The letter to the Imperial Chancellor was one of dozens the Ministry of the Interior received at that time in response to a request sent to all German states. The interior and justice secretaries and the senior public prosecutor of every German state had been interviewed about whether there were any problems with firearms.2 What was the state’s “perception”(!) of gun violence, whether any gun control 1 Bundesarchiv: R/1501, Nr. 113802, Schreiben der Senatskommission für Reichs- und Auswärtige

Angelegenheiten Lübeck an den Reichskanzler Dr. von Bethmann Hollweg, February 7, 1911. (GLA) Karlsruhe: 233, Nr. 12642, Schreiben des Reichskanzlers mit der Bitte um Beantwortung einiger Fragen zur Aufklärung des Waffengebrauches, Az. I A 10327, January 18, 1911.

2 Generallandesarchiv

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existed in the state, and if so, what guidelines the gun laws followed, what kind of experience the state administration had gained with these regulations, and finally, whether the state considered a national gun law necessary. The answers the ministry received were overwhelming. Officials received a detailed description of the situation in every single state with vivid depiction of countless daily life situations involving gun violence, as well as copies of hundreds of outdated police orders (ineffectively) dealing with guns and—most strikingly— hundreds of pages of records relating recent cases of gun violence. It almost seems as if the different state governments had just been waiting to share their knowledge of gun violence. So, what did the states report about gun violence and what does it tell about the phenomenon of violence in Germany at the turn of the century? The Senate of Bremen reported that guns were not prohibited in Bremen and Bremerhaven, except that sailors were not allowed to carry their guns with them when they went ashore. There had been very few prosecutions of sailors, but the Senate of Bremen thought a national gun law was very desirable because the habit of carrying a gun had become more and more common.3 The Senate of Hamburg summarized the few and obviously inadequate police orders prohibiting the use of guns in the city, and the Senator for External Affairs admitted frankly that the police department was unable to say whether the police order of 1803 had ever been used. He attached a list prepared by the state prosecutor listing 41 criminal cases that involved gun violence to demonstrate the widespread use of guns in the city.4 The prosecutor’s office stressed that they had only counted recent cases. Had they analyzed the files systematically the number would have been much higher.5 The government of Hamburg also considered a national gun law to be absolutely essential. The responses from all parts of the country sounded similar: The government of Bavaria, the police of Württemberg, the state prosecutors of Saxony and the Rhineland, civil servants in Alsace, and Prussian officials all reported remarkable rates of growing gun violence. None of them had recourse to effective legal instruments, and in most cases there was not even an old-fashioned police order in force.

3 A New Figuration of Violence: From Knives to Guns Before an analysis of the necessary or actually exercised control measures is possible, the character of the reported violence has to be profiled. What were the state governments talking about when they spoke of “incidents of gun violence?” What

3 Bundesarchiv,

R/1501, Nr. 113802, Schreiben der Sentakommission für Reichs- und auswärtige Angelegenheiten, Bremen an den Reichskanzer, February 22, 1911. 4 Bundesarchiv, R/1501, Nr. 113802, Schreiben der Senatskommission für Reichs- und auswärtige Angelegenheiten, Hamburg an den Reichskanzer, February 23, 1911. 5 Bundesarchiv, R/1501, Nr. 113802, Verzeichnis über Strafsachen, in denen Schußwaffen gebraucht sind, Anlage zum Schreiben der Senatskommission für Reichs- und Auswärtige Angelegenheiten, Hamburg an den Reichskanzer, February 23, 1911.

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did they mean when they reported a “deplorable state of affairs”6 and talked about “bad habits” or “menace.”7

3.1 Characteristics of the New Violence In order to get a more precise picture of the violence the authorities described it is especially important to clarify the following aspects: Were there common characteristics to the phenomenon they were so loquacious about? Was there a shared context or script for the violent acts? Did they identify situations, constellations, or groups that made violent behavior more likely? What acts of violence did they report, what kind of injuries did they observe, and who did they identify as offenders? And who—according to the public records—had been the victims? 3.1.1 Perpetrators and Victims “Women shot ex-lovers, wives shot their husbands.”8 “Pupils shot birds, dogs, and cats.”9 “Shooting on trains has become an increasingly popular entertainment for male youth.”10 “A student shot birds, dogs, and cats.”11 “A worker fired behind him . . . and killed a man. A forester showed his Browning pistol to a young girl and shot a child dead. A young waiter jokingly pointed a gun at a colleague and accidentally shot him in the chest. A worker played with his revolver and injured his stepbrother. Two minors bought a revolver and cartridges, and while playing with them one shot himself dead. An adult handed round a loaded revolver . . . a person present was killed by a shot.”12

The general impression given by police reports was that all kinds of people were involved in gun violence. Women and men, workers and bosses, people from all parts of the country, from all religions, married and single persons, adults and juveniles, and even young children. There seemed to be a concentration of offenses among young men aged between 15 and 25 in urban areas. But this initial observation, representing a move toward an analysis of the

6 GLA

233, Nr. 12642, Antwort des Großherzoglich Badischen Ministeriums des Innern auf das Metallogramm des Reichsamts des Innern, Nr. 4435, February 10, 1911. 7 Bundesarchiv Berlin: R/1501, Nr. 113802, Denkschrift des Justizministers für den Herrn Reichskanzler betr. das Tragen und den Gebrauch von Schußwaffen, Az I 4554, August 6, 1911. 8 Denkschrift des Justizministers, August 6, 1911 (see note 7). 9 Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz (GhStA PK), I. HA, Rep. 84 a, Nr. 5735, Schreiben des Oberstaatsanwalts, Hamm, an den Justizminister, Berlin, March 14, 1911, p. 3. 10 GhStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 84 a, Nr. 5735, Bericht des Königlichen Oberstaatsanwalt, Kiel an den Justizminister, Berlin, betr. Tragen von Waffen, February 26, 1911, p. 1. 11 Denkschrift des Justizministers, August 6, 1911 (see note 7). 12 GhStA PK, 1. HA, Rep. 84a, Nr. 5735, Schreiben des Oberstaatsanwalts, Marienwerder, an den Justizminister in Berlin, betr.: Tragen von Waffen, April 7, 1914, pp. 2–22.

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phenomenon of gun violence, was not associated with any control initiatives at the time. 3.1.2 Locations Police and prosecutors’ reports were not yet standardized, so they produced colorful descriptions of the circumstances of gun violence. They told of “farm workers who carry their revolvers even while working in the fields” and “mechanics who carry a loaded firearm during the marriage ceremony at the registry office.”13 The misuse of guns described in the reports occurred in taverns and at fairs, on the railroad, in department stores, in bakeries, and on market places. Gun violence occurred on a remarkable scale in homes and on the streets, at work, and in schools. People carried their weapons with them wherever they went so the resulting violence was not localized. 3.1.3 Motives All kinds of arguments ended in the use of a firearm: disputes with a neighbors, bar fights,14 and quarrels with friends. Jealousy and unfaithfulness were also often the trigger,15 while the use of guns for other crime was also frequent.16 The most prominent reason for violent fights was alcohol.17 The causes and correlations did not change over time. While the reasons for and contexts of conflicts did not alter over time, the resulting violence did, mainly through the introduction of new means of violence. 3.1.4 Means Police and prosecutors’ reports and newspaper articles talked about different kind of weapons, without systematic distinction between knives, daggers, rubber coshes, and firearms. Likewise they mentioned rifles, revolvers, and pistols. In general the state administrations noted that the “abuse of weapons grew steadily.”18 Beside the rapidly growing use of weapons in general, the descriptions also confirmed that firearms were being used increasingly.

13 GhStA

PK, I. HA, Rep. 84a, Nr. 5735, Bericht des Ober-Staatsanwalts, Cöln an den Herrn Justizminister, Berlin: Tragen von Waffen: auf die Verfügung vom 20.02.1914, Az. 1 1244, April 5, 1914. 14 GhStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 84 a, Nr. 5735, Der Oberstaatsanwalt an den Justizminister in Berlin, betr.: Tragen von Waffen, February 18, 1911. 15 Bericht des Königlichen Oberstaatsanwalt, Kiel, February 26, 1911 (see note 10), pp. 4–7. 16 GhStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 84a, Nr. 5735, Schreiben des Düsseldorfer Oberstaatsanwalts an den Justizminister in Berlin, betr. Erlaß vom 20.02.1914, Az. IV - 2 1715, April 5, 1914. 17 Bericht des Ober-Staatsanwalts, Cöln an den Herrn Justizminister, Berlin, April 5, 1914 (see note 13), p. 4. 18 GhStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 84 a, Nr. 5735, Schreiben des Oberstaatsanwalts, Frankfurt an den Justizminister, Berlin: betr. Bekämpfung des Waffentragens, auf den Erlaß vom 26.01.1911, February 22, 1911, p. 4.

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3.2 From Knife to Gun Culture What state prosecutors in all parts of Germany described in 1911 was a turn from knife to gun culture, which had taken place since the 1880s.19 Around 1900 there were still many districts where knifes were much more common than handguns: “In fights mainly knives were used, sometimes brass knuckles and rubber coshes. The wearing of revolvers is observed quite rarely.”20 Only 10 years later, in 1910, the Senior Prosecutor of Frankfurt reported that there were only scattered areas where knives were more prominent than guns. For Pomerania the Prussian Secretary of Justice reported: “the custom of bearing arms has not yet become common among the rural population. Peasants still conduct their quarrels mainly with sticks or knives.”21 In other districts knives and guns were used equally, as reported in particular by prosecutors from Westphalia and the Rhineland. In fact knifes were still used in many situations, but they were partly substituted and mostly complemented by guns.22 By 1914, most districts concurred with the impression the Senior Prosecutor of Cöln (Cologne) reported for the industrial cities of the Rhineland: “Firearms have become much more frequent than knifes, daggers, and switchblades. In Cöln the number of offenders carrying guns was four times the number in possession of slashing weapons.”23 The reason for this new type of violence was quite simple: Earlier most apprentices had bought some kind of exceptional knife with their first wage, but after the turn of the century young men began to buy a revolver or even a Browning pistol, which was considered to be one of the most outstanding modern weapons. These guns could be bought quite cheaply by mail order.24 That needs explanation, as does the question of whether this shift from knives to guns necessarily meant a new and distinct quality of violence. Both the attraction of these new kinds of weapons and the new quality of violence observed by police and administration after 1910 were based on material innovations and technological change that had occurred during the late nineteenth century.

19 For

the widespread and functionally differentiated use of knifes see the summaries of all district attorneys of Westphalia in: GhStA PK, 1. HA, Rep. 84a, Nr. 5735, Schreiben des Oberstaatsanwalts, Hamm, an den Justizminister in Berlin, betr. Tragen von Waffen, June 7, 1914, pp. 2–18. 20 GhStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 84 a, Nr. 5735, Schreiben des Oberstaatsanwalts Naumburg an den Justizminister, April 3, 1901. 21 Denkschrift des Justizministers, August 6, 1911 (see note 7). 22 For parallel knife and gun violence see, for example, the report of the office of the district attorney of Bielefeld, in: Schreiben des Oberstaatsanwalts, Hamm, an den Justizminister, Berlin, March 14, 1911 (see note 9). 23 Bericht des Ober-Staatsanwalts, Cöln an den Herrn Justizminister, Berlin, April 5, 1914 (see note 13), p. 4. 24 GhStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 84 a, Nr. 5735, Schreiben des Oberstaatsanwalts Breslau an den Justizminister betr.: Tragen verbotener Waffen, March 13, 1911.

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4 The Material Base of the New Violence It is often difficult and sometimes even impossible to date phenomena of cultural history exactly to a few years. Customs, dispositions, and habits change slowly, beliefs and attitudes erode gradually, and new beliefs and convictions grow incrementally.

4.1 New Weapons Available But the change from knife to gun culture can be dated quite precisely on the basis of the transformation of the material culture. It was largely based on technological changes that occurred between the 1860s and 1900. 4.1.1 Technological Development Pistols had been known since the fifteenth century, but these were single-shot muzzle-loaders that were difficult to handle: complicated to load, slow, and inaccurate. At longer distances they were no use at all. The firearms of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries were inferior even to ordinary knives. But dramatic technological change came about in the second half of the nineteenth century. The crucial features of this transformation were: (1) the invention of modern explosives, percussion caps, and innovative cartridges, (2) standardized industrial production, with new machines and materials allowing high-precision mass production. These factors led to the development of rapid loading, repeating weapons. The new handguns had enhanced firepower, substantial range, and improved accuracy. The newly developed automatic revolvers and semi-automatic pistols were capable of reliably hitting targets many hundreds of meters away. The new technology quickly translated into marketable products. Mauser put his Zick-Zack revolver on the German market in 1878, by 1879 the army was equipped with the M/79 revolver, and by 1894 Borchardt was already selling a modern semiautomatic pistol. Only 2 years later, in 1896, Mauser introduced its popular pistol, which—with slight modifications in 1898 and 1912—sold very well until World War II. The Browning semi-automatic pistol introduced in 1900 was especially coveted. It was manufactured in Belgium by Fabrique National and could be found in the advertisements of all major firearm dealers, who were pleased to distribute it by mail anywhere in Germany. The Browning 1910 and the Luger Parabellum pistol introduced in 1908 were easy to acquire. Whether in East Prussia and Eastern Pomerania, the Swabian Mountains, or the Bavarian Forest, all these fashionable models were easy to order by post. The above list names just a few of the famous models and is by no means complete. Illustrating the tremendous technological dynamic, all of them were introduced within two decades. Most of the notable innovations that were to become crucial for German gun culture of the coming twentieth century were already being marveled at in the shop windows of firearm dealers in the late 1880s and 1890s.

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4.1.2 Attractiveness These new revolvers and pistols quickly became a big attraction. Contemporary press reports reveal that from schoolboys to students, day laborers to engineers almost nobody was immune to the fascination of the new technology. Men, women, and children alike were captivated by the new weapons. People longed for the new arms, bought them, and integrated them quickly into their daily routines. As the analysis of the places where gun violence occurred already showed, people took guns with them to school, to work, to the bar, and on weekend outings. They carried arms while traveling, on the streets, at market or visiting a fair, and of course they carried them on occasions like New Year’s Eve, weddings, and funerals.25 4.1.3 Dissemination By 1910 most German authorities were aware that modern guns had become widespread. The wide dissemination of firearms that was reported consistently from all parts of Germany was, according to the Justice Ministry, due to the “passionate desire to possess a gun, especially among young people.” The longing for a gun could become so intense that “often the first income of the young fellows, their last penny, or even stolen money was spent to purchase a firearm.” The dominant impression is that the carrying and use of firearms had increased strongly in Prussia: “Especially workers are in the habit of carrying a gun with them all the time, . . . while the most offenses were committed by young men in the 15– 25 age group. A number of offenses with handguns were committed by women. . .. Ownership of a revolver is considered-according to a report from the district of the Higher Regional Court of Hamm-a necessity.”26 They also had ideas how this widespread distribution had come about: “The noxious influence of young workers returning to their homes with guns after working in factories elsewhere particularly needs to become recognized. Their example has even introduced the bad habit of bearing firearms to the rural population. . .. Servants, apprentices, and industrial workers, almost nobody is without a firearm . . . The influence of these elements contributes significantly to the bad habit of bearing arms even in purely rural areas.”27 Another reason for the wide dissemination of guns was, according to the authorities, energetic advertising and especially the very low prices for which weapons could be bought, even by mail order. “The dealers sell the weapons almost indiscriminately to anybody willing to pay, even if the customer is a child, or is known to be dangerous. . .. Dissemination of guns becomes completely uncontrollable through re-selling and lending of weapons from child to child and worker to worker, in the countryside as well as in the cities.”28 25 Bericht

des Ober-Staatsanwalts, Cöln an den Herrn Justizminister, Berlin, April 5, 1914 (see note 13). 26 Denkschrift des Justizministers, August 6, 1911 (see note 7). 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid.

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These general impressions are backed up by the remarkable growth of the gun-producing industry. Public authorities in Zella-Mehlis in Thuringia reported a doubling of the production of small arms between 1893 and 1903, and in 1906 recorded 540,000 small arms ready for sale. Perhaps not all of these were destined for the German market, but on the other hand Zella-Mehlis was just one of many domestic gun-producing regions—and the German consumer displayed a growing passion for Browning pistols and fashionable revolvers from abroad. In any case, the rising gun production figures and the volume of newspaper and magazine advertisements are strong indicators that the German authorities’ observations of widespread gun ownership were well-founded in material culture.

4.2 Technology and Ubiquity Increase Incidence of Violence Why did the spread of modern firearms result in increasing gun violence, whereas rates of violence in times of prevalent knife violence—according to the German authorities—had plainly been a minor problem? The technological power of modern guns was largely responsible for the increase of violence. Revolvers and pistols at the end of the nineteenth century fired more precisely, even at distance, required little physical strength to operate, and could be used quickly and with minimal effort in affect or rage. Because of their technological capability modern guns were capable of causing multiple injuries that would not have been attainable with knives. Their power to injure combined with widespread circulation and nearly ubiquitous presence was the main reason for the increasing violence. “Many crimes never would have been perpetrated if the perpetrators had not been in the habit of carrying arms”29 was the very pertinent remark of the Senior Prosecutor of Hamm in 1911. It is easy to imagine how Browning pistols, automatic revolvers, and modern guns caused a different kind of violence than the traditional use of knifes. (For a similar shift from knife to gun culture with comparable effects concerning severe injuries for the United States in the 1990s see Blumstein 2002, 825.) So the habit of bearing firearms on a regular basis created a very new dimension of violence performed with a gun instead of a knife. Since the relevance of a distinct material culture for the increase of violence is obvious, it is likewise important to recognize how the new technology diffused into society. Because control is exercised not over technology itself, but over its use and application it is essential to know how technology and habits went together, in order to understand what kind of control regime was exercised or could have been appropriate.

29 Schreiben

note 9).

des Oberstaatsanwalts, Hamm, an den Justizminister, Berlin, March 14, 1911 (see

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5 Traditional Habits Meet New Devices: A New Figuration of Violence and a Growing Control Gap Guns and knives were not used exclusively for fighting; their use was closely connected to ritual patterns. Their handling was highly emblematic and linked to multiple traditions, customs, and values. Possessing a gun did not mean that the owner would necessarily make violent use of it. Instead, bearing arms was an openended course of interaction that could lead to violent behavior, but also offered many other courses of action, which were by no means violent. The open-endedness was mainly grounded in the multiple symbolic and traditional meanings of weapons. This habitual involvement must be understood as an important means of controlling weapons. Therefore, the confrontation of traditional habits with new gun technology is of special interest for the question of control of violence. In the following, I examine practices and customs to test the idea that it was especially the combination of new technologies and traditional customs that led to a new profile of violence.

5.1 Pre-modern Violence Control Frequent references to honor, insult, and manliness lead us to think of pre-modern societies as cultures of retribution (Quéma 2006; Beik 1997) also with respect to the pre-modern economy of violence (Greenshilds 1994; Ulbrich 2005; Schuster 2000; Schwerhoff 1991). The relationship to honor, reputation, dignity, and gender underlines how deeply pre-modern violence was interwoven with social and cultural rules and understandings (Dinges 1988; Loetz 1998; Krug-Richter 2004a, b). 5.1.1 Pre-modern Habits of Violent Interaction The places and contexts of pre-modern violence are very well-known. Violence occurred mainly in public places: busy streets, markets, taverns, and social events such as country fairs, carnivals, annual markets, weddings, and funerals. Even seasons and typical times have been identified by researchers (Krug-Richter 2004a; Wettmann-Jungblut 2003, 38; Schwerhoff 1991, 298 ff.; Eibach 2003; Ulbrich 2005). Looking at pre-modern disputes, violence is mostly found at the very end of a complex interaction that generally started with insults, followed by a cycle of action and reaction, whereupon participants sometimes got rough and finally even turned to violence (Eibach 2003; Krug-Richter 2004a, b; Schwerhoff 1991). 5.1.2 Pre-modern Habits of Violence Control To a modern spectator it looked like a dance with very well-defined steps forward and back, which had to be performed before the first stab could be made. These highly formalized and ritualized codes of interaction, and even of violent action, were supported by legal norms. The Schwabenspiegel, for example, stated that a person being attacked had to back off three steps before being allowed to act in

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self-defense (Wettmann-Jungblut 2003, 33). What is important here is that cultural patterns and juridical norms successfully operated as violence control agents. The traditional habits for the handling of weapons were crucial for the emergence of new forms of violence since knifes were not only commodities, but were also closely connected with identity, manliness, and bravado. Cultural patterns do not disappear within a decade just because of technological innovations. How did the highly ritualized pre-modern patterns of violent interaction connect with modern gun technology at the end of the nineteenth century?

5.2 Pre-modern Patterns Meet Modern Technology First, it should be noted that the places and occasions where gun violence occurred were similar to the situations described for pre-modern violence. A concentration of violent interactions near bars and in connection with alcohol is also found in modern reports on gun violence (Inhetveen 1997). The situations where gun violence was reported were nearly congruent with the contexts for pre-modern knife use. “From the Poznan district it is reported that firearms, particularly at taverns and in disputes, are used not to fire at one another but to threaten and to fire shots into the air.”30 That means that in conflicts guns—like other weapons before—were not necessarily used to hurt the other person, but handled in a highly symbolic manner. Like knifes in former times, guns were also interwoven into a network of threats, gestures, and power. 5.2.1 Failure of Violence Control in the Face of Modern Gun Technology Control norms, which had plainly worked very well for the old-fashioned weapons were adapted to modern times and weapons. Since they had worked very well historically, why should they not also succeed in modern times? At this point the enormous power of the new equipment comes into play: “Overall it can be said that when a perpetrator pulls a gun they almost always also shoot.”31 The new and faster technology subverted the instruments that once ensured control. Taking three steps back—as the Schwabenspiegel requested—had been useful in times of knife violence, but was useless in connection with modern handguns. Even more notable is the way guns were actually brought into play. With knives it is a long way to go from lurking to stabbing, while with a gun the gap between threatening and shooting may be just a few seconds, regardless of how far away target is. The embedding of new gun technology in traditional social contexts is the crucial factor, which in the end led to expanding violence. In the process of amalgamation of old habits with a new material culture the process of violent action also gained new qualities. Therefore, it was not the new technology on its own that led to an escalation of violence, but the combination of a new material culture with traditional habits (Latour 2007). 30 Denkschrift 31 Ibid.

des Justizministers, August 6, 1911 (see note 7).

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5.2.2 Cultural Embedding of Weapons Leads to Omnipresence of Handguns The adaptation of traditional patterns to modern guns mainly meant that guns were always to hand. Since guns—like knives previously—became linked to important cultural concepts like manliness, honor, power, and respect they had to be instantly available—or as the Senior Prosecutor of Hamm put it, guns had become “a necessity.”32 They always had to be at hand to play the games of social respect and honor, to fight for respect and to defend manliness, to test loyalties, or just to relieve boredom. The cultural embedding of weapons was the main reason for the wide circulation of guns. At the same time cultural integration no longer worked as a means of control. It was this gap between traditional habits and norms, on the one hand, and new technological innovations, on the other hand, that allowed a new kind of uncontrolled violence to emerge. The ubiquity of guns did trigger an intensification of pre-existing violence and an enlargement of the range of traditional practices. More important was the creation of a new disposition of violence, which can be easily identified in the reports: “A thirteen year old schoolboy . . . a careless shot hit an eleven-yearold boy in the brain. . .. a tenth-former at Beuthen grammar school played with a stolen revolver. A shot fatally injured a schoolmate. A thirteen-year-old pupil fired toward some schoolmates on a school walk . . . and hit one fatally in the forehead.”33

5.3 Negligence and Numbers as Constitutive Factor of the New Violence The conclusion drawn from these and many other comparable cases was that: “Among all firearm offences those based on negligence require special attentionboth with regard to the numbers and also because of the often grave consequences. They illustrate particularly well the danger of the unlimited right to bear arms because they would never . . . have been committed if the right to carry a gun had not been accessible to everyone. . .. The culprits are mostly still juveniles. . . many of them are still school pupils aged 7 to 14. . .. They sometimes bring weapons into school and endanger the lives of their classmates.”34 So, the omnipresence of guns produced negligence, carelessness, and thoughtlessness that were the main reason for many serious injuries. The phenomenon of accidental death was almost irrelevant for violence committed with knives since it is barely possible to use a knife by accident. In contrast, accidental use can be seen as the prototype of gun violence at the beginning of the twentieth century.

32 Denkschrift 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid.

des Justizministers, August 6, 1911 (see note 7).

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The rapidly growing number of accidental and negligent incidents of gun violence reported by state administrations (quoted at the beginning of this essay) revealed a kind of violence that was new in at least two respects: First, new technologies had brought forth new weapons that attracted many people—especially young men—and in particular led to new habits, new customs, and new practices. It also provoked the transformation of old practices, which gained a very different quality in combination with new technologies.35 The second important point documented in the reports was the sheer number. The new quality of firearms in combination with new marketing strategies resulted in widespread distribution and a steadily rising number of guns circulating within the German population. So, it was a quantitative as well as a qualitative difference that characterized the gun violence of the new century. To sum up: Pre-modern habits and regulations were effective instruments for controlling pre-modern weapons and violence. At the beginning of the twentieth century the adaptation of pre-modern norms and codes of interactions no longer worked as effective control. The deep connection between cultural concepts and weapons, which once guaranteed the containment of violence now had the opposite effect. It led to wide circulation of guns, which ultimately, because of faster and more effective weapons, meant a rise in accidental shootings and gun violence in general. Now that the profile of the new quality of gun violence has been outlined; the open question is why the new violence was not controlled immediately. Why did the German states not modernize their old-fashioned police orders to control the violence they were talking about? In order to understand the control issue we need to take a closer look at the administration, and especially its perception of violence and its ideas about how to control it.

6 Delay of Perception—Delay of Control The many reports and internal memos quoted above to describe the new emerging violence were generally the outcome of a long process of close monitoring, and most were written from the ex post perspective. The authors were looking back to describe a development that had already taken place. To gain a proper understanding of the order of events it is important to put the reports in exact chronological order.

6.1 Administrative Attention from Silence to Concern So, what was the trajectory of official concern? When and why did the German authorities start to talk about gun violence? Equally important is the question when and why the German government was silent about gun violence. 35 Schreiben

des Oberstaatsanwalts, Hamm, June 7, 1914 (see note 19).

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As explained above, between 1870 and 1880 there had been rapid technological development resulting in the production of modern firearms, and between 1880 and 1900 there was widespread distribution and circulation of firearms within all parts of Germany. In light of this technological development it is quite remarkable that even in 1900 the authorities were not reporting significant problems of violence. As the century ended, public authorities were noticing almost no gun violence at all.36 6.1.1 Calm Observations as the Century Ends Many leading prosecutors shared the impression of the Senior Prosecutor of Königsberg that “in this province the vice of bearing arms, particularly revolvers and daggers, has not been noticed in any striking manner. Police regulations forbidding the bearing of arms have not been enacted in any part of the province.”37 Some years previously, in 1895, a report by the Senior Prosecutor of Rostock for the Department of the Interior and the Department of Justice in Schwerin denied any criminological need to regulate the right to bear arms. He even argued, oddly, that “the number of deliberate murders and killings involving firearms is generally very low, amounting to barely four to six cases annually. Between 1858 and 1895 nine persons were killed intentionally using a firearm in the Grand Duchy. Only one of these cases was a . . . murder, whereas the remaining four should be classified as manslaughter. So for a period of 37 years only one case of murder using a firearm remains. On the other hand numerous cases of murder and manslaughter are reported where no firearm was used, but the killing was carried out by poison, strangulation, or using axes or other devices that can be found in every home.”38 With the same clear attitude the Saxon Ministry of State wrote to the Imperial Chancellor, “We have no pressing experiences . . . which would legitimate a legislative approach to restricting the right to bear arms. We also doubt whether the benefits of such an approach would be proportional to the formal circumstances that ensue from such an arrangement. Those persons, who are willing to obey such rule, are not those who would misuse their weapons, whereas those who present the risk of abuse are generally those who do not respect the law and would try to escape any legal rules. We therefore do not support the proposed measure.”39 36 Schreiben

des Oberstaatsanwalts Naumburg an den Justizminister, April 3, 1901 (see note 20). PK, I. HA, Rep. 84 a, Nr. 5735, Schreiben des Oberstaatsanwalts in Königsberg an den Justizminister in Berlin, betr. Tragen verbotener Waffen, March 12, 1901. 38 Bundesarchiv, R/1501, Nr. 113801, Brief des Oberstaatsanwalts in Rostock an das Ministerium des Innern und das Ministerium der Justiz in Schwerin, betreffend das criminalpolizeiliche Bedürfniß nach gesetzlichen Bestimmungen über das Waffentragen, December 28, 1895. 39 Bundesarchiv, R/1501, Nr. 113801, Schreiben des Großherzoglich Sächsischen Staatsministeriums an den Reichskanzler betreffend der Vorschläge des allgemeinen deutschen Jagdschutzvereins über eine reichsgesetzliche Einschränkung des Waffenhandels und des Waffentragens, December 28, 1895. 37 GhStA

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The Royal Secretary of the External Affairs of Württemberg wrote succinctly, “Evidence that the misuse of arms in Württemberg has increased in recent times has not been brought to the attention of this department,” and concluded that any regulation of gun ownership and use would be unnecessary and in contradiction to “civil liberties.”40 6.1.2 1909/1910: Unrest and Concern Trigger Thoughts About Violence Control By 1910 perceptions had changed fundamentally, with civil liberties now seeming threatened not by the restriction of the right to bear arms but much more by the use of guns itself. The impressions quoted from Senator von Eschenburg’s letter were supported by very similar impressions from all parts of the country given in the answers the other ministers of the interior sent to the Reich Ministry. In 1909 most German authorities noted an “increasing savagery and violence of the youth in particular, an abuse of weapons” and considered police measures to reduce the observed gun violence.41 Reading the letters from the different state administrations, one gets the impression that in the process of reporting cases of gun violence to the national Interior Ministry the governments of the German states suddenly realized how deep and widespread the new form of violence had already become in their society. Through preparing their responses for the Imperial Chancellor, collecting data and cases, it became obvious to the state authorities that gun violence had become a huge problem that was present in every single city. What 10 years previously had largely been under the surface, appearing only once in a while with some spectacular case, had by 1911 become an everyday problem. In this way the responses to the Imperial Chancellor document a process of changing perceptions. Investigating the new habit of bearing arms in 1909/1910 caused German prosecutors and police officials to produce hundreds of pages of reports documenting cases of gun violence. The scrutiny of 1910 led to a fundamental shift, “the situation changed considerably,” reported the interior, justice, and trade ministries in unison. This was the reason for them to support “legal control of arms deviating from their former opinion in 1895.”42

40 Bundesarchiv,

R/1501, Nr. 113801, Schreiben des Königlich Württembergischen Ministeriums der auswärtigen Angelegenheiten betr. das Tragen und den Vertrieb von Waffen, October 24, 1895. 41 Among many other examples: GhStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 84 a, Nr. 5727, Schreiben des Großherzoglich hessischen Ministeriums der Justiz in Darmstadt an den Preußischen Justizminister in Berlin, October 26, 1909. 42 GhStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 84 a, Nr. 5727, Anfrage und Stellungnahme der Minister des Innern, der Justiz, für Handel und für Landwirtschaft, alle in Berlin an das Staatsministerium und sämtliche Herren Staatsminister betr: gesetzliche Regelung des Besitzes, Führens und Verkaufs von Waffen, Az. I 5082, June 25, 1910, p. 3.

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6.2 A Vague Understanding of New Violence and Old Ways of Control It was not the former profile of violence, controlled by established police orders and regulated by different forms of social rules, that the state governments reported to the national government. The violence the civil servants described in their reports was a very new phenomenon that the state authorities themselves had only very recently recognized. The newness of the violence or—to be more precise—of the perception of violence—might explain why state governments had no answer to it yet, and were so willing to transfer responsibility to national government. Both national government and local administrations were struggling to gain expertise and understand the new kind of gun violence. 6.2.1 Vague Awareness and Understanding of the Modern Figuration of Violence Looking at the numerous reports submitted, it is easy to imagine how difficult it was to understand the newly recognized violence. Even the documentations prepared for ministries and high-ranking officials were completely unstructured and confused, and lumped together all kind of different offenses. They failed to distinguish between murder and manslaughter, minor injuries and serious harm, negligence and intentional shootings, accidental killing and carelessness, which involved no crime at all. The official reports give the impression that their authors had been overwhelmed by the mass of observations, the newness of the phenomenon, and the sheer extent of the violence. Obviously they were so overwhelmed by the mass of incident data that they were unable to categorize them. Because of this confusion it took about 30 years from the very first debate about modern gun violence to the first draft of a national law on firearms. Gun use first needed to be recognized, understood, and analyzed before an effective control regime could be institutionalized. This complicated process had not yet been performed in the German states when the Imperial Chancellor requested reports, so his local colleagues were more than willing to place the problem of gun violence on his shoulders.

6.3 Complex Transformations: The Control Gap as Time Gap The confusion and reluctance resulted not only from the newness of the violence, but also from the way existing modes for condemning violence ceased to function properly. The bans on hidden arms, bringing weapons into taverns, and owning rifles were designed to regulate hunting on other people’s land and worked very well for most of the nineteenth century. The legal context of these traditional rules had matched the social, technological, and economic order of society. When modern technology, industrialization, new market systems, modern advertising techniques and sales strategies, migration, and alterations to established customs changed the

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basis of these rules, the existing norms were no longer able to effectively control the occurrence of violence. The period under review faced exactly this shift. Technological innovations had already changed the phenomenon of violence by 1911, but the assimilation of control measures did not occur until some decades later. This delay is the crucial space where effective control of gun violence could no longer be exercised. Since the uncontrolled gun-violence of the early twentieth century was not the result of the abrogation of norms (as often seen as by-product of fundamental political changes such as revolutions, state failure, or defeat in wars), it remained undiscovered for a relatively long time. The slow fading of legal control over violence during the outgoing nineteenth century came to the notice of the authorities in a slow process. To understand this shift—which finally resulted in a change of control concepts—we have to understand how gun violence gained the attention of the German authorities in the first place.

7 The First Step Toward Control: Politicizing Through Scandalization Research into mass communication and the media has shown the modern mass media to be central agents of social transformation. The information and images, the problems, concepts, and solutions that are presented, described, and analyzed in the media form ideas, create desires, and initiate actions (Münch and Schmidt 2005). Public communication has been shown to be constitutive for the construction of arenas of political action (Imhof 2008). This effect functions especially intensely with scandalized topics (Pundt 2008).

7.1 Starting the Control Cycle-Initiating Communication The underlying idea of the theory is that the mass media play a constructive role in advancing topics they report. Applying this analytical frame to the context of gun violence, the effects of media attention can be described as follows. 7.1.1 Media Attention to Gun Violence While there had been regular press articles on gun violence during the late nineteenth and twentieth century, reporting became more and more pressing around 1910. What had started as reports on private episodes and individual incidents grew into a broad lamentation about private and finally even public security. The description of gun violence as a permanent threat to the personal well-being of the people represented a fundamental critique of the German authorities and their legal deficiencies. Every large newspaper carried reports about gun violence. Screaming headlines about the “Shooting Epidemic,” “Revolver Boys,”or“Pistols in Children’s

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Hands” were designed to grab attention. When the Kieler Zeitung decided to publish a monthly column counting the number of people shot dead, the impression was created that life in Germany was no longer safe. The very vivid examples reported in the press popularized the idea that public security was jeopardized. According to the press the authorities were no longer able to guarantee public safety. 7.1.2 Parliamentary Debates The German parliaments began to respond to the newspaper reports. In 1909 the Prussian upper house asked the Secretary of the Interior to pass a bill to regulate the uncontrolled use of weapons. Deputy Jaco von Puttkamer (son of the former Prussian Secretary of the Interior, Robert von Puttkamer) characterized the situation in a dramatic speech. Like many of his colleagues, Puttkamer also referred to the press as his main source of information and concluded: If the circulation of private weapons continues, in the near future “every youth and debauched teenager will have a revolver in their pocket and commit the bloodiest crimes without shame or constraint.” He especially stressed the passiveness of the government, which he judged to be totally incomprehensible. In the future—according to Puttkamer’s blunt prognosis—the ignorance of the administration would come to be a heavy burden and grave responsibility (Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Preußischen Herrenhauses 1908/09, 359). One year later, on February 26, 1910, the Prussian parliamentary deputy Professor Martin Faßbender of the Catholic Zentrum made a forceful speech against the “the uncontrolled trade and use of arms.” He quoted from letters sent to him by ordinary citizens, who wrote, “hundreds of deaths are caused by the frivolous use of firearms. Every week we read in the newspapers of children and adults shot because someone was fooling with their weapon, because even minors carry revolvers, and because vendors are willing to sell guns to anybody who is able to pay.” Von Faßbender referred to the numerous press reports sent to him and asked for a law that would at last restrict the possibilities to buy and use firearms.43 As well as journalists and members of parliament, parts of the administration also shared the notion that the government could not tolerate this level of gun violence any longer, and Faßbender’s speech finally initiated government action. In 1910 the Prussian interior, justice, and trade ministries presented a joint proposal to the Ministry of State to support efforts to control the spread of gun violence. In their draft the three Prussian secretaries explicitly mentioned the “daily reports in the press”44 that had initiated their activity.

43 Speech

by Dr. Fassbender, 29th session, February 26, 1910, in Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, 21. Legislaturperiode, 1910 pp. 2339–2342, Berlin: Preußische Verlagsanstalt. 44 Anfrage und Stellungnahme der Minister des Innern, der Justiz, für Handel und für Landwirtschaft, June 25, 1910 (see note 42), p. 3.

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7.1.3 Government Activities: Collecting Data, Debating Action, Drafting Legislation While deputies and civil servants had briefly debated the question of gun laws in 1895 and unanimously decided they were unnecessary, views had changed by 1910. The ongoing press reporting was obviously an important factor in this shift. Members of parliament and journalists stressed that it was one of the first duties of the modern state to guarantee the safety of the people, to protect them against violence, and to safeguard public security. The modern philosophy of the state— Thomas Hobbes as well as John Locke—defined personal security as the foundation of the legitimacy of the modern state. So the claim that the German state was unable (or even unwilling) to protect its citizens against gun violence struck at the heart of state legitimacy and finally brought the national Interior Ministry to initiate its own survey in order to gain information of its own. Until 1909, the German state bureaucracy had almost no first-hand information on rates of gun violence and no definite position on gun regulation. Nearly all data on gun violence available in German ministries originated from newspapers. The research initiative aimed to fill that gap. That did not necessarily mean that the Interior Ministry was pushing gun control. It was an open-ended process, aiming first to collect information. This interpretation is backed up by the observation that there had been some discussion about gun regulation since the late 1890s, when the national government and state governments did not consider gun laws essential.45 The reasons for this reluctant attitude were, on the one hand, the fear of harming domestic firearm manufacturers and, on the other hand, concern about negative public response to the introduction of gun licenses.46 The letter accompanying the Imperial Chancellor’s request for information stated quite precisely the basic reason for his attention and action: it was the German press and its nearly daily headlines on gun violence that made him feel obliged to take action. For more than 30 years the press in all parts of the country had been calling for restrictions on the possibilities to buy, bear, and use firearms. At last, in 1910, perspectives on gun violence were ready to change. At least the Imperial Chancellor was ready to consider whether the introduction of gun licensing might be less irksome to the public than the permanent threat of gun violence. The newspaper coverage of rising gun violence brought national authorities more and own information about the phenomenon. But, using internal sources and asking government bodies, public prosecutors, police officers, and the justice, education, interior, religion, and agriculture secretaries was also important and revealed new and surprisingly insights. The process already described for the state level was

45 With

further references: Schlusser, G. (1897). Das Badische Polizeistrafrecht. Karlsruhe: Lang, p. 22. § 41 with special attention to the order of the Baden Interior Ministry of November 17, 1885, No. 21860. 46 GLA, 233, Nr. 12642, Antwort des Badischen Ministeriums des Innern auf die Fragen des Reichskanzlers das Waffentragen betreffend, February 10, 1911.

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repeated at the national level. After collecting all this information and data on gun violence it became obvious to the national Interior Ministry that gun violence was not a minor problem affecting small parts of Germany, but had developed into a huge challenge present in every region. With all this information at hand it became evident that effective restriction of gun violence would require intervention at the national level.47 Consequently the Secretary of the Interior, in cooperation with the Justice Ministry, started to collect and debate ideas about how to control gun violence. At the beginning the debate had been vague and doubt-filled. Neither governments nor police departments had definite ideas about how to contain gun violence. They discussed ideas of gun licensing, gun laws, eligibility validation, age limitation, and ownership records. Most of the elements that constitute modern gun laws were already debated during these years. However, these control concepts—which are quite familiar to us now—conflicted with the traditional ways of administrating guns at that time and were therefore initially discarded. It was a slow and complicated process to produce even a first draft, but finally by 1928 a national gun law had been passed. The press campaign revealed information about gun violence that had not previously been made public, and also sparked the Imperial Chancellor’s request for information. So it both generated awareness of gun violence and engendered the will to control. Constructing ideas and strategies of control was the next step. Violence and control of violence were embedded in a multi-factor network of interactions—which generated violence and corresponding concepts of control measures in the first place. Therefore—according to social practice theory—violence can be understood as the outcome of a complex set of interactions between different actors and artifacts, combined with various traditions of social habit and diverse structural features. Social practices are understood here as actions with special reference to artifacts, bodily routines, habitual knowledge systems, conventions, and traditions (Schatzki 2001; Hörning and Reuter 2004; Reckwitz 2003). This means that there may be many different reasons for increasing violence. One basic factor—explained here from a historical perspective—can be technological change which provokes different types of interactions which—in the end—may result in an increase in violence.

7.2 Civil Society and Public Communication as Driving Forces for Violence Control At the beginning of the twentieth century, gun violence appeared mainly in private contexts. In the records we find people who shot their neighbors, friends, or family for many different reasons. Apart from these private conflicts there were also many 47 Bundesarchiv, R/1501, Nr. 113802, Denkschrift des Justizministers für den Herrn Reichskanzler

betr. die mit Stoß- und Hiebwaffen begangenen Ausschreitungen, August 6, 1911.

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cases of accidental gun violence. One boy was showing his new pistols to his friends when a shot went off; two children inspecting their father’s revolver accidentally fired it. In most cases, actor and victim came from the same social class and context. This mostly private character was not recognized in public debate until 1910. This ignorance was combined with and partly caused by the fact that many people did not realize what the technological change meant in detail. Politicians and civil servants may have noticed technological changes and modernization on the gun market, but they plainly did not understand what they meant in practice. Media attention brought the private issues to a public arena and thereby made them a public subject. The media reports illustrated the consequences of the technological innovations and above all politicized them. By linking private security to state legitimacy the threat to individual life became a threat to public authority. But the media was not the only crucial factor bringing gun violence increasing public attention after the turn of the century. Ordinary people wrote letters to the local police and prosecutors, petitioned their parliaments, and wrote letters to newspapers; organizations applied to parliaments and administrations; teachers and priests spoke out in public about the situation. In short: civil society demanded stricter gun regulation in order to protect the safety and well-being of the people. Although there were many civil actors, it took some decades after the subject of gun violence was introduced into public communication and a process of reorientation unfolded. This is the main reason why administrative action came so late and was so slow. Violence, which occurs in private contexts needed to be politicized before control actions start. The scandalizing of gun violence by the German press made private gun violence a subject of public security and was crucial for politicization. By forcing political actors to recognize gun violence, which actually existed for about three centuries, the German press shifted the issue from the margins to the center of political debate. Focusing on gun violence did not mean that there was suddenly more violence; it meant that gun violence had finally, in 1911, became a political problem that needed to be solved and controlled. The importance of politicization of gun violence in establishing control measures is also demonstrated by the fact that explicitly political gun violence has always led public authorities to respond very promptly and mostly rigorously. The shooting of statesmen, judges, or politicians do not need any scandalizing. These actions are by definition at the center of political attention. The relationship between public and private violence is specific and changes over time. With respect to gun violence, the relationship between public and private contexts and the degree of politicization is constantly shifting and changing. What has remained constant over time is the necessity to politicize gun violence to provoke control measures. Here we have come full circle, back to where this essay began: Firearm violence had existed for some time in Lübeck and elsewhere in Germany, but it took a changed perception of violence setting in motion a cycle of interaction before control measures aiming to stem firearm violence could be introduced.

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7.3 Gun Laws to Control Politicized Violence: 1928 and After Gun laws can be seen as a control option. They result from attention directed toward gun violence and politicized debate of gun violence. Obviously at the beginning of the twentieth century widespread reporting of gun violence and ensuing debates alarmed the German authorities and in the end forced them to take action. Decisively, press reports had scared the Imperial Chancellor, moved him to initiate his interview campaign, and forced him to review his rejection of gun laws. The outcome of this process of reflection and debate was that German governments considered gun regulation to be more acceptable than ongoing media attention or continuing debates on gun violence in the German parliaments. Consequently, in 1910, a first draft of gun control legislation was formulated.48 The process of gun control was interrupted in 1914 by World War I and then restarted again in 1919 in a very different political context. After the First World War private gun ownership was seen right from the beginning as a potential threat to political order. Democracy itself, institutions, and public order seemed to be jeopardized and needed to be protected by state intervention. To stabilize the political order a gun law was passed in 1928. It included most of the gun control elements familiar today: age limits, licensing, and eligibility validation. The development of a German gun law in the years between 1919 and 1928 followed a very different script than the years before the Great War. In times of street battles and a political highly fragmented society the debate on gun violence and gun control was defined by other topics than in the years before the First World War. What persisted after 1910 was the politicization of gun violence (Ellerbrock 2003). Once in the arena of political attention, gun violence remained a subject that triggered control efforts.

8 Changing Faces of Violence—Varying Features of Control What is seen as violence and recognized as needing control changes over time and varies in different societies (Wieviorka 2006; Renn and Straub 2002). Violent actions and the perception of violence are influenced by many different elements. Social, political, economic, and technological factors are crucial. The example of gun control shows a slow change of perceptions and a gradual development of new control ideas. Intense observation, deep analysis, and open communication were important for the forming of new control instruments. This process of seeing, thinking, and debating was necessary first to understand the occurrence of violence and second to find adequate and effective means to control it. Therefore, the violence/control relationship can be seen as an ongoing process of interaction. In the historical case described here there was first the influence of a changing material and technological culture. The people who were using the new 48 GhStA

PK, I. HA, Rep. 84 a, Nr. 5727, Entwurf eines Reichsgesetzes, betr. das Führen und Feilhalten von Stoß-, Hieb- oder Schußwaffen, October 1910.

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devices changed their approach and habits. Old customs in combination with new devices resulted in new forms of violence that were no longer controlled by social habits. This opened up a severe control gap. The newly emerged violence triggered the opening of new lines of communication and new interactions between politics and public. In the analyzed case it was mainly the newspapers that were crucial to initiating a whole bundle of interactions within the political arena. Debates involving journalists and parliamentarians, party representatives and organizations, political actors, police experts, and specialists of all kind followed in order to collect ideas on control and to formulate control concepts. Therefore, the control gap is to be understood primarily as a time and perception gap. According to this understanding, the cycle of perception, interpretation, communication, and interaction has to be performed over and over again, not only to establish control regimes, but also to adapt to new challenges and to assimilate control tools to changing conditions. For that reason the violence/control balance needed to be developed and implanted over and over again in a permanent and ongoing process. New formations of violence require a certain degree of politicization in order to provoke control measures. Putting the spotlight on violence through intense discussion (scandalizing) is the first step toward initiating such a control cycle. At the very beginning of the development of new control regimes, the recognition of the political relevance of violence is the most complicated phase. In this respect the constant press reporting about rising gun violence can be seen as the crucial starting point of control. What followed was the slow emergence of a new control regime. The violence/control balance is specific for every time and society, so every society needs to debate and negotiate its own special violence/control balance on an ongoing basis. This implies new forms of perception and new ideas of control. In times of social, political, and/or technological change the need to find a new violence/control balance may be even more urgent.

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Controlling Control Institutions: Policing of Collective Protests in 1960s West Germany Klaus Weinhauer

The collective protests of the 1960s not only communicated the protesters’ claims to a broader public; these events all of a sudden brought the police into the media. It was not the image of the policeman as a friend and helper of the populace that was shown, but rather that of policemen engaged in a sometimes-brutal fight against young protesters. In Germany, Italy, France, and the United States, images of policemen equipped with guns, clubs, and tear gas, or reports of brutal police actions filled newspaper columns and television screens (see Gilcher-Holtey 1995; della Porta 1995; Farber 2007; Thomas 2002, 2008; Halloran et al. 1970). These events and their media images underlined what policing was about: aside from any interpretation of policing as law enforcement, crime control, or social work, the core function of the police was “to address all sorts of human problems when and insofar as their solutions do or may possibly require the use of force at the point of their occurrence” (Bittner 1970, 45). In many countries starting in the late-1960s discussions were triggered as to whether the police reacted appropriately during these protests, how the use of physical force could be reduced, and about suitable ways to more effectively control the police. As a consequence, since the early 1970s many scientific studies on the police and especially on the problems of the use of physical force by policemen have been published (an excellent contemporary review is Rumbaut and Bittner 1979; see also Stark 1972; Niederhoffer 1967). Problems of how to control the police are nearly as old as the police itself. This has been especially true since the emergence of democratic mass media societies during the nineteenth century. With the turbulent and protest-ridden phase of the years around 1968, however, these problems became all the more challenging. This article discusses some problems West German uniformed police forces (Schutzpolizei) and politicians encountered in policing collective protests. Two aspects of protest policing will come into focus: the policing of youth protests (in this case the beat music riots of 1965–1966), on the one hand, and police actions against student protests, which were labeled as political protests, on the other hand. As there is no single police body in Germany, the federal states held police K. Weinhauer (B) Department of History, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany e-mail: [email protected] W. Heitmeyer et al. (eds.), Control of Violence, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0383-9_9,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

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sovereignty (Polizeihoheit); this article will mainly be concentrated on the police in Hamburg and in North Rhine-Westphalia. Before discussing adequate ways of controlling protest policing, however, it is necessary to examine exactly how the problem is or was. We must not forget that in post-World War II, West Germany police interventions against collective protests were fairly rare. Thus, an in-depth analysis of the internal dynamics of protest policing and of the inherent problems of how to control them only makes sense if other important aspects like police training, routine policing, and the organizational culture1 of the police are included. Although there is a rich literature on 1968, none of these contributions examines the role the police played in these events (see Horn and Kenney 2008; Klimke and Scharloth 2008; American Historical Review 2009 Number 1+2: The International 1968). This article will also touch upon the question of what role 1968, understood as a cipher or a symbol for far-reaching social and cultural changes, played in the reform of West German police forces. Did these events stimulate or inhibit police reforms or efforts to control the police? When looking at the broad spectrum of police work, it becomes obvious that protest policing was (and still is) only one task among many others the police had to fulfill. Thus, if we want to understand how 1960s uniformed policemen (Schutzpolizisten) acted during riot policing, we also must take a closer look at day-to-day policing, which included handling traffic offenses and minor crimes, or searching for lost property and lost persons (on the spectrum of 1960s routine police work see Weinhauer 2003a, 262–274). During the twentieth century the work a policeman had to perform became a profession which had become independent from the institution many police forces originated from: the army. In these years the proper training of policemen gained central importance. The police force became an organization, which developed a culture with traditions, rituals, norms and values, and patterns of perception. As was true of every other organization, 1960s police was not a gender-neutral institution. Thus, when studying the organizational culture of the police we have to look for its gendered aspects (see Prokos and Padavic 2002; Brown 2007; Weinhauer 2003a, b).

1 Police Service in 1950/1960s West Germany 1.1 Weimar Traditions, Masculinity, and Crisis of Authority After World War II, the Allies abolished the highly centralized Nazi police system in West Germany. New laws on police organization were negotiated and police sovereignty (Polizeihoheit) was given back to the federal states (see in detail Fürmetz et al. 2001; Weinhauer 2003a; Busch et al. 1988; Weinhauer 2004). With the exception of the immediate postwar years, the police model of the Weimar 1 In

this contribution the terms police culture, culture of the police, and organizational culture of the police are used synonymously.

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Republic was reinstalled, and the Weimar police forces served as a positive model for a democratic police force. Until the mid-1970s, communal and city police units survived in those states, which formerly had belonged to the US occupation zone (like Bavaria). Up to the early 1970s, the competences of the central government’s police forces, such as the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA, Federal Criminal Police Office) or the Bundesgrenzschutz (Federal Border Guard), were very limited. West German police forces until the 1960s were organizations that consciously cut themselves off from outside interference. In 1963, the leading Hamburg police physician was commissioned to visit some West German police forces, police training institutions, and also training institutions of the German army, the Bundeswehr. After his return he reported with great concern that the police institutions he had visited were characterized by an “intellectual isolation” and that they showed very thin-skinned reactions when being confronted with critique from outside (Zylmann 1964, 15). When we try to find the reasons for this isolation it must be kept in mind that until the late-1960s ideas and actions of policemen who in their majority had served or had been trained in the police forces of the Weimar Republic were very influential (for the following, see Weinhauer 2000 and 2003a, 336–341). The professional ethos of these patriarchs (mostly born in the first decade of the twentieth century) was built around a model of masculinity that focused on the formation and maintenance of highly cohesive comradely collectives inside the police and also by a close-knit mental connection with the state. Their model of masculinity was characterized by a steady willingness to give one’s own life for the protection of a highly mythologized state. Thus, the self-image of many of the most senior West German policemen, especially among the pre-1912 born patriarchs, followed the motto: Serve the state; be a man. Until the late-1960s, West German police forces were trained to fight communist upheavals and communist-induced civil war (see Werkentin 1984; Weinhauer 2003a; Knatz 2000). This civil war model of protest policing was elaborated during the formative years of the Weimar Republic, when the Prussian Police had to fight communist upheavals. The initial training phase of 1960s policemen took place in barracks and lasted some 3 years (for the following, see Weinhauer 2003a, 168– 185). The first year was spent in a police school; the following 2 years the young police recruits served in the riot police (Bereitschaftspolizei). This training phase had two aims: A strong focus was placed on education, which aimed at introducing the young policemen to the culture of the police community. This was accompanied by intense efforts to form disciplined, courageous, and tough men of action. Small groups of six to ten policemen were the central organizational feature of police training. Especially under the conditions of barracking the importance of these small groups, with their mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, can hardly be overestimated. They were the place where the young policemen were introduced to the culture of the police. During training, sports and maneuvers were practiced intensively. Moreover, legal studies ranked prominently. Senior 1960s policemen called the riot police (Bereitschaftspolizei) the “parental home” (Vaterhaus) of all policemen (Giese 1962, 99). The riot police was much

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more than a training unit in which the young policemen served their first years: it was an institution of the highest symbolic importance (see Weinhauer 2003a, 186–190). It embodied two key elements of 1950/1960s West German police traditions: The riot police was not only a symbol of the strong legacy of the (Prussian) police of the Weimar Republic, but also a constant reminder that these Weimar police forces (in Hamburg and Prussia) underwent a baptism of fire in paramilitary fights against the communist upheavals of the early 1920s. These 1920s combat operations served as a blueprint when West German policemen were trained in handling collective protests. Thus, a strong anticommunist legacy stood at the heart of the unique civil war model of protest policing in West Germany. It was the combination of living together in small groups as well as being trained together under conditions of barracking which gave the initial phase of police training a lasting impact. It was here where the close relationship between police service, masculinity, and the state was inscribed into young policemen. In sum, until the late-1960s West German policemen were trained for two jobs: they had to be policemen as well as soldiers.

1.2 The Technological and Organizational Modernization of Routine Policing The unique professional police ethos between soldier and policeman was slowly undermined by the processes of technological and organizational modernization West German police saw since the late 1950s. The establishment of large police stations, which was accompanied by the extensive use of radio patrol car service, worked against the orientation toward Weimar police forces and their combat experience. This deep caesura meant that in (big) city police routine work at the end of the postwar phase had dawned. Thus, as far as station service is concerned, the modernization of the Schutzpolizei began much earlier than in large-scale police interventions, where changes were in the offing as late as in the end of the 1960s. In North Rhine-Westphalia and other West German states during the last third of the 1950s the network of small police stations was reorganized. Many smaller stations were closed and large police stations (with a staff of up to 100 policemen) with a highly differentiated internal structure were established instead. Simultaneously, the number of police radio patrol cars was increased. Police radio patrol car service could not be integrated easily into traditional police service. Before the phase when the use of patrol cars was intensified, policemen who were walking the beat had a duty roster that was very highly structured. In contrast, policemen in radio patrol cars had to act more independently and autonomously (Giese 1960, 312). This meant that their superiors too, had to change their mind-set. For the latter it became more and more impossible to control their men. As policemen in radio patrol cars were responsible for a much wider area of the city and were often driving to and fro in their patrol districts, they had to be flexible and act independently. Authoritarian patterns of leadership would have worked against these newly gained competences.

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Radio patrol car service was highly welcomed among young policemen who had just joined the police. A closer look at the police in North Rhine-Westphalia can demonstrate these nationwide developments (see for the following: Tilgner 1960, 15–17; Bublies 1960, 1961a, b; Otto 1960a, b, c). Beginning in 1959, Schutzbereiche (protection districts) were established in big cities. In these Schutzbereiche there was one central police station (Hauptwache) and several dependent smaller stations. As a consequence of this reorganization it was hoped to get up to 600 additional policemen into street duty. This modernization was a radical break with the system based on many smalland medium-sized police stations that had been established in the 1870s (Funk 1986, 277–287). Many former leaders of medium-sized police stations (Revierleiter) were employed in the new central police stations. With regard to the old system they lost much of their authority, including decision-making powers about the men of their shift. At the central police stations (Hauptwachen) they had to share this authority with a superior. Moreover, differentiation and specialization meant that the former station leaders had to give up their independence as well as their elevated position in the local community. This erosion of traditions led to a thorough crisis of authority inside the police force. These breakdowns of authority caused by radio patrol car service and by the system of large police stations with a highly specialized internal structure were a heavy burden for the patriarchs, because the nature of police work was very deeply affected in three ways. Under these circumstances it was very difficult for the patriarchs to realize their ideals of police work (1), of paternalistic leadership qualifications (2), and of dominant police masculinity (3). In the eyes of the patriarchs effective policing resembled guerrilla warfare in which the best opportunity to win the “daily fight to secure public safety and order” lay in the deployment of “small units of policemen . . . who were headed by leaders who know their way around very well and who know every hiding place” (Bublies 1960, 38). This understanding of police work as guerrilla warfare also leads us back to a very brutal and bloody aspect of police service in World War II: the fight against partisans. In a seminar paper on the partisan war (Bandenkampf) of World War II, which Wilhelm Schell had written at the central Police Institute in Hiltrup in 1956, the author emphasized that in the antipartisan war small groups run by experienced leaders played an important role. As he wrote, Jagdkommandos (task force units) had the task of “tracking down, cornering, and taking care of” the bandits. What he did not say was that “taking care of” often meant killing the partisans (on partisan warfare and the police, see Browning 1998; Matthäus 1996; Westermann 2005). In this partisan war a “welladjusted and tight-knit community” led by a “determined personality” was highly important (Schell 1956, 20–21). The patriarchs were sure to know that only former station leaders (and not any official in charge) could have this kind of knowledge. Their new positions at the Hauptwachen and the dominant police radio patrol car service made such kind of police work impossible. The dominant model of leadership qualifications among the patriarchs was one in which paternalism played an important role and where the behavior of the superior should serve as an all-encompassing model in private life as well as on the job.

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Additionally, the superior had to know everything—he had to be a real know-it-all (Weinhauer 2003b). Moreover, the patriarchs’ ideal of manliness was threatened because they no longer felt able to integrate their subordinates into closely tied communities of comrades. This qualification was very important, as it enabled the patriarchs to be a man and to act like a man. With regard to the former station leaders, these changes were synonymous with an erosion of their qualifications as patriarchal leaders and superiors. The place where this understanding had been inscribed into them was their training phase in the ranks of the Prussian police during the Weimar Republic (Weinhauer 2003a, chapter II.1; and as a contemporary account Palm 1933). This crisis of authority was reinforced by a changing age structure. In 1961, more than 80% of the highest-ranking policemen in North Rhine-Westphalia could have had Weimar police experiences—at least theoretically. By 1967, this was only true for one-third of the leading police personnel (Weinhauer 2003a, 78–79). Since the early 1960s, West German police forces had seen the advancement of an age group of policemen born in the 1920s (Weinhauer 2003a, 340–341). These modernizers were to reform West German police forces during the 1970s and helped to overcome the narrowness of Weimar-centered police traditions. The modernizers, who mostly had not served in barracked police institutions, held a much more pragmatic view of the relationship between police and the state. They also were in favor of effective policing, prevention, and social planning, and they were willing to develop technological innovations (radio patrol cars, computers, etc.) to their utmost limits. Similar to the patriarchs, however, they held toughness, order, and discipline in high esteem and were convinced that cohesive collectives were essential for police organizations. Moreover, anticommunism was an important part of the value system of the patriarchs as well as of the modernizers. The modernizers put forward a different model of manliness. Vigor, hardness, courage, and loyalty to the state lost importance. Instead, a more flexible and dynamic model of manliness became visible where the state was demythologized, and where the status of individual performance was enhanced. But still, order and the disapproval of “softness”—whatever was meant by this term precisely—were highly valued by the modernizers (Giese 1971, 1972). Thus, it becomes obvious that the modernizers questioned both the style of leadership and of policing preferred by the patriarchs. To conclude, during the 1960s West German police forces found themselves in a transitional phase. The technological and organizational modernization of dayto-day policing not only through the restructuring of the infrastructure of police stations, but also through the intensified employment of radio patrol cars led to a redefinition of police work. This new model of policing required a policeman who acted independently and was self-reliant. Thus, established understandings of leadership qualifications and of dominant police masculinity based on total control of one’s subordinates eroded. Moreover, the role model of policemen being torn between being a soldier, on the one side, and being a policeman, on the other side, had to be adjusted.

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All in all, during the 1960s the Weimar-centered roots of routine police work became outmoded, while the policing of collective action still relied strongly on Weimar legacies.

2 Protest Policing in West Germany 2.1 Policing Beat Music Riots In the view of 1960s West German policemen, crowds acted as a single being. The term the police invented for this crowd behavior was “akute Massen” (roughly: threatening masses). This term was related to the masses described in the 1890s by the French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon. It was shared by their police comrades in other countries (see Weinhauer 2008 and 2003a, 274–277; Fillieule 1997; Schweingruber 2000). Mass behavior, as West German policemen were sure to know, was manipulated by Rädelsführer (ringleaders) who strived to turn crowds into threatening masses whose actions in turn would inevitably lead to communism (Stiebitz 1956; Pulver 1960). The destructive potential of these threatening masses was immense, as they would act as a single creature driven by a will to destroy all order. Thus, the ringleaders had to be isolated and seized by the police. During the mid-1960s, concerts of rock bands like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys caught the attention of the police forces in German cities like Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, or Essen. Looking at police actions during these events, it becomes obvious that some police forces, for example, in Berlin, employed hard-line tactics (Rolling Stones 1965, 372), while police forces of other cities like Munich, the Bavarian capital, tried to avoid open confrontation with the beat music fans (on Schwabing, see Fürmetz 2006). Soft-line police tactics were also employed in the federal state of Hamburg (see Rolling Stones 1965). In order to handle the thousands of young beat music fans showing up for the concerts of the Rolling Stones, the Hamburg police had put into practice four measures (see Weinhauer 2003a, 286–291): (1) the Hamburg police had cleared the terrain around the concert hall of anything that looked like a potential weapon or missile (gravel, stones, wooden planks); (2) concertgoers were personally checked before entering the concert hall; (3) the police had checked their files meticulously, drawn up lists of known troublemakers, and then approached these young men before they entered the concert hall to make it clear that the police would have an eye on them before, during, and after the concert; (4) plainclothes policemen formed special groups that tried to steer group actions of the concertgoers, thus preventing them from rioting when the concerts were over. Only a few years earlier the police had employed traditional methods when they were confronted by the Halbstarke of the late 1950s: water cannons, clubs, and police chains (see Weinhauer 2003a, 283–285; Grotum 2001). By the mid-1960s police intervention tactics for policing nonpolitical youth riots had been transformed into a set of preventive measures.

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Because policemen were—at least in their own view—able to control both the territory and the movement of people, police actions against beat music fans were guided by something like a determined calmness. Thus, only very few violent clashes with the rampaging fans occurred. For the police leadership, policing the beat music riots in Hamburg had been a successful experiment in social control. In these cases, the civil war model of protest policing was not put into practice. As with day-to-day police work, the policing of juvenile (beat) riots from 1966 to 1968 had shaken off old concepts. However, matters were totally different when the same policemen had to act against protests that were labeled as political actions.

2.2 Policing Student Protests All in all, in the 1960s the policing of political protests in Germany was much more shaped by memories of the past than by visions of the future. Two factors helped the police identify that a protest was supposed to have a political character: (1) political demands were put forward and (2) people labeled as communists participated in the protests. These two factors alone were not challenges to the police, because they could also be found whenever political parties were engaged in an election campaign. Matters became different when acts of physical violence were committed or when it was thought that they could take place. The same was true when groups of people roamed around and did not articulate their protests in a disciplined fashion, but rather in a provocative way. In order to handle those protests that were labeled as being political actions, elements of the civil war model of protest policing guided police perceptions. This concept had its roots in the early Weimar Republic. The key features of this civil war model of protest policing were the employment of heavily armed police troops who were willing to end protests at all costs—including shooting at and even killing the protesters. This civil war model of protest policing was still taught at police training centers until the early 1970s. But could it be put into practice in 1960s civil society? Even under the cold war conditions of the otherwise quiet 1950s policemen sometimes drew their arms in order to protect the West German state against its communist enemies. But these weapons were only very seldom used. In Hamburg in May 1951 the police violently smashed student protests against public transport fares; in May 1952 in Essen a protester was shot dead during an antirearmament demonstration; and in Munich in 1954 they fought street battles against consumer protests. Most of the time the demonstrators were highly disciplined members of the German labor movement or equally disciplined activists of the peace movements of the late 1950s (see Kraushaar 1996; Fürmetz 2002). From 1966 through 1968 in many West German cities, however, student protesters employed new patterns of protest and provocation. Would West German police again draw—and this time use—their weapons? Between 1966 and 1968 in West Germany the social climate became more and more receptive toward tough policing. As a representative opinion poll brought to

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light, in July 1966 only 8% of those questioned supported the position that the police should take a harder line against protesting students; by July 1968 this number had risen to 38% (Emnid-Information 7/1968, 11). Generally speaking, against the background of deep-rooted anticommunism views, many West German policemen shared a dislike of the soft policing of political protests. When it came to an analysis of the 1960s protests, two lines of argument united contemporary politicians and policemen. I would like to call this pattern the “master plan and master mind theory of protest” (for Berlin, see Sack 1984; for other German states, see Kleinknecht and Sturm 2004; for Hamburg, see Hamburger Abendblatt no. 154, July 6, 1966; StAHH BfI 1025, Meeting of police leaders August 17, 1966; StAHH BfI 163, Report of Polizeieinsatzleitung June 4, 1967; StAHH BfI 163, Report on police operations during the Shah visit on June 3 and 4, 1967, dated July 12, 1967; moreover AstaDokumente II/1968, 18; StAHH BfI 1034, Demonstrationen in Hamburg 1970, 8 f. [draft]). First, both groups of officials were sure that political protests were not spontaneous actions, but rather were part of a (communist) plan drawn up in advance. Second, such political protest actions needed experienced and professional leaders who could turn the crowds into threatening masses. When looking for more detailed reasons behind the employment of a repressive style of policing political protests it becomes obvious that policemen had shown a great inflexibility in handling spontaneous and creative student protests. All this was reinforced by the contemporary police culture with its pattern of masculinity centered on the man of action. His main task was to protect the highly mythologized state, if needed be at the cost of his own life. When these men were employed against political demonstrations, where threatening masses would inevitably occur and thus when communism was lurking, it was irrefutable that such protests had to be fought hard and determinedly. They compared the actual situation with the demise of the Weimar Republic and thought that the democratic order was threatened or about to be undermined. These feelings of threat may have been reinforced by the fact that the neofascist National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) in some of the recent elections to federal state parliaments had sometimes gained nearly 10% of the vote (for views among the political elite, see Deutscher Bundestag 169th session, April 30, 1968, 8989–9050. The views of the police are discussed in Weinhauer 2003a, 296–332). During these protests, however, the police forces of the federal states of West Germany did not follow a single concept, but rather employed various police intervention tactics. A confrontational model of policing these protests—which forms the basis of the existing research—was employed in West Berlin, where on June 2, 1967, student Benno Ohnesorg was shot dead by a policeman. It was not only the city’s unique political situation which led to the well-known clashes with the police, but also the fact that the Berlin police employed the confrontational civil war model of protest policing in its purest form (see Sack 1984; Busch et al. 1988). In West Berlin until 1969, neither policemen nor politicians considered other models of handling these protests. Water cannons and tear gas were used, but at least no weapons like guns or even tanks (for the reform of the Berlin police forces after 1969, see Hübner 1997).

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There were, however, other cities like Munich or Hamburg, where police intervention tactics followed a softer line—first theoretically, then practically. These reforms did not mean that physical violence was not employed by policemen. The following eyewitness account demonstrates what it could mean to become the object of a police intervention in 1968. This police action tried to protect a building of symbolic importance: the police headquarters. “Everybody screamed and became panic-stricken. I myself was buried under a huddle of people and felt as if I had to choke. The attacking policemen beat rampantly, haphazardly, and aimlessly at people who were falling or who were already lying on the ground. I was shocked watching these distorted sadistic features of many clubbing policemen” (Asta-Dokumente II/1968, 15). As these scenes suggest, it actually was very difficult to maintain self-control while beating other people with a police baton. In such situations, a policeman admitted, only after a few strokes a loss of control occurred, making it impossible precisely to recall how often one had beaten protesters (Maibach 1996, 30–31; Sturm 2006). In Hamburg and some other cities, however, at least the institutional setting was (slowly) changing toward a less confrontational mode of protest policing. One aspect which often is forgotten also had repercussions on the policing of political protests: the way media—at this time, mainly the press—reported about local police interventions. The press could contribute strongly to a climate of hatred between police and politicians, on the one side, and protesters, on the other side. While Berlin, with the dominance of the Springer Press, was a good example of how these processes of mutual radicalization could work, big cities in North Rhine-Westphalia ranged at the opposite end of the scale. Hamburg was situated somewhere in between. The city was not only home of some critical weekly journals (Zeit and Spiegel), but also of the Hamburger Morgenpost, a newspaper that did not demonize protesting students (Lindner 1998; Weinhauer 2003a, 296–315; Hamburger Morgenpost, June 10, 1967, and July 5, 1967). There are three additional factors that can explain why some West German police forces responded less confrontationally against collective actions which were labeled as political protests. First, there were efforts of reforming protest policing put forward mainly not by policemen, but by political actors who had been socialized outside the ranks of the police force. The Hamburg interior minister Heinz Ruhnau, born in 1929, was a trade unionist, and Munich police chief Manfred Schreiber, born in 1926, was a jurist. These officials had realized that reforms were the key to effective policing. Second, crucial steps toward an explicit reform of the civil war model of protest policing had been taken before 1967–1968, before the main wave of political protests began. These reform processes started in Munich after the Schwabing riots in June 1962 and in Hamburg after a demonstration in front of the United States consulate in July 1966. These reform-oriented politicians had to learn step-by-step that cultures of protests had radically changed. In Hamburg the interior minister approved new regulations for the handling of demonstrations, which came into effect in April 1966. But even these provisions only focused on well-ordered and highly disciplined parades or marches (see StAHH BfI 1022, Allgemeine polizeiliche Auflagen und Hinweise für die Durchführung

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von Umzügen, Versammlungen oder Veranstaltungen ähnlicher Art auf öffentlichen Straßen, Wegen und Plätzen, April 20, 1966). They stated, for example, that at most four persons were allowed to walk side by side. Moreover, marchers should only walk on the right half of the right-hand side of the street, thus allowing vehicles to pass easily. The marching columns had to leave gaps at regular intervals. The regulations culminated in the expectation that during darkness or in cases of poor visibility people in the last rows as well as at the sides of the column would carry lanterns. These regulations demonstrate how puzzled politicians as well as policemen must have been when they were confronted with the provocative protest forms, which developed in 1966–1967. As a consequence, in Hamburg, the guidelines for protest policing were radically revised. It was stated that policemen should show tolerance regarding lesser offenses and should also avoid all measures, which could be seen as a “narrow-minded order fanaticism.” Instead, a “flexible reaction” was recommended (Ruhnau 1969, 90∗ ). Third, in both cities new channels of communication for policing political protests were established: in Munich in 1964 the police were assisted by a study group for political psychology and communication research as well as by a psychologist. In Hamburg a planning group was established in October 1966, and a psychologist was employed in 1969 (Weinhauer 2001, 314; Weinhauer 2003a, 300– 301). In West Berlin in August 1967, a psychologist quit after only 2 months of service because of the negative climate inside the police force. This underlines the antireform spirit of the West Berlin police force (see Spiegel, August 27, 1967, 81). The planning group in Hamburg brought together not only policemen and politicians, but also officials from the trade unions, the churches, and local interest groups, among others. Their task was to discuss appropriate measures for protest policing and to work out special recommendations for the police. Even if the committee had no great authority, it was not only an opportunity for communicating about an urgent political problem, but also the recommendations worked out made it clear that the police were not alone in having the skills for solving such problems. In the early stages all of these measures—be it flexible reaction or the invention of new channels of communication—met with harsh opposition from high-ranking policemen in Hamburg. They were irritated about this unwelcome interference. They criticized “soft wave” policing and were hesitant to translate it into action (Weinhauer 2001, 315). Until 1970, Hamburg policemen again and again were reminded, “‘flexible reaction’ does not mean capitulation when facing the troublemaker” (StAHH BfI 1036, Report from December 28, 1967). Effective policing in the sense of police reforms was especially challenged by two unique features of 1960s police force: the specific group culture and the dominant pattern of police masculinity, both of which have been described above. Among 1960s policemen forming and being part of highly cohesive collectives was very important. During police interventions against political protests, however, these informal collectives of men of action made the police uncontrollable. Policemen over the age of 30 were especially disappointed that they could not act against demonstrators as radically as they thought appropriate. As a consequence, these frustrated policemen built uncontrollable collectives, small groups that fought their own battles against

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political protesters. Even their direct superiors could not stop these groups of policemen because their members consciously cut themselves off from any outside communication (Weinhauer 2003a, 328–329). Although this partial collapse of command structures during police interventions could also be found in police forces of other countries like the United States (Stark 1972), the violent actions of uncontrollable groups of West German policemen painfully revealed a specific aspect of West German police culture: the obvious paradox of putting the Weimar-oriented civil war model of protest policing into practice. On the one hand, the patriarchs’ stories of the glory of Weimar police forces and about their effective mode of protest policing were still present inside 1960s West German police forces. These stories either were circulated in police publications, police journals, or as oral histories. These Weimar-centered images were also kept alive in rituals like the annual celebration of the smashing of the communist-led Hamburg uprising of October 1923, and in myths about the highly democratic spirit that allegedly should have been typical of the whole Prussian police (Weinhauer 2003a, 87–97; Weinhauer 2001). On the other hand, since the late 1950s the use of firearms against protesters—a key issue of the civil war model— had become nearly unimaginable in practical policing. Thus, the one and only model for handling political protests West German policemen knew of had become tamed and demilitarized, making these outdated guidelines no longer a useful tool for managing protest events. This must have reinforced the frustrations of these older policemen. The contemporary countermodel of protest policing which was also tough but was put into practice in a controlled way was performed by younger riot policemen, who mostly had been trained by the policemen who belonged to the age group of the 1920s-born modernizers. These young riot policemen were born in the mid- to late-1940s and were roughly the same age as the student protesters. These “68ers” of the police proudly coined the motto: “Wer ApO sagt, muß auch Bepo sagen!” (roughly: “He who speaks of extra-parliamentary opposition must also mention the riot police!”) (Czenna 1970, 89). Some politicians realized the dangers these uncontrollable group dynamics posed to effective policing and thus to the image of the police and—last but not least—to the image of a democratic state. Police modernizers like Ruhnau or Schreiber, whose aims were later supported by some police trade unionists, were not a single group with homogenous aims and practices. However, they all realized the importance of breaking up the hermetic character of the police force and its inherent culture. A thorough demilitarization of the West German police forces became possible after the emergency laws (Notstandsgesetze) were passed in late May 1968 (Werkentin 1984, 205; Busch et al. 1988, 51–62). From then on it was not only the police who were responsible for defending the Federal Republic of Germany against communist upheaval or in cases of civil war. These tasks could be transferred to the Federal Border Guard or, under special conditions, to the Bundeswehr. West German police forces at least in principle could now concentrate more on policing society and less on protecting the state. After decentralized steps to reform the police had been taken, a more encompassing police reform was put into practice in the early 1970s, mainly

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focused on technical and organizational issues. This time it was applied to all West German police forces (Busch et al. 1988, chapter 9). This change of direction was assisted by a reform of the demonstration law, which altered the framework for protest policing. All in all, during the 1970s the civil war model of protest policing was finally abandoned, and police organization, training, and technical equipment were modernized. It comes as no surprise that the demilitarization as well as the police reforms could not achieve their aims overnight, as they were obstructed by a police culture whose norms and values could not be turned off by a flick of a switch (see Weinhauer 2003a, 336–350; on the philosophy of protest policing, see Winter 1998, chapters 7 and 8).

3 Conclusion On a general level, 1960s West German police forces acted in a transitional phase in which the definition of police tasks had to be adjusted. The main problem was that many West German police forces struggled to emancipate themselves from the traditions of paramilitary policing which had its roots in the Prussian police of the Weimar Republic. While this transition was well under way in day-to-day police work and in policing youth riots, the policing of political protests remained strongly influenced by paramilitary concepts and traditions. The problems of this “liminal phase” (Victor Turner) were accelerated and brought to light during the policing of 1968 collective protests that had been labeled as political actions. As the example of 1960s West German police forces has demonstrated, there was (and is) no one best way to control controlling institutions. Especially in the field of policing collective protests which were labeled as political actions, putting such goals into practice had to overcome obstacles, among which were the changes of social norms and values as well as the longue durée of the organizational culture of the police (with its inherent patterns of perception and gendered group cultures, etc.). Concerning such protest policing the main problem that had to be solved by West German police forces was to become completely independent from the oldtime role model of policemen being soldiers protecting the state against communist upheaval. The confrontational way of policing political protests proved its ineffectiveness in the years 1966–1968. When looking at the measures taken to make 1960s protest policing more effective and thus better controlled, four factors stand out. First, during the policing of political protests an escalation of physical violence occurred especially among older policemen (aged over 30). Their interventions often got completely out of hand and became uncontrollable. Their actions were guided by key elements of the organizational culture of the police, which rested upon notions of aggressive masculinity, a highly coherent group culture, and a professional ethos that understood policing as protecting the existence of the state against communist upheaval. Moreover, as the traditional Weimar-centered civil war model of protest policing had become outdated they had no adequate concept to handle political protests. Second, the violent actions policemen took during riot policing were also

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influenced by the experiences they had had during normal day-to-day policing in the streets and also during their training. Thus, if these elements of police service were dominated by authoritarian conditions or by political myths about Weimar police forces, it was likely that these policemen themselves acted in authoritarian or repressive ways. Third, efforts to control (as well as to reform) the police force were initiated from outside, by politicians who had not been socialized inside the police force. Fourth, in order to better control the policing of political protest actions, formal institutions for an improved communication between policemen, politicians, and agents of civil society were established. In sum, patterns of democratic leadership and communication supported a police culture that was not centered on the idea of men of action defending a mythologized state. They also could be tools working against a repressive style of policing, be it on the beat or in riot policing. Coming back to the question about the role 1968 played in the reform of West German police forces, an ambivalent answer can be given. On the one hand, it was demonstrated in the cases of Munich and Hamburg that reforms of protest policing had already begun before 1968. The experiences the police had during the turbulent phase between 1966 and 1968 made it clear that more reforms had to be initiated. These protests gave police reforms a high urgency. On the other hand, these 1960s reforms clashed with a police culture that remained partially influenced by traditions of the (Weimar) past and by a pattern of masculinity that valued the formation of highly cohesive, comradely police collectives. Thus, the question of how to control the policing of collective political protests was still a disputed matter when West German police forces had to handle the massive antinuclear protests of the 1970s (see Busch et al. 1988, 328–342). At least on a formal level the verdict of the Federal Constitutional Court in May 1985 about the freedom of assembly urged the police to tolerate demonstrations and to cooperate with its organizers (Winter 1998, 66– 67 and 197). When looking at the best way to control protest policing, the 1970s slowly paved the way for the insight that protest policing was not about fighting street battles but about avoiding them.

References American Historical Review 114 (2009). Number 1+2: AHR Forum: The International 1968, Part I and II. Asta-Dokumente II/1968. Bittner, E. (1970). The Functions of the Police in Modern Society. Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office. Brown, J. (2007). From cult of masculinity to smart macho: gender perspectives on police occupational culture. Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, 8, 205–226. Browning, C. (1998). Ganz normale Männer. Das Reserve-Polizeibataillon 101 und die “Endlösung” in Polen. Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt. Bublies (1960). Gedanken zur Neuorganisation der Schutzpolizei. Deutsche Polizei/Ausgabe Nordrhein-Westfalen, 37–39. Bublies (1961a). Die Neuorganisation der Schutzpolizei. Ein kritischer Rückblick. Deutsche Polizei/Ausgabe Nordrhein-Westfalen, 99–102. Bublies (1961b). Die Neuorganisation der Schutzpolizei. Ein kritischer Rückblick. Deutsche Polizei/Ausgabe Nordrhein-Westfalen, 108–110.

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Busch, H., et al. (1988). Die Polizei in der Bundesrepublik. Frankfurt/New York, NY: Campus. Czenna, M. (1970). Polizei und Demonstrationen von 1945–1969 in Hamburg und ihre Bedeutung für die nähere Zukunft. Hamburg, unpublished police manuscript. Das Vorgehen der Polizei gegenüber Studentenunruhen in der öffentlichen Meinung. EmnidInformation 7/1968. della Porta, D. (1995). Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State. A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Der Spiegel, August 27, 1967, 81. Deutscher Bundestag 169th session, April 30 1968, 8989–9050. Die “Rolling Stones”in sechs deutschen Städten (1965). Deutsche Polizei, 370–379. Farber, D. (2007). Chicago ’68. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Fillieule, O. (1997). Stratégies de la rue: Les manifestations en France. Paris: Presse de Sciences Po. Funk, A. (1986). Polizei und Rechtsstaat. Die Entwicklung des staatlichen Gewaltmonopols in Preußen 1848–1914. Frankfurt a.M./New York, NY: Campus. Fürmetz, G. (2002). Polizei, Massenprotest und öffentliche Ordnung: Großeinsätze der Münchener Polizei in den frühen fünfziger Jahren. In C. Groh (Ed.), Öffentliche Ordnung in der Nachkriegszeit (pp. 79–106). Ubstadt-Weiher: Verlag Regionalkultur. Fürmetz, G. (Ed.) (2006). Schwabinger Krawalle. Protest, Polizei und Öffentlichkeit zu Beginn der 60er Jahre. Essen: Klartext. Fürmetz, G. et al. (Eds.) (2001). Nachkriegspolizei. Sicherheit und Ordnung in Ost- und Westdeutschland 1945–1969. Hamburg: Doelling and Galitz. Giese, W. (1960). Motorisierter Streifendienst in der Bewährung. Deutsche Polizei, 311–312. Giese, W. (1962). Stellung und Aufgaben der Polizei-Abteilung Hamburg (mot.) im Stadtstaat Hamburg. Polizei, Technik, Verkehr, Special Issue, 97–99. Giese, W. (1971). Gedanken über Menschenführung in der Polizei. Die Polizei, 62, 337–339. Giese, W. (1972). Gedanken über Menschenführung in der Polizei. Die Polizei, 63, 19–21. Gilcher-Holtey, I. (1995). “Die Phantasie an die Macht”. Mai 68 in Frankreich. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Grotum, T. (2001). Jugendliche Ordnungsstörer. Polizei und “Halbstarken”-Krawalle in Niedersachsen 1956–1959. In G. Fürmetz et al. (Eds.), Nachkriegspolizei. Sicherheit und Ordnung in Ost- und Westdeutschland 1945–1969 (pp. 277–302). Hamburg: Doelling und Galitz. Halloran, J. D. et al. (1970). Demonstrations as Communication: A Case Study. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Hamburger Abendblatt, July 6, 1966. Hamburger Morgenpost, June 10, 1967. Hamburger Morgenpost, July 5, 1967. Horn, G.-R. and Kenney, P. (Eds.) (2008). Transnational Moments of Change. Europe 1945, 1968, 1989. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Hübner, K. (1997). Einsatz. Erinnerungen des Berliner Polizeipräsidenten 1969–1987. Berlin: Jaron. Kleinknecht, T. and Sturm, M. (2004). Demonstrationen sind punktuelle Plebiszite. Polizeireform und gesellschaftliche Demokratisierung von den sechziger zu den achtziger Jahren. Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 44, 181–218. Klimke, M. and Scharloth, J. (Eds.) (2008). 1968 in Europe: A History of Protest and Activism, 1956–1977. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Knatz, C. (2000). Ein Heer im grünen Rock? Der Mitteldeutsche Aufstand 1921, die preußische Schutzpolizei und die Frage der inneren Sicherheit in der Weimarer Republik. Berlin: Colloquium. Kraushaar, W. (1996). Die Protest-Chronik 1949–1959. Hamburg: Rogner und Bernhard (4 vols). Lindner, W. (1998). Die Studentenbewegung im Spiegel der Ruhrgebietspresse. Westfälische Forschungen, 48, 217–239.

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Maibach, G. (1996): Polizisten und Gewalt. Innenansichten aus dem Polizeialltag. Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt. Matthäus, J. (1996). What about the “Ordinary Men”? The German Order Police and the holocaust in the occupied Soviet Union. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 10, 134–150. Niederhoffer, A. (1967). Behind the Shield: The Police in Urban Society. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Otto, F. (1960a). Über die geistige Struktur der polizeilichen Neuorganisation. Deutsche Polizei/Ausgabe Nordrhein-Westfalen, 41–43. Otto, F. (1960b). Über die geistige Struktur der polizeilichen Neuorganisation. Deutsche Polizei/Ausgabe Nordrhein-Westfalen, 65–66. Otto, F. (1960c). Hat die Neugliederung der Schutzpolizei eine Anhebung oder Abwertung der betroffenen Oberbeamten zur Folge. Deutsche Polizei/Ausgabe Nordrhein-Westfalen, 79–81. Palm, E. (1933). Die Polizeischule. Eine soziologische Studie, Ph.D. thesis, University of Cologne. Prokos, A. and Padavic, I. (2002). ‘There Oughtta Be a Law Against Bitches’: masculinity lessons in Police Academy training. Gender, Work and Organization, 9, 439–459. Pulver, R. (1960). Polizei und akute Masse. Hiltrup, unpublished manuscript. Ruhnau, H. (1969). Einsatzrichtlinien bei Demonstrationen. Die Polizei, 60, 89–90∗ . Rumbaut, R. and Bittner, E. (1979). Changing conceptions of the Police role: a sociological review. Crime and Justice, 1, 239–288. Sack, F. (1984). Staat, Gesellschaft und politische Gewalt: Zur “Pathologie”politischer Konflikte. In F. Sack and H. Steinert (Eds.), Protest und Reaktion (pp. 23–103). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Schell, W. (1956). Der Bandenkampf als polizeiliche Aufgabe. Hiltrup, unpublished seminar thesis. Schweingruber, D. (2000). Mob sociology and escalated force: sociology’s contribution to repressive police tactics. The Sociological Quarterly, 41, 371–389. Staatsarchiv der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg (StAHH) Behörde für Inneres (BfI) 163, Report of Polizeieinsatzleitung June 4, 1967. StAHH BfI 163, Report on police operations during the Shah visit on June 3 and 4, 1967, dated July 12, 1967. StAHH BfI 1022, Allgemeine polizeiliche Auflagen und Hinweise für die Durchführung von Umzügen, Versammlungen oder Veranstaltungen ähnlicher Art auf öffentlichen Straßen, Wegen und Plätzen vom April 20, 1966. StAHH BfI 1025, Meeting of police leaders August 17, 1966. StAHH BfI 1034, Demonstrationen in Hamburg 1970 (draft). StAHH BfI 1036, Report from December 28, 1967. Stark, R. (1972). Police riots. Collective violence and law enforcement. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. Stiebitz, F. (1956). Die Behandlung akuter Massen. In H. Maly (Ed.), Psychologie im Dienste der Polizei (pp. 42–48). Cologne: Heymann. Sturm, M. (2006). Der knackt jeden Schädel. Überlegungen zur Verwendung des Polizeistocks. WerkstattGeschichte, 43, 96–108. Thomas, N. (2002). Challenging the myths of the 1960s: the case of student protest in Britain. Twentieth Century British History, 16, 277–297. Thomas, N. (2008). Protests against the Vietnam War in 1960s Britain: the relationship between protestors and the press. Twentieth Century British History, 22, 335–354. Tilgner, H. W. (1960). Die Neugliederung der Schutzpolizei in den städtischen Kreispolizeibehörden des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen. Schriftenreihe für Oberbeamte. Mitteilungen aus dem Polizei-Institut, 1, 12–22. Weinhauer, K. (2000). “Staatsbürger mit Sehnsucht nach Harmonie”: Gesellschaftsbild und Staatsverständnis in der westdeutschen Polizei (der 1960er Jahre). In A. Schildt et al. (Eds.), Dynamische Zeiten. Die 60er Jahre in den beiden deutschen Gesellschaften (pp. 444–470). Hamburg: Christians.

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Weinhauer, K. (2001). Innere Unruhe. Studentenproteste und die Krise der westdeutschen Schutzpolizei in den 1960er Jahren. In G. Fürmetz et al. (Eds.), Nachkriegspolizei. Sicherheit und Ordnung in Ost- und Westdeutschland 1945–1969 (pp. 303–325). Hamburg: Doelling und Galitz. Weinhauer, K. (2003a). Schutzpolizei in der Bundesrepublik. Zwischen Bürgerkrieg und Innerer Sicherheit: Die turbulenten sechziger Jahre. Paderborn: Schoeningh. Weinhauer, K. (2003b). “Freund und Helfer” an der “Front”: Patriarchen, Modernisierer und Gruppenkohäsion in der westdeutschen Polizei. In M. Frese et al. (Eds.), Demokratisierung und gesellschaftlicher Aufbruch. Die sechziger Jahre als Wendezeit der Bundesrepublik (pp. 549–573). Paderborn etc.: Schoeningh. Weinhauer, K. (2004). Sozialpartnerschaft, autoritärer Staat und Innere Sicherheit. Gewerkschaftliche Interessenvertretung in der nordrhein-westfälischen Polizei von den 1950er Jahren bis Anfang der 1970er Jahre. In K. C. Führer (Ed.), Tarifbeziehungen und Tarifpolitik in Deutschland im historischen Wandel (pp. 224–246). Bonn: J.H.W Dietz Nachf. Weinhauer, K. (2008). Polizeikultur und Polizeipraxis in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren: Ein (bundes-)deutsch-englischer Vergleich. In C. Benninghaus et al. (Eds.), Unterwegs in Europa. Beiträge zu einer vergleichenden Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte (pp. 201–218). Frankfurt/New York, NY: Campus. Werkentin, F. (1984). Die Restauration der deutschen Polizei. Innere Rüstung von 1945 bis zur Notstandsgesetzgebung. Frankfurt/New York, NY: Campus. Westermann, E. B. (2005). Hitler’s Police Battalions. Enforcing Racial War in the East. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Winter, M. (1998). Politikum Polizei. Macht und Funktion der Polizei in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Münster: LIT. Zylmann, E. (1964). Die psychologische Situation der Polizei. Ein Bericht über eine Studienreise. Hamburg, unpublished manuscript.

Part III

The Micro-level: School Shootings

School Violence and Its Control in Germany and the United States Since the 1950s Dirk Schumann

1 Introduction School shootings in recent years have deeply shocked the public and triggered calls for determined action by state and school authorities. Against the backdrop of scores of teachers and students killed and wounded in these shootings, previous school violence may seem of minor importance. However, school violence in previous decades also caused grave concerns and led to comparable demands for action. School shootings involving multiple fatalities and a specific performative quality of the act of violence are arguably a fairly recent phenomenon. However, if placed in a broader context, they may be seen as a specific form of attention-seeking on the part of marginalized students and can therefore become part of a larger historical narrative. This assumption rests on the premise that school cannot be conceptualized merely as an institution where knowledge in academic subjects is taught and learned. School is also a social space in which values and norms are transmitted and negotiated, and in which subjectivities are formed in response to and in conflict with gender, class, and other social and cultural norms (Dreeben 1968; Southgate 2003). While school as an institution may seek to inculcate and stabilize the prevailing societal norms, students, depending on their social, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds, may attempt to resist such efforts, and teachers may not always act in accordance with the expectations of school administrations and directors. “Control” of what happens in school can therefore take on a different meaning for each group and will never be comprehensive. Even classroom instruction is a process that cannot be fully controlled by the teachers, as students base their behavior on their perceptions of the teacher’s expectations in the first place, not on the teacher’s goals in relation to the academic subject being taught, and may therefore find ways of pursuing their own interests despite appearing to pay attention and without openly challenging the teacher’s authority (Luhmann 1978).

D. Schumann (B) Department of Medieval and Modern History, Georg-August University, Göttingen, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

W. Heitmeyer et al. (eds.), Control of Violence, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0383-9_10,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

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Challenging authority by means of pranks that in extreme forms may even cross over into violence is another way of resisting the coercive features of school. Coercion is an inevitable result of mandatory attendance and may include the overt violence of corporal punishment and other forms of action on the part of teachers and school administrators, which students may perceive as repressive and abusive. Their restiveness can be seen as a way of testing and negotiating the boundaries of the power of the institution and its representatives. Bullying of classmates, which can take many forms including gossip, withholding attention, verbal abuse, and physical attacks, is a way of marking boundaries between social and ethnic groups and of enforcing “normal” behavior of boys and girls or marginalizing those who prove unable or unwilling to fit the norm. It is also a resistance strategy on the part of those who are marginalized (Southgate 2003, 81–144). Teachers, school administrators, and parents may or may not become aware of these practices and, if they do, may choose to take note or turn their backs. As long as school was legally defined as a realm of its own, where teachers and administrators had great leeway in their actions and were obliged to resort to the police and the justice system only in cases of obvious crimes, i.e., until the 1970s, the likelihood that such transgressions of norms, including acts of violence, would be continuously and diligently recorded was minimal. So there is no continuous database on which a study of school violence could rely. Studying school violence therefore means examining it through the lenses of those involved directly and the wider public. The perceptions are marked by discontinuity: There were periods when the issue became the focus of intense public attention and others when it was forgotten or faded into the background. The concept of “moral panics” that Stanley Cohen devised in the early 1970s and refined in subsequent editions of his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics is helpful in conceptualizing this discontinuity. According to Cohen, a “moral panic” occurs when troubling incidents in a given society are perceived not only as dangerous in themselves, but also as indicative of a larger “threat to societal values and interests.” The nature of this threat is then “presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media.” Subsequently, key public figures such as newspaper editors and politicians stoke the fires of public opinion, followed by generally accepted experts who provide diagnoses and propose solutions. Ways of coping are then tried out, and the problem diminishes or disappears (Cohen 2002, quotes p. 1). While (lower-class) youth cultures provide the quintessential objects of moral panics, there are a number of others such as drug consumption and child abuse. School massacres, as Cohen notes in the 2002 edition of his work, are another case in point. A moral panic is not triggered purely by the number or severity of incidents, Cohen explains. What is of pivotal importance is rather: “a cognitive shift from ‘how could it happen in a place like this?’ to ‘it could happen anyplace.’ In the United States at least, the Columbine Massacre signaled this shift.” Cohen quotes President Bill Clinton as saying that the shooting “pierced the soul of America”—a public statement that suggested a search for underlying causes and ways of prevention that went far beyond the individual case (Cohen 2002, xii).

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To avoid misunderstandings: Cohen does not mean to say that “moral panics” are to be dismissed as completely false and dangerous in themselves (and in 2002 described his usage of the term “panic” as potentially misleading, as it might convey a sense of irrationality and mob rule) (Cohen 2002, xxviii). Although they exaggerate, they do raise awareness of a problem that is real. The question is why certain problems become objects of a “moral panic” whereas others fail to attract massive public and expert attention despite being equally disturbing. One example is the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence by a gang of white youth in Britain in 1993, which failed to trigger intense concern about the deadly aspects of racism, mainly because the conservative media rejected the notion of widespread racism out of hand (Cohen 2002, xf.). Cohen’s model helps refine the historical analysis of school shootings and school violence in at least two respects. First, it precludes simple linear conceptualizations of the issue. Such violence may be on the rise or on the decline, but this observation is predicated not only, as standard criminological theory has it, on “labeling” certain behavior as violent (a point relevant to school violence in general, not to school shootings, of course), but also on media attention that then, mediated through political processes, triggers expert activities with respect to the issue. Hence, certain incidents that could qualify for being integrated in a larger, long-term narrative of violence remain unnoticed by a wider public and even by scholars until a “moral panic” renders them an object of concern and interest. Second, the model emphasizes the importance of “experts”—broadly conceived as scholars as well as academically trained staff in organizations and institutions—who not only provide analytical categories for dealing with violence, but also help shape public opinion in the media and translate political decisions into daily practice in schools, clinics, and detention centers. Historical research on school violence is scarce, especially with regard to the twentieth century. For the United States, Crews and Counts provide a long-term overview of school disturbances that includes school violence (1997, cf. Midlarsky and Klein 2005).1 Watson and Watson describe various forms of school violence and other incidents that posed a threat to schooling in the second half of the twentieth century, mainly on the basis of newspaper accounts (2002). While Watson and Watson argue that there has been an increase in danger in schools in recent decades, Crews and Counts were reluctant to make such a statement, pointing to the difficulties in measuring violence and other disturbances over the long-term.2 For Germany, while only touching briefly on the post-1945 era, Flissikowski, Kluge, and Schauerhammer discuss school violence in the context of how schools have dealt with unruly students since the Middle Ages, showing that their separation since the nineteenth century has gone hand in hand with more lenient methods of

1 For

the sometimes even deadly violence of college students around 1800 see Kett (1977, 53–57). and Newman (1980) reject the notion that school violence has increased since the nineteenth century.

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punishment and attempts to explain their behavior scientifically (1980).3 Helpful as they are, these overviews lack a clear focus on violence and fail to provide either a solid empirical base or an analytical framework for the history of school violence. Hence, as a first step to understanding forms of school violence and its control in the past, this essay will focus on debates about school violence and practices for dealing with it at points in time when this violence appeared to be a burning societal issue that required thorough explanation and a strategy of control. Particular attention will be paid to the views of experts. The following questions will be examined: When and why did “moral panics” and public discussion about school violence erupt? Which types of violence were singled out for in-depth discussions, which were neglected? What causes of violence were identified in the debates? What strategies and instruments of control were recommended? What strategies and instruments were actually used in the schools? Focusing on debates does not imply taking a radically constructivist position. School violence was real and harmful to students and teachers alike. Research therefore has to explore the dimensions of the issue as seen by those directly involved, and compare these over time. A comparative and transnational approach helps throw this dimension into sharp relief. Examining the United States and (West) Germany is instructive, not least because references to the United States—both to the actual situation in the schools and to the explanatory models used by social scientists— were common in West German debates. While school systems in the two countries differed greatly in the postwar period—the United States kept its comprehensive system, enormously expanded its high schools, while West Germany preserved its three-tier system and only added a limited number of comprehensive schools (Gesamtschulen)—and the issue of racial desegregation had no parallel in Germany, the problems of school violence seem to have been similar. Investigating them helps understand broader western concerns with education and youth cultures in the past 50 years. In this essay I will examine three time periods during which the discussion about school violence peaked in both countries: the mid-1950s, the mid-1970s, and the early 1990s. I will argue that in each case the discussion was related to a moral panic and unfolded in both countries at basically the same time. In the 1950s and the 1970s there was a small time lag between the discussion in the United States and the subsequent one in West Germany. This was not coincidental. The German discussion was in part triggered by observations of what was happening on the other side of the Atlantic. In some respects, the situation in America seemed to foreshadow what was in stock for Germany in the future, while American scientific expertise provided a welcome resource for addressing the problem of school violence. Depending on their own agenda, German commentators and experts of various stripes used references to the United States to stress parallels or differences, to dramatize the situation or call for calm. Overall, the influence of experts has increased since the 1950s. The three debates show a deepening of scientific expertise on the subject, both with

3

On the lack of recent studies on school violence see Briesen and Weinhauer (2007).

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respect to empirical findings and to the measures proposed for controlling school violence. While sensitivity to various forms of violence grew, eventually including forms of verbal and psychological abuse and pressure—bullying—in addition to physical violence, the “toolbox” available to teachers, school administrators, social workers, and therapists also grew. I examine this process through an examination of key books and articles from the three periods in question, supplemented by archival material. The analysis does not claim to be exhaustive. The three periods will not be covered in equal depth. The most interesting period is the middle one, the mid-1970s, when the first large-scale empirical study of school violence was conducted in the United States. Unlike in the discussion of the 1950s, school violence was no longer seen as just one aspect of juvenile delinquency in general. West German observers took note of the American debate not only in detail, but also in a very selective fashion and came to much more “political” conclusions about how to deal with school violence. After the shocks of the Columbine High School massacre and subsequent similar events on both sides of the Atlantic, the partial inadequacy of concepts and practices of controlling violence in schools seemed obvious and the terms of the debate changed. This, however, will be discussed in detail by the following essays in this volume.

2 The Debate of the Mid-1950s A student threatens to assault the teacher who has asked him to remove his cap, another attempts to rape a female teacher in the school library, several students brutally beat up two teachers on their way home after dark in a back alley—these were among the scenes of the movie Blackboard Jungle, which was released in the United States in 1955. Introducing rock’n’roll to the screen, the film perfectly captured—and also intensified—fears about youth violence and the new youth culture that seemed to contribute to it. Three years later, West German movie theaters screened a German version of the story, Der Pauker (The Crammer) with popular actor Heinz Rühmann playing the lead role. Blackboard Jungle was a serious film and Der Pauker a comedy, but in both an idealistic teacher was challenged by an unruly class and in both cases had to fend off a physical attack before being able to control the class on the basis of mutual respect and understanding (although in the German case the perpetrator was a former student who had been expelled from school). School was not the only locus of media attention directed at the issue of juvenile delinquency and violence—movies such as The Wild One in the United States and Die Halbstarken in Germany situated their stories in public space and in the family home—but it was no coincidence that school figured prominently here. Following the murder of a homeless man by four teenagers in Brooklyn in 1954, media attention to juvenile delinquency had increased greatly. Statistics suggested a dramatic rise in lawlessness among young people, and schools also seemed to be affected. Newspaper reports in New York described attacks on teachers, arson and bomb threats, and gang activity spilling over into the schools and leading to fights in

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which pistols, baseball bats, and knives were used (Gilbert 1986, 12; Watson and Watson 2002, 33–40). While the picture was less gloomy in West Germany, the riots of the Halbstarken (adolescents) created concerns here. These youngsters, mainly low-skilled young workers whose opportunities in society were eroding, molested passers-by, blocked traffic, vandalized public parks, “borrowed” cars, and got into altercations with the police, in a number of instances following the screening of American movies or a rock’n’roll concert (Grotum 1994; Kurme 2006). While many of the “crimes” figuring in the statistics were mere “status crimes” and the rising proportion of young people in the population partly explained the development, other factors also made a contribution. In the United States, the mass migration of African Americans and Puerto Ricans to the big cities of the East in the 1940s and 1950s changed the social composition of inner city populations, while “middle-class flight” to the growing suburbs, housing projects that concentrated poor people in certain areas, and the concomitant loss of low-skilled jobs in the inner cities created adverse conditions for the offspring of the migrants. As high school attendance rose and became the mainstream experience for teenagers—by the end of the 1940s, 65% of the age group was in high school—middle and lower-class children and their different social and ethnic cultures came into closer contact than ever before (Hampel 1986, 75–77; Ravitch 1983, 42–45; Schneider 1999). Car ownership, increasing leisure time, and more money to spend fueled the development of a new youth culture in which the media played an important role. That school became one center of attention in this situation was no coincidence. It was one of the sites of the new peer-group youth culture. Moreover, its crucial role as an institution for the country was confirmed and, for many white middle-class parents also endangered, by the Brown decision of the US Supreme Court in 1954 that mandated racial desegregation, albeit with all “deliberate” speed. The deep-seated fears that all these factors triggered were behind the moral panic of the mid-1950s. It was hardly surprising that in the context of one expression of this panic, the Kefauver hearings in the American Senate, the blame was squarely laid with the media (Hine 1999, 239–245; Gilbert 1986, 3 f., 17–22). Similar voices were to be heard in Germany, too, where American Westerns in particular were held to incite young people to brutality (Poiger 2000, 51–55). While school was not regarded as the predominant place where juvenile delinquency played out, it was considered one institution in charge of controlling the problem, certainly more so in the United States than in Germany. Repression and understanding were both needed, it was felt. In Blackboard Jungle, Mr. Dadier found a way to relate to his students by using comic strips in his English lessons. He also accepted the challenge of the ringleader of the gang in his class to engage in a physical fight with him and, by emerging as the winner, finally broke up the gang structure. The ringleader was expelled from school. The plot in Der Pauker followed the same logic. Here, the ringleader had already been expelled but he still commanded a following among the students. School itself did not have to change but it had to make sure it responded to the emotional needs of the young. In the United States, the moral panic about juvenile delinquency erupted when the “life adjustment” approach to education was already on the decline, and was in

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part a reaction to it (Mintz 2004, 287–289). The concept, based on John Dewey’s reform pedagogy, aimed at shaping a person that was well-adjusted to the needs of life in the family, the community, and at work, but not necessarily a brilliant academic achiever. When figures seemed to suggest that large numbers of students leaving high school were neither fit for qualified jobs nor for attending college, criticism mounted, even though the actual impact of the concept on classroom instruction may have been limited (Hampel 1986, 17–21, 34–57; Ravitch 1983, 45–57, Tyack and Cuban 1995). Still, the discourse on how to control students’ behavior and prevent them from becoming delinquent had to take into consideration that public education was not only about forming student’s minds, but also had to answer to their emotional and psychological needs. In this respect, the mental hygiene movement of the 1930s had left a lasting legacy (Cohen 1999; Jones 1999). Moreover, in contrast to Germany, public education in the United States was seen, in particular after mandatory attendance had been substantially expanded in the early twentieth century, as an institution to “Americanize” the young, and this meant more than conveying knowledge (Schumann and Sealander 2008). Hence, psychological guidance and counseling was institutionalized in the schools at a much earlier date than in Germany, although until the mid-1960s counselors were more likely to refer students with emotional and behavioral problems to special education facilities, therapists, or clinics than to treat their problems themselves (Hampel 1986, 53–55).4 A closer look at the schools in Seattle shows that a focus on the individual “maladjusted” student prevailed in the handling of school violence in a city that experienced gang activity and its concomitant violence only for a short period in the mid-1950s. In September 1955, the police recorded a number of incidents with the “Dukes,” a gang in which several new tenth graders of Lincoln High School played a leading role. A young boy was beaten up because he wore a black jacket with white stripes, the Dukes’ dress, without being a member, a group of girls were molested, the owner of a service station threatened, and a car mirror broken. In a related incident, at a dance organized by the P.T.A. at Roosevelt High School, a student was asked to leave the building by a teacher since he appeared to be drunk. On his way out he got into an argument with another teacher who wanted to know his name, pulled a gun, and threatened to kill the supervisor; after leaving the building he fired a shot from the street but hit nobody. He later declared he had been carrying the gun to protect himself against the Dukes. A strong police presence and swift action by the juvenile court seem to have been important factors in defusing the situation and bringing gang activity to a halt. This form of repression was only part of the story, however. The boy with the gun, who had been taken into custody by the police and suspended from school, was later readmitted, following the decision of a faculty meeting and based on his past record at the school. The fact that his father appeared very cooperative also played a part. The records do not convey the

4 In

the 1950s and 1960s, the number of school counselors rose more rapidly than the number of students. By 1966, counselors were employed in 65% of all high schools.

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impression that his possession of a gun and his threat to the teacher caused the same kind of concern that the gang activity created, even though the consequences of his action could have been very severe.5 The key strategies of Seattle schools were broad involvement of parents and students, good coordination of activities among all institutions dealing with juvenile delinquents, and special security measures: a Family Life Program provided advice especially for young parents; an Inter High School Council, chaired by student representatives, organized activities such as inter-high-school conferences and a “Good Sportsmanship Program” to prevent violence through peer pressure; and a Juvenile Advisory Council brought together representatives of the schools, the police, the juvenile court, and the state liquor board and was in contact with the churches, the P.T.A.s, and youth organizations. In 1954, the school district established a security office that was to apprehend offenders and then to act as a liaison with the police, the juvenile court and the guidance department, social workers, and the parents.6 While officials acknowledged in 1958 that, given the age structure of the population, the problem of juvenile delinquency would continue to increase in future years, the violence they chose to discuss was limited, as it was prior to the gang problems of 1955, to vandalism. Halloween vandalism, characterized by “broken streetlights, uprooted stop signs, stolen hydrant caps, and the like” caused particular concern, costing the community “thousands of dollars” per year, as the Assistant Superintendent for High Schools noted in March 1954.7 An old custom was no longer defined as an ensemble of legitimate pranks but as a lack of “good citizenship” that required control measures. Peer pressure by the Inter High School Council had already borne fruit, the Superintendent noted with satisfaction.8 Overall, juvenile delinquency continued to be seen first and foremost as an individual problem that needed diagnosing at the earliest stage possible in order to be treated satisfactorily. It fell under the category of mental health, not social psychology. While the Seattle school system seemed capable of shouldering this burden, its superintendent voiced doubts that this would remain so in the future. Referring to the expected rise in delinquency due to demography, he pointed out that more resources were needed to adequately fulfill this task. Suspension, transfer, and ultimately the exclusion of students with serious behavioral problems were a possible way out for the school system. As this would only have shifted the basic problem to the community as a whole, the superintendent was not in favor of it, but he was not sure for how long the school system would be able to withstand the mounting pressure from parents on this matter.9 Control by 5 Seattle

Public School Archives (SPSA) A 1978-04, A.A1.44, 55a, Memo from Roosevelt High School, Vice Principal Hasselblad to Superintendent Campbell, 5 October 1955; Police officers Tangen and McAvoy to Captain Dench, 19 September 1955. 6 SPSA A1978-04, A.A1.43, 41, Superintendent to Board of Directors, 5 March 1954; A.A1.44, 55a, Superintendent Fleming to Mayor Pomeroy, 26 January 1954. 7 SPSA A1978-04, A.A1.43, 41, Superintendent to Board of Directors, 5 March 1954. 8 Ibid., p. 2. 9 SPSA A1978-04, A.A1.43, 41, Superintendent Campbell to Board of Directors, 14 February 1958, p. 6.

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exclusion and separation in special institutions was one way of dealing with deviations from normality, in particular when resources were deemed scarce. Addressing the problem of school and youth violence was, not surprisingly, first and foremost a task for the local community, which was, unlike in Germany, the principal actor in the school system.10 Lesser forms of school violence that would later become an issue went unnoticed in the public debate about juvenile delinquency. Steven, a 9-year-old, threw rocks at other children, Richard (7) “kicked a girl in the face and knocked off her glasses,” James (7) threw “large stones” and caused a cut in another child’s head, Richard (14) pushed “a boy half down the stairs,” Michael (10) “struck another boy across the back (over the kidneys) with a rubber coated wire.” These were all cases where Seattle teachers chose to administer corporal punishment. Typically, it came in response to repeated incidents and after other measures, such as loss of privileges, detention, discussion with the parents, and referral to the guidance department had failed. The same procedures were also followed, however, in cases of truancy, impertinent behavior, “bad language,” and other misdemeanors. Violence was not singled out as a special problem, but perceived as one of several behavioral problems that needed treatment. The punishment itself—usually several strokes with a “paddle” on the student’s buttocks in the principal’s office—was not called into question by the school administration or parents.11 Especially in small towns and rural areas, this partly ritualized violence by the school against its students was not yet widely regarded as potentially harmful,12 although school districts in several big cities had already abolished corporal punishment when confronted with new discipline problems in the wake of war and postwar migration (Hampel 1986, 75–77; Olsen 1964, 14). The German debate of the mid-1950s was less specific and more political. Schools did not figure as a place of vandalism or attacks against teachers, so they did not have to change policies or take specific steps. At the peak of the Halbstarkenkrawalle (adolescent disorder), however, the violence of unruly youngsters appeared to some observers to be a grave threat to order. In 1956 prominent educationist Adolf Busemann saw this violence as part of a continuity since the 1920s, when in his view a process of general brutalization (Verrohung) had started that had paved the way for the Nazi crimes but seemed far from over (Busemann 1956). Teacher Paul Diwo deplored a “dictatorship” of the “Halbstarken” and of children as such and regarded their violence as indicative of a lack of respect for the newly founded democracy. From this perspective, youth violence was more than just a public nuisance that police and the justice system had to deal with; it had possible political ramifications. It was hardly surprising that conservative voices such

10 Tyack (1974) describes development of the urban school system in the United States, emphasiz-

ing the growing bureaucratization in the twentieth century. A1978-04, A.A1.43, 45, Corporal punishment reports. The cases are all from 1960. 12 Illinois State Archives 106.014, Superintendent of Public Instruction: Legal Department Correspondence, 1958–1973. 11 SPSA

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as these would point to the United States as an example of how West Germans should not deal with the issue. Busemann cited an article in Time Magazine of 1954 that painted a gloomy picture of Manhattan schools with fearful teachers and rowdy students, to warn of allegedly lenient American methods of school discipline, even though Germany had not (yet) reached the American level of juvenile delinquency. Diwo took a swipe at reform pedagogy: The introduction into the classroom of methods such as projects (Arbeitsunterricht) and group work without firm control by the teacher was undermining respect for authority (Diwo 1956). From this conservative perspective, the Halbstarken problem had to be solved by reaffirming authority. In school that meant strengthening the authority of the teacher, most notably by retaining an instrument of control that had become contested in the postwar years: corporal punishment. In 1954, the Fifth Senate of the Federal Supreme Court rejected the appeal of a teacher who had been fined for spanked students on eight occasions, marshalling historical and pedagogical arguments to voice serious doubts that this form of punishment had any justification at all and allowing it only “in rare exceptional cases.” This ruling caused considerable unrest among teachers and advocates of corporal punishment nationwide. Busemann made a pointed contribution to this discussion in his 1956 article, insisting that teachers had an obligation to protect their students against the brutality of the Halbstarken, and therefore had the right to use “brute force” (Brachialgewalt) themselves. It was hardly a coincidence that a year later, at the peak of the riots in West Germany, the Second Senate of the Federal Supreme Court, ruling in another case of a teacher who had wielded the cane, came to the conclusion that corporal punishment in school had been an accepted, common practice throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and hence was a teacher’s customary right, provided he used it in a “measured” way (Busemann 1956, 163).13 More liberal observers had a different view of the Halbstarkenkrawalle and the appropriate way to deal with them. Prominent educationist and psychologist Hans Heinrich Muchow warned against both dramatizing and playing down the issue. In his view, the root cause of the problem was the boredom of modern society, which offered young people insufficient opportunities for play and adventure. For young people in the emotional crisis of adolescence the riots were one way of expressing their frustration and anger. Bans and legal restrictions would not solve the problem. Instead, young people had to be offered chances to prove themselves in a way that was both attractive to them and useful for the community, such as activities in sports teams, youth homes, and the Red Cross (Muchow 1956). When Heinz Rühmann in Der Pauker got his students engaged in putting together a car from pieces collected in a junkyard, he was following this line of reasoning. But this was an extra-curricular activity. School itself did not seem to be in need of change. Teachers simply had to be engaging and acquire “natural” authority instead of relying on repression. Methods of reform pedagogy therefore should not be discarded (Ehrentreich 1956, 609). Therapeutic mental-health-based measures were not yet on the agenda, however. In contrast to the United States, there was no move to

13 For

more details see Schumann (2007).

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establish new institutions such as guidance and counseling facilities in the school districts. Teachers were regarded as sufficiently qualified to handle all possible problems. As the Bavarian ministry of education stated tersely in 1958: “Excessive specialization (e.g. creating full-time positions for school psychologists) is undesirable.”14

3 The Debate of the Mid-1970s 3.1 The United States The 1960s and early 1970s saw reforms of the education system on many fronts in the United States and in West Germany, as well as student unrest connected with the Vietnam war on both sides of the Atlantic and race riots in the United States. For a while youth violence ceased to be an issue, superseded by debates about expanding secondary education to include hitherto underprivileged groups, changes in the curriculum to make it more “scientific,” and the relaxation of methods of discipline (Ravitch 1983, 228–320; Gass-Bolm 2002). When violence flared toward the end of the 1960s, it was not seen particularly as a problem of schools. This had changed by the mid-1970s, again first in the United States. Media reports, most notably in the news magazine U.S. News and World Report, expressed alarm over an alleged “crime invasion” in the public schools (January 26, 1970). Led by Indiana Senator and presidential hopeful Birch Bayh, a US Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency specifically focused on schools and in 1975 published its findings under the title Our Nation’s Schools—A Report Card: “A” in School Violence and Vandalism. Based on a questionnaire sent to 757 schools in the large school districts (with 10,000 and more students, i.e., primarily in the big cities), of which more than two-thirds were returned, it came to alarming conclusions. From 1970 to 1973, the report claimed, the number of violent assaults on students by other students had increased by 85%, while assaults on teachers had increased almost as dramatically, by 77%. These seemed to be truly disturbing figures.15 Since 1968, Gallup polls had shown “discipline” and “violence” topping the list of problems in schools for the American public (Tyack and Cuban 1995, 28–33). A moral panic was under way. It was certainly not triggered solely by violence in schools. Americans were deeply disturbed by the race riots, the student protest movement, the course of the Vietnam War, the conduct of the Nixon government, and the first oil shock of 1973. At the same time, there was growing resistance on the part of white parents against court-ordered busing of students that was meant to finally implement the Brown

14 Bayerisches

Hauptstaatsarchiv Munich, Kultusministerium 61257, Minutes of meeting of October 27, 1958: “Ein übertriebenes Spezialistentum (z.B. die hauptamtliche Verwendung von Schulpsychologen) ist nicht erwünscht.” 15 The flawed methodology was overlooked: asking respondents to report on a period of the preceding 3 years and failing to account for lack of response in a methodologically sound way definitely inflated the figures. See National Institute of Education (1978, vol. 1, 34).

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decision and create racially balanced schools. Federal and state influence on the schools increased greatly around 1970, resulting in a considerable bureaucratization (Haas 1988, 728; Ravitch 1983, 312–320). As in the 1950s, a fairly concrete issue provided a clear point of reference for complex concerns. The Senate committee mandated a comprehensive study of violence in American schools to be conducted by the National Institute of Education under the auspices of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The resulting report, Violent Schools, Safe Schools (usually referred to as the Safe School Study Report), was published in 1978 and followed by a number of other studies that drew upon its data or collected additional evidence from crime statistics and various associations of school administrators (National Institute of Education 1978; see, e.g., Baker and Rubel 1980; Rubel 1977; Gottfredson and Gottfredson 1985). Given the vested interests of school administrators behind it (Gottfredson and Gottfredson 1985, 8 f.), the study clearly focused on the internal structure of the schools and in particular on the conduct of their principals. The profile of the schools’ students and teachers and the community in which each school was embedded mattered less. Still, the study amassed a wealth of data from representative samples of a very large number of schools all over the country. It was based primarily on a mail survey of 4,000 schools (elementary and secondary), whose principals were asked to report incidents for selected 1-month periods between February 1976 and January 1977, and an on-site survey of 642 public junior and senior high schools, where principals, teachers, and students were interviewed. The study defined violence as vandalism and physical assaults (including threats) against persons, leaving aside the issue of structural violence and forms of psychological pressure and verbal abuse that are today understood as “bullying.” The Safe School Study revealed that vandalism was a considerable problem: 25% of all schools experienced it in a typical 1-month period. The actual figures that were reported for interpersonal violence, however, were fairly low. According to the study, only 1.3% of high school students had been attacked in a typical 1-month period in 1976/1977. Less than half of these attacks resulted in some form of injury, and of those only 4%—in other words, a small fraction of all incidents—required medical attention. Figures for teachers were similar: 0.5% reported an attack in the same period, and of these, a little less than a fifth needed medical treatment (National Institute of Education 1978, vol. 1, 3). The long-term perspective, more difficult to gauge, did not show any alarming trend either. According to the responses of teachers (at both elementary and secondary schools) to annual surveys by the National Education Association, the leading teachers’ union, the numbers of physical attacks developed as follows: in 1956, 1.6% reported such an incident; by 1972, the figure had risen to 2.2%; in 1974, it reached 3.0%; but two years later it dropped to 2.9% (National Institute of Education 1978, vol. 1, 32).16 This certainly represents an overall rise, provided that teachers in 1956 and in the 1970s held the same notion of an attack, but not an overly dramatic one. School

16 Rubel

gives a somewhat lower figure for 1974/75 (1977, 133).

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principals saw violence and property destruction in schools increase from the early 1960s to the 1970s, but both increases level off after the early 1970s; there was no overall change for 1971–1976, and even some improvement in urban areas. A study published in 1985 also came to the conclusion that the trend from the early 1970s up until the 1980s was stability rather than any further increase (National Institute of Education 1978, vol. 1, 34 f.; Gottfredson and Gottfredson 1985, 184). In addition, scholars noted five considerations that further relativized the figures of the study: (1) Throughout the 1960s many schools had purchased high-tech equipment, meaning that there were more and more costly targets for vandalism, which drove loss figures up. (2) Massive increases in school size between 1950 and 1970 increased opportunities for violence. (3) The growing “complexity of due process procedures” in handling unruly students resulted in higher tolerance levels for them. (4) Increased cost of replacement and repair due to the monetary inflation of the 1960s directed the attention of school administrators to these costs. (5) The build-up of offices of school security in the cities in the same time period led for the first time to sustained collection of data about school violence and crime. All these factors helped “producing the impression that there had been a strong upturn in criminal behavior in schools” (Rubel 1980, 18). However, even if the data on rising violence in schools were taken with a grain of salt, the absolute numbers into which they translated and the fear that apparently resulted from the overall situation turned them into a call for action; 2.9% of teachers translated into 61,000 persons. Across the country, 6,700 schools were “seriously affected by crime,” mainly, but not exclusively in the big cities (National Institute of Education 1978, vol. 1, 32 and 3). More importantly, the fear of violence among students and teachers was greater than the actual numbers of incidents suggested. The Safe School Study noted for instance that 20% of high school students were afraid of being hurt or bothered sometimes and 12% of their teachers hesitated to confront misbehavior because of fear of being attacked (National Institute of Education 1978, vol. 1, 5). Thus, even though the Safe School Study avoided the alarmist tone that the Senate committee had used, it still described school violence as a “serious” problem (National Institute of Education 1978, vol. 1, 3, cf. Rubel 1977, 152). Examining the causes of the violence, the study dispelled two myths that had played a role in public discussions of the issue. Violence was not primarily caused by intruders, as Birch Bayh had claimed on the basis of the Senate hearings (Bayh 1977, 301). Offenders were in most cases students of the school in question. In 75% of cases of interpersonal violence, the victim and the attacker knew each other. Furthermore, neither racial integration as such nor busing were factors that increased the risk of violence in a given school. Rather, only schools where efforts to desegregate had been made fairly recently and schools where one racial group was clearly predominant ran a greater risk of experiencing violence than “substantially integrated” schools. Serious violence was more likely in schools dominated by non-white minorities than in others (National Institute of Education 1978, vol. 1, 6 f., 95–114). Victims and offenders were mostly male and they shared important characteristics: they had fewer friends than others and turned more often to counselors and teachers for advice on personal problems; they were more likely to be

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in trouble than other students; they had rather low grades; and they regarded their school as less good than others and saw its rules as arbitrary (National Institute of Education 1978, vol. 1, 7). All in all, from the perspective of the study school violence was first and foremost a problem originating inside the school rather than caused by external factors. The Safe School Study therefore recommended strategies of control that focused on structures and processes in the schools. The subsequent discussion followed the same line. While punitive measures as such were not regarded as very effective, a wide range of concepts and measures was proposed in the discussion, with no clear paradigm emerging. The study itself saw clear rules for students and teachers, consistently enforced by a firm principal, as key to any improvement of the situation. It was also important that students regarded the curriculum as relevant for their lives and careers and taught in an appealing way. Effective administration therefore was the primary, the students’ sense of having a stake in the school the most important secondary factor. Within this framework, the study described three sets of measures that were employed throughout the country. Installing security devices and hiring security personnel was one of them. A majority of the schools in large cities were by now equipped with security locks, security screens, and unbreakable glass. While only 1% of all schools (more in urban areas) had uniformed police on their premises, 35% of large city schools employed their own security guards. The second set of measures comprised means to enforce discipline. Suspension and paddling topped the list for all schools, while in the major urban areas transfers to other schools and referrals to mental health agencies were the chief instruments. The third set of measures comprised a variety of steps to make the best use of all human resources available, including better training, improving the school climate, and involving parents as well as the community. While discipline ranked very high for students, teachers, and principals alike, students mentioned security and disciplinary measures as the main instruments to reduce violence, while teachers and principals advocated a broad range of measures. Training and organizational change, parental involvement and community relations, as well as improving the school climate were even more important for the principals of “high-incidence” schools than for the others (National Institute of Education 1978, vol. 1, 8 f., 142–148, 155– 161). The more severe the problem was, the more flexible and multifaceted was the response by those in charge of handling it. While the expert discussion following the Safe School Study kept its basic openness to a variety of approaches in attempting to control school violence, it centered on a more explicit theoretical foundation. Combining the concepts of Albert Cohen—whose influential book, The Gang, in 1955 offered a class-based theory of juvenile delinquency—and David O. Arnold, sociologist James C. Coleman focused on a deviant subculture as the main source of violence and crime in schools. While lower-class children were in a less favorable position for achieving good grades— and knew it—, the authoritarian structure of school itself placed all students in a structurally similar position, requiring them to master the same tasks, encouraging peer solidarity against the adult world, while not punishing them as hard for transgressions as adults. Hence, failure would foster a deviant subculture among

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students and potentially draw in an increasing number of them. Solutions to the problem would include making authority structures less rigid and giving support to lower-class students from an early stage. Dealing with troublesome students was tricky, as Coleman pointed out, and could only be determined on a case-by-case basis. Sending them to special education classes could encourage the formation of a deviant subculture, but keeping them in their regular classes could produce the same effect (Coleman 1980, 139–149; see also Tinto 1980, 155–166). The importance of factors outside school was not to be denied, but school had to focus on those factors it was able to control (Phillips 1980, 115; cf. Gottfredson and Gottfredson 1985). From this perspective, the root cause of school violence and juvenile delinquency was no longer the maladjusted individual child, whose behavioral problems had to be identified at an early stage of its development and corrected accordingly (although this theory had not been completely laid to rest, see, e.g., Quay 1980). Instead, what mattered most now were structural factors (Rubel 1977, 62 f.). While school placed students under inherent constraints it had to make every effort to prevent them from becoming alienated and reacting accordingly. While there was general agreement that harsh punishment alone would have rather adverse effects on school violence, concrete approaches to controlling the problem fell into two categories. Phi Delta Kappan, the leading teachers’ journal, contrasted them in 1975 without taking sides. The first was the “crackdown.” In a racially mixed high school on Long Island, NY, a new (African American) principal had made violence largely disappear in the first 3 years of his tenure, from 1972 to 1975. Students had to get acquainted with school rules spelled out in writing, every transgression was recorded in detail, teachers uniformly enjoyed the principal’s support, punishment was swift and consistent, and persistently troublesome students had to attend special adjustment programs in the afternoon. Finally, parents had to accompany suspended students when they were allowed back to school. In contrast, the “humanitarian” approach, practiced in a high school in downtown Sarasota, FL, emphasized individuality and close contacts with adults aside from the teachers. Students were involved in guided study programs that drew upon the resources of the community and pursued projects in areas of special interest. Developing their individual strengths was more important than doing coursework required for all. Fostering a sense of responsibility was key for the (white) principal. Discipline would be its natural result and would not need complex methods of enforcement (Wint 1975, 175–178). The disciplinarian and the humanitarian approach remained the two alternatives in the debate about how to deal with school violence. An article in the Atlanta Constitution—Atlanta Journal of February 1, 1984, reporting a calming down of the situation, described how the principal of a high school in the city had been successful with tough rules in the early 1980s. Not only were students immediately suspended if caught in possession of drugs, alcohol, or weapons, they were also sent home if they “lied to teachers or administrators, cursed school personnel, refused to give their names when asked or drove recklessly on school grounds.” Within 3 years, the suspension rate had fallen from over 50 to 20%. By contrast, Walker High School in an Atlanta suburb with mostly white teachers and mostly African

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American students had greatly reduced suspensions by pairing problem children with teachers interested in helping them, by bringing together troublesome students with “student leaders,” and by instituting a sensitivity training program with school counselors, social workers, and court probation workers for juvenile offenders.17 If these two approaches had a common denominator, it was the emphasis on “caring.” Even proponents of a focus on discipline insisted that “caring” was its essence.18 That there was a racial aspect to the disciplinarian approach was acknowledged only implicitly. For white principals and teachers, it was apparently no longer feasible to “get tough” if they were facing mainly African American and other minority students, while African American principals did not feel the same pressure to refrain from it. Public opinion, as measured by the Gallup polls, would support their stance. “Caring” under the humanitarian approach meant improving the school climate by a variety of methods ranging from special programs for students with behavioral and achievement problems to courses and projects that allowed students to pursue their own individual interests. If students no longer failed they would develop a sense of ownership and no longer become immersed in a deviant subculture and resort to violence or other misbehavior to compensate for frustrations. All in all, the tone of the debate in the second half of the 1970s was cautiously optimistic. School violence seemed to be on the decline and hence not an insurmountable problem. A combination of security devices, revised disciplinary codes and measures, and creative programs to provide support for problem students and improve the school climate would do the trick.19 The focus was on general patterns of misbehavior and ways of coping with it, not on the dangerous individual perpetrator. Hence, it comes as no surprise that incidents that today would fall under the category of school shootings went practically unnoticed. To illustrate just a few examples: In Olean, NY, Anthony Barbaro, a 17-year-old high school senior, was seen carrying gun cases into his school one day in January 1975. He set a small fire, triggered the fire alarm, and then shot at the arriving firemen and passers-by. After two people had been killed and several injured, policemen were able to arrest the shooter by using tear gas. Olean was a small town, Barbaro came from a wellrespected family, was academically successful and described by some teachers as likable and intelligent, while others reported that he did not seem to have a girlfriend and kept to himself. Classmates reported he had said that “guns were his life,” that he constantly talked about hunting and shooting and had once mentioned, “How funny it must feel to be a sniper holding off people” (Watson and Watson 2002, 151 f.). One morning in January 1979, Brenda Spencer, a 16-year-old girl

17 Atlanta Constitution – Atlanta Journal, February 1, 1984 “Educators say discipline problems on

decline.” Georgia State Archives (GSA) 012-09-089 Box 26, “Discipline,” undated manuscript of talk by Associate Superintendent of Education in Georgia (ca. 1978). 19 Cf. GSA 037-08-035 Box 8A, Report of the Georgia Senate Study Committee on Violence and Vandalism in the Public Schools, 1978. 18

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from a blue-collar area in San Diego, began shooting at children arriving at an elementary school across from her home. After fifteen minutes, the principal and the head custodian were dead, and two boys, six girls, and a police officer had been wounded. Spencer gave herself up following a siege of several hours by the police. She was described as coming from a broken home, loving guns, and SWAT-style TV shows, having fantasized about being a sniper and possibly having shot at the same school when nobody was present there (Watson and Watson 2002, 155 f.). These incidents (to which more could be added) do not match all the characteristics of more recent school shootings (i.e., small town environment, multiple student victims, and a previously inconspicuous student as gunman), but they come fairly close. Moreover, the Barbaro case was apparently the first that occurred in a small town and involved a middle-class perpetrator with no obvious mental or other problems. Brenda Spencer seems to have been the first female shooter, and the San Diego case, while not leaving a large number of fatalities (and happening in a big city), prefigured later shootings within a school. However, as the focus of public attention was on structures, not on individual perpetrators, these incidents did not yet trigger a moral panic and a wave of scholarly interest.

3.2 The West German Debate in the Mid-1970s The West German discussion of school violence in the second half of the 1970s was not only as complex and alarmist as in the United States, but it also bore the hallmarks of a moral panic. By the middle of the 1970s, it had become clear that the high hopes of education reform—equal chances for children from previously disadvantaged groups, a democratization of the institutions of education, and a more scientific approach to teaching and learning—had only partially been fulfilled and were fading away amidst the bureaucratization of school structures and the lacking appeal of the new abstract methods of classroom instruction. While leftist reformers were dissatisfied that teachers, students, and also parents had not been able to gain more influence on the schools, conservatives deplored impersonal relations and a lack of discipline among students and called for more “Mut zur Erziehung” (“courage to educate”) (Herbert 2002, Schumann 2010). The broader political context was not reassuring, either. The oil shock of 1973 had begun to leave its mark on West Germany when Chancellor Willy Brandt, who had spearheaded domestic reforms and a taboo-breaking foreign policy, stepped down over a spy scandal and was replaced by Helmut Schmidt, a pragmatic and efficient political manager. Under these circumstances, school unrest and violence provided a concrete focus of attention in an atmosphere of general disappointment and unspecific fears. The discussion was triggered by the reception of the American debate. Reports by the principal teachers’ journal Die Deutsche Schule on crime and violence in American schools in 1970 and 1973 painted a gloomy picture of “terror” disrupting education in many places to such a degree that male teachers carried weapons, female teachers gave up their jobs, and the American public debate focused on how to prevent schools from being turned into detention centers, but they were still

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fairly brief and more or less explicitly offered the situation in Europe and West Germany as a stark and positive contrast (Adam 1970, 309 f.; Adam 1973, 709 f.). This changed with the publication of the Bayh committee’s report, which seemed to give official weight to the alarming figures already noted. A long essay in Die Deutsche Schule gave a detailed account of the findings of the report, read through the lens of West German needs and prejudices, and added the author’s own interpretation of the causes of the violence and possible consequences for Germany. Its purpose, the author stated, was to inform the public in order to ensure that the country would not make the same mistakes in school planning and construction as in the United States. His criticism of the American situation was more fundamental, however, than this description suggested. For him, a “general brutalization . . . of public life” in the United States had replaced the former war of the races by a “war of all against all.” While the school system could not isolate itself from this general situation, it produced school violence itself by the principles according to which it operated. In the final analysis, capitalism was the root cause. Students were expected to embrace possessive individualism and the quest for a career; those whose family background imbued them with different values were bound to fail. Large school complexes exacerbated the situation, as they operated on merely rational principles and left no room for the emotional and individual needs of students, which was not conducive to academic achievement. A profound alienation of students was the result. While the author seemed to harbor little hope of a remedy to the problem in the United States, he was fairly silent on lessons learned for the German case. Refraining from a comparison between West German and American capitalism and possible parallels between the school systems, he confined himself to pointing out consequences for the methods of instruction. “Stable relations in study groups” (feste Lerngruppenbeziehungen) had to be kept, he insisted, and students had to be provided with room for experiments in their curricula. Compared to the fundamental critique of American capitalism this was a fairly meager conclusion (Hoffmann 1976, quotes 320, 323).20 Much more outspoken were a number of articles in the July 1976 issue of the more radical teacher’s journal Betrifft: Erziehung. As in Die Deutsche Schule, readers were presented with a detailed and drastic description of the situation in the United States, based on the Bayh committee report. Protecting the physical safety of teachers and students and the material property of schools had become dominant features of public education there, the lead article stated and pointed out that American control strategies focused on more security devices and harsher mechanisms of selection (while mentioning guidance and counseling only in passing; this omission was explained by a lack of material). Even though “national and racial peculiarities” in the United States militated against drawing direct parallels with the 20 This

point is the center of Grauer and Zinnecker’s argument (1978); while, as they claim, present-day school violence shares its essential features—negotiating the boundaries and ultimately confirming the power of school as coercive state institution—with the pranks of previous historical periods, it tends to become uncontrollable as class communities are dissolved and students act out their feeling of alienation and loneliness by excessive violence.

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situation in Germany, shared tendencies with respect to basic causes and forms of control warranted a closer look, all the more so as American school authorities were much more open in discussing problems in the system (Grauer et al. 1976, 41–47). Several interviews with teachers in the issue of Betrifft: Erziehung suggested that school violence in West Germany was, after all, not too different from that in the United States. A female teacher at a Hauptschule reported,21 “There is a lot of fighting in the building. Well, I could probably say that every week either a child has to be taken to hospital or an ambulance has to be called, and sometimes things are really brutal. Last week one student put his arm around another’s head and bashed it against the wall five or six times, causing concussion.” The teacher also reported a gang-like structure in her school, led by a former student, age 20, who had his followers produce brass knuckles.22 Diary entries of another teacher at a Hauptschule noted verbal and physical assaults among his students; during a hiking tour with his class, a student who had skipped school for 2 days appeared all of a sudden with a machete—a new status symbol among his students, he remarked— and a signal pistol, firing shots to impress his classmates (Held 1976, 59). These were only some of the scenes and stories presented. All in all, it seemed that the situation in Germany only appeared to be different from that in the United States because it had not yet been thoroughly investigated (Kalb 1976, 51 f.). The attempts to control the situation reported by the teachers expressed helplessness. Calling the police, threatening to have students expelled, giving them extra assignments, or conducting a “clarifying” discussion were all failures. So were teachers’ explanations of the situation, the lead article contended. Pointing to outside causes such as rising unemployment and broken homes meant overlooking the causes of school violence to be found in school itself. An overreliance on new technologies and a high degree of division of labor in school instruction to make it more “scientific” produced loneliness and isolation among students. This trend, however, was a feature of society at large and not confined to schools. Modern industrial production, neglecting individual needs, resulted in a profound and universal alienation. Individual families were not disrupted; every family was, and more and more children therefore came to school “forlorn, unsatisfied, constrained, desperate.” As in Die Deutsche Schule, the causes of school violence were described in sweeping terms. Possible counterstrategies remained utterly vague, however. Giving up a blind belief in progress seemed necessary. Beyond that, a caring and understanding attitude with respect to violent students was called for. “Alternative forms of living and teaching” were to be sought and tried and “little changes” to be implemented (Grauer et al. 1976, 36, 38, 40, 46 f.). All in all, the contributions to the discussion

21

Hauptschule is the least educationally advanced type of school in the German three-tier system. 36. “Im Gebäude . . . wird unheimlich viel geprügelt. Also ich könnte schon sagen, dass jede Woche entweder ein Kind ins Krankenhaus muss oder der Krankenwagen kommt und aber wirklich auch teilweise unheimlich brutal. Einer hatte in der letzten Woche den Kopf eines Schülers unterm Arm und hatte den Kopf fünf- bis sechsmal gegen die Wand gestoßen, so dass der eine Art Gehirnerschütterung bekam.”

22 Ibid.,

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in Betrifft: Erziehung were more or less confined to mirroring the helplessness of teachers and students they described. In addition to the discussion among teachers, the moral panic about school violence in the mid-1970s manifested itself, as in the United States, in parliamentary action and research. In early February 1977, the education minister of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate responded to a question from a fellow member of the conservative CDU by referring to findings of a recent inquiry by the district administration of Rheinhessen-Pfalz. Although school principals here reported that only 0.2% of students in Hauptschulen were violating school discipline and that there had been only a slight increase in such infractions, these relatively few cases of violence between students seemed to have taken on a habitual and brutal character.23 The inquiry was widely reported in the press, with dramatizing undertones, and triggered action in other state parliaments (Grauer and Zinnecker 1978, 345, note 8). The education ministry in the state of Hesse, an explicit proponent of education reform in West Germany, sent a detailed questionnaire to all school principals, as it was under heavy pressure by the conservative opposition in parliament, which was trying to paint the newly established Gesamtschulen (comprehensive schools) in particular as breeding grounds of discipline problems and violence. While individual responses varied (i.e., not all principals attempted to paint a rosy picture of the situation in their schools), overall they ran counter to the public outcry about violence. There was “no troubling brutalization,” as the director of one of the new Gesamtschulen succinctly summarized the general result of the inquiry. Violence between students and vandalism had increased to some extent in city schools and in schools situated in neighborhoods with social problems. No clear picture emerged with respect to the causes. In contrast to what the public discussion suggested, there was widespread agreement that school size as such did not matter. Big classes and the absence of a close relationship between teachers and students did, however. Apart from the media and broken homes, “anti-authoritarian” education figured prominently in some responses. As for strategies of control, there was almost universal agreement that harsher punishments would not be helpful. While a number of principals mentioned better teacher training, closer contact with parents, and more counseling by school psychologists, respondents were split with respect to special education. While the principals of Gesamtschulen in particular called for the segregation of students with pronounced behavioral problems, others feared that such exclusion would only exacerbate problems of violence and discipline and demanded that US programs such as “head start” be used as a model for helping and integrating troublesome students.24 All in all, principals in Hesse did not regard school violence as a pressing problem, but rather reflected on ways and means to improve school discipline as such, 23 Hessisches

Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden (HHStAW) 504/4408, Response by Education Ministry of Rhineland-Palatinate of 7 February 1977. 24 HHStAW 504/4408, Beantwortung einer Großen Anfrage der CDU zur Zunahme der Gewalttätigkeit in der Schule 1977/78, vol. 1 and 2, passim. The reference to head start is from ibid., vol. 1, Grundschule Gießen-West to district school inspector, 20 July 1977.

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without being overly optimistic that there would be a swift change for the better. Given their position in the schools and the fact that their reports as such were not made public, it was not surprising that they would take a less alarmist approach than the teachers’ journal and other participants in the public discussion of school violence. While they were somewhat more specific in devising strategies of control than the voices in Die Deutsche Schule and Betrifft: Erziehung, they remained more vague than participants in the American debate. In contrast to the 1950s, however, non-pedagogical expert advice, e.g., that of school psychologists, had become an accepted part of control of violence and problems of school discipline. The fairly general approach to the problem of school violence and the assumption by many participants in the discussion that the German situation still was a far cry from that in the United States help explain why the moral panic about school violence did not (yet) result in thorough scholarly studies of the issue. One empirical study on related issues did, however, touch on the problem and came to conclusions akin to those in the two teachers’ journals. In their analysis of deviant behavior and processes of stigmatization in schools, based on a case study of schools in the city of Bielefeld in 1973, Manfred Brusten and Klaus Hurrelmann found that 2% of students reported having been threatened with a weapon, 5% had participated in a fight, and 11% had destroyed somebody else’s property in the preceding year. Teachers’ reports yielded very similar figures. Brusten and Hurrelmann concluded that there was a real problem of school violence and vandalism. Its root cause was to be found in modern achievement-oriented society (Leistungsgesellschaft). Referring to a slightly modified version of Coleman’s concept for explaining delinquency, the authors saw deviance among students resulting from the lower-class status of the offenders and its affirmation by student interaction. Students from the lower classes were in a less favorable position to achieve good grades, as Coleman reported, and in addition, peer culture tended to reinforce rather than counteract their marginal position. Thus, they were predisposed to be labeled “delinquent” from two sides. The schools’ focus on academic achievement made them structurally unable to take an adequate therapeutic approach to students with severe behavioral problems. Those students tended to be eventually relegated to institutions of special education. Because of this inherent structural problem of the school system, better psychological training of teachers and the establishment of more guidance and counseling facilities would not suffice as a remedy, Brusten and Hurrelmann contended, not least because they would run the risk of only adapting students to prevailing social norms. Controlling violent and other deviant behavior would require gaining deeper insights into the nature of the present achievement-oriented society (Leistungsgesellschaft) in order to change it. As a first step, the authors suggested, “group discussions among teachers lasting several weeks and supported by experts with qualifications in group dynamics and politics” could help further such understanding of societal mechanisms (Brusten and Hurrelmann 1973, quote 169).25 It 25 “Als

erste Schritte in diese Richtung könnten mehrwöchige Gruppendiskussionen von Lehrern und Schülern unter Hinzuziehung von gruppendynamisch ausgebildeten und politisch qualifizierten Experten . . . geeignet sein.”

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seems difficult to believe that Brusten and Hurrelmann saw a realistic chance that the discussions they suggested would become a fixture of public education. At any rate, their approach, while opposing the separation of troublesome students in special education, as Gesamtschule directors in Hesse were demanding, and being more specific than those proposed in the teachers’ journals, shared with the latter a sweeping criticism of the relationship between society and the school system that may have hampered the practical work of devising workable strategies of control.

4 The Pre-Columbine 1990s The debate of the 1990s prior to the Columbine High massacre can only be discussed briefly here. It can again be interpreted in terms of a moral panic. In the United States, it came as a sudden surge of youth violence since the late 1980s caused concerns. Particularly troubling was the surge in lethal youth violence, for which various reasons have been named, relating either to crack cocaine dealing or to increased gun ownership and gang subcultures (Moore et al. 2003, 313–315). In Germany, the ground had been prepared by the final report of the Commission on Violence (Gewaltkommission), set up by the Kohl government in the late 1980s. Soon after unification put an end to old certainties and a surge of right-wing violence created anxieties, the weekly Der Spiegel took up the topic in a series of articles and triggered an intense public discussion (Tillmann 1997). The German discussion resulted in the first sound empirical studies of the issue. In contrast to public assumptions (but in line with the typical development of a moral panic) they did not find a dramatic increase of school violence. If it was defined narrowly as physical violence, these studies saw at worst a moderate increase and severe violence confined to a relatively small number of victims and perpetrators; the number of hardcore perpetrators appeared to be on the rise. It seems that these continue to be the prevailing assumptions among scholars of the subject.26 In the United States, following the surge of the early 1990s, school violence overall was on the decline again. This was true for both severe and ordinary assault (though not necessarily for violence against teachers), while figures for vandalism remained stable. The share of perpetrators and victims was fairly low, albeit somewhat higher than in Germany, and teachers definitely seem to have been affected more. The use of weapons, not surprisingly, also was a bigger problem in the United States (Pröhl 2006, 107 f., 184–190; cf. Crews and Counts 1997, 7–24; Bonilla 2000). In both countries, definitions of violence now became broader and explanatory models more complex, leading also to more complex strategies of control. Apart from physical violence, bullying, a more subtle form of violence that nevertheless included many forms of verbal and psychological abuse, was no longer considered a

26 For

a summary of existing research see Pröhl (2006, in particular 73–78); cf. Tillmann (1997, 40–47). Pioneering studies include: Schwind et al. (1995); Holtappels et al. (1997); Fuchs et al. (2005).

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“normal” element of school life, but as harmful and destructive behavior (Schubarth 1993, 31; Pröhl 2006, 26–38; Preuschoff and Preuschoff 1993; Crews and Counts 1997, 24). Explanatory models now sought to find a balance between factors inside and outside of school as well as those related to specific features of a student’s personality. Within this framework, in Germany a “social-ecological” approach placed great emphasis on conditions in school (Holtappels and Meier 1997), while others pointed to dysfunctional families, the depiction of violence in the media and its consumption. The individualization of school education, offering greater freedom and demanding choices while providing qualifications of reduced value, as well as the individualization of society at large were also seen as causes (Schubarth 1993, 35– 45). Proposed strategies of control aimed at preventing violence and emphasized training teachers to handle aggressive behavior in the classroom, working specifically with aggressive students, giving particular support to students with lower grades, and improving the school climate by measures such as increasing parents’ involvement and making classrooms more attractive. Punitive measures were seen as the last resort (See, e.g., Schwind et al. 1995, 292–327). In the United States, experts proposed a “public health” approach to the problem in contrast to the punitive approach that dominated the public debate and government responses to the surge of school and youth violence, especially its severe, gun-related forms. While it was based on the assumption that exposure to violence caused a trauma with lasting consequences for children and adolescents, its causal analysis combined a social-ecological model with a life-course and a developmental focus. From this—fairly ambitious—perspective, school violence was to be treated like a disease. Control meant prevention, provided that risk factors were properly identified and a specific intervention strategy devised for each one, consisting mainly of training and counseling.27 All in all, German and American approaches to the problem of school violence had by now become very similar. Both refrained from attributing the main responsibility for the problem either to the school or to outside influences, downgraded disciplinary measures, and devised broad sets of interventionist strategies based largely on refining teachers’ communication skills.

5 Conclusion (1) From the 1950s to the 1990s, discussions on school violence became more specific and suggested a growing sensitivity, especially on the part of experts. General concerns about juvenile delinquency, which included status crimes as well as violence proper and was not seen as a particular problem of schools, gave way to specific reflections on a variety of forms of violence occurring in schools that ranged from severe physical harm to bullying.

27 See,

e.g., Elliott et al. (1997), in particular the contributions by Hamburg; Hawkins, Farrington, and Catalano; and Marens and Schaefer. Cf. Goldstein and Conoley (1997); Hoffmann (1996).

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(2) Whether, however, actual violence in this period increased is a matter of speculation, even in the case of physical violence, which is easier to identify than other forms. It seems likely that there was an increase overall, but its dimension and specific features remain unclear. It seems less likely that severe violence on the whole showed a substantial increase, if any at all. School shootings, however, appear to be a fairly recent form of severe school violence, even though previous incidents of a similar nature may have been overlooked. (3) Causal analysis of school violence broadened from focusing on individual students with problems to encompassing structural failure of schools, to eventually linking these two factors to community and family features. Strategies of control developed accordingly. This was no linear development from a punitive to a therapeutic approach. While the therapy of “maladjusted” students was an instrument of control from the beginning, punitive disciplinarian measures remained in the toolbox, although they became more subtle (e.g., by ceasing to use corporal punishment). The exclusion of those students who proved impervious to all forms of control, while contested, was a subtext running through expert discourses. (4) Experts identified school violence as students’ attempts to compensate for the loss of control over their own lives and the school environment, be it due to a general “alienation” or the marginalization of certain groups of students. The thought that student violence—in the rather traditional form of violent pranks—was also a means to negotiate power relations with teachers and define relationships among students themselves faded somewhat into the background. Control strategies of teachers and administrators increasingly targeted the compensatory aspect of student violence not least as harsh methods of discipline were replaced by subtle ones. As the value of school qualifications eroded, however, the mandatory character of public education—i.e., its “structural violence”—remained a pressing issue and a somewhat neglected cause of school violence. (5) While “race” was to some extent the elephant in the room of American expert discourses, the power of school administrations seems to have been its West German counterpart. Eventually converging in both countries, discourses not only became more pragmatic, but also encompassed an ever-increasing variety of measures that required increasingly complex coordination and extra efforts by teachers. Weighing risk factors and setting priorities in selecting strategies of intervention was a more arduous task in the 1990s than in previous decades.

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School Shooting: A Double Loss of Control Nils Böckler, Thorsten Seeger, and Wilhelm Heitmeyer

1 The Argument Premeditated school shootings involving the killing of numerous people are relatively rare events in modern societies. As recurrent phenomena, however, they attract a high degree of public attention and traumatize the societies in which they take place. Consequently, the media attempts to interpret these events for the benefit of the public, while academics employ a broad spectrum of approaches to explain them and to search for effective ways to control events and help to prevent them. We aim to counter the widespread illusion of control that has crept into the self-definition of modern societies and their assumption that violence is manageable. That this assumption is insupportable becomes clear on closer examination of the efficiency of behavioral control through norms, the effectiveness of technical surveillance, self-control by the individual (Tittle and others in this volume), different styles of control (Cohen 1985), and control regimes as a mixture of different styles of control. We argue that certain processes and behavior patterns are impossible to control, and individuals and society must consequently more or less abandon their illusions of control. On the individual level, these illusions of control and the expectation of being able (and obliged) to have control over one’s own life and over other people and their responses is fueled by the “imperative of personal responsibility” in modern society. This imperative transfers the sole responsibility for successes and failures in all walks of life, and even for feelings and psychological health, to the individual. On the societal level, society’s illusion and expectation of control is due to the “safety imperative” of modern society, according to which all risks are controllable. Instead, we aim to use the example of school shootings to show that specific violent phenomena are related to a systematic loss of control. This chapter expounds the theory of double loss of control, which shows why school shootings cannot N. Böckler (B) Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany e-mail: [email protected] W. Heitmeyer et al. (eds.), Control of Violence, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0383-9_11,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

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be systematically prevented—not even by changing certain fundamental conditions under which young people grow up in modern societies. • These losses of control are related on the individual level to the situation of the perpetrators and their loss of control over their own lives. This is (a) evoked through negative recognition and decay of recognition in families, schools, and peer groups as agents of socialization, which (b) raises issues of social disintegration. • Societal loss of control consists in the following factors: (a) failure to respond to the crucial factors influencing the scientifically known setting of the act; (b) the largely unexplained systematic interaction between the processes triggering the act; and (c) insufficient knowledge of the trigger causes. To analyze this theory of double loss of control, we propose a three-part composite theory that builds on the social disintegration theory (SDT) with its recognition elements; ideas of youth theory about the conditions under which young people grow up in modern societies; and considerations of control theory about the necessity, limitations, and ambivalence of control. Existing empirical studies were analyzed with these factors in mind in order to find corroboration for our overarching theory of double loss of control. Special emphasis is placed on the school shooting at Columbine High School, as this event attained the status of a “model” for subsequent shootings both in the United States and in Europe. Analysis of internet communications suggests that Columbine will continue to serve as a model in future (Böckler and Seeger 2010). Muschert and Larkin (2007), in particular, stress the key role of the school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton on April 20, 1999, by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, which created an enormous media echo both within the United States and abroad. There is a direct link between this incident and numerous other threatened and actual school shootings, whose perpetrators either made direct references to Harris and Klebold, imitated their modus operandi, or closely studied the Columbine massacre before committing their own crime. Some of these copycat shooters referred to themselves as part of a “revolution of the dispossessed,” which Harris and Klebold called for in their suicide notes (Newman et al. 2004).

2 School Shootings: The Phenomenon and the Numbers 2.1 Criteria for Classification and Exclusion As school shootings have not yet been listed in official crime classification manuals, and as very few empirical studies of the phenomenon have been carried out to date, it is not surprising that no uniform definition has yet been established for research purposes. A glance at the relevant research reveals the consequences of this divergence. Almost every researcher chooses a different definition for his or her own purposes,

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while retaining the same label. As a result, the empirical findings of different authors may diverge widely from one another and it is difficult to achieve a comparative overview of the research results. Thus it is left largely up to the subjective preference of each researcher to define the research subject to suit his or her purposes. To satisfy the case definition problem (Harding et al. 2002), it is therefore necessary to formulate more narrowly defined classification and exclusion criteria for the school shooting phenomenon before attempting a frequency analysis. This category of violence may include incidents not only at elementary and secondary schools, but also at institutions of higher education such as colleges and universities1 : • Perpetrator(s) is (are) current or former students at the educational facility. • Use of a potentially lethal weapon (pistol, knife, explosives, etc.) to attempt to injure or kill more than one person. The crucial criterion is not the outcome—a certain number of victims—but the intent. • The crime, which may have been planned to take place on a certain day or which may arise from a certain situation that is frequently aversive for the perpetrator, takes place during school hours on the school premises, usually in front of an audience composed of other students or members of the school staff. • The school shooter may: (a) choose victims deliberately on the basis of conflict-laden relationships; (b) attack randomly; (c) select victims for their symbolic significance or their status in the school’s social system.

2.2 Frequency Distribution Over Time It transpires that the phenomenon thus defined was extremely rare in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s (see Fig. 1). There was a slight increase in the 1980s, though no incidents were recorded in 1989 or 1990. During the 1990s there was a comparatively steep increase in occurrences, and at least two school shootings were registered every year from 1994 onward. The greatest frequency to date occurred in 1999, when there were seven school rampage incidents. One of them was the Columbine High School shooting on April 20, 1999, which at the time was the most notorious such incident. The number of violent rampages linked to schools then dropped again in 2000, when two incidents occurred. This drop may have been due to an increase, particularly in the United States, of preventive measures. The rise in the number of cases in the 1990s was accompanied by an increase in public awareness of school shootings, and increasing efforts have been made since then to prevent such violent incidents.

1 In all cases recorded to date, school shooters at elementary schools were adolescents who had left

the attacked school many years previously.

N. Böckler et al. 19 Number of cases (absolute values) 56 19 59 19 62 19 65 19 68 19 71 19 74 19 77 19 80 19 83 19 86 19 89 19 92 19 95 19 98 20 01 20 04 20 07

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Fig. 1 Worldwide school shootings from first recorded incident to December 31, 2008 (Source: Böckler and Seeger 2010)2

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Fig. 2 School shootings worldwide by decade (Source: Böckler and Seeger 2010)

However, there was another marked increase in incidences after 2000, until the seven-incident peak recorded in 1999 was reached once again in 2002. In subsequent years the numbers fluctuated, but maintained a constant minimum of three cases per year. These observations show that the frequency of the phenomenon has increased dramatically in recent decades (see Fig. 2). The average since 2000 currently holds at 4.9 cases per year, compared to 1.1 in the 1980s and 3.3 in the 1990s.

2 Data drawn from wide-ranging media research, also including the relevant research publications in this field: Moore et al. (2003); Newman et al. (2004); Robertz (2004); Robertz and Wickenhäuser (2007)

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While it is true that the frequency of the phenomenon is increasing, school shootings remain a rare occurrence worldwide. Against the background of the absolute number of incidents, the excessive dramatism of media coverage portraying their frequency as being of epidemic proportions cannot be supported (Donohue et al. 1998; Brooks et al. 2000). Nevertheless, the increase over the past decades requires careful analysis in order to arrive at a systematic understanding of the conditions under which these incidents arise.

3 School Shootings in the Public and Scientific Eye The key prerequisites for controlling the violent phenomenon of school shootings include the framing of the problem; knowledge of the combined causes; a scientific evaluation of individual factors and their significance in causing violence; the process of planning a shooting; the escalation of the incident; and its triggers.

3.1 The Preference for Undifferentiated Pathologization Frymer (2009), Larkin (2009), and Muschert (2007) emphasize that school shooters are frequently pathologized or demonized in the television and print media, with the result that the American public has acquired correspondingly vague ideas about the background causes of rampage shootings. The Columbine incident in particular was portrayed in the television and print media as the act of a new and hitherto unknown category of evil young people who have become estranged from human values and standards. According to Imbusch (2005), the violent acts that are especially prone to be thus dehumanized (bestialized, pathologized, mythologized, and demonized) by the public are those that do not display an immediately obvious objective or that do not exhibit a clearly recognizable rationality. This applies to school shootings in which the perpetrator—having seemingly lost control—fires into the crowd. It seems surprising that these labels are re-used over and over again after each new incident, given that the findings of research into school shootings now enable us to construct a very sophisticated profile of the act and its perpetrators. For example, the disciplines involved have moved far beyond their erstwhile empirical helplessness and their rather vague attempts at interpreting these acts of extreme violence as impulsive, affective, unpredictable episodes of murderous behavior. Nevertheless, public and political evaluations of such school shootings regularly resort to familiar, ritual explanations in order to downplay losses of control. For example, after a grave shooting incident in Erfurt, Germany, in 2002, the state premier called event an “affliction,” while an expert in criminal psychology promptly gave a reductionist explanation of the causes for the shooting, attributing it to a “severely mentally disturbed perpetrator”—on the evidence of the television reporting and nothing more. These initial assessments either define such crimes as semi-supernatural events or else they pathologize them. What both these variants have in common is that

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they provide interpretations that exonerate society and create detachment in order to downplay the social causes and to return to “normality” as soon as possible: An “affliction” is a fateful thing about which nothing can be done, and pathological criminals can be isolated from an otherwise supposedly intact society. Both interpretations disregard the constitutive criteria of violence, as violence is a highly effective resource that is available to everyone. It always has a history, and regardless of the persons against which it is directed, it is invariably an exercise of power. Equally disconcerting is the insight that violent acts can happen at any time and can scarcely be prevented—in other words, that they generate losses of control. To avoid having to engage with the causes of structural loss of control and to provide reassurance, the dominant public discourse aims to disassociate such phenomena from normal society.

3.2 Scientific Findings on Mental Disorders in School Shooters Let us now turn to the research results. Newman et al. (2004), after analyzing media reports on 25 American rampage school shootings, note that 52% of the perpetrators were portrayed as suffering from severe psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia or bipolar personality disorder. However, it must be noted that in the majority of cases, such disorders were brought into play exclusively by defense counsel when the perpetrators were standing trial. There is a high probability, therefore, that in some of these cases the allegation of psychiatric illness was a strategic move with the purpose of securing a lighter sentence if the defendant was convicted (Moore et al. 2003). The relevant studies, moreover, reveal no significant indications of a link between specific personality disorders and school shootings. In their joint study, the US Secret Service and the US Department of Education concluded that only about one third of the adolescents who deliberately attacked fellow students and/or teachers at their schools had ever been professionally evaluated for a psychiatric disorder prior to committing their crime, and that less than one fifth of these had been diagnosed with a mental disorder. These results correlate with the findings of McGee and DeBernardo (1999), Meloy et al. (2001), and Newman et al. (2004). Although it is possible to find empirical evidence for behavioral problems among future perpetrators, it may be assumed that these problems are the result of failed socialization processes in social relationships within their families or peer groups, rather than innate psychiatric conditions. Thus many perpetrators share character traits pointing toward extreme narcissistic tendencies that cause them to be more easily offended and to experience social rejection or attack more intensely than others. There is still debate about the extent to which recurring experiences that cause hurt and frustration may be responsible for causing young people to experience increasingly extreme feelings of fury and shame, and finally to trigger an act of extreme violence (McGee and DeBernardo 1999; O’Toole 1999; Spiegel and Alpert 2000; Meloy et al. 2001). Additionally, a majority of studies show that most of perpetrators presented symptoms of depression prior to the crime, primarily expressed

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in suicidal tendencies and feelings of hopelessness (McGee and DeBernardo 1999; O’Toole 1999; Verlinden et al. 2000; Meloy et al. 2001; Moore et al. 2003; Leary et al. 2003; Hoffmann 2007). Vossekuil et al. (2002) report that approximately four out of five perpetrators attempted suicide or articulated thoughts of suicide prior to a targeted act of school violence. In addition to symptoms of depression, a comparison of relevant studies reveals other factors that perpetrators frequently have in common: • Low frustration tolerance (McGee and DeBernardo 1999; O’Toole 1999). • Blame for personal misconduct and setbacks is projected onto others (McGee and DeBernardo 1999). • Mistrust of social environment (McGee and DeBernardo 1999; O’Toole 1999, Verlinden et al. 2000). • Rigid and compulsive behavior; lack of empathy (McGee and DeBernardo 1999; O’Toole 1999). • Asocial behavior; perpetrators frequently feel estranged from society and in turn reject it (O’Toole 1999; Leary et al. 2003). • Inadequate emotional problem-solving skills (McGee and DeBernardo 1999; O’Toole 1999; Verlinden et al. 2000). • Violent fantasies (Meloy et al. 2001; Robertz 2004).

3.3 Deficits in Explaining the Interaction of Individual Factors The public tendency to pathologize perpetrators is mirrored by inadequate research findings. According to Muschert (2007), one-sided disciplinary perspectives lead to the Rashomon effect occurring within school shooting research:3 Virtually, all researchers define and interpret the phenomenon from their own perspective and focus their work on issues specific to their own field. The scope of the different approaches therefore varies extremely widely, while the number of potential causal factors mushrooms. Harding et al. (2002) point out almost a dozen hypotheses developed by researchers and the media to explain school shootings, including the allegedly causal role of violence in the media, bullying, severe family problems, psychological disorders, social marginalization and defamation, and the role of emulation. Empirical support can be found for each of these factors, so that none of them can be dismissed out of hand. However, it also becomes clear that the phenomenon must be seen as the result of several interrelated causative factors (Harding et al. 2002). Henry (2009) consequently calls for an interdisciplinary approach to

3 First

coined by Karl G. Heider (1988), the term refers to the film Rashomon by the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, in which four characters who witness a crime subsequently make contradictory statements about what happened. The film ends without the truth about the event being revealed, so that viewers must make up their own minds about which character’s testimony to believe.

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the study of the phenomenon. But even if the premise of a systematic double loss of control is a plausible one, it is still an open question whether the problem can be more clearly explained.

4 The Three-Part Composite Theory Empirical findings clearly indicate that it is also necessary to study the social processes that give rise to such acts of violence—which, in turn, goes hand in hand with questions of the controllability of school shootings. To this end, we propose a composite theory consisting of three elements.

4.1 Social Disintegration Theory and Its Relevance for Explaining School Shootings The disintegration approach focuses on the interaction between social conditions and individual behavior patterns and thus does not simply assume that young people are maladapted to society. • The approach of Anhut and Heitmeyer (2005) takes the social integration of individuals and groups as a decisive factor that prevents them from manifesting deviant behavior. • Individuals feel themselves to be part of society when they experience positional, moral, and emotional recognition. • Disintegration and concomitant recognition deficits, in contrast, result in a loss of positive self-reference; as a result, individuals desire to prevent such deficits, or at the very least compensate for them. Anhut and Heitmeyer also employ control theory to explain the factors favoring the manifestation of deviant behavior: When individuals no longer feel themselves to belong to the social collective, they no longer feel obliged to consider the effects of their own actions on the collective. This may result in the development of antisocial attitudes and a lowering of the inhibition threshold for violence in the search of alternative sources of recognition. The disintegration approach centers on explaining diverse phenomena of violence. From a conflict theory perspective (Anhut 2002), violence can be viewed as a specific, problematic pattern of dealing with states of individual or social disintegration. Disintegration marks the failure of social institutions and communities to deliver basic material needs, social recognition, and personal integrity. The disintegration approach accordingly explains these phenomena as resulting from a society’s unsatisfactory integration performance. One basic assumption of the disintegration approach is that the probability and intensity of violent behavior increase in line with experience and fears of disintegration, while the ability to control it decreases. No direct, determinist connection at the individual level is assumed; instead, individual factors, milieu-specific mobilizations, and opportunity structures determine the choice of specific patterns of coping

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(apathy and resignation also being conceivable “solutions”). Social Disintegration Theory (SDT) (Anhut and Heitmeyer 2005; Heitmeyer and Anhut 2008) highlights different kinds of integration and disintegration and expands the idea of goal-means discrepancy into noneconomic areas where lack of recognition plays an important role. 4.1.1 Social Recognition: The Basis of SDT From the disintegration perspective, recognition comes about as a consequence of satisfactorily solving three specific problems of social integration. This means we are dealing with three dimensions. The social–structural dimension refers to participation in society’s material and cultural goods. This kind of integration into the system is guaranteed by sufficient access to work, housing, education, and consumer goods. Its necessary subjective counterpart is the individual’s satisfaction with his or her occupational and social position. In this context, it is not only the material situation that is important, but the social aspect is also relevant, as are individual satisfaction with one’s own activities and the experience of positional recognition regarding one’s own position, roles, and field of activities. The institutional dimension refers to institutional (and political) forms of participation. A balance between conflicting interests has to be struck without wounding people’s integrity. From the disintegration perspective, this calls for adherence to basic democratic principles that guarantee the (political) opponent’s equal moral status and are accepted as fair and just by those involved. However, the negotiation and formulation of these principles in individual cases also presupposes corresponding opportunities and willingness to participate on the part of those involved. Problems of disintegration arise when individuals perceive a loss of moral recognition because of feelings of powerlessness and insufficient realization of basic norms. Finally, the socioemotional dimension (cultural-expressive social integration) concerns collective and private aspects of life. Here we are dealing with establishing emotional and expressive relations between people for the purpose of self-realization and making sense of life. This calls for considerable attention and attentiveness, but also for space to be oneself and balancing of emotional support with normative demands so as to avoid crises of meaning, disorientation, lowered self-esteem, loss of values, identity crises, and loss of emotional recognition. These three forms of integration are required: social–structural integration (for example, having a job), institutional integration (for example, voter participation), and socioemotional integration (for example, social support by family, friends). Clearly, the disintegration approach discusses the establishing of social integration as a voluntary matter. The disintegration perspective sees the successful accomplishment of these tasks as resulting in positional, moral, and emotional recognition and self-definition as belonging to the relevant social group. On the basis of social integration, voluntary acceptance of norms can also be expected. In contrast, in states of disintegration, the effects of one’s own action on others no longer have to be taken into account. This encourages the development of antisocial attitudes and creates a risk that violence thresholds will be lowered.

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4.1.2 Social Processes and the Effect of Disintegration Which social processes does the disintegration approach consider to be responsible for an increase or decrease in social integration or a loss of recognition, and which effects are associated with the experience of social disintegration or a loss of recognition? An increase or decrease in the degree of social integration and the accompanying changes in recognition options only provisionally expresses the extent to which the potential for dysfunctional ways of coping with disintegration is expanded or reduced. The forms of coping that individuals choose are determined by the coincidence of their experiences (competencies, patterns of accountability, and so on) with specific opportunity structures such as integration into social milieus (group pressure, compulsion to conform) and the function of the chosen pattern of behavior in compensating for lack of recognition. In order to answer the question as to the functionality of the chosen pattern of behavior in compensating for lack of recognition, we must be clear how losses of recognition work. Three basic active principles can be identified: (1) avoidance of inferiority and harm to selfesteem, (2) restoration of norms, and (3) lack of alternative learning processes. In the social–structural dimension, social polarizations reduce access opportunities and achievable gratifications in individual–functional system integration. An additional process of individualization propagates the concept of individuals as autonomous, competent, and successful, thereby intensifying the pressure on people to present themselves as successful. Yet despite the pressure to acquire status, the opportunities and risks of social positioning are spread unevenly. This leads increasingly frequently to disappointment for the losers in the modernization process; it unleashes feelings of resignation, impotence, and rage and causes a lack of positional recognition that undermines self-confidence. That is why people tend to endeavor to avoid this kind of harm. There are several possibilities for coping with this situation. Apathy and resignation are patterns of reaction. Another option for maintaining a positive self-image in the face of ongoing stress is to blame others for one’s own fate and to invoke prejudice and hate in order to compensate. Finally, violence is a possible outlet to compensate for feelings of weakness or to maintain a sense of self-esteem. There is thus a wide range of possible functional solutions to lack of recognition. Institutionally, ideas of rivalry and competition at school and work, instrumental work and social relationships, and a consumer-oriented lifestyle driven by wealth, status, and prestige encourage self-interested tendencies like having to get one’s own way, social climbing, and exclusion. We find two dominant forms of lack of moral recognition. First, the feeling that one’s own life is not of equal value and that one is denied equal rights (refusal of membership in social groups or formal membership of a group or society without acceptance. Second, the impression that basic principles of justice are being violated—for instance, where the individual feels that he or she or his or her own group makes a relevant contribution to the collective social good yet still experiences treatment as an inferior. In addition to cases where the individual feels he or she has been treated disadvantageously or unjustly, we must also include

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cases where the person is not disadvantaged but formulates the feeling of injustice on behalf of others. Here, violence may be employed as an option for restoring justice—the restoration of norms, for example, Tedeschi and Felson’s “restore justice” principle (1994)—or to regain respect (assertion of identity). Unlike the “avoid inferiority/damage to self-esteem” pattern of motives, however, this is not necessarily done at the cost of persons or groups susceptible to discrimination; rather, it tends to be aimed against persons or groups who appear to be privileged. In the socioemotional dimension, ambivalent individualization processes lead to growing instability in relationships between couples, as a result of which family disintegration can have a harmful effect on the conditions in which children are socialized. Emotional stress on parents is caused especially by the combination of individuals increasingly demanding relationships based on equal rights while simultaneously experiencing many forms of inequality. This emotional stress often leads to frustration, insecurity, and a generally higher potential for tension and conflict. Unstable family relationships, in turn, detract from children’s experience of self and the recognition that is required to build a positive self-image. Consequently, aggressive and autoaggressive tendencies and conspicuous behavior in children can be directly connected to the extent of family disintegration. Denial of emotional recognition means experiencing no esteem or attention, or too little, in important intimate social relationships, receiving no emotional support in situations of emotional stress, having no contact person to discuss problems with, having no autonomy, and so on. In relation to the question of how affinity for violence originates, particularly in children and juveniles (and how it is subsequently reproduced in adulthood), two paths appear to be significant. First, direct learning of violence can be observed, including in the form of a repeatedly reinforced cycle of violence in which experiences of violence in childhood and the subsequent use of violence against family members in adulthood are repeated. Alongside this form of direct learning from role models is a second form, which can be labeled as the lack of alternative learning processes. Violence is employed as a pattern of dealing with conflict because other means of coping are unavailable due to the lack of specific social competencies and the existence of development deficits such as lack of empathy, identity disorders, and disorders of self-esteem. In this case children do not learn a constructive model for integrating negative feelings and for being able to deal with them in a constructive way. Development deficits in the shaping of relationships, systematic overtaxing, low tolerance of frustration, a low sense of self-esteem, and vulnerability are the consequence. Children in these situations are relatively helpless in the face of difficult family and school relationships and may turn to violence to defend themselves, compensate for weakness, or retain vestiges of self-esteem. It is thus possible to identify three basic principles of the effect of violation of recognition: the quest to avoid injuries to self-esteem, the need to restore norms and assert identity, and the lack of an alternative pattern for dealing with conflict. However, this does not yet say anything about which pattern of reaction will emerge in an individual case. As we have seen, violence can become a pattern of coping with problems regardless of the specific causes of lack of recognition.

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This raises the fundamental question as to the nature of specific configurations of effects, for example, whether specific lack of recognition in certain integration dimensions predisposes some people to specific patterns of reaction. In principle, three configurations of effects are conceivable. 4.1.3 Configurations of Effects First, it could be that lack of recognition that stems primarily from one integration dimension also causes one specific pattern of reaction. This would mean that the choice of a particular pattern of coping depends primarily on which pattern of coping promises to most effectively limit or compensate for the recognition deficit that has arisen. Second, it would be imaginable that in principle every pattern of coping could be a reaction to different prior losses of recognition. In that case, a possible nucleus of loss of recognition would emerge only in the choice of specific variations of a pattern of reaction. Third, there is much support for the third pattern of interpretation, according to which it seems to be possible to compensate for lack of recognition in individual integration dimensions by recognition gains in other dimensions. In that case, the crucial factor would be the balance of recognition. The choice of a specific pattern of action or a variation of it would then no longer be attributable to a specific lack of recognition in one or more integration dimensions. That would mean that although the chosen pattern of coping was subjectively the one that the person expected to have the biggest effect in a given situation, the person’s experiences, competencies, and patterns of accountability, along with individual and social opportunity structures, such as integration into social milieus, were likely to be of crucial significance in deciding which choice was ultimately made. To sum up, Social Disintegration Theory postulates that school shootings are strongly rooted in the need for recognition. According to this theory, school shootings are an extreme—and lethal—way of expressing resistance to experiences of contempt and failure in the battle for recognition. The shooting represents the culmination of unstable recognition relationships and serves as an attempt by the perpetrator to restore his or her injured identity. Against the background of SDT, therefore, it would seem advisable to examine the conditions under which young people grow up.

4.2 The Youth Theory Facet: The Ambivalence of Growing Up Growing up in modern societies, where school shootings primarily occur, has two facets (Heitmeyer et al. 1998). Young people now have more options for shaping their lives than they did in the past, but they are also under increasing pressure to do so—but without having a clear idea of what opportunities and options they have, nor which they should choose in order to gain status and recognition in society. There are three possibilities for attaining such recognition: Through achievement

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(for example, at school), through outward attractiveness, and through demonstrations of strength. The socially accepted paradigm holds that recognition and status can be attained only if one is able to “control” others and if one is different from others. Those who are inconspicuous are not noticed, and those who are not noticed are nothing. The ideology of the upwardly mobile society states that young people must at the very least attain the status of their family of origin, and should ideally advance to a higher one. This, however, is increasingly difficult to achieve, as precarious life-plans and biographies are the rule rather than the exception in today’s society. Ambivalence thus becomes the central paradigm of life: There are more opportunities for shaping one’s life, but the predictability of individual life-plans is decreasing, and precarious situative processes are becoming the norm. Normality in modern society means that a person strongly identifies with the core approved values such as achievement, self-assertion, and upward mobility. Young people too have received this message and are under considerable pressure from it. Failure to meet these standards of normality—these fixed and rigid norms—is all the more painful the more intensely individuals assimilate and internalize them, such as when they seek to graduate from high school with the highest grades regardless of the cost. This sense of normality will inevitably be challenged and shaken by lack of success or when status pressure comes into play in situations where few corresponding positions of status are available. One possible consequence is that individuals who have “failed” lose control of their reactions—especially in the case of incidents, such as expulsion from school, that have far-reaching consequences for their future lives. The Erfurt school shooting in 2002 clearly showed the fragile nature of social normalcy and the speed with which it can be fundamentally shaken.4 Thus it is necessary to identify the factors that engender violence and examine why individuals may devalue life—including their own—so radically and place so extreme a premium on the demonstration of power. To do so, it is important— following SDT—to examine sources of recognition and the processes by which it decays.

4.3 The Aspect of Control Theory Control is a multilayered concept. At its core, control implies mastery over processes and behaviors both on the individual and the social levels. Control can be used to mean regulation. This applies in the case of individuals—in the present case, young people—who are expected to have a “grip” on their lives; i.e., to meet specific developmental targets, successfully integrate themselves in different spheres of socialization such as the core areas of the family, the school, and the peer group,

4 Nineteen-year-old

Robert Steinhäuser attacked his school, the Johann-Gutenberg-Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany, on April 26, 2002, during the final examinations from which he had been excluded. He committed suicide after killing 16 and wounding another 7.

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and to find recognition there in order to construct a stable identity. Their task is to develop an awareness, to plan out their own lives with some degree of autonomy— or, in the terms of Tittle’s control-balance theory (1995), to develop a balanced relationship between control by others and control over others. The ambivalence of growing up and the dangers of negative recognition balances or the decay of recognition can trigger considerable problems that cause things to “get out of control.” As control itself is an ambivalent construct, there is a danger that loss of control, in conjunction with destructive, violent fantasies stimulated by the media, may result in an over-identification with control-exercising role models. Here the focus shifts from controlling one’s own life-plans to controlling other people. The quest for recognition and control causes individuals to redefine themselves in their fantasies in order to regain control by violent means over their own damaged social identity. The personal writings of the school shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold provide numerous indications of this process.5 On the level of society, both socializing institutions like family, school, and peer group and specific controlling institutions like the police and the legal system aim to constrain behavior according to the normative specifications of society. Various control styles can be employed to this end, from punitive approaches through therapeutic or supportive strategies to measures for identifying perpetrators (Cohen 1985; Horwitz 1990). This, however, says nothing about how efficacious these control styles prove to be on closer analysis of the setting (Section 5) and the processes (Section 6ff).

5 Analytical and Empirical Results: Loss of Control Through Cumulative Decay of Recognition 5.1 Recognition in the Family: Loss of Control by Parents and Children Young school shooters are primarily the children of white, middle-class families in rural or suburban areas (McGee and DeBernardo 1999; Moore et al. 2003; Newman et al. 2004) whose chances of attaining positional recognition in school are usually good in terms of SDT but may deteriorate in response to internal conditions in their families. At first glance, these families appear “conspicuously inconspicuous,” in the words of Hoffmann (2007, 28). The family type may vary, and school shooters grow up in intact nuclear families, single-parent families, and foster families alike (Vossekuil et al. 2002). In this context, Newman et al. (2004) point out that the formal composition of the family is less significant than the way in which people

5 The quotes given in the chapter from the personal writings of Harris and Klebold serve merely to

illustrate and should not be taken as systematic empirical proof. Spelling and grammatical mistakes and use of emphasis are as in the originals.

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interact within the family on an everyday basis. The emotional quality of interpersonal relationships within the family is a particularly important issue. According to SDT, such interpersonal relationships are of paramount importance for individuals in their quest for recognition. Here the results of the various empirical studies correlate. As a rule, the relationships within a school shooter’s family are described as problematic and dysfunctional (McGee and DeBernardo 1999; Verlinden et al. 2000; Leary et al. 2003; Newman et al. 2004; Kidd and Meyer 2005; Fast 2008). The young people often feel insecure in their families, and in some cases they had suffered physical or sexual abuse (Verlinden et al. 2000; Fast 2008). However, the dominant factor seems to be a familial atmosphere characterized by lack of parental involvement and by emotional indifference (for example, O’Toole 1999). Parents frequently know little about their children and take little interest in their lives and personal problems. In this situation, the denial of emotional recognition begins to develop its destructive potential.6 Parents are unaware of the interests and predilections of their growing children and know nothing about their friends and their performance at school. As an exacerbating factor, the family may have moved shortly before the shooting— and/or frequently in the past—which for some adolescents is a cause of regret and resentment. In addition to these fundamental factors, some researchers also focus on the dynamics in the perpetrators’ families. In their analysis of 16 cases, McGee and DeBernardo (1999) conclude that there are often intense conflicts about power and control between the parents and their children. These conflicts are accompanied by constant feelings of anger and hostility that overtly or covertly dominate life within the family. McGee and DeBernardo (1999) also discuss the role of the father in the school shooter’s life. As a rule, the fathers are largely absent or play only a minimal role in the upbringing of their growing children. Within these family dynamics, adolescent children are treated inconsistently or with hostility: between occasional, severe punishments for alleged misconduct, they are simply ignored most of the time. Empirical studies show that inconsistent child-rearing behavior may have extremely problematic consequences for the children’s readiness to resort to violence (Heitmeyer et al. 1998). On the basis of an analysis of 18 cases, O’Toole (1999) notes that the future school shooter has “taken command” in the parental home, with a role reversal taking place in the parent–child relationship because the parents are afraid of their child. For example, the child alone decides about the nature and duration of television watching and internet use and wins all the freedoms it wants to have. In this way, the child successfully eludes parental supervision

6 For

example, in one of his videos (the Basement Tapes), Eric Harris complains that he spends hardly any time with his parents or his brother, with the result that there are no deeper emotional bonds between him and his family (JC-001-010377). Similar subjective deficits in emotional recognition are also revealed by the writings of Dylan Klebold: “my parents piss me off & hate me . . . want me to have fuckin ambition!! How can i when i get screwed and destroyed By everything??!!!” (personal testimony, Dylan Klebold, 1997, JC-001-026400).

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and control. The parents evidently tolerate or deny their child’s sometimes borderline or abnormal behavior. They either ignore the school’s notifications about the child’s problems or poor performance, or they downplay the issues when talking to teachers. This too is described by O’Toole (1999) as a glaring deficit in parental supervision and control, which may be further exacerbated by the presence in the family home of firearms that are not stored with the required security precautions, but are freely accessible to the child. In the terminology of Tittle’s control-balance theory (1995), it is possible to identify an objective control surplus in intrafamilial relationships, that can lead to problematic imbalances if it is paired with a control deficit in social relationships at school or in peer groups. However, the probability is high that children do not experience these familial control surpluses as such. Rather, SDT would suggest that their controlling behavior must be understood as an expression of the unfulfilled desire for attention and emotional recognition.

5.2 Recognition in the Peer Group: Loss of Control over Social Relationships School shooters are often described as immature, introverted loners with inadequate social skills and few, if any, close friends (McGee and DeBernardo 1999; O’Toole 1999; Verlinden et al. 2000; Newman et al. 2004). According to the study by the US Secret Service and the US Department of Education, approximately 75% of school shooters felt harassed, persecuted, threatened, attacked, or hurt by their fellow students prior to the shooting (Vossekuil et al. 2002). Leary et al. (2003) conclude that the perpetrators suffered bullying in the run-up to 12 out of 15 school shootings in their study and had been mocked or excluded because of their weight or appearance. Here, too, there are numerous clear indications for the significance of social disintegration and denial of emotional recognition.7 While the shooters are described as loners in a majority of the studies, and describe themselves as loners under questioning after the offense (Verlinden et al. 2000; Vossekuil et al. 2002; Leary et al. 2003; Robertz 2004; Newman et al. 2004), Hoffmann (2007) warns against generalizing from these findings and points out that some of the young people were “well integrated” in cliques prior to the shooting. With reference to the relevant literature, however, one must consider the possibility

7 Both

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold expressed the anguish they suffered through being despised by their peers: “Everyone is always making fun of me because of how I look, how fucking weak I am and shit, . . . people make fun of me . . . constantly. . . . Therefore I get no respect and therefore I get fucking PISSED” (personal testimony, Eric Harris, 1998, JC-001-026014). “I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things. And no don’t fucking say ‘well thats your fault’ because it isn’t, you people had my phone#, and I asked and all, but no. no no no don’t let the weird looking Eric KID come along, ooh fucking nooo” (personal testimony, Eric Harris, 1999, JC-001-026018). “i HATE my life, i want to die really bad right now . . . nobody accepting me even though i want be accepted” (personal testimony, Dylan Klebold, 1997, JC-001-026390).

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that—as we have seen in the case of the family background—such peer relationships are only superficially unremarkable and are experienced by the young people themselves as inadequate, fragile, and insufficiently functional (Verlinden et al. 2000; Robertz and Wickenhäuser 2007). In most cases, the available attachment figures were significantly younger than the shooters themselves (McGee and DeBernardo 1999) or were also loners who shared the shooter’s marginalized status in the social hierarchy of the school (Verlinden et al. 2000; Vossekuil et al. 2002; Moore et al. 2003; Newman et al. 2004; Robertz and Wickenhäuser 2007). According to McGee and DeBernardo (1999), the cohesion of these cliques is characterized primarily by two common features: (a) Their members are rejected by the majority at school and in leisure activities, and/or (b) they often share an interest in a rigid, eccentric, and nihilistic worldview. This attitude, which is often colored by political, religious, occult, or militaristic views, grants young people access to social affiliation based on a shared, definite value system and gives them a feeling of dominance over their conventionally minded fellow students and peers. Future shooters frequently display attitudes of intolerance and boredom toward everyday leisure activities such as individual or team sports. They also frequently avoid the times and places of social gatherings (McGee and DeBernardo 1999; O’Toole 1999). These behavior patterns and attitudes may explain the findings of Hoffmann (2007), who emphatically points out that hardly a single case of extreme, targeted violence at schools in Germany exhibits a purely one-sided incident of bullying in advance of the offence. Rather, the future shooters frequently provoked the anger and contempt of other students through their actively challenging and provocative behavior. Moore et al. (2003) come to similar conclusions for the United States.

6 Action Settings That Promote Violence Here the investigation leads us to a theoretical exploration of social disintegration, and thus to the problem of recognition and, in the negative case, decay of recognition, as a consequence of which adolescents do not receive satisfactory answers to such fundamental questions as: Who needs me? Who listens to me? Where do I belong? Am I worth as much as the others? Am I being treated fairly? Are my feelings accepted? If we accept that nobody can live without recognition in the long term, it may be assumed that young people in particular, growing up under the ambivalent conditions described above, live in a fragile state of normalcy. Thus close attention must be paid to the overall setting of (1) sources of recognition in the social environment; (2) the shooters’ decision-making competence and capacity for acting; (3) influencing factors such as, most importantly, media consumption; and (4) weapons skills. The synergy between these four components must be studied for the purposes of evaluating whether and how escalation processes may develop in a subsequent phase. Sources of recognition represent the most important point of departure here. Three fields of experience are of paramount relevance for young people.

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• The school provides manifold sources of recognition, especially through good performance, in order to achieve the prerequisites for gaining recognition through status in later life. At the same time, however, the school is permeated by activities signaling contempt on the part of teachers and especially other students. • The importance of the family varies with the child’s age, but remains a source of recognition through love, in other words, a source of emotional recognition. At the same time, withdrawal is relevant under certain conditions, such as when parents exhibit pronounced status behavior—i.e., when emotional recognition is contingent on performance and ambitions for advancement. • The peer group is of primary relevance both in single-gender and mixedgender groups, especially during adolescence. Group affiliation, strength, and attractiveness represent sources of recognition. From the perspective of disintegration theory, we must now turn to the recognition balance sheet. Is it positive, or does the child have to deal with a subjectively felt recognition deficit? As we are always dealing with interaction processes between the child and its teachers, parents, or peers, these contacts and relationships are always associated with feelings of powerlessness when recognition has decayed. As all people, according to SDT, always strive to counteract the undermining of their own self-worth and to construct or maintain a positive identity, the question arises how they can successfully escape from this powerlessness or inferiority. The competences for coping with such conflicts are widely scattered. In terms of SDT, one problem for socially compatible solutions arises in the absence of alternative conflict-solving patterns—patterns which are primarily developed within the family through emotional recognition, safe social bonds, and the absence of experiences of corporal punishment and other violence. As an “alternative” variant, children may attempt to surmount their negative recognition balance sheets and their concomitant powerlessness by means of demonstrations of power. Violence is the most effective variant, preceded by violent fantasies that represent a transitional stage between the child’s feelings of powerlessness and the beginning stages of planning violent acts. Such plans may have a long timeframe. In the case of Columbine High, the perpetrators spent more than a year before the shooting planning the strategies they believed would be effective. In the case of Emsdetten in Germany, the shooter first reconstructed the school corridors on a computer (Engels 2007).8 Violent computer games provide behavior patterns that help to determine the modus operandi. Such influences, therefore, may be able to influence the “strategies” chosen by the perpetrators. In general, however, they are not the crucial factor in prompting the perpetrator’s decision to end his own life and the lives of others. What is more important for this decision is the fact that the future shooter was unable to find answers to the fundamental questions outlined above.

8 On November 20, 2006, 18-year-old Sebastian Bosse injured 37 people at the Geschwister-Scholl-

Realschule in Emsdetten, Germany, before committing suicide.

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The decision to commit an act of violence (“whether to act”) is prompted not by the availability of violence in the media or by the use of such media, but rather by the unbearable negative recognition balance. This alone, however, is not sufficient to prompt the crime; a justification of violence (“why to act”) is necessary for lowering the inhibition threshold for violence. In other words, it is necessary to allocate the blame for the negative recognition balance. The school and the peer group are the core targets in the apportioning of blame. And they are available at predictable times and in predictable places as the field of action for a demonstration of power aiming to maximize the number of victims. The Columbine shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, aimed at a figure of 500 victims. Finally, the setting includes the capacity for acting, i.e., weapons skills (“how to act”), which increases the effectiveness of the action.

7 School Shootings as Indicators of Institutional Losses of Control The action setting that promotes violence, therefore, has a central location, namely, the school. We must now investigate the extent to which the organizational structures of the school contribute to this factor. Fox and Harding (2005) view school shootings as indicators of institutional losses of control (“organizational deviance”). Their case studies at two American educational facilities where school shootings had occurred show that the school’s organizational structures are substantially to blame when serious social and emotional problems remain undiscovered and the institution is unable to respond in a timely manner. According to Fox and Harding, such dysfunctional communication structures are largely due to institutional conditions which, in terms of SDT, may also lead to grave violations of recognition. For one thing, the school represents a formal agency of selection and qualification that assigns status by various means, such as giving grades and allowing students to move up to a higher year, thereby helping to determine both the students’ present status and their future social position. For another, the school functions as a social system that is fundamentally marked by the immediate conditions under which its students grow up—and this is reflected in the communicative relationships among the students. Because the school has a social function, which is fed primarily by the functionality of the system, it pays particular attention to the system as such. This culminates in the expectation that social elements should adapt to functionality (Schubarth 2000). Although children spend a large proportion of their time at school and the school thus acquires considerable subjective significance as the scene of personal social relationships, institutional resources are not geared toward identifying or adequately addressing the emotional needs of the students (Fox and Harding 2005). Rather, schools demand a high degree of social adaptation and discipline while requiring students to suppress their own needs (Hurrelmann 2005; Tillmann 2006). The result may be deficits of both emotional and moral

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recognition. Young people’s opportunities for participation and codetermination are primarily governed by institutional criteria which are perceived by students largely in the context of their interactions with teachers. Unlike informal social relationships, student–teacher interaction is constrained by a formal framework. There is an imbalance in power in which the opportunities for articulating personal needs and exercising influence according to personal desires are unequally distributed.9 The few remaining resources that can be channeled into the students’ emotional and social requirements are usually spent exclusively on those students who are obviously in acute danger of failing the year or who exhibit severe dissocial behavior in school and thus create disorder in the institution. However, research to date shows that school shooters generally remain “under the radar” (Newman et al. 2004, 77). The academic performance of most of the shooters was normal to above-average prior to the event (McGee and DeBernardo 1999; Vossekuil et al. 2002). In fact, the empirical study by Vossekuil et al. (2002) shows that 41% of the shooters regularly received good or very good grades, while only 5% were failing at school prior to the shooting. In terms of SDT, then, these results show that, objectively at least, the shooters largely had good cumulative positional recognition and opportunities for integration. Levin and Madfis (2009), however, show that adolescents in particular do not associate personal success and the value of their own lives with academic achievement and abilities but with their popularity within the peer group, which becomes their all-important standard in the process of striving for autonomy and independence from their parents. Examining the social integration of the future shooters (as described in Section 4.2) revealed abnormalities in their behavior within the student body. Only a very small number of the shooters, however, had exhibited criminal activity, disobedience to school authorities, or violence against other students prior to the shooting (Moore et al. 2003; Newman et al. 2004).

9 Excerpts

from the suicide note of the German school shooter Sebastian Bosse show that this situation gives rise to severe conflict potential. “I want my face to be burned into your brains! I don’t want to run away any more! I want to do my part for the revolution of the rejected! I want REVENGE! I’ve been thinking about how most of the students that humiliated me have already left the school. I have two things to say about that: 1. I wasn’t only in one class, I went to the school as a whole. No way are the people at the school innocent! Nobody is! They’ve got the same program running in their heads as the earlier years! I am the virus that wants to destroy these programs, and where I start is totally irrelevant. 2. Most of my revenge will be directed against the teachers, because they are people who intervened in my life against my will and who helped to put me where I now stand: On the battlefield! Almost all these teachers are still at this damn school! Daily life the way it takes place these days must be the most pathetic thing the world has to offer! S.C.J.R.D.— School, college, job, retirement, death. That’s the life “normal” people have today. But what does normal even mean? S.C.J.R.D. starts at the age of six here in Germany, when children start school. That’s when children start on their personal path of socialization, and in the years to come they are forced to adapt to the majority. If they refuse, they get into trouble with teachers, parents, and finally with the police. Compulsory schooling is just a euphemism for coercive schooling, because they are forced to go to school. . . . Anyone who is forced to do something loses some of his freedom. We are forced to pay taxes, we are forced to observe speed limits, we are forced to do this, we are forced to do that. Therefore there’s no freedom!” (Sebastian Bosse’s suicide note, translated from Rötzer 2006).

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The schools thus generally fail to recognize the desperate emotional state of these adolescents prior to the shooting, nor do they notice when they become the victims of attacks by other students that potentially cause considerable harm to their mental and physical integrity. The probability of becoming involved in conflicts with peers is particularly high in school, which simultaneously offers few possibilities for avoiding such conflicts (Klewin and Tillmann 2006). Bullying, for example, is possible only within social networks such as a school class (Schäfer and Kulis 2005). Thus victimization experiences are particularly stressful in the school context because it is almost impossible to escape from them. Because of compulsory schooling and the increasing importance of gaining qualifications to further one’s future career, victims of bullying find it very difficult to evade aversive treatment by their peers. According to Hayer and Scheithauer (2008), parents and teachers generally hear about episodes of bullying at a very late stage and then frequently attempt to downplay the incidents.10 Additionally, many students are reluctant to help victims of bullying because victimized adolescents are frequently unpopular and because their fellow students are afraid of becoming victims of verbal or physical attacks themselves. This creates a vicious circle of victimhood, as each new attack typically lowers the victim’s status in the peer group still further.

8 School Shooting as the Radicalization of Social Norms and Values? 8.1 The Battle for Recognition and Control: Adolescents Under (Status) Pressure One conspicuous feature of school shootings is that they occur primarily in highly developed industrial nations. The two countries with the highest incidence—the United States and Canada—are two of the world’s wealthiest nations. In Europe, too, school shootings occur most frequently in countries in the wealthier north and west of the continent, with Finland and Germany leading the field. In countries with a highly developed economy, young people live in a transitional phase lasting many years in which they must undergo schooling and vocational training before being able to lead independent lives as productive adult members of society (Newman et al. 2004). The youth theory angle of our composite theory stresses this ambivalence of adolescence. During this phase, they cannot predict whether

10 Thus

Sebastian Bosse wrote in his blog: “Most people don’t know about it. They thought I was going to school every day. I don’t play along, just go back home. The only time that anyone really noticed anything was when they pressed a red-hot wrench against my hand . . . the principal reported it to the police. But nothing else happened. All the other things that happened, nobody wanted to see them, or nobody really did see them” (Bosse, blog entry dated May 26, 2005, 1.27 a.m.).

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they will one day be successful in their competitive societies. As a result, adolescents sometimes engage in bitter struggles for recognition and status during their school years. Newman et al. (2004) note that young people tend to adopt and follow extreme versions of the values and norms of their surrounding culture. For American adolescents, this means that interpersonal competition and achievement as a measure of a person’s social “worth,” which are deeply rooted in their culture, are highly significant factors. The hierarchy in the social system of American high schools is not based primarily on the students’ intellectual gifts and achievements, but is overwhelmingly derived from superficial values and characteristics, such as physical attractiveness, athletic prowess, clothing, and ownership of certain status symbols (Newman et al. 2004). According to youth theory, failure has the most traumatic impact on those young people who strongly identify with the system of values and norms.11 According to SDT, future school shooters do have the hope of attaining positional recognition through academic achievement. However, not all cases are equal. Academic achievement, which was not a problem for the perpetrators of the Columbine shooting, was a core issue in the case of the shooting in Erfurt, Germany. The findings of Newman et al. (2004) correlate with the results of the study by Larkin (2007), who examined social life at Columbine High School. Individuals who rank lower in the social hierarchy have a higher probability of being attacked in some way—either through mocking remarks or through physical violence—by higher-ranking fellow students. In particular, male adolescents who are physically weak and not on any of the school’s sports teams are regularly harassed by the “jocks” and sometimes even suffer systematic psychological and physical abuse (Newman et al. 2004; Larkin 2007). Future school shooters are generally very low down in the social hierarchy of the school and thus have a negative cumulative recognition level that prevents them from attaining a position of higher status within the “jockocracy” (e.g., Katz and Jhally 1999). The shooting represents a way of exacting retribution and revenge for the perceived unfairness of this system and a means of drawing the attention of the public and the media to their suffering and to what they perceive as a colossal injustice. In the terminology of SDT, there is a lack of moral recognition because the school setting and the social relationships that predominate in schools do not respond to a situation that is perceived as unfair. According to SDT, however, the desire to restore

11 For

example, Eric Harris expressed his identification with achievement-based norms and values in a school essay about a year before the shooting. The essay also reveals his need for positional recognition: “Being a leader is a very admirable quality. I respect people who are good strong leaders and know what they are doing, and I do not respect people who are weak, uneducated leaders. This is why I want to be a strong leader. I am hoping team sports and other classes will help me achieve this quality. If I am considering a military career, then leadership is an extremely important quality. I am expecting to learn how to be organized and responsible, how to treat people equally, how to listen attentively and how to solve problems logically. I am hoping my senior classes and experiences will help my goals” (school essay, Eric Harris, 1998, JC-001-026724).

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norms that the shooter perceives as just is not linked to the recognition experience of being heard and gaining respect.12 The shooters deliberately choose their spectacular act of violence because they can no longer bear to perceive themselves as weak and powerless. Additionally, they aim to demonstrate their “strength” in public and especially in full view of their tormentors—the “higher status peers” (Newman et al. 2004; Larkin 2007). In the words of Newman et al.: “School shooters are looking for status-winning, manhood-enhancing departures” (2004, 150). These motives are rooted in a culture that is dominated by competition and by a pronounced masculinity that is associated with violence. In this culture, only a few people belong to the class of “celebrities,” of which adolescent school shooters want to be a part, albeit posthumously (Larkin 2007). Against this background, a student’s school shooting can be viewed as a desperate attempt to gain or regain control over their own social identity. The shooting turns an erstwhile nobody into a “deviant superstar” (Robertz 2004, 181) and gives him the hope of achieving the ultimate, historical recognition of his hitherto marginalized personality.

8.2 The Cultural Script of Masculinity: Power Over Others Equals Control Adolescent school shooters grow up in Western industrial nations under sociocultural conditions dominated by intense interpersonal competition. The social protagonists are involved in fierce competition for jobs, status, and prestige, and the risk of “losing” and failure is very high for the individual (Larkin 2007). This social and cultural climate, backed up by the media, propagates types of behavior that emphasize attributes such as strength and assertiveness. Newman et al. (2004) are particularly emphatic in asserting that American society is dominated by a specific, stereotypical image of masculinity. According to this stereotype, being a man means fearlessly and steadfastly facing the challenges of life and of one’s surroundings. In the view of the authors, the media is one of the main vehicles that propagates this cultural script, as films and sports coverage regularly portray masculinity in connection with aggression, or even with violence involving severe injury to others, as an acceptable means of attaining one’s own goals.

12 Eric

Harris viewed his crime as a moral measure for restoring justice. According to his own testimony, the crime could have been prevented if he had received more social recognition. “I’m showing too much of myself, my views and thoughts, people might start to wonder, smart ones will get nosey and something might happen to fuck me over, I might need to put on [a mask] here to fool you all some more. fuck fuck fuck It’ll be very hard to hold out until April. If people would give me more compliments all of this might still be avoidable, . . . but probably not. Whatever I do people make fun of me, and sometimes directly to my face. I’ll get revenge soon enough. Fuckers shouldn’t have ripped on me so much huh” (personal testimony, Eric Harris, 1998, JC-001-026015).

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Like Newman et al. (2004), Katz and Jhally (1999) also identify a significant connection between media portrayals of masculinity and the phenomenon of rampage school shootings. As the association of masculinity with violence is a cultural norm, a school shooter is, in a sense, acting in accordance with this propagated norm. Shooters are generally male, but are also frequently outsiders at their schools, which means that they are unable to make friends or win favor with the opposite sex (for example, McGee and DeBernardo 1999). Not infrequently, too, they lack the physical attributes that are associated with masculinity and thus often become the victims of verbal or physical attacks from other—mostly male—students (Newman et al. 2004). In the view of various authors, their powerlessness and their failure to live up to the normative ideas of masculinity give rise to severe feelings of inferiority as a consequence of negative moral and emotional recognition (in terms of SDT), which they attempt to compensate by a violent attack on their peers and/or teachers in order to achieve a feeling of power, dominance, and masculinity (Katz and Jhally 1999; Neroni 2000; Newman et al. 2004; Larkin 2007).13 The aggressive behavior of adolescent boys, who are in the process of actively coming to terms with their gender role identity, is a radical means of conforming to the cultural norm of the violent stereotype of masculinity. Aggression enables them to feel powerful and superior to others and to demonstrate and consolidate their position of status.

9 Dynamics of Escalation: Control, Loss of Control, and Violent Quests for Control The conditions described above are the prerequisites for a superficially unobtrusive, covert escalation process whose precise thrust is not predetermined in the early stages. The process may result in an addiction to recognition and a quest for superiority. The aim of the school shooting, too, is to restore recognition. Whether the shooter’s surroundings react negatively or positively is irrelevant here; in the eyes of the shooters, gaining public notoriety for their crimes is itself a positive outcome, and they perceive a possibility of becoming immortal through massacres like those of Erfurt or Littleton as a grand prospect. Revenge as an expression of hate is only a superficial motive for violent acts and represents the last link in a long chain of causation. The real cause is the decay

13 The

leitmotifs of power, dominance, and masculinity are reflected in Eric Harris’ reflections on the planned shooting: “itll be like the LA riots, the oklahoma bombing, WWII, vietnam, duke and doom all mixed together. maybe we will even start a little rebelion or revolution to fuck things up as much as we can. i want to leave a lasting impression on the world” (personal testimony, Eric Harris, 1998, JC-001-026856).

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of recognition, which the shooter may dread experiencing or which he may have experienced in the past. Processes of this kind would drain anyone’s resources, but the point where decay of recognition begins and the point where it becomes “critical” vary from case to case. There is no automatic process that inevitably culminates in violence against others, and so the outside world receives very few warning signs. This is one of the symptoms of society’s loss of control, and it is one reason why school shootings, though small in number, trigger so deep a sense of insecurity in society as a whole. The decay of recognition, then, is a process and not an event that simply happens out of nowhere. Persons affected by this disintegration will respect core values like the inviolability of human life only if they feel that they are receiving adequate recognition from others. In other words, there is a relationship of reciprocal stabilization between an individual receiving recognition and their respecting norms. This process, however, is extremely vulnerable to interference, for example if teachers or parents violate the child’s sense of justice. Such a violation can be interpreted as a violation of moral recognition in terms of SDT if the child’s (sometimes articulated) feelings or experiences of injustice are not resolved.14 As a consequence of such violation, social bonds and emotional support may be lost. Individuals may perceive the prospect of facing loneliness, as the expression of social disintegration, as so threatening that they cease to consider the consequences their actions may have for other people. Other people thus lose their social and emotional significance. Consequently, the norm of inviolability, which protects others from our actions, begins to erode, and the inhibition threshold for violence drops or vanishes completely. The process of decay of recognition can be traced in the Columbine shooting. As the two shooters developed fantasies of superiority (nonetheless socially acceptable) they were at the same time forced to realize that they were not receiving recognition. Rather, they were ignored, and so they secretly radicalized their attitude to their lives over a lengthy period. Their hatred erupted into violence directed primarily against students with particularly high recognition levels (athletes), but also against students who were especially despised (Hispanics). During the shooting, the murderers laughed and giggled as they demonstrated, for the first and last time, their superiority to those by whom they had been denied recognition (Larkin 2007). Based on the available—albeit not always explicitly empirical—data, various authors have developed models for explaining the interplay between the various

14 Eric

Harris appears initially to have compensated the recurring violations of moral recognition in his imagination, in which he renounced accepted social ideas of justice and accepted only his own will as the decisive authority. “My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law, if you don’t like it, you die. If I don’t like you or I don’t like what you want me to do, you die. If I do something incorrect, oh fucking well, you die. Dead people cant do many things, like argue, whine, bitch, complain, narc, rat out, criticize, or even fucking talk. So that’s the only way to solve arguments with all you fuckheads out there, I just kill! God I can’t wait till I can kill you people” (Eric Harris’s web site, 1998, JC-001-010367).

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risk factors that come into play during the genesis of the crime. These individual attempts at explanation generally focus on different aspects, such as the effects of social marginalization (Leary et al. 2003), the effects of the consumption of violent media content (Kidd and Meyer 2005), the consequences of narcissistic personality traits (e.g., Meloy et al. 2001), and the relevance of violent fantasies (e.g., Robertz 2004). However, they do exhibit distinct parallels in certain areas. Thus it seems helpful to place the different approaches in a logical order.

9.1 Social Disintegration and Inadequate Conflict Management Skills: Loss of Control over Life Situation SDT highlights the dangers of loss of recognition in combination with the absence of socially acceptable opportunities for conflict-solving. According to Hoffmann (2003), an adolescent’s shooting spree represents the culmination of a comprehensible sequence of actions and thoughts that result from a continual narrowing of options during the course of a crisis in the adolescent’s life (also Levin and Madfis 2009). Robertz (2004) holds that the origins of the violent dynamic lie in a high degree of biopsychosocial vulnerability that may be caused by a lack of social backing and emotional support (also Harding et al. 2002; Fast 2008). This high vulnerability, which prevents the adolescent from developing adequate problem-solving skills and acquiring a flexible repertoire of responses for interacting with his social environment, results in feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness, and these feelings are increasingly intensified by the adolescent’s repeated failures in various walks of life (Robertz 2004; Thompson and Kyle 2005). According to Leary et al. (2003), constant humiliation through bullying, social rejection, and marginalization by the peer group are the primary factors that cause adolescents to experience their lives as a torment.15 Young people in particular define their identities in terms of their relationship with their peers and their own subjective position within the social hierarchy. Bullying and other forms of social rejection can therefore lead to extreme forms of deprivation and frustration during adolescence (Harding et al. 2002; Thompson and Kyle 2005; Fast 2008). Even adolescents who have a positive emotional climate in their homes to fall back on will gradually cease to experience their home environment as supportive, because adolescence is a phase of life in which their parental bonds typically decrease in strength and the desire for autonomy takes priority (Levin and Madfis 2009). 15 For

example, Dylan Klebold experienced the consequences of social exclusion as follows: “this is a weird time, weird life, weird existence. . . . I think a lot. Think . . . Think . . . that’s all my life is, just shitloads of thinking . . . all the time . . . my mind never stops . . . i am in eternal suffering . . . hoping that people can accept me . . . that i can accept them” (personal testimony, Dylan Klebold, 1997, JC-001-026388). “i see how different i am (aren’t we all you’ll say) yet i’m on such a greater scale of difference than everyone else . . . I see jocks having fun, friends, women, LIVEZ” (personal testimony, Dylan Klebold, 1997, JC-001-026389).

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According to Meloy et al. (2001), Hoffmann (2003), and Robertz (2004), experiences of contempt and powerlessness may lead to a narcissistic grievance—a violation of self-esteem that is perceived as an existential threat. One way of responding to this situation is to search for ways to compensate, to escape from the tensions and maintain a positive self-image (Meloy et al. 2001; Hoffmann 2003; Robertz 2004).

9.2 Compensation of Action and Control Deficits: Violent Fantasies According to Robertz (2004), an unendurable inability to take action may be compensated by escaping into a fantasy world in which highly vulnerable adolescents can play the role of strong and powerful personalities that is closed to them in their real-life experience. Meloy et al. (2001) provide a similar description of the pre-offense experiences of adolescent mass murderers, who frequently attempt to compensate for social grievances by means of fantasies of omnipotence in which they transform their feelings of shame and self-doubt into extreme anger at their social environment. Future shooters may compensate their narcissistic grievances by assuming the character of a godlike avenger and creating a new world for themselves in which they can play the role of a lord over the highest form of power—that of life and death (Robertz 2004).16

9.3 The Quest for Control: The How Harding et al. (2002), Hoffmann (2003), Robertz (2004), and Kidd and Meyer (2005) suggest that media content glorifying violence plays a significant role in this process. However, while Harding et al., Hoffmann, and Robertz all believe that the media serve as an intermediary between feelings of deprivation and the genesis of violent fantasies (for example, by making available violent films and video games in which susceptible adolescents are repeatedly provided with alternative incentives 16 An

example of Eric Harris’ pre-delict fantasies: “Well all you people out there can just kiss my ass and die. From now on, i don’t give a fuck what almost any of you mutha fackers have to say, unless I respect you which is highly unlikely . . . for the rest of you, you all better fucking hide in your houses because i’m comin’ for EVERYONE soon, and i WILL be armed to the fuckin teeth and I WILL shoot and kill and I WILL fucking KILL EVERYTHING! No I am not crazy . . . everyone is different, but most of you fuckheads out there in society, going to your everyday fucking jobs and doing your everyday routine shitty things, I say fuck you and die. If you got a problem with my thoughts, come tell me an i’ll kill you” (Eric Harris’ web site, 1998, JC-001-010360). “We of the Trenchcoat Mafia still march around, military-style in our trenchcoats, especially in the school hallways, honing and developing our master plan. We will conquer the entire world once we get a few things straight and make our bombs! . . . Our master plan is to kill at least 500 people at our high school, besiege the local neighborhood, seize the airport, and then crash a plane full of jocks and cheerleaders into the Pentagon” (Eric Harris’ web site, undated, quoted from Larkin 2007, 162).

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and ideas for developing new and more intensive power fantasies), Kidd and Meyer describe media consumption as a causative factor that touches off a dynamic of dissocial behavior and thus predisposes the individual for a loss of control. Even young children, in their view, are taught by violent media content that violence is an effective and desirable way of solving problems, and they subsequently resort to violence with increasing frequency when dealing with conflicts in their social relationships. As a consequence, they experience rejection from their peers, with the result that the prosocial behaviors of these children increasingly atrophy in the absence of social learning experiences and the children repeatedly resort to forms of violence in their interactions with others. While Kidd and Meyer (2005) assert that it is access to weapons that tempts adolescents to use them to gain the respect they long for in their social environment, Robertz (2004) believes that the crucial trigger for rampages is a vicious circle between real failures and fantasies of greatness. In his view, the adolescent must initially withdraw further and further into his fantasy world in order to escape from the repeated humiliations in his real life and to compensate for them by fantasies of omnipotence, vengeance, and superiority. The adolescent devotes more and more time to these fantasies while reality steadily loses its relevance for him and his ability to cope with reality steadily deteriorates. Access to weapons and violent media images continually supplies new content for his fantasies, which become increasingly detailed and refined, until the point is reached where the fantasy alone is no longer a sufficient means of compensation and he begins to make real preparations for a real action and put parts of them into practice. This may take the form of leaking—of directly or indirectly announcing his intentions. The adolescent increasingly loses control over his fantasies, which increasingly become the basis for his existence. After experiencing yet more frustration and humiliation, he increasingly comes to believe that putting his violent fantasies of vengeance into practice is a logical thing to do. According to Robertz (2004), undifferentiated and excessive media coverage of past school shootings frequently enables adolescents to identify with real mass murderers and offers them justifications and choreographies for putting their own plans into practice. According to Leary et al. (2003), following through on these intentions is made easier by the fact that the adolescent’s history of dwelling obsessively on issues such as murder and death has desensitized him to such a degree that the idea of putting the murderous actions of his fantasies into practice comes to seem increasingly more normal and less frightening. Additionally, an existing fascination with weapons means that the adolescent is at ease with the idea of handling them.

9.4 From Absolute Loss of Control to the Crime: Triggering Causes Most authors maintain that the violent act is triggered by a final experience of frustration or loss that overtaxes the adolescent’s coping ability to the extent that he can no longer compensate for their deficits (for example, Harding et al. 2002; Robertz

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2004). In terms of stress theory, the individual is now confronted with demands on his own resources and competences he perceives as being impossibly high. The result may be a drastic cumulation of stress when acute aversive situations coincide with existing chronic tensions such as continual denials of recognition in the family, the school, and the peer group. Where these are already present, brief episodes of stress may subjectively be perceived as catastrophic and existentially threatening (Levin and Madfis 2009; Lazarus and Folkman 1984). Prior to a school shooting, the perpetrators frequently faced experiences of loss or social rejection (McGee and DeBernardo 1999; Verlinden et al. 2000; Vossekuil et al. 2002; Moore et al. 2003; Leary et al. 2003; Hoffmann 2007). These kinds of losses of status and relationships are described in the literature as situative triggering events which the future shooter experiences as severe personal failures and the loss of all hope (Robertz 2004; Hoffmann 2007). Moore et al. (2003) assume that such experiences overtax the shooter’s coping capacity so greatly that a dramatic act of violence comes to seem an attractive option for channeling pent-up feelings of frustration and expressing them at last (so too Harding et al. 2002). McGee and DeBernardo (1999) conclude that the shooters were generally confronted with a large number of such psychosocial stressors within a period of 2 weeks to 24 h before the shooting. Various studies have identified the following events as specific, situative triggers that lead from the planning of the shooting to its execution: • Rebukes and punishment by parents or school authorities (McGee and DeBernardo 1999; Verlinden et al. 2000; Meloy et al. 2001; Vossekuil et al. 2002). • Incidents during which the adolescent was exposed to public mockery or perceived unfair treatment by others (Meloy et al. 2001; Vossekuil et al. 2002; Leary et al. 2003). • Loss of or rejection by a partner or an idol (O’Toole 1999; Meloy et al. 2001; Vossekuil et al. 2002; Leary et al. 2003; Moore et al. 2003). • Repeated rejection or bullying by peers (Meloy et al. 2001; Vossekuil et al. 2002). • Severe illness diagnosed in the shooter or a person close to him (Vossekuil et al. 2002; Harding et al. 2002). Vossekuil et al. (2002) were able to identify such events as preceding 71% of the shootings in their study. According to Adler (2000), 50% of the rampage shootings in his study occurred on the same day as such an event, while 30% took place a few days later.

10 Social Control Strategies and Losses of Control According to Newman et al. (2004, 50), exaggerated media reporting about the frequency of school shootings creates a “climate of fear” within American society with far-reaching consequences. After the school shooting at Columbine High, parents increasingly feared that their children were no longer safe at school. Although

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the likelihood of a student dying in an educational facility is approximately one in two million (Addington 2009), 71% of the parents interviewed by Peterson et al. (2001) feared that a similar incident could occur in their own town. (Donohue et al. 1998; Brooks et al. 2000). The primary cause for these fears—which, from a statistical perspective at least, are largely unfounded—is believed by many authors to be the way in which such incidents are reported on television and in the print media, though a portion of the responsibility is also ascribed to political vested interests (Donohue et al. 1998; Burns and Crawford 1999; Brooks et al. 2000; Birkland and Lawrence 2009). Media reporting on school shootings has great audience appeal, while politicians can exploit fears of the supposedly ubiquitous danger of school shootings in order to win voters, by demanding demonstrative, high-profile security measures and calling for a zero tolerance policy. In particular, many parents have repeatedly and emphatically called on schools to take visible measures to prevent school shootings. The authorities frequently opted for installing clearly recognizable security measures to demonstrate their willingness and ability to act. For example, government funding was made available to for CCTV cameras and private security services to tighten surveillance. Other measures that were implemented at schools with increasing frequency after the Columbine shooting included video surveillance in schoolyards, hallways, and classrooms, metal detectors, locker inspections, and the logging of traffic through the main entrances (Addington 2009). It remains largely unclear, however, whether these security measures achieve their purpose or whether they have negative effects on the schools and their student bodies. While no substantiated evaluations have been performed to date, initial empirical findings suggest that these kinds of demonstrative attempts at control are counterproductive. Studies indicate that there is a link between the use of the security measures described above and an increasing degree of victimization and fear among the students (Schreck and Miller 2003; Schreck et al. 2003). According to Addington (2009), negative consequences can be expected above all through the lack of respect for personal freedom that is inherent in random inspections and violations of privacy. These measures, then, represent a control regime that is itself uncontrolled. Whether this kind of striving for social control over school shootings has the slightest possibility to succeed is very much an open question. Even more restrictive gun laws, which have been the focus of much discussion, are unlikely to be very effective on their own. Newman et al. (2004) show that school shootings are typically committed with stolen firearms or weapons procured from friends, and only very rarely with guns purchased by the shooters themselves (Kleck 2009). Additionally, little attention has been paid to the fact that the two factors discussed in Section 5 as elements of an action setting conducive to violence, namely, the consumption of violent computer games as a decision-making aid for improving efficiency on the one hand and access to weapons as a prerequisite for the ability to kill on the other, are regulated by the capitalist market rather than governmental or other restrictions. Illegal markets invariably develop alongside legal ones. The illegal media market in “killer games” and the illegal weapons market are highly efficient—both on the national and international levels—and are accessible at any

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time to those willing to make the effort to do so. For this reason, they are related to a loss of control on the part of the institutions entrusted by society’s to exercise control. Because illegal markets are “learning systems” they will always get around attempts to exercise control in their search for profit—especially in countries like the United States, which take weapons ownership for granted.

11 An Interim Conclusion The background against which school shootings occur is characterized by great ambivalences that affect loss of control. Adolescents growing up in today’s society lose control over their own lives under the influence of social pressure and structural insecurity about the possibility of realizing their life-plans. This process is based in social dynamics of integration and disintegration: The thwarted desire for recognition generates an addiction to recognition, and this addiction fosters a desire to exercise control over others. Violence is a means of exercising control. So there are also dynamics of escalation that are almost impossible to control systematically—in other words, they cannot be limited or causally repressed. Thus the empirical findings suggest that school shootings represent the expression of a double loss of control which can be identified on the following levels: On the level of the individual, in the loss of control of adolescent perpetrators over their own lives because the agents of socialization (family, school, peer group) make it impossible to achieve an adequate degree of social integration with a positive recognition balance. On the level of society, in a diffuse understanding of the causes underlying the violence. This makes it almost impossible to develop effective methods of prevention and intervention—in other words, to control this form of violence. To sum up, it appears to be extremely difficult to identify potential school shooters in advance. Even when young people directly or indirectly announce their intentions, it is almost impossible to accurately assess the seriousness of these “warning signs,” although there is a growing international effort to improve threat assessment procedures (O’Toole 1999; Verlinden et al. 2000; and, for Germany, Scheithauer et al. 2008). However, the risk of stigmatizing a suspect through the labeling approach is immensely high and there is a danger of forcing an adolescent into the role of shooter through accusations and disciplinary measures (Lamnek 1979; also Böhnisch 2001). Thus Fox and Savage (2009) hold that the primary and essential priority is to improve recognition and the general climate in the student body and among the teaching staff of schools and colleges. As a fundamental prerequisite, it is necessary to strive for a new culture of recognition and mutual watchfulness both in schools and in the general social context. Such a culture would prevent adolescents from experiencing social disintegration, losing control over their own lives, and taking refuge in extreme violence as an escape from their dramatic situation in order to achieve an illusory immortality.

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Explaining and Preventing School Shootings: Chances and Difficulties of Control Rebecca Bondü and Herbert Scheithauer

The first case of severe targeted school violence in Germany took place in 1999, when a 15-year old killed his teacher with two large kitchen knives. Since then, this form of violence has claimed further victims in this country almost annually. A sad climax was reached in 2002 when a former student killed 13 school employees, 2 pupils, and a police officer before finally shooting himself at the Gutenberg Gymnasium in Erfurt. At that point this was the most serious school shooting by an adolescent that had ever taken place anywhere. In November 2006 and in March 2009, Germany was the site of further severe school shootings. After the school shooting at Columbine in 1999, a similar development was to be observed throughout the world, making deadly severe targeted school violence a global phenomenon of the new century. In spring 2007 the United States faced its most severe school shooting ever, while Finland was confronted with two lethal offenses in 2007 and 2008, both of which claimed a large number of dead and wounded. In the search for possible explanations behind this development and for a starting point for controlling the risks of school shootings, various aspects of preventing this form of violence are considered. While aspects of intra- and interpersonal control may stand out as possible explanatory factors at first glance, other aspects—as, for example, possibilities for political control—should also be given some thought. Is the increasing number of such incidents throughout the world and an increasing average number of victims per offense due to a loss of control? After looking over the current state of research, the possibilities and difficulties of control will be discussed in detail and preventive approaches deduced.

R. Bondü (B) Department of Educational Science and Psychology, Freie Universität, Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

W. Heitmeyer et al. (eds.), Control of Violence, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0383-9_12,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

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1 Targeted School Violence Targeted violence is defined by the U.S. Secret Service’s Exceptional Case Study Project (ECSP) as “any incident of violence where a known or knowable attacker selects a particular target prior to their violent attack.” Vossekuil et al. (2002) have applied this definition to the study of violence in schools. According to them, targeted school violence may be directed against individuals such as preselected schoolmates or specific members of the school staff; whole groups of people such as cheerleaders or athletes; or even the school building itself—for example, by arson. The attacks are committed by current or former students at their accordant schools by using potentially lethal weapons. Therefore the school is consciously and purposefully selected as the site of offense. The definition further implies that these offenses are not caused by group conflicts (Vossekuil et al. 2002). While Anglophone texts speak of targeted violence in schools, German-speaking authors tend to extend the term by the word severe, thereby stressing the distinction between extremely violent, lethal or potentially lethal, and other “normal” aggressive behavior patterns in schools like bullying, assault, or extortion (see Hoffmann 2003; Robertz 2004; Scheithauer and Heubrock 2005). School shootings constitute the most severe form of targeted violence in schools. However, there is no consistent definition of the term whatsoever (see Harding et al. 2002). We employ it in a rather broad sense here, covering incidents which aim at the death of at least one person who is connected to the school environment in the eyes of the offender (other authors demand more fatalities in order to satisfy the definition, e.g., Meloy et al. 2001 and Thompson and Kyle 2005). Although the term shooting suggests the use of firearms, other potentially lethal objects like blade weapons or explosives are also covered by the definition. In the media such offenses are often also referred to as a “rampage” or “massacre.” 1

2 The Frequency of School Shootings Although youth crime as a whole has been on the decrease in recent years (see Anderson et al. 2001) a worldwide increase in severe targeted school violence and school shootings has been observed, especially in the last decade. This increase is on the one hand due to a rise in the total number of incidents, which jumped from an average of one up to a mean of five per annum in the United States and from zero to one per annum in Germany. On the other hand, during the same period, the lethality of such events has also risen, with single offenses now claiming an increasing number of fatalities and casualties (see Kidd and Meyer 2002; Reddy et al. 2001). While Robertz and Wickenhäuser (2007) identified 99 school shootings worldwide up to the year 2006, our own research indicates that far more than 100 incidents have occurred throughout the world by now (Scheithauer and Bondü 1 In

German the term Amok is used, borrowed from Malay.

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2008). A large majority of these events have taken place in the United States, but Canada and Germany were also strongly affected. By now, there have been 11 cases of severe targeted school violence in Germany, while several others have possibly been prevented (see Table 1). Although school shootings are still rare events and the probability of dying in such an incident is low for students as well as for teachers (see Evans and Rey 2001), there is obviously an urgent need to prevent such offenses in order to avoid further fatalities, casualties, and trauma (see Scheithauer et al. 2008; North et al. 1994; Schwarz and Kowalski 1991). Therefore, in Germany there is good reason to conduct more research about this form of violence in order to prevent similar incidents by identifying and treating potential offenders beforehand. But while research has grown during the last decade most of all within the United States, there still is a great lack of knowledge on the topic. Studies on risk factors and case studies on school shootings

Table 1 Cases of severe targeted school violence in Germany 1999–2008 Place (federal state)/Time

Case

Meißen (Saxony) 11/09/1999 Brannenburg (Bavaria) 03/16/2000 Freising (Bavaria) 02/19/2002

A 15-year old committed an announced murder of a teacher within the classroom with two large kitchen knives A 16-year old shot the head of his boarding school with his father’s weapons and then tried to commit suicide After killing two coworkers, a 20-year old killed the head of his former school and shot another teacher in the face before killing himself with a gun A 19-year old shot 12 teachers, 2 students, 1 police officer, and 1 administrative employee to death and injured at least 6 further persons before finally committing suicide A 15-year old plans to stab his teacher, but is hindered during the attack by other teachers

Erfurt (Thuringia) 04/26/2002 Behrenhoff (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) 08/29/2002 Coburg (Bavaria) 07/02/2003 Emsdetten (North Rhine-Westphalia) 11/20/2006 Biberbach (Baden-Württemberg) 07/23/2008 Winnenden (Baden-Württemberg) 03/11/2009 St. Augustin (North Rhine-Westfalia) 05/11/2009 Ansbach (Bavaria) 09/17/2009

A 16-year old tried to shoot his class teacher but missed, injuring another teacher before killing himself An 18-year old injured 36 people with firearms and smoke-bombs before committing suicide A 15-year old student who failed in class stabbed his principal, wounding him slightly before being calmed down by teachers A 17-year old shoots 12 people in his former school and 3 while on the run, before finally committing suicide A 16-year old girl injures another girl with a kitchen knife when being surprised in the restroom. Maybe she planned a more severe offense An 18-year old injures 10 students with incendiary devices and an axe

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that have happened in Europe especially are lacking. Furthermore, present findings are often not scientifically well founded, since a majority of the existing studies faced severe methodological problems: for example, studies are often exclusively or almost exclusively based on analyses of media reports about (often overlapping) singular cases, as police and court records are often not accessible; and witnesses— most important of all, the offenders themselves—are frequently not available. As there is very little research on school shootings considering comparison groups (which are also hard to define; see Harding et al. 2004 for more details) up to now, it is often not quite clear whether the factors, called “risk factors” in the following sections of this chapter, are specific for this special group—in other words, whether these factors are causal risk factors of school shootings. That is, the term risk factor as it is used in the existing literature on school shootings should not be interpreted in terms of a causal risk factor but only in the sense of a retrospectively identified correlate. Initial research findings from Germany indicate that there are many similarities to the results of previous studies from other countries, but there are also specific (cultural?) differences (Bondü and Scheithauer 2008a, b). Thus, the simple transfer of results obtained from research in the United States to the German situation is highly questionable and speculative, as sound international comparison studies do not exist yet. Despite these problems, different studies were able to identify a number of factors in all or at least in the majority of cases of severe targeted school violence and school shootings quite consistently. Although most of these factors have not been proven unique to school shooters yet (that is, they have not been proven to be causal risk factors), for now they may be seen as risk factors. Nonetheless, a higher risk can only be assumed if there is a combination of several of the risk factors described in the following sections of this chapter.

3 Explaining School Shootings: Warning Signs and Possible Risk Factors There has been research on school shootings and severe targeted school violence from different fields of science. The research findings presented in this section are a selection of results and explanatory models from different fields of research (but with a special focus on psychologically oriented studies), which may be instrumental in preventing further offenses. Starting points for prevention and intervention are then described in Section 6.

3.1 Planning of the Offenses One pivotal warning sign for a school shooting is the concrete planning of such an offense. For example, Vossekuil et al. (2002) mention that the planning of an attack is a constitutive characteristic of targeted violence in general and thus of targeted school violence in particular. This assumption is underlined by the results of different studies, showing that in many, if not most, cases there has been a long-term

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cognitive preoccupation with the offense and its planning before finally acting. In all ten cases analyzed by Verlinden et al. (2000), the offender had a detailed plan and the actual offense corresponded to this plan and to prior announcements. According to O’Toole (1999) the planning and execution of the offense often occurred in cooperation with other persons, also suggesting a long-term preoccupation with the topic. According to Vossekuil et al. (2002) the idea to realize an offense existed from 1 day up to 1 year before it was eventually acted upon. The planning phase spanned several hours up to 8 months, and took place at least 2 days before the offense in 32 out of 41 cases analyzed. Consequently, such offenses are not spontaneous, affect-driven acts that develop directly out of the present situation. In accordance with this finding, offenders have been reported to act in a controlled manner and to appear calm during an attack (see Cornell 1996; Meloy et al. 2001). Thus, signs of planning an offense afford an opportunity to identify potential offenders at an early stage, because these preparations are accompanied by observable, conspicuous behaviors that point toward planning and a movement toward acting on the idea. It could be shown that this development of offenders did not pass completely undetected. As Vossekuil et al. (2002) point out, in 38 out of the 41 cases analyzed, offenders had engaged in behaviors that caused others to be concerned (see Vossekuil et al. 2002, 30). In 88% of the cases, at least one adult was aware, and in 78% of the cases at least three persons knew. Thus, conspicuous behaviors (directly related to the later offense, such as leaking, and general disturbing behaviors such as concerning oneself with death extensively) have pivotal relevance for the prevention of such offenses. The planning of the offense might be a characteristic that separates school shootings from other forms of juvenile crime (see Fritzon and Brun 2005). As Moore et al. (2003) state, in other cases of juvenile murderers, acute and personal conflicts play a much larger role. Thus, according to the authors, school shootings resemble other forms of mass murder more than other forms of juvenile violence or violence in schools (see also Lange and Greve 2002; Meloy et al. 2004).

3.2 Leaking as a Central Warning Sign The most relevant of such conspicuous behaviors and thus an important starting point for the early identification of potential offenders seems to be a phenomenon known as leaking or leakage. The term describes announcements of a planned offense that are leaked out (see O’Toole 1999). Such announcements may appear either directly in verbal or written form (e.g., in conversations, essays, chat rooms, or via SMS), as well as within drawings and comics; or indirectly, as shown by an obsessive interest in violent media, formerly executed, similar offenses, firearms— even in camouflage clothing or related topics. Some offenders also stood out because of suicidal thoughts (see Band and Harpold 1999; Moore et al. 2003). Announcements may be directed at specific persons (without necessarily constituting a threat against this person) or may be expressed in a rather unspecific context—as, for example, in a chat room.

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Leaking has turned out to be a crucial starting point for the prevention of severe targeted school violence, because in all cases known to date, either direct or indirect forms of leaking were to be observed: • In nine out of the ten cases analyzed by Verlinden et al. (2000) offenders had communicated their intentions directly, sometimes repeatedly, in detail long beforehand. • In six out of eight cases analyzed by Kidd and Meyer (2002) offenders made verbal announcements that ranged from rather vague insinuations to explicit warnings. • McGee and DeBernardo (1999) detected leaking in all of the 18 cases they analyzed. In the large majority of cases known in the literature, leaking was directed to the offender’s peers—or at least peers were the persons who came to know about it (e.g., via Internet chat rooms). As Vossekuil et al. (2002) report, peers of the offenders had knowledge about the planned offenses in 87% of the analyzed cases, sometimes even in detail; in more than half of these cases more than one person knew about the offender’s intentions. But teachers and other adults were also aware—often by forms of indirect rather than direct leaking.

3.3 Violent Fantasies and Consumption of Media Violence Time-consuming and intensive fantasies centered on violence, omnipotence, and superiority seem to play a crucial role in the development of severe targeted school violence. Violent fantasies seem to be present in cases of school shootings more often than in other cases of juvenile murder (see Meloy et al. 2001). These fantasies often are also recorded in personal writings (see Kidd and Meyer 2002). Such fantasies seemingly also become influenced and augmented by the consumption of media violence. Several authors report that a large majority of school shooters showed interest in media violence (see Kidd and Meyer 2002; Verlinden et al. 2000; Vossekuil et al. 2002; for general influence of consumption of violent media, see Anderson and Bushman 2001; Anderson and Dill 2000). In some cases certain circumstances of the offense obviously were influenced by the content of films or books. Other offenders took their lessons from former school shootings, relying heavily on media reports about such events. It is eye-catching that in recent years a pattern of dressing in camouflage clothing or long, dark trench coats has been established among offenders. With almost global access to the Internet and with the advent of Web 2.0 technologies, the Internet has become the place to search for information about former offenders and offenses, which may inspire copycat crimes. Furthermore, the Internet provides a platform for leaking. Extensive media reports about offenses and especially about former offenders not only provide publicity and a dubious fame for the offenders, but also justifications for their offenses as the reports also try to explain the perpetrators’ motivations.

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Thus, media reports offer opportunities to other possibly vulnerable persons to identify with former offenders, their motivations, and their acts. According to these findings, timely clusters of offenses could be identified (see Cantor et al. 1999; Robertz 2004). The interest of offenders in violent topics is also related to war, weapons, and explosives. Many offenders had a detailed knowledge about weapons and in most cases knew how to handle them (see Leary et al. 2003; McGee and DeBernardo 1999). Under these circumstances, the availability of and access to firearms promotes acting on the planned offense.

3.4 Mental Disorders While juvenile offenders seem to lack psychotic symptoms (see McGee and DeBernardo 1999), they apparently tend to internalize problems and are strongly affected by depression or depressive symptoms. Suicidal gestures, ideations, or even attempts were reported for all offenders analyzed by McGee and DeBernardo (1999) and for five out of eight offenders analyzed by Meloy et al. (2001). This proportion of suicidality seems to be higher than in other cases of juvenile mass murder analyzed by Meloy et al. (2001). Other authors have considered narcissistic traits as a possible causal factor in school shootings (see Twenge and Campbell 2003).

3.5 Risk Factors in the Social Environment Offenses seem to be influenced and promoted not only by the specific characteristics and interests of the offender but also by social factors and experiences. One major social factor which seems to be connected with school shootings in the United States is the finding that a large majority of the offenders had been rejected by their peers or even had been bullied in school. Peer rejection seems to be associated with school shootings more than with other cases of juvenile murder (see Fritzon and Brun 2005; Meloy et al. 2001). Several authors report victimization rates from 75% up to 100% among school shooters (see Leary et al. 2003; Meloy et al. 2001; McGee and DeBernardo 1999; Verlinden et al. 2000), while others do not consider bullying as a crucial factor (see Thompson and Kyle 2005; Vossekuil et al. 2002). In most cases, offenders were socially isolated and were described as loners or members of a rejected peer group (see Verlinden et al. 2000; Vossekuil et al. 2002).

3.6 Motives In most cases of targeted school violence the offenders experienced major losses—subjectively perceived major losses, respectively—shortly before the attack (Vossekuil et al. 2002). These losses either consisted of a rejection by important others, for example, by girls the boys were in love with (see Leary et al. 2003), a loss of future prospects, e.g., by the rejection of an application or expulsion from school, or the loss of status or face, e.g., by harsh and repeated humiliations in front of others

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(see Vossekuil et al. 2002). Due to a lack of or inadequate coping mechanisms and an actual or perceived lack of social support, these experiences of rejection and loss can hardly be handled (see Kidd and Meyer 2002; Verlinden et al. 2000). Considering these facts, it is neither surprising that the victims of the offense often were not arbitrarily chosen but preselected nor that the motives for the offenses seem to consist in the need for revenge or justice, suicide, or the wish for control, respect, and fame (see McGee and DeBernardo 1999; Meloy et al. 2001; Verlinden et al. 2000; Vossekuil et al. 2002).

3.7 Structural Risk Factors Beneath these predominantly personal and social factors structural risk factors are discussed as well. A negative school climate, high pressure to perform, deficits in the educational system (see Fox and Harding 2005; Newman et al. 2004) or easy access to firearms should also be taken into account when searching for explanations and opportunities for prevention of severe targeted school violence (see also Bondü et al. 2008 and Weisbrod 2008 for the connection between the access to firearms and the homicide and suicide risk with younger persons). Although German gun law is comparatively strict (and has been further tightened after the 2002 school shooting in Erfurt), German offenders still managed to gain access to the required weapons. While some of them owned (at least some of) their weapons legally after acquiring the German license to carry firearms, most gained access illegally, for example, by stealing them from close family members who possessed the firearms legally (see Meloy et al. 2001). While the results regarding the mentioned risk factors so far are basically consistent, there is no such agreement among the outcomes from different studies in other aspects, thus pointing out the need for future research. Divergent results have been reported in regard to academic performance in recent offenders as well as their mental health status, family background, or former aggressive behavior (see Kidd and Meyer 2002; McGee and DeBernardo 1999; Meloy et al. 2001; Verlinden et al. 2000; Vossekuil et al. 2002). Vossekuil et al. (2002) also conclude that there is no typical or single profile of a school shooter to be identified. Although the cited findings, stemming from very small samples, can hardly be considered as representative for all school shooters, they nonetheless provide valuable information, which has been used to develop explanatory models as well as preventive approaches for severe targeted school violence in general and school shootings in particular.

4 Explaining School Shootings: Explanatory Models As has become clear, severe targeted school violence and school shootings are not associated with a single risk factor but rather are the result of a complex interaction of personal and social factors over longer periods of time (= developmental aspect)

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which then are influenced by situational stressors. That is, monocausal explanatory approaches such as blaming the consumption of media violence (which is widespread), specific cultural factors (e.g., in American society, an approach that neglects offenses in other countries), or even gender (nearly all of the school shooters are male) are insufficient. Therefore recently discussed models and theories have taken into account a wide variety of risk factors, mainly resting upon the social rejection of the offender, lack of social skills, and violent fantasies. While the heavy consumption of media violence is also often integrated into these models, it is not considered as a causal but rather as a mediating factor (see Hoffmann 2003; Meloy et al. 2001; Robertz 2004). A quite simple model has been put forward by Meloy et al. (2001), claiming that offenders retreat into fantasies centered around violence and their own superiority in order to compensate for severe public humiliations. This is supposed to enact processes which transfer hot shame into cold anger and thus fosters the implementation of those fantasies in real life. Kidd and Meyer (2002) consider violent fantasies in children to be the result of early and frequent consumption of media violence, which itself is caused by a lack of social and emotional support as well as supervision by their parents. These children tend to overestimate the positive impact of violence as an instrument for problem solving; they tend to become desensitized toward violence and thus are rejected by their peers, setting in motion a vicious cycle of rejection, social incompetence, and increasingly violent behavior. If a further loss cannot be compensated due to the lack of social competence and support, if former threats have not been taken seriously, and if the student has or gains access to weapons, this may constitute a turning point toward an offense. Leary et al. (2003) argue similarly, but identified three further risk factors that may foster an offense: (1) mental disorders that are potentially associated with aggressive behavior; (2) a fascination with weapons and explosives; and (3) a fascination with death and related topics. Similarly, Thompson and Kyle (2005) consider social isolation that fosters low self-esteem and delinquent behavior as the crucial factor in the development of severe targeted school violence. According to the authors, social isolation is caused by a lack of moral education by the parents, which also results in the lack of the acceptance of the ethical system. This negative interaction pattern of social isolation and low self-esteem may be reinforced by a competitive school environment. While explanatory models of school shootings from the American literature focus on social and psychosocial factors, explanatory models from the German literature comparatively accentuate the role of intrapersonal characteristics (and the influence of media violence consumption). For example, depressive traits are considered as a risk factor, heightening the vulnerability of a person in general, while narcissistic tendencies are deemed especially to intensify experiences of rejection and humiliation. A lack of social skills is said to increase the risk for such experiences and also to hinder adequate problem solving, while tendencies for external attributions and trait hostility might lead to the one-sided and uncritical attribution of guilt onto other persons. Under these circumstances, fantasies of aggression and/or

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(Bio)psychological risk factors

Psychosocial risk factors

Structural risk factors

Rejection/bullying Loss Social isolation Suicidal tendencies depressive and/or narcissistic symptoms

Media

Violent/revenge fantasies Leaking

Access to weapons Decision on/planning of offence Leaking

Developmental course

Fig. 1 Heuristic model for the description of a pathway toward a school shooting (Scheithauer and Bondü 2008)

omnipotence might compensate for subjectively experienced mortifications resulting in feelings of control and superiority. In a long-term developmental interactive process, these fantasies are considered to be reinforced and enriched by the content of the supposedly frequently consumed media violence (see Heubrock et al. 2005; Hoffmann 2003; Robertz 2004). Heubrock et al. (2005) as well as Scheithauer and Bondü (2008) propose a heuristic model (see Fig. 1) that visualizes a possible developmental pathway toward an offense by integrating the multitude of the aforementioned risk factors and putting them into meaningful groups. At the moment, this model is empirically tested for the group of German offenders. The developmental orientation of the model opens the opportunity to identify the stage at which a potential offender currently is and thus to choose adequate preventive measures—a way to control for further offenses as the next section will show.

5 Deficiencies of Control After this brief review of findings regarding possible risk factors and explanatory models of school shootings, one may consider these results from the angle of control. In this context several aspects of control ask for consideration. First of all one might look at the personal control of the offender, concerning his self-control in regard to emotions and behavior as well as his ability to control his own life and future plans. Another way to look at the results comes from a societal perspective and mainly focuses on possibilities of controlling and thus preventing further offenses.

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5.1 Deficiency of Personal Control The offenses, following a severe loss or other extremely averse experiences in most of the cases, may symbolize a perceived loss of control over one’s own life and future plans, thereby causing a lack of prospects and feelings of frustration and anger as well as despair and hopelessness. Such affects may end in depressive features, encourage suicidal tendencies, and lead to the execution of offenses in persons at risk. The aforementioned findings make quite clear though that the offenses themselves are far from resulting from a short-term, emotion-driven loss of intrapersonal control, but on the contrary from longer periods of thoughtful planning, which in some cases took years. That is, contrary to many findings in other areas of crime and the common picture of a rampage, offenders often showed behavioral control over long periods of time (see Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990) while gaining access to weapons, collecting information on the school building or possible victims, and waiting for the right moment to act. Sometimes, the shell of self-control cracks, for widely unknown reasons. This is when a potential offender leaks his violent fantasies, intentions, and plans to the outside world and thus provides an opening for the planting of interpersonal or social control in order to prevent further incidents (see below).

5.2 Deficiency of Control Within the Social Environment and Within Organizations Unfortunately, in many cases neither students nor adults reacted to leaking or announcements of school shootings adequately. Although by now there have been a number of cases where the acting out of an offense has been prevented, in many others social controls failed. Why so? First of all warning signs were not always taken seriously and were not perceived as real threats. As Fox and Harding (2005) point out, one factor causing a lack of social control within schools is what they term organizational deviance. According to the authors this kind of deviance is the result of a lack of communication among school staff, leading to a split-up of important information concerning a student. Thus, the student’s behavior may only be seen in parts, and critical developmental changes may go undetected. Schoolmates or peers who knew about the plans, or at least felt unease, often felt trapped between concern and (misinterpreted) loyalty. After so many severe incidents the willingness among students to report possible warning signs and leaking to school officials or police has risen though—a phenomenon known as the Columbine effect in the United States (see Larkin 2007). But even if conspicuous behaviors were reported to teachers or to the police, the recipients often did not know how to react properly. This is due not only to a

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lack of scientifically founded criteria, which would allow for the assessment of a potential offender’s dangerousness, but also to the lack of a legal hold. Thus, there is also a need for the development of appropriate legal and political controls built on scientific findings.

5.3 Deficiencies of Control Within the Media In the face of rising numbers of incidents, fatalities, and casualties throughout the world, controlling severe targeted violence and school shootings may seem difficult. Some aspects concerning this topic even seem to run out of control, thus providing a possible explanation for the aforementioned development in recent years. One of these aspects is the now frequent use of the Internet (but also other types of media) by potential – as well as actual – offenders. The Internet provides a platform not only for leaking, as has been observed, but also for the presentation of the motives behind the offense and the ideal and fantasized self that offenders want to propagate after the incident. It may also be used to obtain information about previous offenders and offenses, to contact people with similar thoughts and ideas, or even to buy weapons—legally or illegally. Thus the Internet is increasingly exploited by potential or actual offenders—and it is impossible to control through legal means due to its size and anonymity. But even informal controls do not always work here. On the contrary, leaking within a closed community of previous offenders’ admirers or even of potential offenders themselves who may meet in special chat rooms might go undetected by the outside world.

6 Possibilities of Control and Prevention The described gaps in control are seemingly one factor (among others) that allows severe targeted school violence to occur. However, there seem to be ways to control for the risks of school shootings. Those may include general preventive approaches that may diminish the influence of known risk factors and strengthen protective factors (primary prevention). If a student is in danger of committing an act of severe targeted school violence, then there is a need for means that allow for the identification of such persons, for an assessment of their dangerousness, and for the prevention of their acting upon possible plans or ideas for an offense (secondary prevention).

6.1 Primary Prevention Primary prevention addresses the entire population and focuses on single risk factors and aspires to diminish their negative impact. Thus psychosocial competencies like frustration tolerance, adequate problem-solving strategies, and communication skills, but also empathy, changing perspective, and aggression control may be

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enhanced by appropriate programs. However, these skills need to be fostered not only within potential offenders, but also within all students, in order to prevent bullying and other forms of victimization in school and to improve the school climate. Self-confidence and feelings of control over one’s own life may be fostered through positive social experiences and interactions such as learning to cope with and solve problems adequately. Findings of studies considering negative life events as possible catalysts of a planned offense also clarify the need for early intervention in order to prevent negative long-term developments and negative social experiences (as would, for example, be the case with poor school achievement or mental problems). Since consuming violent media seems to encourage the development of ideas for an offense and the execution of those ideas, it is an important step to urge parents to strongly monitor the media consumption habits of their children and to foster a competent handling of media content by students themselves. In this regard social and familial controls have to be strengthened. In the area of preventive purposes there are also starting points for stronger legal controls in order to control for single risk factors: for example, it is often demanded to further diminish the access to and availability of weapons, especially firearms, for juveniles. However, as Bondü and Scheithauer (2009) point out, the primary prevention of school shootings is difficult to realize due to the rather unspecific risk factors and the low base rate of the phenomenon. Accordingly, secondary preventive measures seem to be more promising.

6.2 Secondary Prevention As has already been pointed out, leaking may serve as a central warning sign and starting point for (secondary) preventive measures. In Germany, the Berlin Leaking Project takes advantage of these possibilities.

The Berlin Leaking Project Since results and knowledge concerning severe targeted school violence and school shootings are mainly based on the media analysis of a small set of overlapping single cases that took place in the United States, it is unclear whether or to what extent these results may be transferred to the population of school shooters as a whole and to German offenders in particular, nor how these risk factors might interact and how they would have to be statistically weighted. Furthermore there is still a lack of knowledge about the leaking phenomenon. Unfortunately, there has only been a theoretical preoccupation with school shootings and severe targeted school violence in Germany during the last decade. The Berlin Leaking Project (in German: Berliner LeakingProjekt) based at the Freie Universität Berlin, took a different route. The

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Berlin Leaking Project aims at avoiding further cases of severe targeted school violence and school shootings in Germany by the early identification of potential offenders. Since leaking was present in all former offenses investigated so far, this phenomenon is viewed as a central starting point for a preventive approach and therefore gave the project its name. For this purpose, specific risk factors, causes, and offender characteristics of severe targeted school violence in German (potential) offenders were to be identified as well as criteria that may allow the distinction between serious and innocuous announcements of offenses. Several steps have already been taken to reach these goals. There were three main strategies for the data collection, which also covered different kinds of research questions.

1 Analyses of Inquiry Files We conducted thorough and systematic analyses of inquiry files on German cases of school shootings (currently N = 7) as well as on severe announcements of such offenses (currently about 120 cases accessible). Relevant inquiry files were obtained from the public prosecutor’s offices and the police. We developed an analysis sheet especially for this purpose, considering a wide range of already known and further possible risk factors. We tried to identify specific risk factors in the population of school shooters, to test for the transferability of findings from former studies in other countries to the German situation, and to identify possible effects of culture-specific factors. Inquiry files clearly constitute a more appropriate and reliable source of information than, for instance, media reports. Furthermore, working with comparison groups provides the possibility of identifying factors that are unique to offenders. Indeed, our results indicate possible differences between school shooters and persons who announced such offenses but did not act accordingly, as well as two different groups of persons showing only leaking (see Bondü et al. 2007; Bondü and Scheithauer 2008a; Heldner 2008). Although there are large overlaps, we were also able to identify differences between the German and US offenses with regard to certain risk factors and leaking (Bondü and Scheithauer 2008b).

2 Investigations of “Gewaltmeldeformulare” In order to find out more about the frequency of leaking in Germany (in terms of a base rate) and the development of its frequency as well as its forms of appearance, characteristics, and surrounding circumstances, we investigated the so-called Gewaltmeldeformulare (violence message forms), which schools

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in Berlin are supposed to fill in for every case of violence and report it to the responsible public authority. We were able to extract all cases of leaking reported in the school years from 1996–1997 until 2006–2007. Thus, we gained a more holistic picture of leaking in Berlin schools during recent years.

3 School Study Within the Berlin Leaking Project In order to find out more about leaking and its treatment, we also conducted a further study in schools in Berlin, which is to our knowledge currently unique in Europe. In a pilot study teachers from eight schools were informed about leaking and further risk factors for school shootings. They were asked to report cases of leaking directly to members of the Leaking Project team and to answer a questionnaire at two points in time. The data showed that even short interventions yield positive effects by strengthening the confidence of teachers in their own decisions or by extending their repertoire of possible reactions to leaking. However, the study also clarified the teachers’ need for further training and professional support (for further details see Bondü and Scheithauer 2009). These findings may be used to conceive reliable starting points for the prevention of severe targeted school violence in German schools. The new project NETWASS (Networks Against School Shootings), which started in autumn 2009, is based on these findings and aims at fostering and evaluating the development of stronger social networks in schools, the constitution of professional networks (see below), and cooperation between both of them. There have been further efforts in the United States to reduce the risk of severe targeted school violence that are worth mentioning: several institutes have presented lists of risk factors (see National School Safety Center 1999; APA 1999), which are supposed to be used as checklists for identifying potentially dangerous students. However, some of the risk factors are quite broad in scope and even in combination fit a large number of students. Since severe targeted school violence is a rare event with a low base rate, these lists are untrustworthy and even pose the danger of wrongly identifying and stigmatizing a person who is not even thinking about or planning an offense.

Nevertheless, it is important to strengthen social controls and thus train teachers (and possibly also parents) to identify leaking and possible risk factors and to react appropriately to such signs. A number of authors even call for a greater willingness and more possibilities to report warning signs and risk factors in general, even among students (see Band and Harpold 1999; Fein et al. 2002). While this idea

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is a double-edged sword, it seems to be a pivotal precondition to control for and avoid further incidents of school shootings, as it is mostly peers who witness signs of conspicuous behaviors in their friends or classmates. In order to prevent the described risk of information loss in large organizations such as a school, it is important to establish a junction where data from different sources converges and can be seen and judged in the aggregate (a “leaking appointee”). Thus, the social network and control can be further strengthened, accumulations of warnings signs can be detected early, and interventions can be initiated quickly. Decisions about the seriousness of leaking or the danger posed by a person should then be considered by a team of well-schooled personnel. In the early detection of potentially dangerous persons the threat assessment approach has proven to be instrumental. This approach was first developed in regard to targeted violence against persons in public life and then transferred to targeted violence in other contexts such as the workplace and school (see Cornell 2004; Fein et al. 2002; Fein and Vossekuil 1998). Violence is seen as a product of a specific interaction between the potential offender, the potential victim, the setting (the reason why the student came to the authorities’ attention), and the situation (circumstances and major events in the life of the student, particularly recently). Thus, targeted violence is viewed to be neither spontaneous nor random, but to result from behavior and thought patterns that are traceable and observable. If a student warrants attention, a special process is started. Then, information concerning the student is sought from multiple sources such as interviews with friends, family members, or the student him- or herself, as well as from official documents like school records. Aside from general data, information about behaviors or ideas is sought, which might suggest a development of thinking and activities toward the execution of a planned offense. It is important to note that while every threat should be taken seriously and be acted upon, threats alone do not pose a reliable indicator for a potentially threatening situation, since not every person constituting a threat also verbalizes one. Therefore, further central aspects are requested according to ten central questions of the threat assessment approach, which for example covers the student’s ability to make plans and to act according to them, recent major losses, the mental state of the potential offender, or his interest in violent topics (see Fein and Vossekuil 1998; Reddy et al. 2001). A threat assessment is started whenever a prior determined threshold is crossed. Since the threat assessment is a flexible process, it is able to treat each case individually, to identify causes for behaviors of concern, take into account situational factors, and decide about length and intensity of the investigation according to the initial findings. Nevertheless, the threat assessment approach faces the base rate problem and the need for reliable, scientifically founded assessment criteria (see Reddy et al. 2001). Moreover, the threat assessment approach is time-consuming and cost-intensive. Threat assessment is closely linked to threat management to find or—if necessary—develop individually appropriate interventions to prevent an offense. In this context, not only can the student’s problems be treated and solved, but also

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the further development of a person may be monitored long-term and if necessary reacted upon accordingly and immediately. In order to arrange for the most adequate intervention in every individual case (at least if necessary), cooperation between several professions (“professional networks”) such as the school psychologist, therapists, the youth welfare office, or the police should be implemented on the community level.

6.3 Further Starting Point for Preventive Purposes Some schools have installed technological devices in order to prevent school shootings, e.g., metal detectors or cameras. But since metal detectors do not stop somebody from wanting to kill and to be killed, and guards in front of a school might only implicate some more deaths, this way of intervention does not seem appropriate; it takes effect too late. The role and the impact of the Internet has to be further investigated in future research. As the influence of the Internet seems to gain importance, there may also be a growing need for ways to enact additional controls. That is why some are looking for the development of technological devices that may detect warning signs on the Internet and thus also serve as preventive tools. However, in this regard questions about too much control have to be faced, and the success of such approaches is questionable. But other media also need to be requested to rethink the way they cover school shootings. The focus should shift away from the offenders and the offense and thus withdraw the platform for information or identification of people in danger of also committing a similar offense.

7 Concluding Remarks As has been shown, prevention of school shootings is not only necessary, but also principally possible. There are different starting points for the prevention of severe targeted school violence, which may be further developed by future research. As such offenses are rare and the knowledge about risk factors and developmental dynamics is still modest, all preventive approaches face their specific problems (see Bondü and Scheithauer 2009 for more detail). That is, complete control is and will never be possible. Several cases of prevented harmful acts in Germany and throughout the world show though that attentiveness and early intervention may prevent further offenses and can even save lives. As controlled designs in terms of longterm evaluations are not possible for ethical and for methodological reasons, we will never be able to exactly determine the effectiveness of preventive measures in regard to the number of avoided offenses. It is possible though to create surroundings that foster positive social conditions, to train teachers in identifying leaking and other warning signs early, and to convey a sense of control within the school

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context in order to prevent feelings of fear and insecurity. Nevertheless, everyone working in the field of the prevention faces the task of finding a way for responsible and adequate control instead of disproportionate and superfluous overcontrol.

References American Psychological Association (1999). Warning signs of teen violence. Retrieved September 25, 2001, from http://apahelpcenter.org/featuredtopics/feature.php?id=38. Anderson, C. A. and Bushman, B. J. (2001). Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior. A metaanalytic review of the scientific literature. Psychological Science, 12, 353–359. Anderson, C. A. and Dill, K. E. (2000). Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the laboratory and in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 772–790. Band, S. R. and Harpold, J. A. (1999). School violence. Lessons learned. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 68, 9–16. Bondü, R. and Scheithauer, H. (2008a). Warning signs of school shootings and severe targeted school violence. Paper presented at the XVIIIth World Meeting of the International Society for Research on Aggression in Budapest, July 8–12, 2008. Bondü, R. and Scheithauer, H. (2008b). Leaking as a warning sign in cases of school shooting and severe targeted school violence. Paper presented at the XXIXth International Congress of Psychology in Berlin, July 20–25, 2008. Bondü, R. and Scheithauer, H. (2009). School shootings in Deutschland: Aktuelle Trends zur Früherkennung von zielgerichteter schwerer Gewalt an Schulen. Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, 58, 685–701. Bondü, R., Dölitzsch, C., Bull, H. D., Meixner, S., and Scheithauer, H. (2007). Das Berliner Leaking-Projekt zur Früherkennung und Prävention von schwerer, zielgerichteter Schulgewalt. Tagung der Fachgruppe Rechtspsychologie, 20–22 September 2007, Kiel. Bondü, R., Meixner, S., Bull, H. D., Robertz, F. J., and Scheithauer, H. (2008). Schwere, zielgerichtete Schulgewalt: School Shootings und “Amokläufe”. In H. Scheithauer, T. Hayer, and K. Niebank (Eds.), Problemverhalten und Gewalt im Jugendalter. Erscheinungsformen, Entstehungsbedingungen, und Möglichkeiten der Prävention (pp. 84–95). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer-Verlag. Cantor, C. H., Sheehan, P., Alpers, P., and Mullen, P. (1999). Media and mass homicides. Archives of Suicide Research, 5, 283–290. Cornell, D. G. (1996). Coding guide for violent incidents: instrumental versus hostile/reactive aggression. Retrieved October, 28, 2007, from http://youthviolence.edschool. virginia.edu/pdf/codingguide.pdf. Cornell, D. G. (2004). Student threat assessment. In E. R. Gerler (Ed.), Handbook of School Violence (pp. 115–135). Binghampton, NY: Harworth Reference Press. Evans, G. D. and Rey, J. (2001). In the echoes of gunfire: practicing psychologists’ response to school violence. Professional Psychology Research and Practice, 32, 157–164. Fein, R. A. and Vossekuil, B. (1998). Protective Intelligence & Threat Assessment Investigations: A Guide for State and Local Law Enforcement Officials (NIJ/OJP/DOJ Publication No. 170612). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. Fein, R. A., Vossekuil, B., Pollack, W. S., Borum, R., Modzeleski, W., and Reddy, M. (2002). Threat Assessment in Schools. A Guide to Managing Threatening Situations and to Creating Safe School Climates. Washington, DC: United States Secret Service and United States Department of Education.

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Fox, C. and Harding, D. J. (2005). School shootings as organizational deviance. Social Education, 78, 69–97. Fritzon, K. and Brun, A. (2005). Beyond Columbine: a faceted model of school associated homicide. Psychology, Crime and Law, 11, 53–71. Gottfredson, M. R. and Hirschi, T. (1990). A General Theory of Crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Harding, D. J., Fox, C., and Mehta, J. D. (2002). Studying rare events through qualitative case studies: lessons form a study of rampage school shootings. Sociological Methods Research, 31, 174–217. Heldner, S. (2008). Androhungen von schwerer, zielgerichteter Schulgewalt: Analyse Berliner staatsanwaltschaftlicher Ermittlungsakten. Unpublished diploma thesis. Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin. Heubrock, D., Hayer, T., Rusch, S., and Scheithauer, H. (2005). Prävention von schwerer zielgerichteter Gewalt an Schulen – Rechtspsychologische und kriminalpräventive Ansätze. Polizei & Wissenschaft, 6, 43–57. Hoffmann, J. (2003). Amok - ein neuer Blick auf ein altes Phänomen. In C. Lorei (Ed.), Polizei & Psychologie. Kongressband der Tagung "Polizei & Psychologie" am 18. und 19. März 2003 in Frankfurt am Main (pp. 397–414). Frankfurt: Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft. Kidd, S. T. and Meyer, C. L. (2002). Similarities of school shootings in rural and small town communities. Journal of Rural Community Psychology, E5(1). Available via http://www.marshall.edu/jrcp/sp2002/SP2002Contents.htm (retrieved March, 3rd, 2003). Lange, T. and Greve, W. (2002). Amoklauf in der Schule – Allgemeine Überlegungen aus speziellem Anlass. Soziale Probleme, 13, 80–101. Larkin, R. (2007). Comprehending Columbine. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Leary, L. M., Kowalski, R. M., Smith, L., and Philips, S. (2003). Teasing, rejection, and violence: case studies of the school shootings. Aggressive Behavior, 29, 202–214. McGee, J. P. and DeBernardo, C. R. (1999). The classroom avenger. The Forensic Examiner, 8, 1–16. Meloy, J. R., Hempel, A. G., Mohandie, K., Shiva, A. A., and Gray, B. T. (2001). Offender and offense characteristics of a non-random sample of adolescent mass murderers. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 40, 719–728. Meloy, J. R., Hempel, A. G., Gray, B. T., Mohandie, K., Shiva, A., and Richards, T. C. (2004). A comparative analysis of North American adolescent and adult mass murderers. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 22, 291–309. Moore, M. H., Petrie, C. V., Braga, A. A., and McLaughlin, B. L. (Eds.) (2003). Deadly Lessons. Understanding Lethal School Violence. Washington, DC: National Academic Press. National School Safety Center (1999). Checklists of Characteristics of Youth Who Have Caused School-Associated Violent Deaths. Westlake Village, CA: National School Safety Center. Newman, C., Fox, C., Harding, D. J., Mehta, J., and Roth, W. (2004). Rampage. The Social Roots of School Shootings. New York, NY: Perseus. North, C. S., Smith, E. M., and Spitznagel, E. L. (1994). Posttraumatic stress disorder in survivors of a mass shooting. American Journal of Psychiatry, 151, 82–88. O’Toole (1999). The School Shooter. A Threat Assessment Perspective. Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation. Reddy, M., Borum, R., Berglund, J., Vossekuil, B., Fein, R., and Modzeleski, W. (2001). Evaluating risk for targeted violence in schools. Comparing risk assessment, threat assessment, and other approaches. Psychology in the Schools, 38, 157–172. Robertz, F. J. (2004). School Shootings. Über die Relevanz der Phantasie für die Begehung von Mehrfachtötungen durch Jugendliche. Frankfurt: Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft. Robertz, F. J. and Wickenhäuser, R. (2007). Der Riss in der Tafel. Amoklauf und schwere Gewalt in der Schule. Berlin: Springer. Scheithauer, H. and Bondü, R. (2008). Amoklauf. Wissen was stimmt. Freiburg: Herder. Scheithauer, H. and Heubrock, D. (2005). Gewalt an deutschen Schulen. Präventives Eingreifen als Lebensretter. Fundiert—Wissenschaftsmagazin der Freien Universität Berlin, 1/2005, 96–103.

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Scheithauer, H., Bondü, R., Meixner, S., Bull, H. D., and Dölitzsch, C. (2008). Sechs Jahre nach Erfurt—Das Berliner Leaking-Projekt. Ein Ansatz für die Prävention von School Shootings und Amokläufen an Schulen. Trauma & Gewalt, 2 (1), 2–13. Schwarz, E. D. and Kowalski, J. M. (1991). Malignant memories: PTSD in children and adults after a school shooting. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 30, 936–944. Thompson, S. and Kyle, K. (2005). Understanding mass school shootings: links between personhood and power in the competitive school environment. The Journal of Primary Prevention, 5, 419–438. Twenge, J. M. and Campbell, W. K. (2003). Isn’t it fun to get the respect that we’re going to deserve? Narcissism, social rejection, and aggression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 261–272. Verlinden, S., Hersen, M., and Thomas, J. (2000). Risk factors in school shootings. Clinical Psychology Review, 20, 3–56. Vossekuil, B., Fein, R. A., Reddy, M., Borum, R., and Modzeleski, W. (2002). The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative. Implications for the Prevention of School Attacks in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education. Weisbrod, D. (2008). Prelude to a school shooting? Assessing threatening behaviors in childhood. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 47, 847–852.

Masculinity, School Shooters, and the Control of Violence Ralph W. Larkin

1 Introduction A funny thing happened on the way to Herbert Marcuse’s one-dimensional society. Issues of domination and subordination were supposed to have been reduced to mere technical issues; labor and capital had arrived at the great consensus. In their private lives, workers consumed the products they made in the public sphere under capitalist domination. The system delivered the goods and citizens traded political freedom for economic well-being. Western society was living in the era of repressive desublimation. The unhappy consciousness had been conquered by consumer society. Yet in the very year of the publication of One-Dimensional Man (Marcuse 1964), the great consensus was unraveling in strange and unpredictable ways. Young people from the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area were dropping out of school and giving up their comfortable (and boring) middle-class existence, quitting the status struggle, drifting into the dilapidated Haight-Ashbury neighborhood at the foot of Golden Gate Park, living in poverty, and eschewing possessions—with the possible exceptions of guitars and stereo systems—but experiencing a sense of community unavailable in the suburbs (Cavan 1972; Yablonsky 1968). This marked the beginning of a self-identified oppositional youth culture that rapidly spread across the county to such enclaves as New York City’s East Village, Los Angeles’s Venice Beach, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Members of this new breed were called “hippies.” At first a curiosity, this new counterculture attracted increasingly hostile media coverage because of its culturally subversive practices. Bright and talented children of privilege were dropping out of school and rejecting the corporatized lifestyles of their parents and former communities (Yablonsky 1968). They expanded their consciousnesses with drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and marijuana. They flaunted their sexuality and engaged in numerous encounters with many

R.W. Larkin (B) John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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partners, sometimes in public. Conventional society was scandalized by their flagrant idleness, sexual libertinism, and indulgence in drugs. Middle-class kids were panhandling! Hippies were characterized as spoiled brats who were taking advantage of their privileged positions; hostile observers accused them of hypocrisy because many were living on allowances from their parents. They would smoke marijuana or drop LSD and then conduct “be-ins” in Golden Gate Park, large gatherings of the hippie communities during which they would hang out, often not doing much of anything except making out, blowing bubbles, lying around stoned out of their minds, or listening to poetry. The emergence of the hippie mode of masculinity, which was overtly peaceful, was short-lived primarily because of the violence that it generated. In response to the predators who attempted to exploit the counterculture for their own ends and the physical brutality of police raids on their communities, hippies morphed into “freak radicals” (Foss 1972). Freak radicals adopted practices of the counterculture such as open sexuality, consciousness expansion, and communal living but they also promoted the notion of “protecting our communities,” which led to more aggressive confrontations with predators and the police. Also incorporated in the new counterculture were the politics of the new left: resistance to the Vietnam war, in loco parentis regulations on college campuses, the corporatization of everyday life, and racism, among other causes. This chapter traces the cultural history of masculinity in America from the rise of oppositional cultures in the mid- to late 1960s and the response of dominant elites in an effort to explain how the issue of masculinity plays into school rampage shootings. My thesis is that since the emergence of the middle-class youth movement, which challenged the hegemonic ideology of masculinity, America has struggled over masculinity’s definition. This struggle, which has permeated all levels of American society, is an underlying dynamic of school rampage shootings. Dialectally opposed camps have promulgated differing visions of what it means to be a man. In addition, social and economic policies implemented by a new elite emerging from the south and west of the United States have dramatically influenced the nature of masculinity in America. Karl Marx famously stated: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal consequently also controls the means of mental production, so that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are on the whole subject to it” (1976, 67; italics in original). In today’s media-drenched society, dominant elites have great influence on the behavior of non-elites, not only through the actions of the state, but through the media. The dominant elites have power through access to the political process, to which the merchants of violence have an open door—for example, military contractors, paramilitary organizations (such as Blackwater [now known as Xe], Wackenhut, and Triple Canopy), and the most powerful lobbying organization in the country, the NRA, which comprises weapons manufacturers, ammunition producers, hunters, and Second Amendment

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absolutists. They also have the ability to influence attitudes toward violence in the media. David Altheide (2004, 2006) has examined this influence in the generation of fear in the general populace; Douglas Kellner (1990, 2008) has examined the role of media in legitimating violence. Through legislation, backing “pro-violence” political candidates, and sponsoring violent media products, those with vested interests seek to promote fear, justify violence against real and imagined enemies, and offer a vision of masculinity in the context of violence. The political right zealously opposed the alternative vision of maleness offered by the counterculture of the 1960s (Kimmel 1996). A victory of sorts for the reemergence of hegemonic masculinity was represented by the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980. At the cultural level, the Reagan administration attempted to return to the status quo ante by championing a cowboy style of hyper-masculinity. The political and cultural right declared war on alternative modes of masculinity, encouraging the growth of a variety of hypermasculine subcultures such as professional wrestling, extreme boxing, gun culture, skinhead groups, gangs, and paramilitary culture, all celebrating masculinity as violence (Faludi 1999). These cultural trends gave legitimacy to violence against subdominant groups, including blacks, homosexuals, women, and males who did not fit the hegemonic stereotype (Jeffords 1994). Meanwhile, dissident subcultures went through a series of mutations: freaks morphed into punks, who then became hardcore and metalheads (Larkin 1988). Subsequently, these subcultures have been collectively identified as “Goth.” With their alternative modes of masculinity and gender-bending, they were perceived as an affront to hegemonic masculinity; tacit permission was given by authorities to harass, humiliate, bully, and otherwise attack members of these dissident subcultures. This was certainly the case at Columbine High School (Larkin 2008). Hostility between the jocks and outcast students was acted out in daily confrontations in middle and high schools across the United States (Eckert 1989; Gaines 1993; Wooden and Blazak 2001). Retaliation sometimes came in the form of rampage shootings (Tonso 2009). It comes as no surprise that virtually all rampage shooters (and would-be shooters) have been males. The motive in the vast majority of school rampage shootings was revenge for harassment, bullying, and public humiliation against the shooters perpetrated by elite students (Larkin 2009a). In all documented cases, the predatory behavior had sexualized overtones. In a minority of cases, mostly in the American South, rampage shootings were conducted as retaliation for the female rejection of male sexual advances, such as in Pearl, Mississippi (Bellini 2001) and Jonesboro, Arkansas (Newman 2004).

2 Hegemonic Masculinity in America R. W. Connell defines hegemonic masculinity as “the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women” (2005, 77). Michael Kimmel points out that

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masculinity is primarily a homosocial enactment. Men define themselves in relationship to other men. The greatest masculine fear is to be humiliated among other men or to be dominated by a stronger male—that is, to be “unmanned.” Kimmel states: “Homophobia is the fear of other men—that other men will unmask us, emasculate us, reveal to us and the world that we do not measure up, are not real men” (1996, 8). In American society, masculinity has been defined primarily in terms of potential for violence (Kimmel 1996). In a militaristic model, the idealized male is mesomorphic, athletic, compulsively heterosexual, clean-shaven, short-haired, and not given to public displays of emotion, with the exception of anger. The idealized male is a leader who uses command- and control-methods. Although outlets for male bonding are provided through sports and sexual escapades, male relationships are expected to steer away from homosexual behavior, which is viewed as gender treason. American hegemonic masculinity can best be defined by its opposite—homosexuality. American masculinity has been strongly influenced by the existence and the myth of the frontier (Slotkin 1992). The frontier always offered an escape to men who could not succeed in conventional society as husbands and fathers. The frontier provided an important component to American masculinity in the form of the cowboy, whose image reflected self-reliance, self-sufficiency, emotional self-containment, and life in a world populated mostly by men. Cowboys defended themselves with guns. They had no families to speak of, and sought comfort in the arms of prostitutes. Deep relationships with women were full of the dangers of attachment, settling down, and taking on the responsibilities of a family. Cowboys had to be footloose and free from attachments. Homosexuality was unmentionable. These images were promulgated through Western novels, such as those of Zane Gray, and popular movies. The cowboy mythology reveals an essential truth of American culture: in too many families, the males leave their families and thereby abrogate their responsibilities to their wives and children. Dorothy Dinnerstein (1976) makes the point that American masculinity is defined through reaction-formation to that which is feminine: boys learn masculinity not only through the emulation of male role models, but by being taught that femininity is taboo. Behaviors socially defined as “feminine,” such as crying, showing tenderness and compassion, and nurturing are signs of weakness. Betraying interest in the domestic arts, such as sewing, cooking, fashion, and interior design is viewed as “girly” and a threat to the male image. Becoming masculine in America is a painful process because of the strictness of the definition of hegemonic masculinity. The puritanical nature of American culture requires strict boundaries between good and evil. When masculine is defined as good and femininity is defined as weak, dark, evil, and seductive, those who stray into or openly choose a more feminine persona do so at their own risk. Lurking behind male–male relationships is the threat of homosexuality; those who defy accepted notions of masculinity will be punished summarily. American masculine identity is also painful because expectations for role performance are excruciatingly high, engendering many more losers than winners. The American male is caught aspiring to role models that are difficult to achieve, while

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anything defined as feminine is forbidden because it hints at homosexuality. Because of the narrow constraints within which American males navigate, the male ego tends to be rigidly constructed and highly attuned to deviance from the norm. A man must be constantly vigilant about his own behavior because failure is always a possibility. The American male tends to be puritanical and self-loathing. Fear of failing to live up to expectations leads men to attempt to hide their weaknesses. As Jules Henry (1964) notes, when those vulnerabilities are in danger of being revealed, violence is often used in attempts to cover them up. American men are about four times as likely to commit murder as Canadian men (NationMaster 2009). Central to American masculinity is the control of violence. Violence and the threat of violence are necessary to maintain dominance over other males and females. In her study of displaced white-collar workers, Susan Faludi interviewed a counselor working with men who were soon to be laid off. They were described as having “extremely limited skills—social skills, work skills, communication skills . . . They don’t emote. It’s a culture totally based on false pride, alcoholism, and violence. This is the distillation of the male ego in its coarsest form” (1999, 56). They were all having trouble keeping their families together; the only justification they had for maintaining their marriages was that their wives were economically dependent on them. When the wives had to go to work to make ends meet, the men became not only economic liabilities but sources of potential violence. Faludi interviewed an unemployed insurance agent who kept an arsenal of weapons in his house. Although he claimed the weapons were for protection from invasion, he also saw them as a means of subtly coercing his wife into not leaving him. Faludi reported that he viewed the Second Amendment as a “Defense of Marriage Act.” If there is a single word to define the hegemonic American male it would be “bravado.” With the criteria for role performance so high, the probability of failure so great, and the punishment for failure so severe, the American male ego is fragile, protected by a wall of seeming invulnerability. Marcuse noted that the ego is based on the performance principle. When an American male performs up to standard, he receives a tremendous psychic boost and basks in the adulation of others. Perhaps he wants to do a celebration dance, like an NFL football player scoring a touchdown. However, the performance principle is never fully satisfied and the future remains a minefield of potential failure. The only thing worse than being a loser is to have the rules of the game change in which one has invested so much energy. This is precisely what occurred for many men in the 1960s.

3 Masculinity Wars How did hair become a political issue in the 1960s? Michael Kimmel (1996) and Barbara Ehrenreich (1983) point out that in the late 1950s hegemonic masculinity was in a period of crisis as men became increasingly hesitant to take on the obligatory roles of husband, father, and breadwinner. However, with the emergence of the

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“androgynous” hippies and the rise of the counterculture, hegemonic masculinity was confronted by dissident youth. They called the traditional middle-class male trajectory of college degree, career, marriage, family, and a house in the suburbs a “death trip” (Yablonsky 1968). The hegemonic male was devastatingly lampooned by the comic artist R. Crumb as “Whiteman”: clean-shaven, square-jawed, mesomorphic, dressed always in a hat and suit, he was continually on the go, but had no real destination. His continual vague anxiety was heightened in the presence of people of color and members of the counterculture. His motto was “Keep a tight asshole.” Hippies replaced the gray flannel suit with paisley shirts and bell-bottom Levis, and the military-style clean shave and well-trimmed haircut with a beard and long hair. Commentators claimed that they could not tell the boys from the girls (Ehrenreich 1983), except when they were having sex in public. Hippies and countercultural types were perceived as an affront to the American male; there were incidents of young men traveling to countercultural enclaves to engage in “hippie bashing,” much as heterosexuals would invade gay communities to attack homosexuals. Police, who could be considered the guardians of hegemonic masculinity, would use any excuse to apply a truncheon to the head of a long-hair, whether it was at a be-in, sit-in, antiwar protest, or traffic violation stop (Los Angeles Times 1968; Drummond 1968). The members of the middle-class youth movement, whether of the hippie, student radical, anti-Vietnam War, or rural communard variant, undercut hegemonic masculinity. They presented themselves as “new men,” in touch with their feelings and willing to release control in order to “go with the flow.” They questioned all authority, especially the authority of the state, corporate chieftains, and their parents (Foss 1972). They seemed unpatriotic, as they declined to fight a war they perceived as unjust simply because it was their masculine obligation. While “real” men were required to bear arms to protect the powers that be, dissident males and their peacenik girlfriends stuck flowers in the barrels of their guns. Another assault on the hegemonic white male in the 1960s came from African American men, who were asserting themselves as hypermasculine. No longer submitting to white (male) power, the Black Panther Party threatened that black men would “defend their communities” with guns, if necessary. Playing on white fears of black-instigated violence, black nationalists developed righteous personas that were used to intimidate whites. This mode was captured by Tom Wolfe in his essay “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers” (1970), in which self-proclaimed community leaders extorted funds from the City of San Francisco through intimidation and guile.

4 The Women’s Movement and Gender Politics Perhaps the strongest assault on hegemonic masculinity was the women’s liberation movement. Spurred by the sexism of the new left, it arose in the late 1960s to challenge patriarchy in all its forms. In her epochal essay, “Goodbye to All That,” Robin Morgan wrote:

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Goodbye, goodbye. To hell with the simplistic notion that automatic freedom for women— or nonwhite peoples—will come about zap! with the advent of a socialist revolution. Bullshit. Two evils pre-date capitalism and clearly have been able to survive and postdate socialism: sexism and racism. Women were the first property when the Primary Contradiction occurred: when one-half of the human species decided to subjugate the other half, because it was different, alien, the Other . . . Beyond standards we all adhere to now without daring to examine them as male-created, male-dominated, male-fucked-up, and in male self-interest. Beyond all known standards, especially those easily articulated revolutionary ones we all rhetorically invoke. Beyond—to a species with a new name, that would not dare define itself as Man. (1970a)

The rise of the women’s liberation movement was as surprising as it was dramatic. The patronizing and sexist responses to it by black and white male radicals alike only served to enrage feminists, adding fuel to the fire and convincing movement women that they had to act immediately in their own interest and not wait for the socialist revolution to bring gender equality (Freeman 1975). These women rejected male new leftists who derided their cause as “pussy power,” a phrase borrowed from Black Panther member Eldridge Cleaver. Stokely Carmichael’s remark that women’s position in the movement should be “prone” was another instance of male negativity that was burned into the consciousnesses of activist women (Evans 1979). The women’s movement, by proclaiming that “the personal is political,” attacked sexism and patriarchy throughout Western society, from intimate and family relationships to institutional practices, from control of the female body to political domination through violence and war (Robotham 1972). In addition to demonstrating against the Vietnam War, women sat in at university administration buildings to protest gender quotas in graduate schools and attacked corporations for sex discrimination. In 1967, they invaded the Miss America contest in Atlantic City to protest its commodifying of women’s bodies. They disrupted Wall Street and raised public awareness of rape and violence against women as endemic problems in American society (Brownmiller 1975). Perhaps one of the most threatening activities generated by the women’s movement was the formation of consciousness-raising groups. These quickly spread beyond the feminist left to middle-class suburban communities (Sarachild 1978). Suddenly, suburban housewives were reading Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963), discussing sexuality and sexual health, declaiming the sexism of their husbands, and examining their genital organs in mirrors. If a core aspect of hegemonic masculinity was controlling women and their bodies, then the women’s liberation movement was a clear call to resist this control. Encouraged by feminism, and especially the feminist concern over the rights of lesbians, the gay rights movement sprang to life almost overnight. The riots in Greenwich Village in June 1969, in response to a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, marked the beginning of the movement (Duberman 1993). Within a few years, every American city had a visible gay enclave, and the movement had gone international. The gay community began “outing” homosexuals who were in the closet and who were oppressing their own, such as the lawyer for the House Un-American Activities Committee, Roy Cohn, and the FBI Director (and cross-dresser) J. Edgar Hoover and his life companion and assistant Clyde Tolson.

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5 Hegemonic Masculinity in Crisis By the mid-1970s, the masculine ideal was in crisis. The iconic John Wayne attempted to resurrect American masculinity by starring in the movie The Green Berets in 1968. In the wake of the disastrous defeat of America in the Vietnam War, heroes of Hollywood movies in the 1970s failed to follow the old militaristic mold. Among the few true heroes were Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein investigating the corruption of the Nixon administration in All the Presidents Men, and Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa. Much more prominent were the antiheroes featured in the films of Martin Scorsese, such as the thugs in Mean Streets, Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, and the Corleone family in the Godfather trilogy. Although all the leading characters of these films are hypermasculine, Travis Bickle, a New York City taxi driver, takes masculinity to its extreme. Apparently, a Vietnam War vet who suffers from insomnia, Bickle drives the night shift. He is a complete loner, unable to make emotional contact with anyone. He attempts to date a staff member of a US senator who is running for reelection. After she rejects him when he takes her to a pornographic movie on the first date, he buys four handguns and plans to assassinate the senator. Meanwhile he becomes involved with a teenaged prostitute, whom he is trying to reform and send back to her parents. He is unable to assassinate the senator, but in his efforts to rehabilitate the teenage prostitute he shoots and kills three gangsters. As a consequence, he is hailed as a hero. This is Scorsese’s joke on American masculinity. A man who is violent and full of rage at his own social isolation becomes idolized as a savior of American femininity through mere happenstance: if it were not for the senator’s security detail, Bickle would have become another crazed lone gunman in a gallery that includes Arthur Bremmer, who shot George Wallace, and Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Bobby Kennedy. Parodies of hegemonic masculinity were featured in such box-office successes as Woody Allen’s Annie Hall and the Arthuric spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail. If movies featured appealing male role models who fought against “Big Brother,” these characters met their demise in the end. This was the case for Warren Beatty’s character in The Parallax View and Gene Hackman’s in The Conversation. Both of these movies are nightmares of total paranoia whose heroes are overwhelmed by hidden forces. In John Boorman’s Deliverance, four men from Atlanta, one of them super-macho, pit themselves against nature during a river trip. One of them is killed, the macho leader is seriously wounded, and a third is sodomized by locals. These movies reflected a cultural truth: masculinity was in crisis. The antihero had taken center stage. In 1979, in the midst of an energy crisis, President Jimmy Carter addressed the nation with what has been referred to as his “malaise” speech. In it he stated: “In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning” (Carter 1979).

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Postmodern culture had arrived and the values of consumption had overridden the values of production. In a world in which gender relations were organized around men producing and women consuming, the hegemonic notion of man the producer had changed. The values that sprang from his role as provider, protector, disciplinarian, and guardian had been undermined. Susan Faludi (1999) referred to this newly emergent social structure as “ornamental society” and documented how it undermined masculinity. No longer was providing material support for his family sufficient to justify a man’s position of domination. Expectations for male role performance had escalated to include sensitivity to the feelings of others and emotional support of family members. The family had become more democratized, and wives demanded that their husbands treat them with love and respect. Many men were not up to the challenge.

6 Ronald Reagan to the Rescue If Jimmy Carter had correctly diagnosed the problem, he was certainly clueless about the solution. In one of the most humiliating defeats of an incumbent president in American history, Ronald Reagan secured 91% of the votes of the Electoral College in the election of 1980. It was a stunning victory for Reagan, who had built his career on opposing the movements of the 1960s. When he was elected governor of California in 1966, his major issues were “welfare cheats,” the Berkeley Free Speech movement, and the shutting down of the University of California by student protesters 2 years earlier (Kotkin and Grabowicz 1982). This particular platform appealed to a broad segment of the California population later referred to as “Reagan Democrats.” These voters resented having their tax dollars spent on welfare for African Americans in the ghettos of California cities and on higher education for spoiled brats in the state’s universities. Although Reagan claimed that he was not personally prejudiced against blacks, his campaign against welfare cheats appealed to the deep-seated racism of a large segment of California voters who had roots in the South (Boyarski 1968). Ronald Reagan became the poster boy for the newly emerging political right (Kotkin and Grabowicz 1982). He was handsome and affable, with a sense of humor, and the TV screen loved him. Subsequently, known as “the great communicator,” Ronald Reagan became a happy, friendly face that was able to deliver the dark message of the hard right. The election of Ronald Reagan to the governorship of California provided the nouveaux riches of the South and West with a spokesperson. Reagan shifted the focus of the Republican Party away from the northeast toward the southwest establishment. With Reagan, the Republican Party would move from the more liberal Eastern establishment and resurrect the right wing of the party from the disastrous defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964. His staunch opposition to the middle-class youth moment and the activism of the African American community made him a reigning symbol of the culture wars. He supported “family values” even though he was not personally passionate about those issues (he had been divorced and was estranged

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from his children). He was much more concerned about creating an environment where businesses and corporations could operate free of government regulation than he was about outlawing abortion (Kotkin and Grabowicz 1982). However, as the political right incorporated antiabortion Catholics and conservative Christians, the Reagan presidential campaigns in 1976, 1980, and 1984 adopted positions consistent with the cultural right and against constituencies focused on the liberation of youth, women, gays, and minorities. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 marked a cultural and political watershed for two reasons. The Reagan administration represented the ascent of a new Western and Southern political elite to the pinnacles of power in America (Sale 1976). In addition, it represented the ascendance of the counterrevolution against the changes of the 1960s and early 1970s. The goal of the Reagan administration was to turn back the cultural revolution. In aligning himself with the Christian right and promoting the interests of the military and armament industries located primarily in the South and West, Reagan also embodied the resurrection of the old masculinity. He was marketed as a combination of “Mr. Smith goes to Washington,” a straight-talking citizen-politician (Boyarski 1968), and a heroic defender of American freedoms against the communistic Soviet “Evil Empire.” The Reagan administration and the new right had two major items on their agenda, both of which had implications for the ideology of masculinity: first, to fight communism abroad, and second, to efface the changes brought about by the movements of the previous two decades. Reagan’s aggressive anticommunism, his militarism, and his cultivation of his image as a cowboy—complete with a ranch outside Santa Barbara, where he would ride horses, chop wood, and clear brush— presented him as a man among men. His alliance with the antiabortion movement certified him as a “protector” of women. If the subtext of the Reagan administration was to resurrect the image of man the warrior, the defender of the household, the breadwinner, and the controller of women, its economic policies made it increasingly difficult for a large sector of the male population to achieve such status (Kellner 2008). One of his first acts as president was to decertify PATCO, the air traffic controllers’ union. The Reagan administration had declared an end to the social contract between corporate America and its unionized labor force, which exchanged social peace for wages on which a worker could support his family (Gartner et al. 1982; Lekachman 1982). Adding to workers’ distress was the government-sponsored recession of 1981–1982, the worst since the Great Depression. Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, raised federal interest rates from 11.2 to 20.0% between 1979 and 1981. This action stopped the economy in its tracks and sent unemployment into the double digits. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce (Bureau of Economic Analysis 2009), between 1980 and 1982 the United States economy grew by only 1%. Actions taken to rid the economy of what economists referred to as “stagflation” (a stagnant economy with persistent inflation) performed wonders for American corporations, especially those in the Midwest that employed unionized workers. The recession gave them an excuse to shut down outmoded means of production, lay off workers,

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and relocate production facilities to the anti-union American South or outside the United States. Meanwhile, Reagan inveighed against the social safety net, especially welfare. Bolstered by his apocryphal stories of mink-coat-wearing “welfare queens” who picked up their monthly payments in Cadillacs, his administration slashed payments to the poor, required all persons on Social Security disability payments to reapply and certify their disabilities, cut funding for school lunch programs, ended subsidized housing, and cut back on medical care (Gartner et al. 1982). If this were not enough, the Kemp-Roth tax reform bill redistributed income upward (Mishel et al. 2007). The effect of supply-side economics, sometimes called “Reaganomics,” was to impoverish those at the bottom of the income pyramid and enrich those at the top. Ironically, working-class Reagan Democrats were probably the citizens most negatively affected by his economic policies. Between 1981 and 1991, union membership dropped by one fifth, from about 20 to 16% of the labor force (Ventura 1995). The policies of the Reagan administration created a new class of millionaires while simultaneously eliminating the livelihood of millions of workers in what was now called the “rust belt” of manufacturing industries located primarily in the Midwest. During the 1980s, there was a demographic shift of families moving from the Midwest to the South, seeking employment that turned out to pay approximately two thirds of their former wages. Reagan policies also resulted in a flood of homeless people into every major city in the United States (Jencks 1992).

7 Masculinity Wars Reagan’s policies attempted to resurrect the old masculinity while simultaneously undercutting its material basis. A new kind of hypermasculinity arose to bridge the contradiction, based not upon work, marriage, or a family, but rather on idolizing violence. The rise of the cult of violence throughout the 1980s provided validation of masculinity for men who did not have the wherewithal to marry and raise a family. The recession of 1981–1982, along with policies encouraging American industries to seek cheap labor forces overseas, created a bleak outlook for working-class and economically marginal American males. Not only did the recession permanently eliminate unionized jobs, but it also generated a farm crisis. In the decade of the 1980s, it has been estimated that between 700,000 and 1 million small- to mediumsized family farms disappeared (Dyer 1998). In 1986–1987, 1 million people were forced off their land. White men who in previous generations had been entitled to a union job or honest labor on a farm were frozen out of the market and consigned to temporary itinerant labor. These men were not well educated; most had a high school diploma at best. No longer tied to communities, they had to scrounge for work wherever they could find it. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, both of whom were convicted of bombing the Murrah building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, could serve as examples of this population. McVeigh was raised in an upstate New York working-class

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family, where his father and his grandfather had union jobs at Harrison Radiator, a supplier to General Motors (Michel and Herbeck 2002). By the time Timothy was of working age, Harrison Radiator had gone out of business and the union jobs had disappeared. He enlisted in the Army instead. After completing nearly 4 years of exemplary service and rising to the rank of sergeant, he ended up employed as a security guard. Because of his fascination with guns and his right-wing political beliefs, especially his absolutist defense of the Second Amendment, he took itinerant jobs so he could sell The Turner Diaries at gun shows. This novel describes a revolution of white males that overthrows the U.S. government and proceeds to exterminate Jews and minorities. In the military, McVeigh met Terry Nichols, a failure in numerous jobs and business ventures, who had lost his farm. Both men blamed the American government for their failures. Their blame had some validity. Certainly, the free-trade ideology of the Reagan– Bush era prevented the government from protecting American workers as corporations closed plants in the Midwest and Northeast and relocated production facilities elsewhere; the farm crisis could be laid at the feet of Paul Volcker’s monetary policies. Farmers had been told by representatives of the Department of Agriculture that they had to grow or die (Dyer 1998), so many farmers attempted to expand their holdings by borrowing money to purchase land. As interest rates rose, farmers with variable-rate loans faced ballooning payments, became overextended, and could not pay taxes on their land. And yet these disaffected workers and farmers were more likely to see government “bureaucrats” as the enemy rather than Ronald Reagan (who became known as the “Teflon president”) because of his ability to avoid blame for the consequences of his policies. Given the right-wing tenor of the country, the enemies of these angry white males included feminists, communists, abortionists, Jews (especially bankers), the Zionist Occupation Army, the FBI (and its “jackbooted storm troopers”), gun-control advocates, and anybody politically to the left of George H. W. Bush. After the disaster at Waco, Janet Reno and any other officials associated with the Clinton administration were added to the hate list (Dyer 1998). The 1980s saw the reemergence and expansion of numerous right-wing hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, National Association of White People, White Aryan Resistance, and various Nazi skinhead organizations (Dyer 1998; Ridgeway 1995; Stern 1997). In addition, new hate groups emerged, many of which had their roots in the racist ideology of the Christian Identity movement (Stern 1997). These included Army of God, Church of Jesus Christ Christian, and the Phineas Priesthood.

8 The New Militarism and Paramilitarism Ronald Reagan’s militarism was designed primarily to funnel increasing amounts of the federal budget to the defense industries in the West that were among his core supporters. Unlike his successor, George H. W. Bush, who invaded three countries (Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, Panama, and Somalia), Reagan’s actual military adventures were much smaller scale: an invasion of the “great threat to American democracy,”

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the island of Grenada, after its citizens elected a Socialist government, and the bombing of Libya. The “evil empire” rhetoric of the Reagan administration and the drumbeat of the great Soviet threat coincided with a visible weakening of the Soviet empire. However, the ramping up of fear served cultural as well as its material purposes. It reinforced the notion, carried through the Reagan administration and the two Bush presidencies, that international problems could be solved by military might. The fall of the Soviet Union ultimately gave credence to the militaristic claims of the Reagan administration and stimulated the cultural trend of paramilitarism. One of the major problems the political right identified in US foreign policy was the “Vietnam syndrome.” The term was used by Ronald Reagan as a rallying point during his presidential election in 1980 (Franklin 2005) to characterize the American populace’s hesitancy to become involved in foreign conflicts. Reagan and his militaristic backers claimed that victory in Vietnam had been stolen from the Americans, that cuts to the military by the Carter administration had weakened America in the face of an emboldened Soviet threat, and that Vietnam was a noble cause. Thus, the effacing of the dissident subcultures of the 1960s was to be achieved by championing militarism and offering the masculinity of the warrior as an alternative to the limp-wristed, hedonistic, gender-bending, “feminazi” identities of the past. Hollywood did its level best to promote the new warrior culture with a spate of films such as the Rambo and Mad Max series, which were tremendously popular (Gibson 1994). On television, viewers could watch the actions of a paramilitary group called the A-Team. What were the characteristics of this new warrior? As James Gibson (1994) points out, the new warrior is alienated from the system. Unlike the heroes of World War II movies, he has no family to protect, no women to come home to, no democracy to defend. The new warriors have been betrayed by their (democratically elected) government, which is either unwilling or too corrupt to fight its enemies. Masculinity is molded in the crucible of battle and in the company of men, away from the influence of women. Freed from the fetters of the family and the state, the new warrior is autonomous as well as alienated. The new warrior fits perfectly with the mentality of men who were emasculated by the policies of the Reagan administration. Masculinity is defined no longer in relationship to femininity, but in the absence of it. These men despise homosexuals, yet they have no relationships with women. Their model reassures individuals like Timothy McVeigh, who never had a serious relationship with a woman, or Terry Nichols, who had two failed marriages (Dyer 1998; Michel and Herbeck 2002). They hoped to resurrect a new kind of masculinity forged by violence, in their cases, violence against the state. In the 1980s, in addition to the recrudescence of right-wing hate groups, a nationwide paramilitary subculture emerged, with its core in the South and the West (Gibson 1994). Schools sprouted up, especially in the Southwest, promising to teach paramilitary skills to men. Weekend warriors could wage paintball wars akin to the childhood game of capture-the-flag, making paintball a fad in the 1980s. This paramilitary subculture was off the national radar until the passage of the

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Brady Amendment, which restricted gun ownership, in the first year of the Clinton administration (Niewart 1999; The Nizkor Project 1995). Angry white men rose up, ostensibly to defend the Second Amendment to the Constitution, although the revolt also embraced white supremacy, anti-Semitism, fundamentalist Christianity, patriarchy, and hostility to the federal government. The government was perceived as attempting to take away rights to gun ownership, promoting the interests of minorities and feminists, and secularizing public life (Brown and Merritt 2002; Dyer 1998; Niewart 1999; Stern 1997). Major events in this revolts included the shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992; the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas; the rise of nongovernmental militias in nearly every state in the union; the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City; the derailing of an Amtrak train in the Arizona desert; and, finally, the holdout of the Montana Freemen, which ended in June 1996. The movement can be thought of as taking the form of a funnel. At the top were such conservative organizations as the Republican Party, the National Rifle Association, and various evangelical Christian churches. As the funnel narrowed, it included organizations existed that claimed to be legitimate and law-abiding but either had a clandestine element or functioned, at least in part, as a conduit to underground terrorist organizations. One such organization was the Gun Owners of America, a Second Amendment defense organization to the right of the NRA. Perhaps most representative of such organizations were the private militias, which maintained a front as legitimate assemblies of law-abiding citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights that concealed their sponsorship of illegal activities. Several militias, such as the Arizona Militia and the Washington State Militia, were successfully infiltrated by law enforcement agencies and their members were prosecuted for terror-related activities such as stockpiling illegal weapons, possession of bombs, and conspiracy to commit murder (Dyer 1998; Niewart 1999). Finally, at the narrow end of the funnel were found right-wing hate groups such as the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, Aryan Nations, the American Nazi Party, Posse Comitatus, the National Alliance (a neo-Nazi group), the Order, the Freemen, and the Phineas Priests, all of which engaged in illegal activities such as bank robberies, intimidation, fraud, theft, and murder. The major fomenters of this dissidence, expressed in right-wing ideological terms, were economically and socially marginal men (Kellner 2008). They advocated for an America that was white and Christian, claiming those citizens had rights superior to immigrants, racial minorities, and Jews. They proposed that the American Northwest be ceded to white Christians as a homeland, free from federal government interference. They were involved in cultural wars against urban hipness, multiculturalism, feminism, and homosexuality. They advocated for a muscular Christianity based upon the position of men as the undisputed authority in the household, as promulgated by such organizations as the Promise Keepers.

9 Bill Clinton and the Sex Wars The unlikely victory of Bill Clinton in the election of 1992 hardly slowed the rightward trend of American society. Bill Clinton’s presidency was anathema to the right.

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Early in his regime, he did two things to enrage them: issued an executive order to allow gays in the military under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and secured passage of the Brady Amendment, which limited access to automatic weapons and required background checks for gun purchases. From that point on, activists on the cultural and political right vowed to force him from office, to humiliate him, and to destroy him. In opposition to the right-wing male image of the warrior, Clinton projected the image of the lover-boy. He was a child of the 1960s who had literally “made love, not war.” He protested against the Vietnam War (and dodged the draft), was upwardly mobile, had an egalitarian marriage, and had great sexual and personal charisma. In terms of gender politics, Clinton was a disaster to the right. He was not a man’s man; women loved him. He grew up in a single-parent family as a mama’s boy. He felt other people’s pain. He was not afraid to shed tears in public. The cultural right’s attempts to reverse the changes in gender relations of the 1960s and 1970s failed. To conservatives, the election of Clinton was a disaster. Hatred of the Clintons was palpable among the right-wing elite and their followers, who mounted personal attacks unprecedented against presidents in living memory. The right wing of the hereditary upper class, funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, began the “Arkansas Project,” funded through the conservative magazine The American Prospect, which attempted to smear the Clintons by investigating their involvement in an unsuccessful real-estate venture called Whitewater (Kangas 1996). When that failed, they investigated the suicide of their friend Vincent Foster, claiming that the Clintons had murdered him. Finally, the Arkansas Project hit pay dirt when it convinced Paula Jones to accuse the President of sexual harassment. A conservative three-judge panel appointed Kenneth Starr, who had worked for several legal organizations funded by Scaife, as special prosecutor. Starr artfully connected the Paula Jones inquiry to Clinton’s White House peccadilloes with Monica Lewinsky. The investigation certainly succeeded in publicly humiliating Clinton and threatened his presidency with impeachment; however, throughout the entire process, Clinton enjoyed broad public support (Washington Post 1999). The political right did not have the votes or the power to oust him from office. The incessant, vicious, and personal nature of the hard right’s attacks on the Clintons, and its willingness to use any tactic available, conveyed to the larger populace that if you have the power and the resources you can go after anybody you choose, including the President of the United States. The political right had as one of its major goals to “unman” President Clinton, and its actions established a climate in which power trumps fairness. A low point in American history was the impeaching of an American president for lying about a sexual encounter. Even though Clinton was not removed from office, the attacks provided support and schadenfreude to the legions of the hard right who wished to vilify gays, put women in their place, and resurrect the warrior masculinity (Kellner 2008).

10 Youth Wars The culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s did not extinguish the dissident collectivities of the 1960s, which continued to exist in encapsulated form. What remained

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of the new left tended to be ensconced in social science departments in academia or in the remnants of the union movement. Feminists experienced a slightly different fate. Although many first-generation feminists were holed up in academia, sometimes coalescing with and then struggling against male left-wing and mainstream academics, the movement’s front line tended to be in women’s health organizations. Additionally, feminist consciousness seemed to percolate into the consciousnesses of many women, even those who claimed to be non-feminists or anti-feminists. Because they had joined the workforce and had an independent source of income, these women were more willing to throw their husbands out of the house if they were seen as a drag on family resources or a threat to themselves or their children (Faludi 1999). The gay rights movement continued, focusing primarily on AIDS treatment and research, gaining legal rights for partners, and campaigning for gay marriage. In the world of youth culture, especially in predominantly white suburbs beginning in the late 1970s, dominant elites and members of outcast subcults became increasingly polarized (Eckert 1989). In Penelope Eckert’s study of suburban high schools in Michigan, she found that the “jocks” and the “burnouts” constituted opposed and mutually hostile cultures within high schools. Each listened to its own music and claimed territory within the high school building and grounds. Jocks tended to wear preppy clothing, while burnouts dressed in black. Although their drug use was similar, the burnouts smoked more pot and tobacco. Most startling of all, absolutely no jocks had friends who were burnouts, and vice versa. This polarization was noted by other researchers on youth culture. In their study of four suburban California schools, Wayne Wooden and Randy Blazak (2001) found jocks at the top of the status hierarchy. At the bottom were several disparaged groups, including “dirtbags,” “punks,” and “metalheads.” Relationships between jocks and outcast students were strained, with outcast students subjected to ostracism, public humiliation, and physical violence. At Columbine High School, where the largest school rampage shooting in American history occurred, the jocks viewed their predatory aggression against outcast students as a way of maintaining the moral order of the school (Larkin 2007). They considered outcast students, such as the gender-bending Goths, as a stain on the good reputation of the school. Therefore, according to the hegemonic ideology of the school, outcast students deserved the treatment they received. Meanwhile, school bullying in general emerged in the United States as a major social problem beginning in the mid-1980s. Ralph Larkin (2007) documented that popular magazine articles on bullying doubled between 1990 and 1994 over the previous 5 years, tripled between 1995 and 1999, and increased by 72% between 2000 and 2005. A similar trend, although with a 5-year lag, can be found in the professional literature. Public awareness of bullying increased dramatically during the 1980s. In Larkin’s study of adolescent peer groups in a suburban high school in the bicentennial year of 1976, bullying was not even mentioned, although tensions among various student subcultures were observed (Larkin 1979). The attempted solution to the cultural crisis of the mid- to late 1970s was an attempt to close the space in society opened up by dissident collectivities in the

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1960s. The right denied legitimacy to the claims of urban blacks, feminists, gays, and other discriminated-against minorities. Under the guise of the drug war, it could also attack the remnants of the white middle-class youth movement. Douglas Kellner (2008) noted that conservatives inveighed against all aspects of dissident youth culture, especially its music, video and computer games, and use of the Internet. As far back as the late 1950s, Edgar Z. Friedenberg (1959) and Paul Goodman (1962) observed that adults tended to view young people with suspicion and hostility. The attack on youth from the right in the 1980s was designed to play on these prejudices (Males 1996). As a consequence of youth activism, in 1974 the national legal age for drinking was lowered to 18. As part of the war on drugs, in 1988 it was raised back to 21. This single act made young people more subject to police surveillance. However, police have a great deal of discretion in their treatment of youth in possession in drugs or alcohol. Differential treatment of athletes and nonelite students by the police has been an ongoing complaint of high school students (Larkin 2007; Lefkowitz 1997). This aspect of the war on drugs has allowed police to crack down on nonconformists while giving free passes to elite students. The Reagan revolution was fought at all levels of social reproduction. At the material level, Reagan economic policies impoverished the many while enriching the few. At the political level, power accrued to corporations and the military as labor unions and civil society were weakened. At the cultural level, the right campaigned on wedge issues of abortion, gay rights, drug use, increased incarceration for crimes, and hardening of the juvenile justice system. Meanwhile, there were indications of high school jocks running amok. In 1989, in the suburban New Jersey community of Glen Ridge, 13 boys, most of whom were members of the football and baseball teams at the local high school, participated in the rape of a mentally retarded female student. They tried without success to entice her to reenact the assault the next day so they could videotape it (Lefkowitz 1997). Upon investigation, it turned out that these boys had been involved in numerous other criminal activities, including theft, cruelty to animals, and serious damage to a house during a weekend party. In 1993, media attention turned to a group of about a dozen boys who called themselves the “Spur Posse” at Lakewood High School, in a Los Angeles suburb. These boys had begun a competition to have sex with as many girls as possible (Faludi 1999). The boy having sex with the most girls by the end of their senior year would win the competition. The scandal came about when local police arrested eight of the boys on suspicion of sexual crimes ranging from rape to unlawful sexual intercourse. After most of the charges were dropped, the boys became media celebrities and appeared on numerous talk shows to explain their behavior. Wayne Wooden and Randy Blazak (2001) documented less criminal hijinks of other elite student groups. What appeared to be happening on suburban and rural high school campuses was increasing conflict between jocks and outcast students (Eckert 1989). As the cult of hypermasculinity was being championed by the cultural right, it was enforced in American high schools by the jock crowd, often encouraged by their athletic

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coaches. James Garbarino and Ellen deLara (2002) reported that nearly one third of American students in grades 6 through 10 were directly involved in serious, frequent bullying. What is less well understood is the nature of that bullying. In most high schools in America, the leading crowd is the athletes, who coexist with dissident subcultures of outcast students. A large portion of bullying behavior in middle and high schools is generated by the relationships among status groups within the peer structure (Larkin 2009b; Milner 2006). Bullying enhances and maintains relationships of domination and subordination. The dominant ideology of the high school defines much of bullying out of existence as norm enforcement: elite students take it upon themselves to sanction nonconforming students for their violations of the peer normative structure. James Garbarino and Ellen deLara (2002) quoted a Columbine High School student athlete in the wake of the shootings who defended bullying: Columbine is a clean, good place except for those rejects [outcast students, including the shooters Dylan Klebold and Erik Harris]. Most kids didn’t want them here. They’re into witchcraft. They were into voodoo dolls. Sure, we teased them. But what you expect with kids who come to school with weird hairdos and horns on their hats? It’s not just jocks; the whole school’s disgusted with them. They’re a bunch of homos, grabbing each others’ private parts. If you want to get rid of someone, usually you tease ’em. So the whole school would call them homos, and when they did something sick, we’d tell them, “You’re sick and that’s wrong.” (79)

Although most students, parents, and the school administrators denied that the so-called jocks engaged in systematic violence, harassment, and intimidation, an investigation into the school climate indicated that the coaches ran the school and the athletes controlled the school buildings and the athletic fields (Larkin 2007). Klebold and Harris, the Columbine shooters, complained bitterly about the treatment they received at the hands of the jocks. Eyewitnesses told of an incident where football players surrounded Klebold and Harris in the cafeteria and sprayed them with catsup while claiming that because they were always seen in each other’s company, they were a homosexual couple. Other outcast students voiced similar complaints. One Columbine outcast student described being harassed by an athlete in the presence of a coach who was egging him on.

11 Rampage Shootings in the United States from the 1980s to the Present Young people do not live outside history. They are actors in society and they have a certain amount of agency. Youth culture is influenced not only by its internal dynamics but by its external context. In the 1960s, the Western world experienced an unprecedented youth movement. Young people attempted to change everything from the corporate control of the state to sexuality, drugs, and the length of one’s hair. As older generations reacted against the young, punk culture emerged as a response. When the culture wars made increasingly large sectors of adolescent

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behavior illegal, punk subculture morphed into hardcore and “thrasher” subcults, and “Goth” became the generic term for all outcast subcults. Scholars agree that prior to the 1980s, rampage shootings of any sort were extremely rare (Ames 2005; Larkin 2009a; Moore et al. 2003; Newman 2004). The major loci of rampage shootings since then have been middle, junior high, and high schools. In the United States, rampage shootings began to escalate with six school rampage shootings in the 1980s, rising to 19 incidents in the next decade. In the 1980s, teachers and administrators with whom attackers had conflicts were targeted along with the shooters’ peers (Larkin 2009a). However, in the 1990s, especially in the latter part of the decade, fellow students become the prime targets of school rampage shooters. The majority of rampage shooters sought revenge, primarily against elite students—referred to as “jocks,” “preps,” or “soshes” (high status students who may not have been athletes)—for bullying, harassment, and humiliation. Most rampage shooters were members of outcast student subcultures. In one case, in Paducah, Kentucky, Michael Carneal was goaded into his shooting spree by Goth students. Carneal admitted to killing three students and wounding five others for the purpose of impressing his Goth peers (Newman 2004). Since 2000, the United States has experienced 14 school rampage shootings. Of those, five, including the deadliest, at Virginia Tech by Cho Seung Hui, were on college campuses (Larkin 2009a). In addition, numerous conspiracies have been thwarted in which outcast students plotted to attack their middle and high schools in retaliation for the bullying they received from elite students. Between 1999 and 2007, 11 credible plans for rampage shootings were uncovered by police within days of their putative execution. Bullying has existed from time immemorial, so if it is the main cause of rampage shootings, why are they such a recent phenomenon? In the 1980s, the dominant corporate elite, sometimes referred to as the Eastern establishment, which had controlled the state for the previous 100 years, was overthrown by an insurgent faction of the upper class that represented the political and economic interests of the American South and West (Oglesby 1976; Sale 1976). The emerging capitalists of the Southwest, representing such interests as the oil, agriculture, defense, real estate, technology, and leisure industries, perceived the Eastern establishment as out of touch with current economic realities, incapable of exercising discipline over the labor force, and soft on communism. They offered an alternative path that included breaking the social contract with organized labor, reducing or eliminating welfare, imposing harsher sentencing for all sorts of crimes, deregulating the economy, and projecting an image of strength and hostility toward the communist world. This became the platform of the Republican Party and much of it was implemented by President Reagan. The recession followed by the application of supply-side economic policies succeeded in transferring wealth from the lower four income quintiles to the top quintile (Mishel et al. 2007). A new, energized elite had taken over. This new elite came to power not just based on its stance on economic and international issues, but also because its cultural views appealed to what Richard Nixon called “the silent majority.” The religious right and antiabortionists flocked to the

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Republican Party. Reagan campaigned on “family values,” code for the resurrection of the male-dominated nuclear family. These values included making divorce more difficult to obtain, reducing support for single-parent families, preventing abortion, and discouraging cohabitation outside marriage, proceeding from the claim that America was a Christian country. The Republican Party championed the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. With the election of President Reagan, the country fell under the spell of cowboy chic. Cowboy boots, Western dress, bars with mechanical bucking bulls, and aw-shucks imitations of the president became the mode of the day. As the newly emergent political right gained hegemony, it championed a harder, unforgiving, and less-caring society (Finnigan 1998). Youth were vilified in general (Males 1996), and extreme examples of bad behavior were used to enforce more draconian laws aimed at controlling their behavior. The treatment of youth in the criminal justice system shifted from rehabilitation to incarceration and punishment (Kellner 2008). The Reagan Revolution sponsored extravagance at the top of society and poverty below (Stanfill 1980). It also generated suspicion of sectors of the population that did not conform to the cultural ideals of the right. Within this crucible the struggle between jocks and burnouts turned deadly. Since the 1970s, predominantly white rural and suburban high schools had incorporated dissident subcultures that had their roots in the youth movement of the 1960s. These dissident subcultures provided social space and friendship networks for students who would otherwise have been socially isolated. The struggle between nonconformist and conformist subcultures occasionally broke out in a riot, as in 1979, when the Chicago White Sox sponsored a “Disco Demolition Night” between games of a doubleheader. Punks and disco fans got into such a fight that the second game of the doubleheader had to be forfeited. The increased boldness of elite students in their persecution of nonconformists was primarily documented in the complaints of their victims (Gaines 1993; Garbarino and deLara 2002; Wooden and Blazak 2001). Because students are required to attend school, victims of bullying are confronted by their tormentors on a daily basis. Although differences in drug use, academic achievement, dress, or personal hygiene, may be points of contention, the fundamental flashpoint between jocks and outcasts is masculine role performance. It is an affront to members of the jock subculture when an identifiable social collectivity in their realm of domination violates normative masculine role performance. Students who either cannot or do not rise to the athlete’s standards of masculinity are perceived to be less than men and therefore subject to public humiliation. This certainly was the case with the Columbine shootings and with numerous other school rampages (Larkin 2007). Virtually all instances of bullying, harassment, and public humiliation in high schools are sexualized. The masculinity of the victims is continually questioned as their tormentors call them “homos,” “fags,” “queers,” or “cocksuckers,” and invite them to “suck dick.” Michael Kimmel and Matthew Mahler noted in their study of masculinity and rampage shooters: “All or most of the shooters had tales of being harassed—specifically, gay-baited—for

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inadequate gender performance; their tales are the tales of boys who did not measure up to the norms of hegemonic masculinity. Thus, in our view, these boys are not psychopathological deviants but rather overconformists to a particular normative construction of masculinity, a construction that defines violence as a legitimate response to a perceived humiliation” (2003, 1440; emphasis added). Rampage shooters adhered to hegemonic notions of masculinity every bit as much as their tormentors. The rampage shootings were not only revenge for past humiliations, but also a reassertion of masculinity—indeed, an attempt by young men to out-masculine their hypermasculinized victimizers. As the right emerged as a potent political and cultural force in the United States, the culture wars were primarily directed at the remnants of the 1960s: women (“feminazis”), minorities (welfare cheats, mud people), gays (those who chose an immoral lifestyle), former antiwar activists (peaceniks), environmentalists (“tree-huggers”), “Volvo-driving, latte-sipping, wine-and-cheese partying” secular humanist intellectual elitists, and gun-control advocates. As these wars created wedge issues of abortion, gay rights, and the relationship between church and state, all of which spoke to some aspects of dominant masculinity, it is not surprising that athleticoriented student elites use that masculinity against nonconformist minorities as was being done in the larger society. What is interesting is that the victims of bullying and humiliation would adopt the same hegemonic model of man the warrior in retaliation. Many rampage shootings resulted essentially from attempts at masculine one-upmanship. This was certainly the true of numerous school shootings since the early 1980s, including some of the most deadly: Barry Loukaitis in Moses Lake, Washington; Luke Woodham in Pearl, Mississippi; Michael Carneal in Paducah, Kentucky; Andy Williams in Santee, California; and, most famous of all, Erik Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School in Colorado. At Columbine, the boys enacted the paramilitary fantasy of dying in a blaze of glory, their manhood avenged.

12 Rampage Shootings Outside the United States Through the time of the Columbine events, school rampage shootings were a North American phenomenon. Canada has witnessed four such incidents; the two that occurred in 1975 seemed to anticipate future shootings in the way they were carried out. Both shooters, Michael Slobodian and Robert Poulin, were seemingly typical high school students until their rampages. Slobodian killed a teacher and a fellow student and injured 19 others before killing himself (Canadian Broadcasting System 2007). According to a fellow student, in the weeks before his rampage shooting, Slobodian shaved his head, became uncommunicative, and started dressing in military fatigues, which he wore during the rampage. Although he targeted a male science teacher who had given him a failing grade as well as a female English teacher who had called his mother to report his truancy, he shot only the female English teacher, killing her. He also shot at the students who crossed his path from the bathroom where he loaded his weapons to the English teacher’s classroom.

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Poulin was described as a bright, studious, and introverted student (Cobb 2007). He had few friends and was especially self-conscious with females. In his diary he wrote that he hated his family, was depressed, and wanted to have his first sexual experience. He became obsessed with pornography and owned an inflatable lifesize female doll. Poulin raped and stabbed a female friend to death before going to the school, where he killed one classmate and wounded five others. He entered his religion class and started shooting students with a shotgun, and then shot and killed himself. These two shootings were the third and fourth in North America after those committed by Charles Whitman at the University of Texas in 1966 and Anthony Barbaro in Olean, New York, in 1974. In neither case were there reports of bullying by peers, although those aspects were never investigated. However, there was clear evidence of masculinity issues in both Canadian cases. Slobodian adopted a hypermasculine identity during his rampage, shooting the female teacher who reported him to his mother, but not the male teacher who jeopardized his aspirations to be a medical doctor (Canadian Broadcasting System 2007). Despite his obvious sexual obsessions, Poulin lacked social skills to relate to the opposite sex. The only way he could express himself was through gendered violence. Another rampage shooting, committed by Mark Lepine at the École Polytechique in Montréal in 1989, was also highly sexually charged. After entering a classroom and stating that feminism had ruined his life, he separated the women from the men and started shooting the women, who he claimed were feminists because they were in college (Struck 2006). He ended up killing 14 women and wounding 27 more before turning his gun on himself. Mark Moore et al. (2003) referred to Lepine as a pseudo-commando who adhered to the American paramilitary ethos of dying in a blaze of glory. The fourth Canadian rampage occurred 8 days after Columbine and was an obvious copycat shooting. The perpetrator, Todd Cameron Smith, aged 14, was an unpopular student who was bullied by his peers (CBC News 2004) and was being homeschooled because of his social problems. He arrived at school early with a shotgun concealed beneath his overcoat. When he approached some other students, who were discussing Columbine at the time, they asked him if he had a gun. He pulled it out and began shooting, killing one student and seriously injuring another. The first rampage shooting outside North America occurred in Sundsvall, Sweden, a small city of about 50,000 people about 380 km north of Stockholm in 2001, where an outcast student killed one student and injured another (Lampe 2005). All of the rampage shootings outside North America were influenced by the Columbine shootings. Columbine received international coverage and generated debates worldwide among adolescents between sympathizers and those who vilified the acts of Klebold and Harris (Muschert 2002, 2007). Many of the European rampage shootings, including the two in Finland, and two of the three in Germany emulated Columbine. Robert Steinhauser wanted to exceed the body count of Columbine, which he did (Mendoza 2002). Finland and Germany both have traditions of male bonding in the context of military service. In Germany, militarism, patriotism, and heroic masculinity

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are merged (Hagemann 1997). In Finland, universal military service, in addition to its manifest function of providing a military force in time of war, serves as a male bonding device that encompasses all Finnish social divisions (Lahelma 2005). The two cases of rampage shootings in Finland can be interpreted as partially motivated by failed masculinity. According to Elina Lahelma (2005), in Finland, the major rite of passage from boyhood to manhood is military service. Finnish males can opt for a slightly longer stint in the civil service or an exemption because of physical or psychological reasons. About 80% of all Finnish males serve in the military, while about 10% serve in the civil service and another 10% obtain an exemption. The two Finnish rampagers, Matti Saari and Pekka-Eric Auvinen (Alan 2008), knew each other, played Battlefield 2 on the same Internet team, discussed the Columbine rampage shooting plans with each other, and developed the scripts for their attacks, which were almost identical in execution. Auvinen, aged 18, was a loner and an outcast whose rampage shooting was intended as revenge against the social system that excluded him. Saari was a 22-year old who had been thrown out of the military after firing his weapon against orders during training. Both claimed to hate contemporary society and to feel excluded from it, although Saari was reported to have many friends (DeJong 2007). Heavily influenced by Columbine, Auvinen and Saari adopted personas of American hypermasculinity, posting threatening videos on the Internet. Auvinen adopted Eric Harris’s notions of natural selection and revolution against oppression. Michael Kimmel and Matthew Mahler (2003) have suggested that rampage shootings are an attempt to assert the shooter’s masculinity in a context where it has been questioned. In the case of Auvinen’s social rejection and isolation, this seems to have been a motive. Saari appears to have adopted a hypermasculine and violence-prone identity that was so extreme that he could not adhere to military discipline. In Germany, masculinity is characterized by contradictions. Claudia Bruns (2005) suggests that in the 40 years before the defeat of World War I, hegemonic masculinity was associated with a strong military state. Women were relegated to the domestic sphere and the state was exclusively masculine. Masculinists during this time did not see homosexuality as a perversion, but as a natural product of bisexuality or hypermasculinity. Onanism was regarded as un-masculine, along with strong female influence, of which Jews were an example. The hypermasculinity of National Socialism was spearheaded mostly by men who were born too late to have served in World War I (Donson 2006). Denied an opportunity to perform heroically in war and educated in schools that emphasized militarism, they believed that the German military was not defeated on the battlefield but undermined by republicanism. Andrew Donson notes that the Nazi party was the party of the disaffected soldier and that it recruited heavily from the Freikorps. Klaus Theweleit’s (1989) examination of the hypermasculinity of the Freikorps members’ lust for violence, fear of women, desire for purity in the company of men, and dreams of world conquest outlines the extreme nature of Nazi masculinity.

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The defeat of Nazism and the collapse of the Third Reich generated a crisis of masculinity in Germany, in which a new model emerged that incorporated egalitarianism and democracy (Heinman 2005). Joe Perry (2007) notes that there were both political and economic imperatives that placed the family at the center of masculinity, replacing the state as in previous eras. Although this new model of man seems generally to prevail in Germany, the nihilistic violence of Nazism rears its head in attacks on immigrant communities and in school shootings. Of the eight rampage shootings in Europe, five took place in Germany; in addition to the two in Finland, there was one in Bosnia. Although four of the five rampage shootings in Germany bear the earmarks of Columbine, they seem to have been committed for different reasons and had different targets. The shootings in Freising and Erfurt in 2002 and Coburg in 2003 were directed at authority figures, including bosses, headmasters, and teachers (Mendoza 2002; Newswatch 2009). In Freising, a boss and a supervisor were shot after firing the perpetrator, who then went to his former school, where he targeted his principal. Robert Steinhauser, in Erfurt, targeted the school principal and the teaching staff. The shooting in Coburg injured one teacher. In each case, redress for failure was the motive. In the Emsdetten and Winnenden shootings, fellow students were the targets (Evening Standard 2009; Cable News Network 2009; Gulf Times 2006). All five of the German shooters were isolated loners or social outcasts. Three of the five shooters, Robert Steinhauser in Erfurt, Sebastian Bosse in Emsdetten, and Timothy Kretschmer in Winnenden, wore special clothing during their shootings. They all were dressed in black. Steinhauser wore a ninja mask, and Kretschmer wore the black uniform of the police special forces. Ironically, he was killed by members of the very special forces that he emulated. Kretschmer, like Mark Lapine, targeted primarily women and was known to be a misogynist (Freydis 2009). School failure, along with social isolation and rejection by peers, played a major role in the five German school shootings.

13 The Control of Violence Physical violence is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men. There has never been a female school rampage shooter. The resort to physical violence is primarily a male prerogative, even an aspect of male social privilege, because it is the ultimate method for enforcing relationships of dominance and subordination. Violence is literally the exercise of power. The state and cultural elites have tremendous influence on the use of physical violence, through state action such as the passage and enforcement of laws, and through less formal methods such as the production and distribution of violent media. For example, until the women’s movement drew attention to domestic violence, abusive husbands and fathers had great latitude in their behavior toward wives and children and were rarely sanctioned unless they caused serious injury or death. Lax enforcement of weapons laws enabled the rise of the violent right during the 1980s. States and dominant elites usually maintain control over violence,

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especially that which threatens their regime; however, informal violence may be sponsored by elites and sanctioned by the state because it enhances their domination of society. In addition, subdominant males may be informally granted the exercise of a form of “compensatory violence” by authorities. Lax police enforcement in poor neighborhoods allows predation within the ghetto, while making sure that such violence does not extend to more privileged areas (Anner 1995; Pearman 1969). Low-status males are often allowed a circumscribed realm, such as the family or neighborhood, where they are allowed to exercise legitimate violence. Low-status males who may chafe at their own position in the social order are granted permission by sexism and ageism to vent their hostilities on those less powerful than themselves (Chavis and Hill 2009; van Natta 2001). Effective control of violence requires that dominant elites must eschew the use of violence. This has not been the case with the right in the United States, which has incorporated violence and fear into its box of tools for domination. It has sponsored wars against small and impotent states such as Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, and Iraq. It has used economic violence and intimidation against enemies, including assassination and threats of assassination. It has engaged in labeling and exclusion as stratagems for maintaining hegemony. It has vilified those who have honest disagreements with their policies. It has encouraged violence by making weapons, especially guns, easily accessible. In the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, the Bush administration pursued a policy of kidnapping, indefinite incarceration, and torture of terrorism suspects in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Accords (Mayer 2008). If there is one lesson to be learned, it is that dominant elites can ramp up or tamp down violence. When cultural changes posed a challenge to the old hegemonic masculinity, violence was encouraged throughout the system. The resurgent right emphasized violence and power and rejected feminine influence, encouraging cultural wars against those who did not adhere to their monocultural ideal while simultaneously appropriating greater proportions of material surplus for themselves (Frank 2004). The imposition of the hypermasculine idea, however, was vigorously contested at all levels of society, including by adolescent subcultures in America’s middle and high schools. As the alienation between jocks and outcast students intensified, skirmishes broke out, and on rare occasions these confrontations turned deadly. A major problem in America’s schools is that their normative environment and the hypermasculine ideal maintained and enforced by school administrations (in which athletic coaches are overrepresented) place outcast students in suspect social categories. Outcast students—who do not conform to the norms of the school, who dress in black, whose musical tastes run to punk or hardcore music, who do not have “school spirit,” who do not attend football games and root for their gridiron gladiators—are deemed by the majority of their peers as deserving of the derisive treatment they receive (Garbarino and deLara 2002). Their presence is a living critique of the hegemonic ideology of the school. Because they are considered lesser human beings, the violence directed toward them is perceived as legitimate.

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It is the responsibility of teachers and administrators to prevent this violence. There is ample evidence that they ignore it and sometimes actually encourage it (Garbarino and deLara 2002; Huerter 2000; Sanko 2000). Only a rare administrator will attempt to bridge the gap between elite and outcast students. If schools are going to control violence, they need to sponsor cooperative relationships among the various student subcultures. Numerous proposals for reducing violence in schools have been promulgated; this author advocates conflict resolution programs (Larkin 2007). Norway instituted a countrywide school violence reduction plan that emphasized reducing opportunities for bullying behavior and creating social rewards for avoiding bullying (Olweus 1993; Olweus et al. 1999). In anti-bullying programs, bullies and their parents are targeted for intervention. Firm limits are established for unacceptable behavior and adults act as authority figures and positive role models. Students are actively involved in the program through a curriculum that uses role playing, modeling, and classroom discussions to teach them how to cope with bullying. They become the first line of defense in generating an environment that does not tolerate bullying. It is key to the reduction of violence for students to be empowered and actively involved; they must learn to practice nonviolent conflict resolution. Numerous anti-violence programs have produced positive results. For example, Elliott Aronson (2000) and Aronson and Patnoe (1997) proposed a method of assembling students into what he referred to as “jigsaw groups,” vertically integrated classroom workgroups. In a field trial in Texas schools, the technique was found to reduce tensions. What is important is that any program that seeks to reduce violence in schools must focus on the social climate of the school and community. As David Hawkins, David Farrington, and Richard Catalano stated: In the school context, violence prevention is more fundamental than a new curriculum taught in addition to the “3R’s” or the installation of a metal detector in the hallway. Violence prevention is a function of the social environment of the school as a whole: the policies and practices of school administrators that support and encourage a positive learning environment, and of the way teachers manage and teach in classrooms and on playgrounds. Schools that fail to generate strong bonds to school in their students will be unable to counteract the competing influence of gangs and other social groups that reinforce violent behavior. (1998, 193–194)

In the United States, numerous grassroots attempts have been made to reduce violence. Perhaps the most hopeful sign that the country is taking reduction of violence seriously has been the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. The Obama administration has adopted the language of cooperation and negotiation, rather than the language of domination, anger, fear, and hatred. However, the election of Obama has stirred up the dormant elements of the hard right who had been content with the policies of the Bush administration. Since the election of Obama, gun sales have increased 29% over the previous year (Gregory 2009).

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Lahelma, E. (2005). Finding communalities, making differences, performing masculinities: reflections of young men on military service. Gender and Education, 17, 305–317. Lampe, A. (2005). Violence in our schools: January 1, 2000 through December 31, 2004. Retrieved December 24, 2007, from http://www.columbine-angels.com/Shootings-2005-2009.htm Larkin, R. W. (1979). Suburban Youth in Cultural Crisis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Larkin, R. W. (1988). Lurching toward the millennium: youth in the next decade. The World & I, 3, 535–549. Larkin, R. W. (2007). Comprehending Columbine. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Larkin, R. W. (2008). Columbine: the school shooting as a postmodern phenomenon. In D. Brotherton and M. Flynn (Eds.), Globalizing the Streets (pp. 203–215). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Larkin, R. W. (2009a). The Columbine legacy: rampage shootings as political acts. American Behavioral Scientist, 52, 1309–1326. Larkin, R. W. (2009b). Toward a Theory of Legitimated Adolescent Violence. New York, NY: John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Lefkowitz, B. (1997). Our Guys. New York, NY: Vintage Press. Lekachman, R. (1982). Greed Is Not Enough: Reaganomics. New York, NY: Pantheon. Los Angeles Times (1968). Hippies Greet Autumn with Elysian festival. Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles Times. Males, M. A. (1996). The Scapegoat Generation: America’s War on Adolescents. Monroe, ME: Common Courage. Marcuse, H. (1964). One-Dimensional Man. Boston, MA: Beacon. Mayer, J. (2008). The Dark Side. New York, NY: Anchor Books. Mendoza, A. (2002). Robert Steinhäuser, Retrieved November 28, 2007, from http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/steinhaeuser.html Michel, L. and Herbeck, D. (2002). American terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Tragedy at Oklahoma City. New York, NY: Avon Books. Milner, M. Jr. (2006). Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption. New York, NY: Routledge. Mishel, L., Bernstein, J., and Allegretto, S. (2007). The State of Working America, 2006/2007. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Moore, M. H., Petrie, C. V., Braga, A. A., and McLaughlin, B. L. (2003). Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Muschert, G. W. (2002). Media and Massacre: The Social Construction of the Columbine Story. Boulder, CO: University of Colorado. Muschert, G. W. (2007). Research in school shootings. Sociology Compass, 1, 60–80. NationMaster (2009). Murders per capita by country. Retrieved February 8, 2009, from http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita Newman, K. S. (2004). Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings. New York, NY: Basic Books. Newswatch (2009). Germany-school shooting leaves 17 dead. Retrieved August 11, 2009, from http://tvnewswatch.blogspot.com/2009/03/germany-school-shooting-leaves-17-dead.html Niewart, D. A. (1999). In God’s Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest. Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press. Oglesby, C. (1976). The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate. Mission, KS: Sheed Andrews and McMeel. Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Olweus, D., Limber, S., and Mahalic, S. F. (1999). Bullying Prevention Program. Boulder, CO: Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado at Boulder. Pearman, R. (1969). Black crime, black victims. Nation, 208, 500–503.

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Media and Control of Violence: Communication in School Shootings Glenn W. Muschert and Massimo Ragnedda

In the contemporary world of risk, much focus is placed on controlling parameters of undesirable events (Beck 1992, 1999). While we cannot completely eliminate occurrences of violent events, accidents, or disasters, we nonetheless attempt to contain them within what might be considered “normal” or controllable parameters (see Perrow 1984). Of particular concern in the past decade have been school shootings, known in the criminological literature as “rampage shootings” (Newman 2004). Examining the communicative aspects of such events is crucial for understanding the increased salience of school shootings as an example of the loss of control of violence. Although extremely rare, school rampages attract a considerable amount of media attention and generate high levels of public concern. Certainly, the often severe consequences of these events contribute significantly to the generation of fear: the senseless death of young persons, the disruption of institutions of education symbolic of communities, and the broader shock to society. Indeed, the post-traumatic stress observed in the most infamous cases rivals that observed in plane crashes, natural disasters, and industrial accidents. Still, the rarity of such events may not justify the attention they receive, despite their horrible consequences. Muschert (2007b) clarified this discrepancy via the “Rashomon effect,” a term derived by anthropologists from the 1951 Kurosawa film to describe situations in which those observing a phenomenon from varying perspectives see different versions of reality. In the case of school shootings, the discrepancy is between their rarity and the disproportionately high level of public concern they capture. The media have a tendency to focus on crimes of violence, especially extreme cases (Doyle 2006; Jenkins 1994; Sacco 2005), which may lead to hype (Vasterman 2005) or a perception about the disproportionately high severity of a threat (Burns and Crawford 1999). This focus pushes other social problems off the public agenda and into obscurity (even into nonexistence, from a social constructionist point of view).

G.W. Muschert (B) Department of Sociology and Gerontology, Miami University, Oxford, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected]

W. Heitmeyer et al. (eds.), Control of Violence, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0383-9_14,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

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Communicative processes play an important role in dynamics related to the control of violence. In this chapter we argue that much of what we observe in regard to school shootings is a mass-media phenomenon. Many acts of violence carry expressive, communicative connotations, and thus school shootings should be understood as discursive processes. It is our hope that this exploration of the media dynamic associated with the loss of control in cases of school violence will contribute to the wider effort of our colleagues in this volume to examine the loss of control of violence in a variety of settings. In order to present a model for understanding the types of communication that dominate the discourse around school shootings, we examine the participants in the media dynamic and specify their interests. In particular we examine the performative script for many school shootings. Then we examine the emergence of rampages as a social problem and how this social problem fits into the natural history of social problems approach. The discussion concludes by assessing whether the shooters’ performative script is acknowledged in policy responses to school violence.

1 Communication in School Shootings Any examination of school shootings is intimately linked to the discourse of school shootings. Indeed, in a society dominated by mass media, images of crime and crime control become as “real” as the events themselves (Ferrell et al. 2008, 81). Thus, it is important to understand the discursive elements of school violence as a complement to the events themselves. Mass-media accounts are “the principal vehicle by which the average person comes to know crime and justice” (Barak 1994, 3–4), and in recent years journalists have clearly increased their coverage of “violations of school safety that amplified public anxiety about the safety of schools” (Lindle 2008, 29). The mass media, in their typical over-reporting of violent crimes, amplify public fears, thereby creating alarm regarding school safety and increasing the incidence of moral panics (Cohen 1972). The mass media contribute to a culture of fear (see Altheide 2002; Furedi 2005), by continually returning to and emphasizing the motif of school violence, creating a discrepancy between public fear and the real risks of victimization, fusing the perception of fear with the real event, and soliciting an emotional response divorced from its context. This cultural dynamic serves as a backdrop for academic and popular notions of school violence, and school shootings in particular. Social scientists in a variety of fields have studied aspects of school-shootings phenomena including typologies,1

1 Muschert

established a typology of school shootings, categorizing rampage shootings, mass murders, terrorist attacks, targeted shootings, and government shootings (2007b, 62).

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etiology,2 effects,3 and mass-media dynamics.4 The most commonly known variety of school shootings may be termed classroom avenger shootings (McGee and DeBernardo 2002) or rampage shootings (Amok in the German discussion), and are defined as “an institutional attack [that] takes place on a public stage before an audience, is committed by a member or former member of the institution, and involves multiple victims, some chosen for their symbolic significance or at random. This final condition signifies it is the organization, not the individuals, who are important” (Newman 2004, 231). These are expressive attacks on school institutions—including students, personnel, or buildings—that are meant as a form of communication. Perhaps the least expressive school shootings are those in which a student or faculty member targets specific individuals or group members in order to exact revenge. Ironically, these targeted attacks are the most common form of school shootings, yet they garner the least media coverage; often their effects are limited to the locality in which they take place. Other varieties of school shootings also have communicative aspects, including mass murder-type school invasions and terrorist attacks in which schools are selected as symbolic targets. In terror attacks, the expressive element by definition is political, while in attacks carried out by government agents such as police or the military, authorities may wish to assert their power over contrarian groups. Because of the symbolic importance of schools as community centers, attacks on schools generate media attention, making them highly effective locales for actions motivated by the desire to communicate. Indeed, much of the school shooting phenomenon may be viewed as a process in which the shooters, journalists, and the public communicate aspects of the events related to their own interests and points of view. This communicative process contributes to the media dynamic. This process involves three groups of participants:

2 The

etiology of school shootings is derived from a complex combination of common social circumstances occurring on three levels: individual, community, and socio-cultural. See Muschert (2007b, 65–71) for a review of the causes associated with school shootings, and for discussion of the difficulties encountered in identifying nomothetic rules for explaining such events. Other scholars have suggested specific theoretical models for the causes of school shootings. Levin and Madfis (2009) point out the importance of cumulative strain, while Newman (2004) (and later Newman and Fox [2009]) points to five factors including marginalization of the shooters, psychosocial problems, available cultural scripts for rampages, failure of surveillance, and availability of weapons. 3 Muschert (2007b, 71–73) points out that the effects of school shootings are under-studied. Most commonly, researchers have examined consequent fear of victimization or post-traumatic stress. Recently, scholars have begun to examine the policy effects of such events; see Addington 2009; Fox and Savage 2009; Muschert and Peguero 2010). 4 For example, see the following: Altheide (2009); Birkland and Lawrence (2009); Frymer (2009); Lawrence (2001); Lawrence and Birkland (2004); Muschert (2007a); Muschert (2009); Spencer and Muschert (2009). For a review of the literature on school shootings research, see Muschert (2007b) and Muschert and Spencer (2009a, b).

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the shooters, the media, and the public audience. Shooters may communicate with the media before and during their attacks, while the media communicates with the shooters before the attacks, and with the public during and following the attacks. In the sections that follow, we examine the variety of messages conveyed by each participant.

2 The Shooters Criminologists frequently distinguish between instrumental violence, which is intended to achieve one or more goals, and expressive violence, which is intended to convey a message. School shootings are frequently interpreted as efforts to communicate on the part of the shooters (e.g., see Larkin 2007, 2009). In this section we examine two varieties of communicative behaviors of school shooters.

2.1 The Performative Script First, it helps to clarify the messages being communicated in school shootings. Discussions of the research group on Control of Violence highlighted that violence can be communicative, and as such may have connotations to those beyond the victims directly affected. In its broader sense, violent behavior may also involve attempts to contest the regime of control, or to establish new rules of transgression within the cultural field of violence. The performative script in many school shootings involves the use of violence by young males who perceive themselves to be unfairly subordinated in their social environments. The shooters employ lethal violence to assert what they perceive to be their rightful place in the social hierarchy: they may wish to exact retribution for past injustices, regain their sense of masculine dominance, or simply experience excitement. One common communicative element in many rampage attacks involves the shooters’ seeking revenge against those they perceive to have caused them to lose social status. Tonso (2009) traces this masculine cultural script back to the noted 1989 case of the Montréal Massacre at École Polytechnique Université de Montréal, in which a male shooter targeted female engineering students, who he felt were transgressing gender boundaries by studying in a traditionally male-dominated field. In this case, and in numerous other school shootings that have occurred more recently, an underlying cultural script stresses male dominance (see Kimmel and Mahler 2003; Kellner 2008). This can express itself in the form of targeting members of socially subordinated groups, such as minorities or females. Alternately, the dynamic may include the desire to exact revenge on members of groups that have bullied the school shooters, in order to express their dissatisfaction with those groups and the authority structures that allow such torment to persist. R. W. Larkin (2007) notes that the shooters at Columbine were mercilessly teased and that their school allowed members of sports teams (from which they were excluded) to dominate the social hierarchy. The Columbine shooters’ unrealized intention to

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blow up the school building communicated their desire to negate the social structure that facilitated their subordination. In this case, as in many others, the attack expresses the shooters’ disaffection with their social environment. In the words of Columbine shooter Eric Harris, “We’re going to kick-start a revolution” (Gibbs et al. 1999). Although a mass rejection of school social subordination has not followed in quite the way the Columbine shooters envisioned, a number of disaffected youth understood the message contained in the shooters’ rejection of their social environment. Thankfully, most youth with whom this message resonated did not choose extreme violence to vent similar frustrations. In an effort to raise their social status, many school shooters intend their actions as “degradation ceremonies.” Harold Garfinkel (1956) used the term to indicate the loss in social status experienced by an individual when his or her deviance becomes publicly known. The school shooters intend to raise their own social status at the expense of their victims.5 The degradation ceremony hinges on the school shooters’ imagining that they are drawing attention to past injustices they have suffered at the hands of others. Thus, the meaning of school shootings, as seen through the eyes of their perpetrators, involves a renunciation of their own perceived degradation and subordination by the social system in their local environments. A final aspect of the performative script of rampage shootings is the expression of excitement in performing violence for its own sake, ultimately raising the possibility that violent youth have no regard for the value of human life. Such a script plays upon general social fears that violent acts arise from the condition of social anomie, in which the absence of normative regulatory mechanisms leads to a general sense of moral aimlessness. The phenomenon of youth engaging in violence for its own sake, known as “wilding,” has numerous cultural antecedents in America, including cases of packs of youth who sexually prey on women in public areas and of children who kill their parents for no apparent reason (Derber 2004). Criminologists have written about the seductive aspects of violence (Katz 1988), and certainly a number of rampage school shooters have communicated their positive anticipation of their attacks. In this regard, the rampage shooter’s performative script confirms the myth of the juvenile superpredator (Muschert 2007a), a category of youth which rejects conventional social norms in favor of wilding behavior.

2.2 Communication via the Media In preparing their attacks, many rampage shooters reveal a high degree of media savvy, and frequently their messages are communicated via the mass media. For example, the Columbine shooters produced videos as well as internet sites on which they posted their writings and videos. The Columbine shooters rightly suspected that their attack would make them infamous. They saw themselves as “natural born

5 Pointing

out the symbolic degradation of victims should not detract from acknowledging the physical and emotional pain suffered by the victims. We merely intend to point out the symbolic complexity of school shootings as communicative acts.

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killers,” after the Quentin Tarantino movie of the same name (Frymer 2009), and they went as far as to fantasize about which actors would play them in a movie about their attack. In some cases, shooters select their clothing to send messages (Ogle et al. 2003). During the Columbine attack, shooter Eric Harris wore a black T-shirt with “Natural Selection” in white lettering, a detail reported in the media, and later imitated. In the 2007 Jokela High School shooting in Tuusla, Finland, the shooter wore a Tshirt that said “Humanity Is Overrated,” and in a YouTube video claimed that he was emulating Harris’s practice of natural selection (Larkin 2009). Given the close association between clothing and youth subcultures (Hebdige 2002), we can see such style choices as deliberate efforts to communicate. In many cases, writing or other media content produced by the shooters are reported by mass media following the attacks, raising awareness of school shootings as a cultural script for violent masculinity. Subsequent shooters have adopted the Columbine shooters’ methods of communicating dissatisfaction with their social environments. Many shooters have directly imitated or referred to Columbine in their preparations, frequently asserting that they intend to surpass the death toll at Columbine. In post-Columbine attacks this communicative aspect appears enhanced, as shooters are more likely to justify their attacks as revenge in the name of a collectivity or to memorialize Columbine (Larkin 2009). In other cases, shooters have directly contacted the news media. For example, on the day of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, Seung-Hui Cho sent a packet of information including a video, pictures, and a written manifesto to NBC corporate headquarters in New York. In portions of the video which were broadcast on the news, Cho vented his frustration with his social position and clarified his attack as retribution against those who had marginalized him. Cho’s use of the media to convey the reasoning behind his attack serves as an example of the communicative aspects of school shootings as expressive events for the shooters, particularly as their messages are conveyed through the media. The new rules in the culture of violence in schools have reified the use of rampage attacks as communicative events, even if the meaning of such events may be obscured in the voluminous reportage accompanying them.

3 The Media Aside from their function as a conduit for messages from the shooters themselves, the media also play an important role in defining the social problem of school shootings. The media focus is on rampage-type school shootings, while other shootings garner much lower volume and intensity of coverage. The way journalists frame their coverage of school rampage shootings can have a strong effect on how the problem is understood by the public, even influencing whether an issue is seen as a social problem. Thus the news media have played an important role in defining the nature and extent of the problem of school rampages. The Columbine attack seems to have

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been a defining event, one that forced journalists to develop new conventions for covering an emergent type of violent event (Lawrence 2001). The social problem it represented was primarily defined as an issue of ineffective gun control, although alternate problem frames also emerged, including media violence, bullying, poor school social climate, ineffective parenting, and mental illness. An empirical study of the news framing of Columbine suggested that the initial coverage focused on the details of the event, while over time the coverage focused more on the effects of the shootings for communities across the United States (Muschert 2009). Such a framing suggested that Columbine was a turning point in the rise of school shootings as a social problem. A longitudinal study of framing of school shootings in the United States (Muschert and Carr 2006) found that Columbine was indeed the peak incident of rampage shootings. The period in which school shootings were an ascendant social problem ran from 1997 to 2001, and early in the period the news tended to frame school attacks as local issues. These early events were characterized as unfortunate for the communities where they occurred, but such local framing allowed people in other locales to disassociate the event from their own environments. Thus, the media’s early tendency toward community-level framing may have suppressed public awareness of school shootings as a wider social problem. As shootings persisted, peaking with the 1999 Columbine shootings, the media framing began to present school shootings as a national-level concern. It was no longer possible for the public to disassociate from an unfortunate school shooting that happened in a faraway location. Instead, it seemed that such shootings could happen—and in some cases were believed likely to happen—anywhere. This perception connected people’s local school and community to the distant locations in which school shooting events had occurred. According to some communications scholars, media attention for a social issue lasts about 18.5 months before being replaced by another issue (McCombs and Zhu 1995). By 2001, the problem began to recede as the media returned to framing school shootings as community-level events (Muschert and Carr 2006). In the United States, school shootings remain newsworthy but tend to be characterized as local events rather than as symptoms of a national problem.6 Even in the case of the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, the media coverage concentrated on the community, thereby suppressing the framing of the development of violence in post-secondary schools as a social problem.7 The available research 6 One level of contrast that may operate here is that violence in schools has been a consistent (even

somewhat normalized) aspect of the social environment in impoverished areas. Such normalized violence, as it remains segregated within poor environments, may be tolerated by the society at large. In relation to the wider discussion about the control of violence, such tolerance of violence in segregated localities might be itself a weapon of social control wielded by authorities or powerful groups. 7 The only available empirical study examines the United States (Muschert and Carr 2006). Unfortunately, school shootings are not simply an “American disease” of violence, as these events occur in a variety of countries and continents. It is unclear whether similar dynamics would be observed in other countries that have experienced multiple rampage shootings, such as Canada, Finland, and Germany.

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suggests that when violence is framed as a local issue, it does not rise to the level of a recognized social problem, and therefore action occurs primarily at local levels. When framed using wider space frames, such as regional, national, or international frames, the school shootings are more likely to evoke public outcry and recognition of violence as a social problem. On an international level, the tendency may operate in a similar fashion: when a problem is associated with a particular nation, those in other countries are able to disassociate the problem from their local environments.

4 The Natural History of School Shootings Clearly, the dynamic of media coverage of school shootings is related to the larger sense that a social problem exists. The natural history approach to understanding social problems may help shed some additional light on the phenomenon of school shootings and their status as a social problem (see Best 2008, 17–23). R. C. Fuller and R. R. Myers (1941) coined the term “natural history of social problems,” which denotes the idea that all social problems have both objective and subjective elements which follow a typical process of development, peak, and decline. In this sense, social problems are defined as negative conditions that diverge from social expectations about normative social relations. Social problems can be observed and verified by trained impartial observers. The objective existence of social problems thus separates them from other, non-verifiable phenomena such as rumors, scares, and unfounded panics. The objective existence of the negative condition is a necessary precondition for the formation of a social problem, but its mere existence is not sufficient for a problem to arise. The subjective element is also necessary: a problem arises when a significant segment of the population comes to see it as a threat to their cherished values. It is through these dual levels of awareness that a problem develops in the early stages of its natural history. Historically, various types of attacks on schools have occurred for decades. To date the deadliest attack on a school in the United States occurred in Bath, Michigan, in 1927, when a disgruntled taxpayer detonated a bomb under a school building, killing 45 people (Ellsworth 1927). Other noted school attacks in the United States include the University of Texas tower shootings in 1966 and the Kent State University shootings in 1970; in Canada, they include the Montréal Massacre in 1989, and another incident in the same city at Concordia University in 1992. These events, and others, took place well before the subjective development that made violent attacks on schools into a recognized social phenomenon. More recently, a 1997 school shooting in Bethel, Alaska, failed to attract national media attention, but shortly afterward, other shootings in the United States did so. By 1999, both the objective and subjective qualities of the school shooting problem converged, leading to its identification as a social problem. Since that time, school shootings have been recognized as a social phenomenon rather than as a set of isolated incidents.

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Key to the natural-history approach is the role of social values and conflicts of values in the evolution of problems. Of course there is nearly universal consensus about the positive value of schools as centers of local communities and of schools and children as symbols of collective hope for the future and cultural reproduction. It is obviously important to maintain the security of students at schools. However, a core value that is frequently contested in the discourse about school shootings is precisely how schools should maintain security.8 In the following sections, we explore the fear generated by the loss of control in schools. Columbine continues to be invoked metaphorically as a “keyword for a complex set of emotions surrounding youth, fear, risk, and delinquency in 21st Century America” (Muschert 2007a, 365). The development of the perception of school shootings as a social problem is accompanied by an increase in public discourse about the problem. As an associated development, fear of school violence seems to motivate efforts to enhance security in schools. Perceptions of risk and risk tolerance play an important part in the discourse of school shootings. Risks represent threats to control, and while some varieties of risk may be viewed as acceptable, risk tolerance in schools is extremely low, even zero. There are two varieties of risk related to school shootings: compositional risk is the evaluation of the frequency and likelihood of an occurrence; degree of risk is the evaluation of the gravity of the consequences of an occurrence. School shootings have a low compositional risk, because they are extremely rare, but they have a high degree of risk, because their consequences are grave. The risk tolerance for events with a high degree is typically low. Compare the similar perception concerning other events that have similar relative levels of compositional risk and degree of risk, such as plane crashes or exposure to virulent diseases such as Ebola. Because of the type of risk school rampages represent, risk tolerance for this variety of loss of control is extremely low. This low tolerance drives calls for safety and security in schools. Safety may be defined as “an acceptable level of risk” and security as the “process of achieving acceptable levels of risk” (Vestermark 1996, 108). Generally, the expectation of risk in everyday life is a feature of contemporary society (Altheide and Michalowski 1999), although in the case of school shootings the acceptable level of risk is extremely low. This dynamic has been called the “Columbine Effect” (Muschert and Peguero 2010), referring to the recent fear-driven expansion of social control and anti-violence efforts in schools. School shootings exert great pressure on perceptions of safety in schools, which in turn leads to efforts to maintain security.

8 This

is particularly true when viewed from the international comparative perspective. Consider the different responses in the United States and Germany. In US schools, security efforts have tended toward the punitive, including the placement of police in schools, installation of surveillance systems, and establishment of zero-tolerance policies. Germans have initiated few of these measures in schools, instead favoring the mobilization of social capital to reaffirm that schools should remain violence-free institutions open to their surrounding communities. These differences are a potential area for future study.

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5 Social Control as Communicative Response Although often the culture of control is reciprocal to the culture of transgression (Ferrell et al. 2008), in this case it may not be. Therefore, we explore the relationship between the communicative interplay involved in efforts to exert control in schools and the communicative elements involved in the transgression of school rampages—in other words, whether control responses consider the performative script conveyed by the shooters.9 Cultural conflict is an important subjective aspect of the life course of social problems (Fuller and Myers 1941), and the conflict surrounding the securitization of schools in the post-Columbine period stems from a conflict concerning the sources of school shootings. While the performative script chosen by many rampage shooters suggests their dissatisfaction with the school’s social hierarchy, this message seems poorly received by policymakers and the public.10 Although there is little controversy concerning the need to ameliorate school violence in the United States, policy treatments tend to be aimed at influences other than the school climate. Identifying causative factors outside schools (e.g., lack of gun control, poor parenting, mental illness, or media violence) discounts the role of factors within the schools. To address these factors would necessitate deep cultural changes within the social environments of schools. In the United States, social restructuring of schools has been largely ignored in favor of approaches aimed at external elements. For example, when the problem is characterized in terms of poor parenting, inadequate gun control, or mass-media violence, these causes do not threaten the well-established social orders present in the schools, a social hierarchy that often reflects the values and conflicts within the surrounding community and culture. Proposed solutions to school shootings reflect the prevailing cultural logic of the community or nation. A case in point is the use of metal detectors to keep guns from entering schools. Such a measure seeks to exclude an outside influence from the school, rather than addressing the underlying causes of conflict within the school. Another proposed solution that maintains the social status quo is to point to individual mental illness as the cause of school shootings. This places responsibility with individuals and suggests that individual treatment could solve the problem. The reduction of the social causes of school

9 Other

questions relevant to the evaluation of control responses to violence include: What is the relationship between internal mechanisms or pressures to conform and external pressures to conform? How are these effective or ineffective in controlling violence? 10 This perhaps results from the level of moral outrage generated by school rampages. Efforts to understand the motivations of the most heinous violent offenders (such as rapists, terrorist, pedophiles, war criminals, serial killers, or mass murderers) are frequently misconstrued as efforts to justify their actions. Most public discussion of school shooters’ motivations avoids offering clarification of their actions (Muschert 2002), and the social context in which shootings occur is insufficient to mitigate the moral responsibility of the shooters (Spencer and Muschert 2009).

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violence to individual psychology obfuscates the need for social change within the institutions.11 In a wider cultural sense, the shooters’ performative script is not received and understood, as it would necessitate sociological restructuring of school social environments. Such a change would threaten existing social arrangements in many communities, and would likely challenge the privilege enjoyed by dominant groups. In the natural-history approach to analyzing social problems, the subjective element is crucial, and the framing of a social problem strongly influences the policy responses generated to manage it. In the case of school shootings, the problem is often framed in terms of individual factors associated with the shooters and social factors external to the schools. These control responses suggest the rejection of the performative script that drives rampage shootings. By attacking symbolic targets such as social groups or school institutions, school shooters often intend to communicate the problems associated with the institutions they attack. If this message were received, we would expect policy responses to address causes beyond the level of the individual shooter. Instead, the shooters’ messages are often discredited or disregarded. This dynamic even extends to denying the humanity of the shooters themselves, which certainly indicates an unwillingness to understand their motives.12 This negation of the shooters’ intended messages is demonstrated by subsequent efforts to exert control in schools. Often, anti-violence policies focus on individual students, with punitive measures like mandatory school exclusion for first offenses. Such policies fail to address causal factors behind school violence, such as the behavior of groups and institutions, which would be consistent with the shooters’ implied grievances (see Henry 2009). Alternately, efforts to secure schools may take a target-hardening approach, in which the vulnerability of the school is reduced. These measures include installation of metal detectors, placement of police officers in schools, and utilization of electronic surveillance. Rather than addressing the role that institutional-level dynamics might play in contributing to school violence, these same measures might instead create a negative, prison-like environment that undermines the environment of trust and nurturing expected in schools.

6 Conclusion In reflecting upon what can be learned from the communicative elements of these events, and how these lessons might apply to the control of violence, the issue of how media violence affects society is of course a relevant, if not crucial, backdrop

11 This

raises the question of why many millions of students who experience psychological problems do not commit school rampages. 12 See Spencer and Muschert (2009). Such a denial may also be interpreted as a symbolic gesture on the part of the targeted communities or nation at large, one which disavows the membership of the perpetrator in the very community he targeted.

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(see Appendix). However, we believe examination of the dynamic of communication in school shootings is more salient. The perpetrators of school shootings often wish to convey a message, and their attacks are expressive. The content of the shooters’ messages can be gleaned from their performative scripts: rampage shooters typically intend to voice dissatisfaction with the social or institutional dynamics in schools. This script overlays a variety of individual circumstances (e.g., social ostracism, mental illness, or family abuse) and sociological backdrops (e.g., a culture of violence and masculinity, and access to guns). Muddying the issue is that the vast majority of youth who are subject to similar influences do not undertake extreme acts of violence to express their dissatisfaction with their social environments. Thus it is easy to dismiss the school shooter as a fanatic and to ignore his grievances. By giving maximum credence to the motives expressed by rampage shooters—while certainly withholding justification of their actions—we can begin to interpret the expressive qualities of their acts more fully. Rampage school shooters wish to convey dissatisfaction with the social structure of many schools, one which they perceive as allowing (or even facilitating) the marginalization and victimization of segments of the student population at the lower end of the social hierarchy. One aspect this victimization takes is bullying behaviors. Numerous studies confirm that many (although not all) rampage shooters have been victims of bullying themselves.13 While this certainly does not justify their attacks, it does suggest that the shooters might be attempting to convey a legitimate grievance, albeit in a horrifically misguided way. This message is largely disregarded, not only in the discourse about rampage attacks (see Spencer and Muschert 2009) but also in the communicative elements of control responses to school rampages, especially in the United States. If we interpret social problems as collective behavior (see Blumer 1971), then the responses to these problems are also collective in nature. The message conveyed by the contemporary regime of control in schools rejects the shooters’ messages. The perception of school shooting as a social problem certainly remains relevant, and the sensitivity to risk in schools remains salient. Although the dynamic of fear in schools is often not as simple as it seems (see Muschert 2007b, 71), the low tolerance for risk in schools drives the development of anti-violence policies in schools. Yet efforts to maintain security may not accommodate the messages conveyed by the shooters. When we examine the interactive relationship between rampage school shooters and the mass media, with particular focus on the media’s role in communicating the shooters’ messages to a wider audience, we find that the media tend to focus on broad social issues (e.g., media violence or the culture of masculinity) or personal issues (e.g., mental illness or fixation on violent fantasies) as key causes of school shootings, although the shooters themselves are attempting to convey their dissatisfaction with characteristics of their local school environment (e.g., tolerance of bullying or exclusive social dynamics). This framing of the causes of school

13 See,

for example, Burgess et al. (2006); Harter et al. (2003); Kimmel and Mahler (2003); Klein (2006); Larkin (2007); Leary et al. (2003); Meloy et al. (2001); Newman (2004); Newman and Fox (2009); Tonso (2009).

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shootings tends to lead to individual solutions to the problem of school violence (such as the exclusion of troubled youth from schools or a focus on their psychological treatment), despite the evidence that some aspects of school institutions might also contribute to these rampages.14 Cultural criminologists suggest that the culture of control is often reciprocal to the culture of deviance (Ferrell et al. 2008), yet in this case the suggestion does not hold. Because the shooters’ extreme violence is taken as demonstrating their moral turpitude, their messages are ignored; the moral response follows a reassertion of the normative status quo. This reassertion of the normative structures may require that groups disregard the validity of the perpetrators’ perceptions, including their intended messages. In the United States, the mobilization of social control responses in the wake of school shootings tend to focus their treatments on individual elements or target hardening, while directing attention away from those problems indicated by the shooters’ performative scripts, such as group and institutional dynamics (see Muschert and Peguero 2010). As control responses focus beyond the causes suggested by the shooters themselves, the performative script conveyed by the shooters is disregarded, including any valid points that might be contained in that script. Rampage school shootings occupy the extreme end of a continuum of violent behaviors in schools that includes a variety of more common but less severe events.15 What separates many school shootings from other, “normal” types of violence in schools is the perceived loss of control. Even as time fades the memory of the most famous school shootings, certain archetypical events remain cultural beacons: in the United States, Columbine; in Germany, Erfurt; and in Canada, Concordia University. As the incidence of school shootings seems to broaden its reach, most recently in Finland, an increasing number of countries can point to their own “Columbine” event.

Appendix: Research on the Effects of Media Violence Research on the effects of media violence on social behavior is vast. Violence is a fact of life that should be included in public discourse. It is present in factual representations (news programs) and in entertainment (movies or television). Many theories address how exposure to violence could cause both long- and short-term increases in aggressive behavior (Anderson and Bushman 2002; Griffiths 1999). Indeed, the effects of the media on behavior are one of the most important issues in media studies. Watching violent television programs could teach children aggressive 14 Like

all institutions, the media have a vested interest in maintain the status quo. By focusing on exogenous or personal factors in rampage shootings, the media absolve the schools themselves from responsibility. This dynamic might prevent the development of effective anti-violence policies. Moreover, by framing the school shooters as deranged persons, the media also diffuse their own role in the dynamic of school rampages. Obviously, they do not pull the trigger, but corporate media have a vested interest in the maintenance of the status quo of contemporary institutional relations. 15 See Henry (2009) for a theoretical discussion of the levels and varieties of school violence.

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attitudes and behaviors. Media violence can also desensitize young viewers to both real-world and fantasy violence. Finally, it can lead to fearful or pessimistic attitudes about the non-television world. These dynamics are the mass-media context for our discussion. The relationship between the viewer and the screen is complex and active: it depends on the personal experience and education of the viewer, and in addition media violence is hard to define and measure. Yet there is a general finding that children who consume high levels of media violence are more likely to be aggressive in the real world: “heavy exposure to televised violence is one of the causes of aggressive behavior, crime, and violence in society. The evidence comes from both the laboratory and real-life studies. Television violence affects youngsters of all ages, of both genders, at all socio-economic levels and all levels of intelligence. The effect is not limited to children who are already disposed to being aggressive and is not restricted to [any] country” (Eron 1992, 1). This statement is confirmed by the National Television Violence Study (NTVS), a 3-year study to assess the nature, amount, and context of violence in entertainment programming, examine the effectiveness of ratings and advisories, and review televised anti-violence educational initiatives. The report defined television violence as “any overt depiction of the use of physical force—or credible threat of physical force—intended to physically harm an animate being or group of beings” including “depictions of physically harmful consequences against an animate being or group that occur as a result of unseen violent means” (Federman 1997, ix). The NTVS reported that 58–61% of programs contained some violence; the problem was not only the frequency of violent acts but the way they were portrayed. NTVS showed that 40% of all violent acts were committed by attractive characters, and 75% of violent actions went unpunished. Perpetrators showed no remorse for their acts, and in 37% of the programs the “bad guys” were not punished. Ultimately, NTVS researchers argued that the way TV violence is portrayed encourages children to learn aggressive and hostile behavior. As Bandura (2002) noted, human nature is influenced by direct as well as observational experiences. Long-term exposure to images of violent acts increases the likelihood that viewers will imitate this behavior in real life, or even develop beliefs normalizing aggression (Bandura 2001, 2002). Moreover, more than half of all violent incidents portrayed did not show the suffering of the victims. Federman (1997) shows that only 4% of programs coded had a strong anti-violence theme. The risk of glorifying violence and disregarding the suffering of its victims is that violence can become a model for future behavior. Desensitization theory suggests that most humans have an innate negative psychological and physiological reaction to observing violence. “It is believed that the unpleasant physiological arousal usually associated with violence inhibits thinking about violence, disregarding violence, or behaving violently; however, as a result of continuous exposure to violent depictions, individuals are expected to no longer have such reactions. Violence becomes perceived as mundane and pervasive, and this may result in a heightened likelihood of violent thoughts and behaviours” (Vorderer and Bryant 2006, 351).

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Cultivation theory tries to ascertain if those who spend more time watching television are more likely to perceive the world in ways that reflect the most common messages of the television world. “The cultivation hypothesis is perhaps best known for its research on violence and fear, postulating that the lessons of television, and especially the patterns of victimization, are fear, intimidation and a sense of vulnerability” (Signorielli 2005, 19). This theory proposes that mass media are the dominant and distinctive cultural force in contemporary society (Gerbner et al. 2002, 43), and that heavy viewers of mass media are more likely to see and understand the world through the values and images offered. The heaviest viewers of violent content seem to believe their world is meaner, scarier, and more dangerous than do their lighterviewing counterparts. According to Signorielli (2005, 29), a paradigm or model for understanding a complex phenomenon of mass-media communication, such as television violence, should involve three aspects: a study of the policies, practices, rules and regulations regarding media; a study of media content, providing an analysis about the messages of violence that are seen by public; and, finally, a study of the effects of these mediated images on the public. Our chapter provides an overview of this second variety of analysis. Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge the encouragement of the research group on Control of Violence at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. In addition, the authors wish to acknowledge the research assistance of Tirth Bhatta.

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Part IV

The Meso-level: Terrorism

Terrorism as Performance: The Assassinations of Walther Rathenau and Hanns-Martin Schleyer Bernd Weisbrod

“Terror is a strategy, not a creed” (Tilly 2003, 237). This is a central point in Charles Tilly’s wide-ranging analysis of the “politics of collective violence,” which focuses not primarily on the ideas or behavior of violent actors, which might change over time and place, but on the social processes that are, so he claims, produced by violence itself. This “relational” approach clearly has the advantage of allowing for the historical variations in violent claims that were prominent in European history well before the new threat of fundamentalist violence.1 Terror as a communicative strategy has been “used in support of both left and right-wing ideologies, and by state and non-state actors” (Wright 1991). As a tactic of the “politics of fear,” terror turns on the effectiveness of violence as a performance, as “propaganda by deed.” This approach not only emphasizes the negotiated character of political violence in particular circumstances, it also targets the negotiation value of violence itself. Terrorism, in short, can be regarded as a violent communication strategy designed to produce fear (Schmidt and de Graf 1982, 15). The historical investigation of terrorism must look not just for its conditional framework—the opportunity, organization, and motives of political violence—but also at the attractiveness of violence itself. What is the “terroratio,” Jan Phillip Reemstma rightly asks: What is the logic of terrorist violence, beyond any instrumental logic?2 If acts of violence are regarded as communicative acts whose victims convey a message to an audience, the effectiveness of terrorist violence turns not just on the achievability of its goals but also, and sometimes even exclusively, on the demonstration of its uncontrollability. Following Reemtsma again, this may have to do with the “autotelic” quality of terrorist violence in its purest form, which as a performative act is self-directed and in some ways self-sufficient (Reemstma B. Weisbrod (B) Department of Medieval and Modern History, Faculty of Humanities, Georg-August University, Göttingen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] 1 For

historical examples of terrorism from anarchism to fascism, separation violence to religious violence, see Mommsen and Hirschfeld (1982). 2 “Terror is only ‘rational’ when it produces a sufficient amount of ‘irrationality.’ Terror has its own rationality, therefore the play of words ‘terroratio’” (translated from Reemtsma 2008, 411).

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2008, 116ff and 132f). The concept of an autotelic performance which “seems to need no goals or rewards outside itself” draws on Victor Turner’s reading of transformative rituals, which under certain conditions of liminality allow for “flow” or communitas—a shared holistic sensation of engaging in a transformative act with total involvement and apparent loss of ego—on which claims for total communities can be built (Turner 1982, 58f). This, I argue, is the inner logic of the voluntarism of violence. Terrorist acts, according to Mark Juergensmeyer, are always defined by their performative character: “Terrorist acts can be both performance events, in that they make a symbolic statement, and performative acts insofar as they try to change things” (Juergensmeyer 2000, 125). This is true not just for religious violence, which feeds on demonstrative public rituals of faith, but for terrorist acts as such, because as “performance violence” they always “have a symbolic side and in that sense mimic religious rites” (126). By performing the symbolic drama of empowerment, terrorist acts of violence confer the illusion of power, which often has to compensate for failing to achieve more tangible political goals. Such acts can in fact become an end in themselves, because they feed on the charisma, the awe-arousing centrality of the terrorist act itself.3 The extraordinary power to take life, even at the cost of one’s own, and to claim a following through that act must, therefore, be taken as the hidden script of any terrorist performance. In historical cases of terrorist violence, this performative claim accounts for the effectiveness of attempted “propaganda by deed.” The first modern terrorists who subscribed to this strategy, the Russian Socialists-Revolutionaries and anarchists, failed not only to reach their goal but also to control their own followers, because of the contagion of violence in the public theater once this line was crossed (Geifman 1993). This symbolic drama of terrorist violence must be studied in different historical contexts in order to understand its autotelic quality. Therefore, I propose to analyze prominent cases of political murder in Germany from the Right and the Left to discover resemblances that might point to their common performative character. The two incidents examined are the murder of Walter Rathenau in 1992 by clandestine Freikorps activists hoping to trigger an insurrection to topple the Weimar Republic, and the kidnapping and murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer by the Red Army Faction in 1977, a pivotal showdown in the revolutionary battle of selfappointed urban guerrillas with the state. Political movements like the Freikorps in the Rathenau case and the RAF in the Schleyer case clearly operate in different political and ideological arenas, but they share a belief in violence and its practical uses.4 The battleground for the control of violence, therefore, is not just the political agenda or the rule of law, but the effect of the violent performance itself. I propose

3 This

“magic” or “revolutionary” reading is only one of the two readings in Max Weber’s concept of charisma. See Riesebrodt (2001). 4 For the continuity of style and the fascination with violence in the Conservative Revolution and the New Left, see Payk (2008).

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that the violent act is a performative projection of an emotional claim whose meaning, if the act “succeeds,” goes well beyond its declared political agenda. Political claims are overlaid by claims inherent in the act, such as absolute self-dedication and self-victimization, deliberate abandonment of one’s former life, and salvation through violent self-transformation. Acts of terrorism appear as a staged and transformative ritual, which enacts a symbolic drama of historic proportions. If properly read, the terrorist act derives its credibility not primarily from its agenda, but from the symbolic drama of life and death it presents.5 Terrorist violence, therefore, can be seen as a performative strategy in three ways: it demonstrates how to commit irreversible deeds, it enacts a violent ritual for a political audience, and it projects political and emotional claims through the mass media. This projection multiplies the “identification” effects of violence through the live coverage available in the television and Internet age.6

1 The Assassination of Walther Rathenau When Walther Rathenau, the wartime industrialist, visionary writer and foreign minister, Jewish intellectual, and Weimar politician in favor of reparations “fulfillment,” was gunned down on his way to the Foreign Office on 24 June 1922 in his open car by two members of the terrorist Organisation Consul, the country was gripped by shock.7 Since Rathenau had realized just the night before, in a discussion with foreign diplomats and Hugo Stinnes, that his policy of “fulfillment” had lost its usefulness, his assassination was “as redundant as it was brutal” (Kent 1989, 185). His friend, the liberal theologian Ernst Troeltsch, found fitting words for the widespread anxieties aroused by Rathenau’s assassination in his regular column in the Kunstwart, the famous “Spaktator-Briefe,” in which he wrote about this “terrible event” under the heading of “dangerous times”: “It was just this man, one of the last pillars of German credit, which the murderous organization of German fascists had to bring down! No wonder that the impact is shattering. Behind this murder lurk civil war and chaos. Now the Reichstag will be dissolved, and each election will be a battleground with hand grenades and machine guns” (translated from Troeltsch 1924, 285). The assassination had been carried out like a shock troop operation in trench warfare: one open car was overtaken by another, one of the killers got up to fire five shots from an automatic pistol directly at the “enemy,” and another hurled a hand grenade into the back seat for good measure.

5 The

ritual and performative character of violence has not been considered directly by Victor Turner; it can, however, be regarded as an extreme case for his reading of the transformative power of ritual in social drama (see Turner 1969). 6 The best analysis of the media’s role is in Schmid and de Graaf (1982), see also Elter (2008). 7 On the murder of Rathenau, see Sabrow (1998) and the catalog of the exhibition at the Deutsche Historische Museum (Wilderotter 1994).

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It is telling that Troeltsch’s interpretation, which appeared a fortnight after the event, located it squarely within the context of civil war and the defense of Weimar democracy against the onslaught of “fascist” forces—who in the guise of the Freikorps movement had already threatened the military overthrow of the Republic in the thwarted Kapp Putsch of March 1920. An efficient police operation soon identified the Organisation Consul, a secretive offshoot of the banned Marinebrigade Ehrhardt, as the operational base for the assassination attempt. The police investigation eventually led to the apprehension of the killers, two students and ex-military followers of Captain Ehrhardt. One of them was shot by the police, and the other shot himself in their last place of refuge, castle Saaleck on the river Saale, on 17 July 1922. In the meantime, public excitement and unrest reached unprecedented proportions. Furious exchanges in the Reichstag followed the assassination, and in Berlin alone 200,000 mourners demonstrated for the republic the next day in the Lustgarten. Some one million came to pay tribute to Rathenau when he was laid to rest. This became one of the most spectacular moments in Weimar history because in a way it was the right murder at the right time. Others had been committed: in the context of the revolution itself, the heinous murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in January 1919; or as a byproduct of the Freikorps’ operating as ersatz republican security forces in putting down militant labor opposition to the government at home, after fighting “insurgents” in the emerging Baltic states and Upper Silesia (Waite 1970; Schulze 1969; Krüger 1971; Stern 1963). After the Kapp Putsch and the murder of Matthias Erzberger (26 August 1921) and the attempted murder of Philipp Scheidemann (4 June 1922), both representative of the “national shame” of Versailles who were targeted by the Organisation Consul, it became clear that Rathenau was just the most prominent name on the hit list of national-revolutionary militants. Rathenau was targeted not just for being a national traitor and “November criminal,” who had managed to bring the emasculated Weimar Republic back to the international negotiation table for the rescheduling of reparation payments and a new international independence at the conference of Genoa and in the German–Russian treaty of Rapallo (April 1922).8 He was also on the list because he was a Jew: “Knallt ab den Walter Rathenau, Die Gottverfluchte Judensau,” as a song of the killer organization went.9 The assassination of Rathenau amounted to a “political earthquake” (Sabrow 1998a, 92). It symbolically reenacted the political drama between the Right and the Republic. Because Rathenau was martyred for the Republic, the political motive of the killers seemed obvious. The court proceedings indicate that the judges were likely to accept that a mixture of nationalist and völkisch motives and youthful enthusiasm was enough to explain the assassins’ behavior, and were reluctant to

8 For

the economic background of reparations, see Kent (1989) and Felix (1971). off Walther Rathenau, The Goddam dirty Jew,” as quoted in Waite (1979, 219).

9 “Knock

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investigate any further political implications of the disbanded Freikorps organizations. The Freikorps’ invisibility was also in the interest of the military, who considered them as reserve battalions for the much-reduced Versailles Reichswehr who could enforce a secretive murder code against putative traitors.10 As Martin Sabrow argues, this “licensed illegality” gave political cover to a well-organized conspiracy against the Republic (Sabrow 1998a, 179). Earlier investigations into the activities of the Organisation Consul had shown that such symbolic assassinations were intended not just as revenge killings of traitors (Feme-murder) but also as the most effective way to trigger an uprising of the socialist masses, which would in turn force the Reichswehr to accept the Freikorps as partners in putting down unrest. This insurrectionary plan was later featured in the takeover bid of the Bavarian Right in autumn 1923.11 The imagined uprising of the Left also served as a political aid to Nazi threats in Papen’s calculus for declaring state emergency, as it did for Schleicher’s gamble on military emergency planning, which served as a blueprint for the transition of power when the Nazis took advantage of the Reichstag fire in February 1933.12 The public downplaying of this political master plan was, of course, also in the interest of those abettors of the assassination attempt who were imprisoned and later capitalized on their acquired status of national martyrs, such as Ernst von Salomon.13 Their own accounts propose another plausible explanation for their violent script, which speaks more to the perpetrators’ own desperate attraction to violence than to any political calculus: Violence was all the politics hey had. This claim has the effect of shifting the question of the violent script from “why” to “how.” In Salomon’s stylized self-presentation in his account of the Rathenau murder in his interrogative questionnaire following the war, he uses this claim not just as a strategy, but also as some form of acknowledgment: he recalls a conversation with Ehrhardt’s close collaborator Plaas after he had left prison, in which they confirmed that they desperately hated the “fulfillment” policies and that they had lied to the court about their political connections in order to blur the picture (Salomon 1951, 105ff). But, he continues, the assassination happened almost “mechanically,” out of a “general feeling”—not because Rathenau was a Jew, although they clearly were anti-Semites. The execution list, he claimed, had appeared out of nowhere and been circulated among their circle of friends, with names being put on and struck off, but the general feeling was the need simply to do something: “Looking at it as a matter of feeling,” Salomon records, “the event itself was much more important than the result, this incomparable frenzy of self-victimization and self-annihilation—the 10 On

the atmosphere of mistrust and physical intimidation in these clandestine operations, see Sauer (2004); Southern (1982). 11 For the Statutes of the Organisation Consul with insurrectionary plan and order of Feme for traitors, see Jasper (1962). 12 For the military emergency planning of the “Kriegsspiel Ott,” see Blasius (2008, 136ff, 162ff). See also Mommsen (1990, 493, 546) and Vogelsang (1962). 13 See his literary record, in Salomon (1930) and Salomon (1951). For a rather uncritical account of Salomon’s ideas, see Klein (2002).

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grandiosity of the effort ‘to blow up the earth to the moon’—In all,” he concludes, “a rather pretty show of adolescence.” When challenged with “This is what you say now,” Salomon agrees: “Yes—of course, then it was dead earnest. But looking back it yet appears weird” (translated from Salomon 1951, 109). Young men (all under 25) from well-to-do families conspiring to carry out a series of assassinations was a weird event indeed. These remarks betray a certain amount of ex-post soul-searching, perhaps along with the bygone rhetoric of brutal enthusiasm that was the hallmark of war writers like Ernst Jünger (Weisbrod 2000). But even contemporary sources convey a sense of dislocation and urgency in their terminology of “elimination” and “destruction” springing from an “ideology of the pure deed” in these executioners who apparently willed their historical deed for no other reason than the deed itself (Jasper 1962, 458). As Salomon records in his 1930 report about his plight as one of those “outlaws,” as revolutionaries they had lived according to the “pressing will of the epoch,” dangerous and chaotic as it was, and had acted because they had “the will for determination.” They were in battle with the illegitimate ruling powers, who were bound by values that followed the needs and wants of the people and not by the deeper power which produced such needs and wants in the first place: “We had always appealed to this power, nothing else. We had never appealed to parties and programs, to flag and badge, to dogma and theory.” In a double play on the German word Gewalt, Salomon claims they had no aim except “to put power/violence against appearances, life against constructions, rank against happiness, substance against corruption”—because they asked not just for the meaning of things to come, but also for their measure. “To roam this battlefield” of God and demons, “armed with the ultimate urge of a will, a faith, ready to decide, that could now be the only demand fitting for an individual” (translated from Salomon 1930, 325). This is the pure language of political “decisionism.”14 While functioning as a literary trope of martyrology and heroism, this language also speaks of the double performance of the terrorist act: the symbolic reenactment of the political drama along with the feeling of hyper-subjectivity in the autotelic show of violence itself. This performance combined obedience to the traditional rules of military command with the self-propelled dynamics of young activists (Jasper 1963, 119). Scripts like these are never fully fixed politically or individually, but are enacted in particular circumstances. For most of the Freikorps faithful, the activist battle of terror was over in 1923, although they found their way into a number of paramilitary organizations, especially the Nazi Stormtroopers. The insurrectionary strategy had failed, but new heroes were waiting in the wings—such as Albert Leo Schlageter, the martyr of violent opposition against the French occupation of the Ruhr, who was a national hero even for the Communists, but became even more a model of bravery and dedication for the National Socialists, who elevated him to their pantheon (Behrenbeck 1996). The leaders of the north German peasants’ revolt, the

14 See

the classic definition by Christian Graf von Krockow (1958).

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Landvolk movement, also taught the Nazis about the usefulness of bombs in taxcollection offices. Von Salomon was once more involved, but never went so far again as actually lending his hand to murder. In an undated passage of his “Fragebogen”, he asserted that he refused on principle to be recruited by old friends for an assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler. With hindsight he was not convinced that they had to do it again just because they had done it once and jumped the ditch before, as his companion claimed. “It would be the vilest lie, the lie of murder,” he writes. “If the assassination of Rathenau was murder, heinous, base and vile murder, and we know it, you and me, then the same is true for an attempt on Hitler’s life. It would be worse than a lie, it would be a fraud, a fraud on life, on the course of events, on everything. This man is our fate, more than Rathenau had been, it would be a fraud on our fate, be it as it may, he is our fate” (translated from Salomon 1951, 126). Not all his former brothers-in-arms saw it this way, notably Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz, who had tried to kill an informer during the Rathenau murder trial with poisoned sweets and later on became a key figure in the national revolutionary revolt against Hitler.15 He had been in close contact with the Strasser wing of the NSDAP before joining the faction of the military defense intelligence, led by Wilhelm Canaris and Hans Oster, that was critical of Hitler’s strategy. During the Sudeten crisis in September 1938, Heinz led the hit squad which was to capture Hitler, but he failed to convince his co-conspirators that Hitler had to be killed. He stayed on the side lines during the putsch of 20 July 1944 and went on after the war to become the head of Adenauer’s intelligence service. His case shows that terrorism as a strategy traveled lightly with such dandy desperados from the Kapp Putsch to the Röhm Putsch, and that the terrorist old-boys network of national revolutionaries, when overtaken by the Nazis in mass mobilization and brutality, also found refuge in the anti-Hitler coalition of the conservative right.16 It could, however, be argued that after the Rathenau assassination, terrorism as a strategy had run its course for these clandestine networks of counterrevolutionary actors, who lived in their old military world and tried to enforce a new code of national heroism by sheer terror. They had lost their cause and their strategy had failed, as the police hunted them down and the government encouraged a public display of outrage that pre-empted aggressive counterstrikes by the Left. This public response was manifest in the parliamentary debates which were widely published, the massive demonstrations of public support, and the quick passage of a special Law for the Protection of the Republic—which, however, in its practice still showed signs of conniving with the “national interest” as defined by the secret operations of the Reichswehr, as well as more generally with anti-Weimar sentiment and official revisionism (Jasper 1963). Competing voices were heard, blame was allocated in public, and displays of mourning were shown which almost immediately overlaid

15 For

details on the attempted poisoning, see Meindl (2000, 63); Meindl and Krüger (1994).

16 Hartmut Plaas, a longtime collaborator of Captain Ehrhardt, was murdered by the Gestapo in the

context of the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler. See Sabrow (1998, 93).

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the shock of the murder itself. The political narrative was thus quickly reinstated and the claim to peaceable solutions firmly attached to the republican agenda. The first official statements on the assassination in the Reichstag, made on the afternoon of 24 June by its Social Democratic president, Paul Löbe, and the head of government, Joseph Wirth, and which were published as broadsheets, bear this out.17 Amid a turbulent session in which the Left pressed on the Right and demanded the removal of the “murderer”—the conservative wartime finance minister Karl Helfferich, who had agitated in a session the day before against the “fulfillment” policies of Rathenau—Löbe insisted that the Republic itself was at stake. The government, he said, was under attack by “reckless hate campaigns beyond all bounds” from a particular section of the press against which there seemed to be no protection (Verhandlungen 1922a, 8034).18 But he knew that the murderers had had “helpmates”—Helfferriche, as one heckler from the Left called them—and that this was the plot of a political “murder organization.” Wirth, too, stressed the “murderous atmosphere” under which the government labored and which had not deterred his noble friend Rathenau from his duty to work for reconciliation among the peoples of Europe. Wirth appealed to the workers to stay calm in the face of the tide of “murderous demagogy” that had swamped the country and had directed the killers to their target, while not a single prominent politician of the Right had suffered as much as a bruise. This, he proclaimed, was a turning point for the Republic and everybody should stand up for its protection. It was a dangerous game to air public discontent and to attempt to bring it into line with parliamentary procedure. In spite of mass demonstrations and publicly sponsored strikes by trade unions, the political showdown within in the confines of the parliamentary procedure and legal practice soon resumed. On the day before Rathenau’s murder, the parliamentary leader of the Right, Karl Helfferich of the German National People’s Party (DNVP), who had campaigned against Matthias Erzberger, had highlighted the contrast between Germany’s present plight and the Kaiserreich, pointing to its glorious past and its promise for the future (Verhandlungen 1922b, 7988ff; Williamson 1971). The politician who had financed the war by devaluing bonds now berated the “fulfillment” politicians for triggering inflation and national despair in Germany. The government’s approval of the new conditions under the London ultimatum, he said, was not just “madness,” but a “crime” which ought to be dealt with by a Staatsgerichtshof, a court for high treason (ibid., 7996–7997). There was no hope for Germany, he proclaimed, without a German government that was prepared to show determination and which would fight and teach the world “that they had to deal with men” (ibid., 8001). The response to such hate speech in parliament was almost unanimous: most speakers blamed the campaign against the leaders of the Republic on the nationalist media, whose directors and writers included some MPs of the Right, and found the culprit for the assassination itself in Helfferich himself and the DNVP—which

17 See 18 For

the broadsheet in Wilderotter (1994, 432). the atmosphere of this session, see Kessler (2007, 524ff).

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allegedly had sheltered the murderers and refused to draw a firm line against the “Hydra of political, foul assassination.”19 Political murder in the 1870s and 1880s, a spokesman of the Center Party claimed, was usually committed by uncultivated and isolated people, who might have been excused for their ill-advised behavior, but now cultivated members of the so-called better circles were at play who should be expected to show restraint, but whose behavior tragically proved the moral decline of German culture (Wilhelm Marx, ibid., 8045). The DNVP tried to save face by issuing a parliamentary declaration of regret and indignation that condemned the vile deed as a danger to peace and demanded that the government bring the perpetrators to justice (ibid., 8049). But the line against the Right was drawn very effectively when Chancellor Wirth, after presenting a threatening letter dated “on the day of Rathenau’s murder,” countered by saying to tumultuous applause on the floor and on the galleries: “This is where the enemy stands which trickles its poison into the wounds of a people—this is where it stands—and there can be no doubt, this enemy is standing on the Right” (Joseph Wirth, ibid., 8058). Public interactions also helped unite the republican forces together behind Rathenau’s coffin, so to speak. The symbolism of his lying in state in the Reichstag to music from the Coriolan overture and Götterdämmerung, the salute by a Reichwehr squad in front of the Reichstag, and the wide media coverage of the funeral cortege with its million mourners, as well as the huge public demonstrations of anger and resolve in Berlin and in many other cities, drew a picture of public mourning that overshadowed the assassination act itself (Verhandlungen 1922d).20 The symbolic murder strategy had backfired: in pictorial terms, it had shrunk to a little cross on a postcard marking the spot on the Koenigsallee where the shots were fired (Sabrow 1998a, 94).21 Papers across the country propagated the government’s million-mark reward for information, and spread the news of its quick success in special issues. Apart from likenesses on search posters and sketches from the Leipzig trials, the public image of the deed and the perpetrators was language-driven. The visual memory of the assassination was reduced to a small number of memorials commemorating Erzberger, Rathenau, and Ebert as martyrs of the Republic; in 1929, a little memorial plaque was erected by a local chapter of Rathenau’s liberal party on a tree close to the spot where he was shot in Berlin, only to be removed in February 1933. By this time his image as a Republican martyr had already given way to the symbolism of consensus beyond parties and even disgust with them.22

19 Otto

Wels, leader of the Social Democrats, in Verhandlungen (1922c, 8042). The leader of the Independent Socialists even claimed that the DNVP together with its following was itself a veritable murder-organization (ibid., 8051). 20 See also the entry of 27 June 1922 in Kessler (2007, 528f). See also the cover photo of Die Große Berliner Illustrierte, 1 July 1922, “Das Staatsbegräbnis Dr. Rathenaus,” in Wilderotter (1994, 437). 21 The postcard is reproduced in Wilderotter (1994, 426). 22 See Wilderotter’s explanations in Wilderotter (1994, 438–440), and Sabrow (1998a, 74). For the ensuing memory battles, see Sabrow (2001, 601–619). See also (Akten der Reichskanzlei (1973b)).

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On the day of Rathenau’s assassination, the government brought an emergency decree before the Reichstag (according to Article 48 of the Weimar constitution), in order to counter “the rising terror and the nihilism frequently cloaked in the mantle of national sentiment” (Verhandlungen 1922a, 8037). It was designed to strengthen the government’s legal arsenal against persons, associations, assemblies, and media who denigrated the Republic and its colors, incited hatred against any of its ministers, or plotted political murder of officials. It also established a special court to try these offences, even retroactively, and it banned impending antiVersailles demonstrations as well as regimental festivities and any other meetings of former military units. Having lost some of its aggressive republicanism in the parliamentary process, this emergency decree formed the basis of the ensuing Law for the Protection of the Republic, which was passed with a constitutional majority (303 to 102) on 18 July 1922 (Jasper 1963, 57ff). Bavaria and the DNVP still refused consent to the law, although the original line of Justice Minister Gustav Radbruch and Chancellor Wirth, that the law would be used only against the Right, had already been abandoned in a cabinet meeting (Akten 1973, cabinet meeting of 25 June 1922). This promise had been part of a strategy to rein in the escalating and violent protests on the Left; the socialist trade unions had declared that their demonstration was not a political “general strike,” but a sign of mourning in line with the official closure of public offices and buildings.23 The legal proceedings of the newly established Staatsgerichtshof in Leipzig, which sat in judgment on the accomplices of the Rathenau murder in October, were also flawed. Most of the accused were convicted only as accomplices, or for aiding and abetting, and given prison sentences of up to 15 years. The court was reluctant, on the basis of the “national interest” involved in secret Reichswehr activities, to draw the legal conclusion and seek out the lines of communication necessary to prove murder on command (Brammer 1922, 41).24 The evidence was there: the assassins were a mobile terror squad with an undercover network of technical support in close contact with an effective chain of command. But the court acknowledged only the motive of “blind hatred of Jews,” choosing not to hear the confession about the political strategy to provoke a pretext for a nationalist takeover. So in legal terms the conviction was for common murder only, not for political murder (Sabrow 1998a, 183 and 189; Gumbel 1924, 51–56). This legal framing of the terrorist act as a misguided endeavor by young enthusiasts, disregarding their political motives, reflects the bias of German officialdom, and in particular of judges in political cases, to take right-wing offences much less seriously than those committed by the Left.25 These legal measures, together with effective policing and bans on a number of organizations of the radical Right—soon also on those of the radical Left 23 Some

demonstrations of the Left that profited from a general amnesty at the same time led to outrage against the property and persons of the bourgeois Right in several cities. See Sabrow (1998, 95ff). The Christian trade unions objected to demonstrative strike action. See Akten (1973a). 24 The Staatsgerichtshof showed no such reluctance in the Tscheka trial against a communist assassination program in autumn 1923; see Jasper (1963, 126f). 25 For the political bias of the judiciary, see Gumbel (1922). See also Jansen (1991, 237ff).

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(Huber 1966, 269f)—seemed to place the Weimar Republic well in control of the groundswell of terrorism which had haunted it in its early years.26 Sympathy with the perpetrators existed in some quarters, including the police and the military (Jasper 1962, 452). Even the public seemed helpful, for example, when lookalike doubles allegedly appeared on bikes to mislead the police on their manhunt, although the “outlaw” status of the two fugitives makes this a rather unlikely show of support (Salomon 1930, 222f). Republicans had to resort sometimes to vigilantism to enforce at least token mourning in traditionally nationalist milieus such as high schools and universities, using symbolic actions and public censorship (Sabrow 1998a, 99). But overall the government was successful in controlling the danger of escalation from the Left, whereas the political tide ran the other way once the first wave of bans and controls had receded, leaving a safe haven for the NSDAP and other radical groups of the Right in Bavaria (Jasper 1963, 117ff).27 Controlling nationalist associations, which kept re-emerging in other guises, or the right-wing media, whose hate speech focused on evidence of their own suppression, was one thing. Control of the terrorist imagination in a culture of violence and of its transfer into myth was a much more difficult task. Even Rathenau’s status as a Jew remained a problem under the surface of republican unity (Achilles 2004). For the nationalist Right and for the National Socialists, who were banned in different states under the Law for the Protection of the Republic, Walther Rathenau was firmly established as a Jewish hate figure representing the “system” of Weimar who could be repackaged for their own purposes, as in the National Socialist campaign against the revision of the reparations payments in the Young Plan in 1929.28 After 1933, Ernst Werner Techow, the driver of the assassins’ car, had his sentence commuted; he was released, his police record was cleared, and his former quasi-military service accepted by the SS, which took over Ehrhardt’s men (Sabrow 1998a, 194). On the Saaleck a small monument was erected in July 1933 in honor of the two martyrs, who were hailed by the Völkische Beobachter as “Rathenau-removers.” Speeches were given at their grave by Captain Ehrhardt himself, who publicly proclaimed his terrorist strategy as “völkisch duty,” as well as by Heinrich Himmler and Ernst Röhm, who had brought in 5,000 SA and SS troops to mark the event: “Germany is once more Germany. This Germany is the Germany of its vanguard, who rest in this grave” (Waite 1970, 220).29 Yet the occasion soon passed, as new martyrs came to hand and those of the old order were swallowed up in the new movement. Rathenau was as much the first victim of the Third Reich as the last victim of the Kaiserreich (Sabrow 1998b, 93). 26 An

assassination attempt on Maximilian Harden, the critical journalist, followed after only 10 days. See Sabrow (1998, 117ff). 27 The Rathenau “crisis” also triggered the hyperinflation, as Count Kessler immediately observed (Kessler Tagebuch, 531f). 28 See the Nazi poster which quotes the “Great Jew” Rathenau as proof for the rule of 300 men of “High Finance,” in Wilderotter (1994, 442). 29 For the dedication of a new memorial that was provided by Hitler’s Reich Chancellery, see Wilderrotter (1994, 438–440, esp. 439); Sabrow (1998a, 112).

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In the case of the Rathenau murder, legal instruments were immediately put in place to stop the killing spree, which owed much of its efficiency to the ability of a close network of desperado militants to wage war on the Republic and to mobilize a culture of violence in the shadow of a counterrevolutionary strategy dressed up as a bid for national security. The efficiency of these political weapons, however, was restricted by the inability and unwillingness of the judiciary to impose a “political verdict” or to expose the political actors in the background who were involved in a counterrevolutionary strategy of military mobilization. Long-term control of violence depended on the widespread sympathy on the nationalist Right for manly resolve against defeat abroad and at home. It fed on a number of causes: nostalgia for the Kaiserreich and hatred of the “Jewish Republic,” but more prominently the claim for “trenchocracy,” i.e., the rule of soldiers hardened in trench warfare, and the nihilistic desire for heroism under fire. In the end, the culture of violence was to be transformed not by defensive actions of the Republic, but by a competing culture of violence which gathered momentum on the streets and transformed not only the “old fighters” but the public show of terrorist violence.

2 The Assassination of Hanns-Martin Schleyer When terrorism reappeared on the stage in West Germany as political murder, even serial murder, in the 1970s, it had completely changed political orientation.30 The Red Army Faction (RAF) was one of the most violent terrorist groups of the Left that arose in the fallout of the worldwide protest movement of the late 1960s against the Vietnam War and imperialist repression, the capitalist world order of bourgeois authority and double standards, and—in Germany and Italy—the legacies of a terrorist past which had ravaged the social and moral order through state terrorism and civil war, respectively.31 But in many ways this terrorism of the Left bore family resemblances to earlier forms of terrorist violence from the Right, especially with the Freikorps killings as exemplified in the Rathenau case. Like the student protest movement, the terrorist movement was international, sharing strategies, arguments, and style. But this was not new either (Gerwarth 2008). Comparison across national cases has proven extremely helpful in identifying shared patterns of escalation and control.32 Contemporary media regimes have provided these patterns a timespecific arena of publicity and attention which was unavailable to earlier forms of terrorism.33 The terrorists of the 1970 s were the first media-savvy militants; their strategies built on the photographic verification of their spectacular deeds as a visual

30 See

the full-scale analysis of background, personnel, organization, and strategy in Kraushaar (2006). 31 For the protest movement of 1968 as an international movement, see Horn (2007); Frei (2008). 32 For a comparison of the RAF with the Brigate Rosse, see della Porta (2004). 33 See the detailed analysis of media control and public response in Schmid and de Graaf (1982, 106ff).

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enactment of their violent claims. This reenactment through visual media created a battle of images, which their earlier counterparts usually had to leave to the imagination of their audience. Kidnappings became a hallmark of this kind of terrorism, with shooting of the images tantamount to shooting the person. The imagery of the violent reversal of the moral order in blackmail messages and confessional texts, and the savagery of the deeds presented in the pictures of dead bodies, negotiated the definitions of success and defeat in the public eye.34 Under these circumstances the control of violence had to address not just police and legal actions, but also the deployment of media presentation and the projection of realistic images to counter the imaginary culture of violence.35 It is a matter of contention whether the strategic option for violence was an inherent consequence of the radical rhetoric of the student movement (which early on had been castigated by Jürgen Habermas as “fascism of the Left”), or whether the recourse to violence followed from the apparent failure of the student movement and represented abandonment of its democratic ideals (Kraushaar 2005; see also Kraushaar 2006a). Systematically, provoking the violence one wants to denounce, Habermas warned, was “playing with terror, with fascist implications” (Habermas 1967; see also Kraushaar 2006b). When Rudi Dutschke and Hans-Jürgen Krahl declared “the organization question” of the Socialist Students Union (SDS) to be a matter of “revolutionary existence” in September 1967, they openly pleaded for “agitation in action,” which would provide “sensual awareness” of the “abstract violence of the system” in “irregular actions”: “The ‘propaganda by gunshots’ (Che) in the Third World,” they argued, “must be complemented by ‘propaganda by deed’ in the metropolis, which will historically enable the urbanization of the rural guerrilla” (translated from Dutschke 1998, 290, Kraushaar 2006b). The creation of the urban guerrilla was meant to guarantee the destruction of the system of repressive institutions as well as the extension of revolutionary consciousness in the street fighters themselves. But Dutschke was not very clear about how this irregular warfare should be practiced, beyond collective disobedience and targeted attacks against nerve points of the system by nonviolent demonstrations, as well as sabotage actions that would unmask the capitalist order and its political system as a “dictatorship of violence” (Dutschke 1968a, 84). His own experience was restricted to a failed attempt at bombing a transmitter pole for the American radio station AFN in March 1968—the bomb was later found to have been provided by an agent provocateur of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution—before he himself was shot and wounded by a solitary gunman with right-wing connections while riding his bicycle on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin on 11 April 1968 (Kraushaar 2005, 22ff).36 Nor was Dutschke’s theoretical departure into revolutionary utopianism more than a new installment of Frantz Fanon’s violent voluntarism. The “new man,” he claimed, following Che Guevara and Frantz Fanon, was generated in a long

34 On

the visual politics of German and Italian terrorists, see Terhoeven (2007). scripting of violent events in the “live” media of today, see Liebes and Blondheim (2005). 36 He also transported some dynamite for Feltrinelli in his son’s pram. 35 On

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and painful battle for the new society; revolutionary intellectuals had to revolutionize themselves by organizing in the streets and thereby acquiring the will to break with the imperialist system of repression at home and abroad. Without European, American, and pan-Asian branches of the Vietcong, the Vietnam revolution would be doomed to failure like others before: “In Vietnam,” he declared, “we ourselves are daily crushed, and this is not just an image or a phrase” (Dutschke 1968b, 92). It was, therefore, he concluded, “primarily a matter of our will” whether the historical opportunity would be used to bring global conflicts ranging from Vietnam to Europe to a head—be it only in the battle of Bremen high school students against a raise in tram fares. This voluntarist reasoning was highly contested within the SDS. It amounted to condoning revolutionary violence in the Third World, even of nationalist and separatist violence in Europe as committed by the IRA or ETA, and it also broke the taboo on violence by agitating the “urban guerrilla” in order to foment revolution in the metropolitan centers. But this reasoning was not necessarily a “concept for armed struggle.”37 It was a different matter to actually cross into lawbreaking by setting fire to a Frankfurt department store as a protest against public inertia in face of the napalm bombardment of Vietnam. This first demonstrative act of “propaganda by deed” was committed by Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin in April 1968. Together with Ulrike Meinhof’s participation in Baader’s breakout at gunpoint from custody, these acts constituted the programmatic break with revolutionary talk. From now on the violent performance was programmatic in itself. As Dutschke himself made clear in a letter to the weekly Die Zeit after the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer by the RAF in September 1977 in which he alluded to the murder of the Chief Prosecutor earlier the same year: “When desperate or directed desperados write: ‘Create more revolutionary cells! Create more Bubacks,’ a socialist can only say: This destruction of critical-materialistic reason cannot be surpassed” (Dutschke 1977). The individual terrorism of the RAF would have been considered nothing but murder by the theorist of the urban guerrilla, and contrary to any socialist ethics. In many ways, as a “dandy of evil” Baader had more in common with the cold desperadoes of Weimar’s revolutionary nationalism than with the theoretical revolutionaries of the Left (Wieland 2005, 83; Kraushaar 2006a, 332–349.).38 They bought into terrorism in the same way, even if for different reasons. When the three founders of the RAF were caught in the summer of 1972, a spate of terrorist assaults had already been committed and a number of people had been killed on both sides; but it was the second generation who started the targeted killing of political figures, which despite its ideological script had as its goals to set their idols free and to impress by their sheer ruthlessness. When the last generation of activists announced the dissolution 37 As

proposed by Kraushaar (2005), although there are signs that Dutschke had already thought about an “urban guerrilla” to prepare the insurrectionary phase of a revolution in 1966 and was consistent in this revolutionary concept. 38 The comparison is here with the literary posture of Ernst Jünger, who claimed in Der Arbeiter (1932) that it was infinitely more attractive to be “a criminal than a bourgeois” (87).

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of the RAF after almost 30 years, in April 1998, they listed 26 dead combatants but failed to name the 34 victims of their terrorist violence: policemen, soldiers, judges, diplomats, the Chief Prosecutor, politicians, industrialists and bankers, their bodyguards, bystanders, and an American soldier who was killed simply because his ID card was needed.39 The authors of the first political statements issued after Baader’s liberation were already clear about the programmatic character of “armed struggle”: they did not care about the twaddle of the intellectuals of the Left, but instead were addressing the “potentially revolutionary” sectors of the people, who were in a position “to understand the deed instantly, because they are prisoners themselves.” This revolution would be no “Easter parade,” but if the conflicts were brought to a head and the “pigs” were “forced to do what we want and are no longer in a position to do what they want,” then the members of the “sub-proletariat” who were ready to lash out at their oppressors would take the lead. Meinhof declared in a taped message that the Red Army was being built up for them, the outcasts of society, in order to show that you can win when you are engaged in armed struggle and that they will not get you—provided, of course, that you do not talk but shoot: “Of course, we say cops are pigs, we say the figure in uniform is a pig, not a man, and this is how we have to deal with him.”40 Hate speech and the proletarian jargon of intellectual selfhatred have here replaced theoretical argument—the excitement and urgency of the act itself are justification enough. New recruits were attracted by a way of life that rejected any compromise and in which absolute personal dedication and solidarity in closely knit outcast groups were guaranteed by the need to perform deadly acts, in order to keep one’s place and to keep ahead of the police. The urban guerrilla as a way of life was defined by a constant reassertion of violent practice that eventually confounded ends and means altogether. This is not to deny the theoretical ambition carried over from fantasies about terrorist violence as a “center for attraction” in undermining military dictatorship in South America, as spelled out in Carlos Marighella’s Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla (2002). But the call for “armed propaganda” reduced this ambition to second place, while questions of strategy and survival dominated not just the practical considerations of the terrorists but also their personal relations. Political leadership, according to Marighella, was simply a matter of the “practice of revolutionary action, its success and consequence, and the definite, constant, direct and personal participation of leaders in the execution of these actions”; the urban guerrilla was defined by his ability to shoot and shoot well—it was his “reason for existence, the basic condition in which he acts and survives” (ibid., 48; 10). The proof of politics lay in violence, which is why the leaders, once imprisoned, sought to claim the status of “political prisoners.” For the police and judiciary they were simply criminals, the Baader-Meinhof “gang.” When Meinhof attached to her manifesto “Das Konzept 39 For

the full story, see Aust (1997); see also Peters (2004). first statement was sent to an anti-authoritarian journal (Agit 883) in West Berlin: “Die Rote Armee aufbauen. Erklärung zur Befreiung Baaders vom 5.6.1970,” in Rote Armee Fraktion (1977); the tape was partly published in Der Spiegel, 15 June 1970, as quoted in Peters (2004, 193–197).

40 The

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Stadtguerrilla” Mao’s motto “Draw a clear dividing line between us and the enemy!” she was really claiming that the dividing line had to be drawn between theory and practice. There was no point in specifying precise goals for their actions, she argued, except for generally contending that armed struggle as “the highest form of Marxism-Leninism” (Mao) would lead to a rise in revolutionary consciousness and eventually the overthrow of the system by the masses. All that counted now was the revolutionary initiative of the avant-garde (Rote Armee Fraktion 1997, 27–48).41 The theoretical argument was thus to be decided by the “primacy of practice”: “Whether it was right to organize armed resistance now depended on whether it was possible, and whether it was possible could be found out only by putting it into practice” (ibid., 40). In this respect, Meinhof was closer to the logic of her historical counterparts than she would have liked. She refused to be taken for an anarchist, although she cherished the pathos and heroism of Blanqui; instead she called for discipline and class analysis. She argued that whoever thought of the illegal organization of armed resistance in terms of the Freikorps or the secret murder squads of the right-wing Feme courts was really advocating a pogrom against the revolutionaries; such projections should be analyzed as a result of psychological mechanisms that, following the concepts of Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s “authoritarian personality” or Reich’s “mass psychology of fascism,” belonged in the context of fascism (ibid, 28). Another element in this voluntarism of violence was its existentialist meaning, which filled the pure and empty deed with the transcendental promise of rebirth on the threshold of death. As for the shock troops of the conservative revolution of the 1920 s, the “battle as inner experience” became an “absolute life form” (Koenen 2001, 359f). Terrorist violence was transformed from the symbolic drama of a global class war into the enactment of quite another drama—a drama about life and death in which the revolutionary fighter was entitled to kill because he or she was ready to die. This cult of the absolute resembles the political decisionism and anti-bourgeois radicalism of the intellectual masterminds of the Weimar Right, which were carried over into the postwar period by Carl Schmitt in his Theory of the Partisan (1963).42 It completely departed from the Weimar pattern of male blood-brotherhood, however, in that women played a decisive role in this drama, and not just in the imagination of the scandalized public (Terhoeven 2008a; Diewald-Kerkmann 2006). Not all of these women were enamored with the machismo of the fighters or shared the macho talk about themselves as “cunts.” But as Gudrun Ensslin herself remarked in praise of Andreas Baader’s proletarian virility, females were just closer to his sense of absolute dedication and ready for the quality which he epitomized: the will to absolute self-liberation in battle.43

41 While

acknowledging the student movement as the pre-history of the RAF, Meinhof saw the demise of this petty bourgeois movement as caused by its inability to find an appropriate practice for its goals. See also Giers (2006). 42 On the legacy of Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt in this respect, see Kraushaar (2001, 237); see also Kraushaar (2006a). 43 On the basis of secret prison messages, see Koenen (2001, 382, 2003).

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This cult of the will, which also cut the RAF founders loose from their children and family, was broadly directed against the establishment—the representatives of the worldwide system of capitalist oppression—but also closer at home against the “generation of Auschwitz” (Ensslin) with its murderous past. It was a veritable obsession on the part of the terrorists to denounce any effort of state agents to confront them with the use of force or imprisonment as an attack on their way of life or at least as torture by isolation, and as a sign of the fascist character of the “pig-system” altogether. The activists’ demonstrations of self-starvation were in fact a life-and-death proof of the performative character of terrorism and their most effective bulletin to the media.44 The fantasies of Auschwitz appeared “realistic” to Meinhof when she confessed to her fear and anger in the “dead zone” of the Cologne prison: there was only one escape from the many deaths in this system, she wrote in a secret message, and this was “violence against the pigs.”45 As hunger strikers, they protested against the psychological warfare they experienced in jail through a premeditated “murder/suicide”: “Our isolation now, the concentration camp soon—whether under the rule of green or white terror groups— leads to: extermination camps—reform Treblinka—reform Buchenwald—the ‘final solution.’ This is what it looks like” (Rote Armee Fraktion 1977, 187–190). These internal rituals of self-criticism and self-purification for the cult of absoluteness took on an almost religious tone when they promised the rebirth of the new revolutionary man in a “battle to the death”; and the repeated hunger strikes in prison eventually produced an icon of self-victimization in the image of Holger Meins. His emaciated body was taken as proof of this historic role reversal, which fired the murderous campaign of the “second generation” to free their comrades from jail (Elter 2008, 154–160). In symbolic terms Hanns-Martin Schleyer was the right hate-object to bring these two elements together: He was a hardliner in his position as president of the Federation of German Employers—he had pioneered widespread lockouts in labor conflicts in the early 1960 s and objected to the German model of trade union codetermination—and he had been an early convert to the SS in 1933 as a member of a conservative student association. He epitomized the continuity of the German elite from Nazi functionary (running student politics in Prague and “Germanizing” industry in Bohemia and Moravia) to director of the postwar economic miracle (serving on the board of Daimler-Benz) (Hachtmeister 2004). But he was not the first to be targeted. One successful attempt at liberation by kidnapping had occurred in February 1975, only a few months after the death of Holger Meins. A commando of the Berlin-based June 2nd Movement46 abducted Peter Lorenz, 44 On

the self-sacralization and the “holy hunger” of the terrorists, see Passmore (2009). even wondered why they had not been killed by deadly injections, as quoted in Koenen (2001, 967). For the secret death wish of the fighters, see ibid., 505. In a message for the internal info-system from Holger Meins: “either man or pig/either to survive at any cost or/or to battle to the death/either the problem or the solution/there is nothing in between . . .” (Bakker Schut 1987, 69: 184). 46 For the inside story of the formation of the June 2nd Movement, see Baumann (1981). Baumann quit after his friend Georg von Rauch was shot by the police in December 1971. 45 Ensslin

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the CDU candidate for mayor of West Berlin, and held him hostage for a week to force the release of five of their comrades in jail in a spectacular public demonstration: the prisoners were flown to Yemen with live TV coverage as demanded. This was the beginning of a two-way channel of communication which made control of the media over the Schleyer case a matter of life and death (Elter 2008, 150). Two other attempts had been botched: one day after the death of Holger Meins, on 10 November 1974, the Berlin Supreme Court president Günter von Drenkmann had been shot when he opened the door for a flower delivery; although he was a liberal judge not connected with the RAF trials, his murder was hailed by the RAF prisoners in the special purpose high security prison of Stammheim as a justified “execution.”47 And then, in April 1975, a “Kommando Holger Meins” stormed the German embassy in Stockholm and demanded the release of 26 RAF prisoners.48 Commando members killed two diplomats to enforce their ultimatum, but this time the unified crisis response organization under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt decided to stand firm. The commandos were caught when the dynamite they had planted in the embassy exploded and the hostages were released. Liberation through public humiliation of a prominent hostage and by forcing the hand of the government in an instrumental media showdown had worked only once. This armed struggle for the release of the prisoners came to a head in 1977 in a series of killings that culminated in the hostage-taking and murder of Schleyer in the “German autumn” of 1977. The banker Jürgen Ponto, who was tricked by a family friend turned terrorist, was shot on his doorstep in July 1977 when he refused to be taken hostage. But the commandos also tried execution pure and simple, as in the case of Siegfried Buback, who as chief prosecutor had signed the indictment against Baader and his friends. He was killed by the “Kommando Ulrike Meinhof” together with his driver and another member of staff in a drive-by shooting in April 1977, 3 weeks before life sentences were passed on Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe in Stuttgart. The effectiveness of violence in revenge killings had thus been tested in a new “offensive 77” without any sign of immediate political success when Schleyer’s car and his police escort were stopped in a side street in Cologne by the “Kommando Siegfried Hausner” on 5 September 1975. This was a particularly vicious attack, a well-planned hijacking and an orchestrated execution: a car blocked the road, guns were taken from a pram beside it, and more than 100 shots were fired at the two cars at point-blank range. One of the gang of four even jumped onto the hood of the escorting car in the ensuing shootout. Three policemen and the driver were killed on the spot, but Schleyer was still alive. He was bundled away to the first of his three hiding places in Cologne, The Hague, and Brussels. This veritable massacre was the defining scenario for the following escalation. The government could not 47 It is still unclear whether this was intended as a hostage-taking or a straight murder attempt (Aust

1997, 305f). 48 Naming the commandos after the movement’s martyrs was a sign of the inward-looking strategy

of the RAF ringleaders in prison: Holger Meins died as a consequence of his hunger strike on 9 November 1974, Sigfried Hausner died from his injuries after the Stockholm embassy bombing on 4 May 1975, and Ulrike Meinhof hanged herself in her cell on 9 May 1976.

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give in to save the “big boss” when police officers were being shot down as if in a gangster movie, nor could Schleyer have been in any doubt. Even the cold-blooded executioners later realized that they had been overtaken by panic in the act (Boock 2002, 36).49 But the final declaration of moral bankruptcy, taken as such even by some of the activists, came with the hijacking of the Lufthansa plane Landshut with 83 vacationers and five crew on board from Mallorca on 3 October by a commando of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. This commando had hosted some of the German activists for military training and shared their aggressive stance against imperialism (Skelton-Robbinson 2006, Mogadishu 884–890). To use the “Landshut” passengers as hostages threatened by an ultimatum was in clear contravention to the activists’ ideological claim to speak for ordinary people—who were here being terrorized by the killing of the pilot as well as by their captors’ apparent disregard for their own lives.50 When the government finally exercised the “military option” that the RAF leaders had consistently provoked and warned against and the hostages were freed by a special commando of the federal police on 18 October, the RAF prisoners held in Germany played the last card in their hand by collectively committing suicide. This revolutionary act of martyrdom was consistent with their imagined role reversal of fighter into victim, but it gave the lie to their claims to have been completely isolated in jail, although it is still unclear how their preparations could have gone unnoticed. The propaganda effect of casting these suicides as state murders was limited because everybody could read the telling details: only the men, Baader and Raspe, had a gun at hand; Ensslin had to hang herself; and Irmgard Möller stabbed herself with a kitchen knife and survived. The “myth” of Stammheim still lived on, not just in the next generation of activists, but even among the remaining irregulars the “suicide action” was treated as an absolute taboo (Peters 2004, 452).51 The Kommando Siegfried Hausner’s denunciation of the “massacre of Mogadishu and Stammheim” as “fascist dramaturgy” gave proof of its members’ own murderous projection by announcing that they had “ended the wretched and corrupt existence” of Schleyer, whose death was without importance compared with their pain and rage over these “massacres” (Rote Armee Fraktion 1977, 273). After a 43day ordeal Schleyer had lost his usefulness as a hostage, but he still had to lose his life—not as a precautionary tactic, but simply as a matter of consistency, a last-ditch effort to salvage the guerrilla honor that, in fact, destroyed any political pretext for their actions.52 The execution was performed by the book, “in absolute secrecy and cold blood” (Marighella 2002, 26), and the body was dumped in the trunk of a car. 49 For

a short profile of those engaged in the Schleyer kidnapping, see Hachtmeister (2004, 133–352). 50 On the gruesome ordeal of their experience as hostages, see Peters (2004, 430–449). 51 Seventy-six percent of the young generation (16–35 years) was convinced that it was suicide; only 9% had some doubts, but among those with left credentials it was 25%. See Schmidtchen (1983, 238f). 52 See the reasons given ex post by Stefan Wisniewski in Wisniewski (1997); see also Koenen (2001, 364).

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This produced the public show of absolutely senseless murder, which proved to be the turning point in the symbolic drama about life and death. The humanity of the hostage was exemplified in his written and video messages, which showed him to be brave in adversity and, as it later turned out, even in a position to command respect from his captors (Boock 2002, 8).53 This kind of defeat could not be matched even by the successful pursuit of the Red Army Faction by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (BKA) under Horst Herold, who found to his dismay that terrorism was like a hydra which grew new heads for every one he managed to cut off.54 Achieving control of such mushrooming networks of violent actors was always just out of reach. Despite a threefold increase in staff and the modernization of police work through systematic profiling and aggressive operations, successes remained haphazard and incomplete: information about the first hiding place for Schleyer was lost in red tape; traditional investigations and tip-offs often led to more tangible results than the newer methods; and a number of cases remain unsolved to this day, possibly for reasons kept secret from the public. As Schleyer himself noted, for a long time the BKA seemed not to be in command of the situation, while the government was simply playing for time (Hachtmeister 2004, 391). Controlling the onslaught of terrorism by the computerization of police work even backfired, as it led to critical questions about the protection of personal information; once the immediate danger was over, dataprotection legislation became an unintended consequence of the control effort and worked against the “surveillance state” which had cropped up in the wake of the public dramatization of terrorist dangers (Weinhauer 2006). The demonstration of police presence in nationwide drag-net search operations was meant to reassure and mobilize the citizens, but also to impress the grey zone of sympathizers. Their main concern, however, was the erosion of legal restraint in the control practices of the state, especially with regard to due process in trials of terrorists. Here too, special legislation, such as laws proposing to exclude defense lawyers suspected of supporting “terrorist organizations,” or to deny lawyers access to their clients during the high tide of the Schleyer drama, in the end mobilized a countermovement of liberal lawyers in defense of their rights.55 These developments cannot simply be put down to the still-uncertain success of the “battle against terrorism” (Herold) in 1977. The killing went on for some years, before the completely isolated terrorists adopted a demilitarized rhetoric and exercised their exit options. This was mainly

53 This was also one of the reasons why his “interrogation” in the “people’s prison” backfired (Elter

2008, 177). Schleyer even confronted his captors with his impression—“not least because of my experience in the ‘Third Reich’”—that they had already given up their social utopias for short-term gains (Book 2001, 88). For the media effect of the Schleyer hostage pictures, see Steinseifer (2006, 371–377). 54 For the escalating strategies of police control, see Schenk (1998); for the almost personal character of the confrontation, see Hauser (1997). 55 Lawyers who joined the armed struggle or provided the inmates with guns certainly crossed the line, but running the info-system was not necessarily beyond the bounds of a “block defense” system. See Requate (2006).

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due to a growing awareness in the public mind that the framing of the conflict in the media as a military showdown or as a policing or legal control problem alone had lost its usefulness (Musolff 1996). News management was the answer to the communicative strategies deployed in the Lorenz kidnapping and reiterated in the commando declarations during the Schleyer crisis (Elter 2008). But this was accomplished not just by denying media space for the self-declarations and exhortations of the commandos, who were diligently planting their scandalizing news. During the “German autumn” the media were indeed attentive to the strategic moves of the government in this respect (Steinseifer 2006; and Schmidt and de Graf 1982). It was much more difficult to rein in public anxiety about the so-called sympathizers as the police search for supporters escalated into a general climate of suspicion and denunciation, which blurred the dividing lines between criminal acts, political attitudes, and a wavering fascination with violence. In the early phases of the conflict, critical intellectuals such as Heinrich Böll or Peter Brückner had reason to believe that they were being caught up in a deliberate attempt by the conservative press and politicians to blame the whole spectrum of the post-1968 Left. But by the mid-1970s, party politics were relegated to second place in the crisis management by Helmut Schmidt, who left no doubt that he was ready to take responsibility and even risk failure in order to make good on the disaster of the televised exchange of prisoners for Peter Lorenz. This closing of the ranks brought the political parties closer together than ever before.56 The public hunt for sympathizers, however, still fed on widespread imagination about communist spies, independent intellectuals, and refractory youth—a scenario of a whole counter-society. In the winter of 1977–1978, those who protested against the captives’ prison conditions were regarded as sympathizers by two thirds of the population; those who shared some of the terrorists’ criticism of society were so regarded by one third of their fellow citizens (Musolff 1996, 185). In fact, practical support for those on the run dried up quickly, and any sympathy expressed for them usually had to do with suspicion about excessive control efforts by the police and judiciary and a sense of moral outrage at the victimization of those on hunger strike (Koenen 2001, 392 ff.; Balz 2006). But behind these sentiments, reasonable or not, was one hidden feeling that caused a public outcry when it was openly confessed: the “secret joy” about the successful performance of violence itself which an anonymous in a Göttingen student journal declared to have felt immediately after the murder of Siegfried Buback (Buback 1977; Spiller 2006). In this confession the self-styled Mescalero questioned himself about his spontaneous response to the killing and finally arrived at the total rejection of gangster strategies for the Left. We have no right, he claimed, to copy the strategies of the likes of Buback, lest we acquire the same kind of “killer-face”; we should give up on identifying the objects of class hatred for the people and instead develop ideas and practices of violence and militancy which are cheerful and approved by the

56 Christoph

Wackernagel, a short-time terrorist, later declared that the murder of Schleyer was, in this respect, the “foundational crime” of the Federal Republic (Hachtmeister 2004, 400).

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people. Anti-authoritarianism could not be achieved by authoritarian means: “For the sake of power (o God!) people of the Left must not be killers, brutalos, rapists, but surely also not saints nor innocent as lambs” (Buback 1977, 12). The political message was clear, but it was crowded out by the public outrage in response to his remarks about his own susceptibility to the violent imagination. For some time, he confessed, as a civilian he had—“like so many of us”—appreciated the actions of the armed fighters: “I even got a kick out of it when something exploded again and raised panic among the capitalist bigwigs and their henchmen. Things I would love to do myself in my daydreams, but never dared to do” (Buback 1977, 11). Style and argument give this text away as a “vain playing at militancy,” as the author himself later confessed, but it was precisely this open admission of the attractiveness of a well-performed act of terrorist violence that gave it iconic status in the public imagination. The text seemed to reveal the reservoir of secret supporters of terrorism at the same time that it spoke the mind of many sympathizers who turned away when their own violent imagination was overtaken by reality (Mescalero 1989).57 For the terrorists of the RAF, reality was constructed by the deed, and in the end the only reality was a life authenticated by the ecstatic feeling of absolute power over life and death, which gave them the “romantic aura” of death angels (Kraushaar 2001, 237; Kraushaar 2006a, 1: 140–156). For sympathizers like the Mescalero— it was estimated that one fifth of the student body felt likewise58 —this was the emotional trap of identification in which an unrequited passion for moral outrage and the utopian dream of a life free of alienation could be lived out in an imaginary proxy war with the authorities. Without this play of death and victimhood, and the accompanying fantasies of suicidal battle, the attractiveness of terrorist violence cannot be understood (Reemstma 2005, 114).59 The murder of a hostage for no reason is the ultimate proof of the performative sovereignty of the violent act. It is autotelic insofar as its only reason is the claim: We can do this to you! But it was this level of violent claim-making that provoked an emotional response the terrorists had not anticipated: the shaming pictures of Schleyer as a hostage and of Schleyer’s body in the trunk had transformed the “killer-face” of fantasy into the face of absolute vulnerability and destroyed humanity. The communicative battle of violent imagination was finally lost with the suicide pictures from Stammheim Prison. Later RAF followers never used them in their propaganda, although some pretended to the very end that their comrades had been murdered in their cells. But these images pulled many a sympathizer back from the brink: they were pictures of defeat, politically and morally, and they broke the enchantment of violence which had kept so many spellbound—frightened and fascinated—in an imaginary culture of revolutionary violence. 57 On

the public campaigns and legal consequences for the editors of the student journal, and for some professors who insisted on having the full text published in order to counter its misreading, see Brückner (1978). 58 According to Peter Glotz, minister for education in West Berlin, as quoted in Balz (2006, 347). On the selective “aesthetics of mourning,” see Schmidtchen (1983, 236f). 59 Same in Kraushaar (2006, 2: 1353–1368).

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3 Conclusion Terrorist practices can be profitably analyzed in synchronic comparison, as, for example, between the Red Army Faction and the Brigate Rosse (Della Porta 2004), to uncover common readings of ideological claims and different control regimes in national cultures. Diachronic comparisons build on such efforts by working through these elements in order to identify possible historical transfers of common patterns in the long-range effects of the voluntarism of violence. This is the only way to analyze the performative strategy in the politics of fear, which was negotiated and played out in terrorist acts in politically highly diverse circumstances over time. Written records as well as visual representations are not always available to provide set piece comparisons over time. But some family resemblances emerge in the symbolic drama of terrorist violence in the Rathenau and the Schleyer cases, which can be summarized under five headings. 1. A moment of shock characterized each of the terrorist scenarios. Indeed, the shock of the act itself left perpetrators and observers transfixed, before confessions or denunciations were actually spoken. These silences were filled with the imagination of disaster or triumph, as the case may be, accumulated through previous rehearsals, as in the string of Freikorps killings at the beginning of the Weimar Republic and the killing sprees of the RAF. This historical legacy was carried over in the confrontation between the RAF and the state, which symbolically replayed the violent scenario that led from Weimar “unrest” to the Nazi holocaust. The shock effect of both cases of political murder signifies the recognition of the symbolic centrality of this particular murder for a political or theoretical argument. It also acknowledges that this was the “right” murder— that violence was acknowledged as decisive and committed in the “right” way. As symbolic performance of the conflict, the murder brought the crisis to a head and demanded everybody’s hightened attention and clear response. This sense of awe and expectation needed to be controlled, and in more than just a technical manner. Control depended on the ability of the state to perform its counterclaims in an equally symbolic manner, in order to counteract the fascination of the violent act. 2. Competing voices followed the shock. These voices tried to shape the communicative impact and to model the public rules of speaking and reading the script of violent acts. Symbolic acts—like the ritual ceremony of Rathenau’s lying in state—played an important role in control of the public imagination. In a democratic polity in transition such as the Federal Republic in the 1970 s, controlling the media script was of paramount importance, since the perceived overreaction by police and the legal system could fire the imagination of sympathizers. But if terrorism is about orchestrating the politics of fear, there is no reason to suspect that the voluntarism of violence can be overcome by punitive practices alone. The charisma of violence is played out in a communicative battle for minds, which claims legacies of imagined martyrdom and bravado. This is why the analogies between the Rathenau and Schleyer case are not just to be seen

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in a common strand of national self-determination against national victimhood, in the first case against Versailles and in the second case against capitalism and imperialism (Hauser 2005). The deep analogy, as Meinhof herself realized, was in their readiness to embrace violence for its own sake, or rather as “propaganda of the deed.” 3. A language of violence itself can be identified beyond what could be called the mere “coquettishness” of talk about violence.60 When the political framing of violence in public speech acts is analyzed in historically diverse settings, the performative character of terrorist violence is revealed in its autotelic absoluteness. The promise of salvation in and through death in political terrorism is laden with transcendent beliefs about victimhood and immortality, even without otherworldly expectations. This is why, as the Rathenau and the Schleyer cases show, a control regime needs more than just effective policing and a public show of the rule of law. Nationalist martyrology still undermined the Weimar Republic after the immediate threat of terrorism was over, and public sympathy for the RAF needed to dry up before the network of secretive terrorist groups could actually be disbanded, long after the showdown of the Schleyer case. Communications about political violence, in particular about claims of political transformation through acts of violence, need to take into account the wider emotional claims of self-empowerment and orchestrated panic which are negotiated by the voluntarism of violence. 4. The escalation and de-escalation of political violence are self-learning processes, not just strategies with proximate trigger causes or a purely instrumental logic. At stake in both murder cases was the performative claim of terrorist acts as a bid for absolute resolve and a guarantee for an irresistible transformation of the self and the rules of the political game. These demonstrations, not ideologically motivated policies, are the core of terrorist politics. They must be read as historically located ritual claims for political as well as moral transformation. Whatever the proclaimed aims of violence may be, the contagiousness of political violence is itself a process of cultural negotiation. Its success depends on mobilizing and controlling the violent imagination of an audience whose members may not be inclined to commit such acts themselves. The efficiency of the state monopoly on legitimate violence is, therefore, only one side of the counterclaim of public order. The martyrology of desperate heroism may play an equally important role. Hate speech, the orchestration of moral panics, and the performance of dramatic death scenes can serve as further manifestations of the charisma of violence. As the historical cases show, the voluntarism of violence may be not just autotelic, but auto-generative. 5. Finally, the long-term perspective leads to some conclusions about the family resemblance of terrorist practices, which link the two cases irrespective of their ideological programs and their respective enactment. Performance matters: the

60 This

is not just a problem of intellectual history, as in Payk (2008).

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symbolic drama of their revolutionary ambitions were played out in the reenactment of different images of war—as the shock assault of trench warfare (Rathenau), or as the demonstrative execution of gang warfare (Schleyer). But they shared the two basic features of insurrectionary fantasies and an unshakable belief in the transformative power of violence itself. The Red Army Faction’s strong rhetoric about making a radical break with the “Auschwitz generation” has obscured this long-range connection of self-victimization and envy of victimhood with the historical German culture of violence. Norbert Elias has argued that the murderous terrorism of the 1970 s reflected the generational conflict in countries with fascist and militarist traditions, such as Germany, Italy, and Japan, and that the particularly bloody excess was to be explained in terms of guilt transfer and state overreaction within this traumatic constellation (Elias 1989). On closer inspection, it appears that the rage of terrorisms in these countries instead speaks of a shame culture created in response to national humiliation and loss of identity in defeat.61 This subtext creates an ideological link between the suicidal revolt against imperialism and Americanism by the RAF and the lastditch stand of the national revolutionaries against the shame of Weimar. But as “dandies of evil” who banked on the voluntarism of violence, they were even closer. The sense of defeat, in particular ultimate defeat, powers the imagination of self-liberation through violence, as Hans Magnus Enzensberger has argued in view of the more recent spate of international terrorism (Enzensberger 2006). In historical terms, the repeated attraction of terrorist violence as an ultimate counterperformance to imagined defeat, across the wide spectrum from the terrorism of the Right to the terrorism of the Left, speaks of the same adulation of personal and bodily engagement in battle, the cult of the will in the confrontation of friend and foe, and the relentless belief in the transformative power of the violent performance, in its therapeutic as well as in its didactic effects. This message is all but lost in the recent movie The Baader-Meinhof Complex, where the story is reduced to one bloody shooting after another, in an ominous play on the performative imagination of the action movie (Terhoeven 2008b). But it is precisely this promise of the voluntarism of violence that can be fully controlled only when this imagination is defeated. And defeated it certainly was in the case of the Red Army Faction, when their communicative strategy backfired. Their self-image as “death angels” was lost in the new sensitivity to individual suffering which eventually emerged in the pictures of their humiliated victims. In the long German tradition of terrorism, they were the latest to subscribe to the voluntarism of political violence—not just in the rhetoric of ultimate battle but also in the performative proof of their violent selves.

61 See

the excellent criticism of the Elias argument in Hauser (2005).

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Party Politics, National Security, and Émigré Political Violence in Australia, 1949–1973 Mate Nikola Toki´c

Late in the night of 4 July 1963, three troikas of heavily armed Croatian separatist guerrillas crossed from Italy into Yugoslavia, seeking to further the cause of Croatian independence through acts of sabotage and terror in Tito’s socialist state. Nine years later, in June 1972, a similar incursion occurred, this time by 19 militants whose aim was the instigation of a general Croatian uprising against the regime in Belgrade. In both cases, the Yugoslav army and domestic intelligence services successfully neutralized the insurgents, rendering both actions failures. In the first instance, all nine would-be revolutionaries were arrested within 4 weeks of entering Yugoslavia and sentenced to between 6 and 14 years in prison. In the second, the resistance of the guerillas was greater: 15 were killed in pitched gun battles with army forces over the span of several weeks, with the remaining four eventually arrested, three of whom were sentenced to death. What these incursions shared is that both were conceived, organized, and led by members of the Australian-founded and Australian-based Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood (Hrvatsko Revolucionarno Bratstvo, HRB). The HRB was one of several underground émigré terrorist organizations established worldwide in the decades following the World War II with the aim of destroying socialist Yugoslavia and establishing an independent Croatian state.1 In addition to the two forays into Yugoslavia, the HRB actively targeted institutions of the Yugoslav state in Australia itself, including embassies, consulates, diplomats, trade representatives, airline offices, and travel agencies.2 Between 1963 and 1972, the HRB and other Croatian separatist extremists engaged in no fewer than 52 significant incidents of M.N. Toki´c (B) The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt e-mail: [email protected] 1 There are very few studies on Croatian émigré separatism, nationalism, and terrorism. One of the

earliest, which remains one of the best, is Clissold (1979). See also Toki´c (2009) and chapter three of Hockenos (2003). 2 The HRB instructed its members: “Destroy all Yugoslav embassies and consulates, kill Yugoslav diplomatic representatives because they are common criminals and Fascists. Prevent migrants from traveling on Yugoslav aircraft, and destroy Yugoslav aircraft. Wreck the travel agencies” (Clissold 1979, 16).

W. Heitmeyer et al. (eds.), Control of Violence, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0383-9_16,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

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violence on Australian soil, leading to a high number of casualties and considerable property damage.3 Australia, to quote a circular letter put out by the HRB, was “the citadel of Croatian national consciousness abroad,” serving as the locus of the “uncompromising struggle for the liberation and sovereignty of the Croatian people.”4 Despite the clear threat these extremists posed to Australian national security, both the ruling Liberal Party and the state’s internal security services, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), remained relatively indifferent to Croatian émigré political violence throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Whereas the Liberals and ASIO certainly never encouraged or supported acts of terror on the part of Croatian émigrés, neither did they actively pursue a policy of control over the purveyors of violence. From as early as the first half of the 1950s, both the Liberals and ASIO viewed Croatian extremists ambivalently—if not at times even favorably—and adopted what can best be described as a laissezfaire attitude toward their repeated acts of violence and terrorism. ASIO—together with the Australian Commonwealth Police—monitored the activities of Croatian separatists, but for various reasons deemed it politically expedient to give these radicals an exceptionally long leash. Not until 1972, with the defeat of the Liberal Party at the hands of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), did this begin to change, as governmental attitudes toward Croatian émigré extremism took on a new political dynamic. Focusing on Croatian émigré political violence in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s, this chapter explores the political context of control of violence—or lack thereof—and the ideological contests involved. Specifically, it examines the conscious political calculations made by governmental actors when deciding whether particular kinds of violence should be considered deplorable, tolerable, acceptable, or even desirable, and therefore subject to different kinds of control. As has been amply demonstrated in this volume and elsewhere, the very notion of what constitutes violence in society is both ambivalent and contingent, subject to myriad conditions, not least of all power in all its many guises. Control, as a result, is equally ambivalent and contingent, dependent on the mobilization and application of particular forms of power operating on different levels. The history of Australia’s relationship to émigré political violence brings into sharp relief the variable and difficult relationship among ideology, party politics, institutional dogma, and the control of violence. It also demonstrates the degree to which both violence and control can be arbitrary categories, defined as much by power

3 NAA(C).

Series A5034, Item 1973/2136 PART 1 “Croatian Terrorism: Relations with Yugoslav Government—Part I.” Doc: “Croatian Extremist Activity in Australia.” 4 UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 1, Item 3, App. B.17. (The Papers of Adolf Andri´c): “Letter from Supreme Headquarters to Members of the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood in Australia, July 15, 1964.” The documents in this collection are part of the papers tabled in Parliament on March 27, 1973, by the Labor Attorney-General Lionel Murphy following his infamous raid on the ASIO headquarters on the evening of March 15 and morning of March 16. The raid will be discussed in greater detail later in the chapter.

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struggles and political expediency as by abstract if socially accepted paradigms of action. Simply put, Australian governmental policy toward Croatian émigré terrorism was driven more by external political considerations than by the desire to control the violence itself. That the Liberal Party and ASIO failed—or indeed refused—to exert control over separatist violence before 1972 can be traced to the very ideological underpinnings of the two bodies, not least of all their staunch anti-communism. The unprecedented measures to control Croatian terrorism adopted by the ALP after 1972, meanwhile, find their roots in part in the political opportunism of a party which had just come to power after enduring a full generation in opposition.5 For these reasons, the issue of control itself readily became politicized in Australia, with implications far beyond the actions of the radical émigrés themselves. As we will see, when it came to Croatian terrorists the question of control became a fundamental point of contention in Australian politics. In this way, the struggle for control over Croatian separatist violence became a struggle for the control over much more in Australia: control over the institutions of the state, control over the underlying principles of government and, at its most basic level, control over power.

1 Picking Sides and Choosing Battles ASIO, Australia’s first peacetime internal security agency, was established by Prime Minister Ben Chiefley’s Labor government in March 1949. Only 1 year earlier, Chiefley had rejected appeals by the Australian Army for the founding of a permanent, freestanding security service. By the beginning of 1949, however, two important factors had forced a shift in Chiefley’s views about the need to monitor potential domestic threats to the nation.6 The first was pressure from Great Britain and, particularly, the United States, which were concerned about security leaks at the highest levels of the Australian government.7 The second was a precipitous increase

5 Primarily under the stewardship of Prime Minister Robert Menzies (1949–1966), the Liberal Party

managed to stay in power for a record 23 years, from 1949 to 1972. It was under Menzies that some of Australia’s most conservative and controversial policies were pursued, including the attempted ban of the Communist Party of Australia, the drawing up of internment plans for communists, trade unionists, and immigrants in the advent of war, and the commitment of troops to Vietnam. 6 The complete story behind the establishment of ASIO, including the real impetus behind Chiefley’s decision to institute a domestic security service after earlier rejecting the idea, remains somewhat shrouded in mystery. For three histories of ASIO, see Hocking (2004), McKnight (1994), and Cain (1994). 7 American security officers were so concerned that Australian military and political officials could not be trusted with confidential material that they placed a complete ban on the transmission of all confidential information to Australia in May 1948. As one report by the U.S. Navy read, “Because of political immaturity, a leftist government greatly influenced by communistic infiltrated labor organizations, and the fact that Australian governmental activities have violated the basic security principle that classified information should not be divulged to unauthorized persons Australia is a poor security risk” (Cain 1994, 40, underline in original).

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in the strength of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) over the course of the 1940s. Initially, the political objectives and operational reach of ASIO were nebulous, as Chiefley remained hesitant to instill the new agency with real power. The ALP had itself been the target of Australian military intelligence in the period leading up to the World War II—due both to its socialist leanings and close connections with the trade unions—and Chiefley sought to ensure that ASIO remained somehow depoliticized. As he wrote openly in the first charter of the new organization, “the Security Service should be kept absolutely free from any political bias or influence . . . [or] any matters of a party political character” (Hope 1977, appendix 4-A). The defeat of the ALP by Robert Menzies’ Liberal Party in the elections of December 1949, however—not 9 months after the founding of the agency—paved the way for a fundamental shift in this position. Menzies guided the Liberal Party to victory on a platform of fierce anti-communism, which had become a polarizing issue in Australian politics and society. After the election, this anticommunism developed into what amounted to the raison d’être of the Liberal Party.8 This extended to ASIO, as the new administration made immediate and lasting changes which would come to define the agency for over a generation. In June 1950, Menzies appointed as the new director-general of ASIO Colonel Charles Spry, who proceeded to thoroughly restructure and reorient the young agency. Communist subversion became the new primary concern of ASIO under Spry, who was convinced that the CPA was controlled by Moscow with the aim of preparing Australia for revolution (McKnight 1994, 107–117). Just 11 days after joining ASIO, Spry began work on plans for the internment of communists, trade unionists, and immigrants from “unfriendly nations”—primarily Eastern Europeans—in the event of war (McKnight 1994, 117–122). He also oversaw a rapid growth in the size of ASIO, especially the B1 Branch—counter-subversion—which was concerned almost exclusively with the communist threat.9 By the mid-1950s, Spry and Menzies had succeeded in re-forming ASIO in their own image, essentially turning the security agency, to quote Jenny Hocking, into “the political police of the Liberal-Country Party government” (Hocking 2004, 30).

8 Central to Menzies’ election campaign was a pledge to ban the CPA. After coming into power, this

became a priority for the new government. Menzies’ succeeded in pushing the Communist Party Dissolution Act 1950 through parliament, only to have it overturned by the High Court of Australia for being unconstitutional and undemocratic. Menzies then sought to amend the constitution itself through a national referendum, which failed by only the smallest of margins, 50.48–49.07%. 9 Of B1 Branch’s six sub-sections, five were explicitly concerned with communism. The six subsections were: “B1 a) a research desk on ‘International Communism’ which initially analyzed links between overseas communist parties and the CPA; B1 b) which covered the internal organization of the CPA itself; B1 c) which covered ‘communist activities among aliens in Australia;’ B1 d) which covered ‘communist activities in trade unions and industry’ but also watched the ALP left; B1 e) which worked with C Branch [which conducted political vetting of public servants, service personnel, and migrants seeking naturalization] on assessing the information gathered to vet public servants and military recruits; and B1 f) which covered the all-important ‘communist front organizations’” (McKnight 1994, 110).

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A central component of ASIO’s early counter-subversive activities was vetting the 1.2 million immigrants who came to Australia between 1946 and 1959. Initially, as Spry’s plans for the internment of foreign nationals from Eastern Europe in the case of war illustrate, the government viewed displaced persons and other emigrants from Eastern Bloc countries with great suspicion. It quickly became clear, however, that a fair proportion of these new arrivals were ardent and active anticommunists—if not in fact fascists—having been forced from their homes precisely because of their opposition to communism. During the early 1950s, immigration guidelines for former Nazi collaborators, war criminals, and even former members of the Nazi Party were repeatedly relaxed, easing their passage to the fifth continent.10 ASIO security screeners attached to immigration offices in embassies across Europe focused their attention on communists and communist sympathizers, while often turning a blind eye to those with anti-communist credentials. Once in Australia, many of these new immigrants were then recruited by ASIO as informants and agents, primarily to be used against communist and leftist elements in their own émigré communities. Among the most notorious of the anti-communist immigrants to arrive in Australia in the 1950s were anti-Titoist Croatian separatists. During World War II, the quisling Ustaša regime of Ante Paveli´c engaged in one of the most brutal and destructive programs of ethnically motivated genocide in wartime Europe. Serbs, Jews, Roma, and Croatian antifascists were all targeted by the Ustaša, with Serbs particularly singled out for systematic eradication. Following the war, an estimated 12,000 former fascist collaborators and anti-communists from Croatia found political asylum in Germany. An additional 20,000–40,000 found their way to countries with sympathetic regimes, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Spain or countries that traditionally welcomed immigrants, such as the United States and Canada. With the active and passive assistance of ASIO, many thousands also ended up in Australia, including several known Ustaša war criminals. Upon arriving in Australia, some of the more extreme former Nazicollaborationist Croats established political organizations and networks dedicated to the destruction of Yugoslavia and the establishment of an independent Croatian state. With few exceptions, these Croats advocated the use of violence in the pursuit of their aims.11 Rather than responding negatively to the activities of these new immigrants, ASIO and the Menzies government in fact looked rather benignly on 10 For

instance, in 1950 simply having been a member of the Nazi Party was grounds for refusing entry into Australia. In 1952, new guidelines were drawn up which made a clear distinction between those who had held leadership positions in the Nazi Party and those who belonged to the rank and file. By 1955, membership in the Nazi Party ceased to be grounds for security objections to be raised about individual applicants for immigration. For a very well researched if unabashedly politically one-sided text on fascist migration to Australia following the World War II, see Aarons (2001). 11 The Ustaša (Croatian for insurgents or rebels) began as a terrorist group before being elevated to power by Hitler and Mussolini in 1941. In the early 1930s, former radical members of the Croatian nationalist Party of Rights were forced to leave Yugoslavia following Serbian King Alexander Karadjordjevi´c’s declaration of a royalist dictatorship in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on January 6,

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right-leaning Croatian political groups and individuals. Spry repeatedly downplayed the potential security threat posed by Croatian nationalist groups in Australia, often overriding the concerns of his own agents in the field. In 1951, for instance, an ASIO officer in Adelaide performed a check on the local Croatian Club following its application to publish a newspaper. In his report, the officer declared that the club was “controlled by militant political members” and was unabashedly “antiCommunistic, if not, in fact, a fascist group” (Aarons 2001, 400). Nevertheless, Spry felt that there was “insufficient evidence available for a security objection to be raised to the publication of the proposed paper” (Aarons 2001, 401). Three years later, an almost identical scenario played out, this time with the much larger Australian Croatian Association. The ASIO officer in charge of reviewing the organization and its publication Hrvat (The Croat) declared that the paper would “become the official organ of Fascist propaganda in Australia . . . [and that] no good purpose would be served by officially allowing an extremely pro-Fascist newspaper to cause upheavals in a fairly contented community.”12 To this, Spry replied that despite the fact that “the Australian Croatian Association was extremely proUstachi and constantly in touch with the Croat terrorist Ante PAVELICH, at present residing in Argentina . . . the Australian Croatian Association is anti-communist and anti-Tito . . . [and] there is therefore no security objections on these grounds to the publication of ‘Hrvat.’”13 This is not to say that ASIO and the ruling Liberal Party did not have reservations about groups such as the Croatian Club and the Australian Croatian Association. Spry ordered that both these Croatian émigré organizations—and others—be monitored for potential anti-state activities. But these groups’ right-leaning politics and vocal support of the Menzies’ Liberal-Country Party government meant that state control over their activities was minimal at best. The governments’ real concern, simply, was potential communist agitators and leftist revolutionaries. As one senior ASIO officer said in an interview in 1992: “The attitude was, because they were anti-communist, we’ll look at them later. We’ll concentrate on these [communist] bastards because they’re dangerous!” (McKnight 1994, 177). The result of this rather accommodating attitude toward right-wing Croatian political organizations,

1929. Led by Ante Paveli´c—a lawyer from Zagreb and former deputy in the Yugoslav parliament— these radicals formed an underground separatist terrorist organization—the Ustaša—which drew its support from the ranks of exiled nationalist Croatian students and hard-line nationalists. In addition to their most famous deed, the successful assassination of King Alexander in the French port city of Marseilles in October 1934, members were responsible for numerous bomb attacks, a failed armed uprising in the impoverished Lika region of Croatia, and several assassination attempts on prominent Yugoslav officials. The breakthrough for the Ustaša came with the Axis powers’ defeat of royalist Yugoslavia in April 1941. 12 NAA(C). Series A6122, Item 304 “Publication of Newspapers in Australia in a Foreign Language— ‘Croatian.’” Doc: Field Officer Report: Croatian Newspaper “Hrvat,” September 30, 1953. 13 NAA(C). Series A6122, Item 304 “Publication of Newspapers in Australia in a Foreign Language—‘Croatian.’” Doc: Memorandum for the Secretary of Immigration, April 12, 1954. Capitalization in the original.

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however, was that anti-Titoist separatist groups were essentially able to organize as they pleased over the course of the next two decades, without having to worry about state intervention. In the 1950s, this meant an aggressive campaign of propaganda among Croatian immigrants through papers such as Hrvat which agitated for the “freeing of the homeland.” In the 1960s, more ominously, this meant the establishment of various underground para-military terrorist groups and networks dedicated to the violent destruction of the Yugoslav state. As the government would soon find out, it was in fact the Croatian anti-communists who were the dangerous ones, not the “communist bastards.”

2 Uneasy Bedfellows The consequences of the Australian government’s leniency toward radical Croatian émigrés became manifest in July 1963 with the HRB’s first incursion into socialist Yugoslavia. The HRB had been formed 2 years earlier by the former Ustaša officer Sreˇcko Rover, who had immigrated to Australia in 1950 and had become a citizen in 1956. He had been head of the Australian Croatian Association and publisher of Hrvat at the time of ASIO’s inquiries into both, and was also leader of the Oceania branch of the Croatian National Resistance (Hrvatski narodni otpor, HNO), which was one of two main factions of the global Ustaša movement following a split in the movement in the mid-1950s.14 As radical as the Australian Croatian Association and, particularly, the HNO were, the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood (HRB) was more explicitly dedicated to the use of violence and terrorism in the struggle against “Serbo-communism” in Yugoslavia. At the Croatian Catholic Welfare Centre in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra, recruits were trained in handling weapons, bomb-making, and the art of sabotage, all to be used in combating the institutions of Tito’s Yugoslav state. It was also there that preparations for “Operation Kangaroo” were made, which was the name given to the first incursion into Yugoslavia undertaken by radical Australian-based Croatian separatists. Following the arrest of all nine insurgents by Yugoslav authorities, the government in Belgrade issued an official protest to Canberra about the political activities of émigré Croats in Australia. In the complaint, the Yugoslav government stated directly that Australian authorities were “acquainted with the organized activity of the Croatian fascist emigrants and were, to say the least, tolerant towards them.”15 The Liberal Party also faced a hail of criticism from members of the opposition and several of Australia’s leading newspapers. Evidence was made public that the 14 Postwar

radical Croatian political activism was in many ways characterized by competition among rival separatist groups. This competition led to a splintering of the émigré separatist movement, as contenders for control of the diaspora community fought for authority over the remains of the wartime Ustaša movement. For a discussion of the causes and consequences of this disunity in the Croatian émigré community, see Toki´c (2009). 15 UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 1, Item 1, App. A.3. (Letter by Sir Garfield Barwick as Minister for External Affairs to the Attorney-General, January 6, 1964).

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government was not just indifferent to Croatian extremism, but in fact maintained close connections with radical Croatian nationalists. It was revealed, for instance, that leading members of the party, including the Minister for Shipping and the deputy leader of the New South Wales Liberal Party, had attended celebrations commemorating the establishment of the Ustaša’ puppet state in 1941, the Independent State of Croatia. More troubling, film footage was obtained by the Commonwealth Police apparently showing joint military exercises between members of the Croatian Liberation Movement (Hrvatski oslobodilaˇcki pokret, HOP) and the Australian Army’s Citizens Military Forces (CMF), suggesting that the government was not just accepting Croatian militancy, but was in fact actively promoting it.16 Although the reality behind the film proved to be somewhat less troubling than appearances indicated,17 that such a film could exist at all showed that the government’s attitude toward Croatian émigré violence was at best cavalier. Rather than cracking down on radical and violent Croatian organizations after the HRB’s incursion into Yugoslavia, the Liberal government treated the affair relatively lightly. Menzies himself indirectly defended Croatian radicals in a statement in the House of Representatives, portraying their struggle in supportive terms. As he declared: To understand the attitudes of these migrants it is necessary to remind ourselves that this part of Europe has an exceedingly complex and troubled history. . .. It is difficult for people coming to Australia easily to forget their historical backgrounds. Since the war a number of organizations opposed to the present Government of Yugoslavia have developed throughout the world among refugees and migrants from that country. It is understandable that some Yugoslav migrants of Croatian origin should continue to hope for the establishment of an independent Croatia and within a democracy like Australia they have a right to advocate their views. . .. The Commonwealth’s own investigations so far have not produced any evidence which would warrant legal proceedings. I wish to make the Government’s position in this regard quite plain. The Government will not interfere with freedom of opinion.18

From a policy standpoint, the response was not much more comprehensive. In a letter to the Attorney-General 6 months after the incursion, the Minister for External Affairs essentially advocated a soft-pedaling of the “new” threat posed by radical Croatian émigrés. In his words:

16 The

HOP was the second main faction of the global Ustaša movement and rival to the HNO. It was originally founded by the former quisling leader Ante Paveli´c in 1956 in Argentina. 17 Explaining the incident to parliament, Army Minister Jack Cramer claimed that the “exercises” had been carried out by the commander of an armored squadron whose only interest had been “enhancing the prospects of recruitment for the CMF” with a “picnic group” the squadron had encountered during training. According to Cramer, the commander—who allowed non-CMF Croats to handle rifles and pistols and receive instruction in tank-driving and use of wireless equipment—was unaware of the true nature of the picnickers (Aarons 2001, 414). 18 UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 1, Item 1, App. A.1. (The Menzies Statement of 27th August, 1964): Statement by the Prime Minister Robert Menzies in the House of Representatives entitled “Yugoslav Immigrant Organizations.”

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In essence, the problem is one of “keeping an eye” on immigrant extremists. . .. [But] we should not abandon our democratic principles of free speech, belief and association. . .. With this in mind, I should like to suggest that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization should maintain some supervision over migrant groups (making no attempt to disguise its surveillance) . . . . In appropriate circumstances, it may be necessary to consider the desirability of prosecution under the [Crimes] Act as a further deterrent to uncontrolled extremism, although this measure need not be adopted except in the last resort.19

Apparently, even an incident as dramatic as the HRB’s incursion into Yugoslavia was not enough to convince Canberra that measures were needed to curb the activities of radical Croatian émigrés. For the sake of Australia’s “reputation” in the international community—to paraphrase the Minister for External Affairs20 —it was clear that some level of government supervision of Croatian groups was necessary. But actual control remained out of the question. This said, over the course of the next several years the government did begin a systematic—if still limited—investigation of radical émigré groups. The AttorneyGeneral approved the wire-tapping of “suspected” terrorist leaders such as Sreˇcko Rover and Fabijan Lovokovi´c—the head of the HOP in Australia—and ASIO informants penetrated deep into organizations such as the HRB and HNO. ASIO also had regular contact with leading Croatian radicals, such as the brothers Adolf and Ambroz Andri´c, who hoped to strike a deal with the Australian government “to the effect that the H.R.B. would refrain from using Australia as a base for revolutionary activities against Yugoslavia provided certain members of the H.R.B., together with their families, would not be prevented from leaving Australia.”21 In 1967, police even raided the homes of a number of HRB members following several bomb attacks in which the Yugoslav Consulate in Sydney and vocal opponents of Croatian separatism were targeted. By 1968, both ASIO and the Commonwealth Police had compiled extensive dossiers on the HRB and other underground terrorist organizations which revealed in no uncertain terms that these groups were prepared and willing to employ violence and terrorism in pursuing their goal of an independent Croatian state.22 19 UMA

(Fraser), 106-25 Box 1, Item 1, App. A.3. (Letter by Sir Garfield Barwick as Minister for External Affairs to the Attorney-General, January 6, 1964). 20 As he wrote in his letter justifying his call for “keeping an eye” on immigrant extremists, “For my own part, I am disturbed at the foreign policy implications of such activity which may embarrass our relations with other governments.” UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 1, Item 1, App. A.3. (Letter by Sir Garfield Barwick as Minister for External Affairs to the Attorney-General, January 6, 1964). 21 UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 2, Item 5, App. B.24. (Letter from H.R.B. Europe to A.S.I.O and letter relating thereto by A.S.I.O to Department of Immigration). Ultimately, no deal was ever struck between the government and the Andri´c brothers. Both Adolf and Ambroz would ultimately leave Australia to lead the HRB’s second incursion into Yugoslavia in 1972, which resulted in their deaths. 22 UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 1, Item 1, App. A.5. (A.S.I.O Position Paper of 1st May, 1967.), UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 1, Item 6, App. A.6. (A.S.I.O Position Paper of 1st October, 1967.) and UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 1, Item 1, App. A.7. (Report of the Crime Intelligence Bureau of the Commonwealth Police dated 6th March, 1968 on the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood (H.R.B.)).

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Nevertheless, even with the evidence collected by ASIO and the Commonwealth Police revealing the true nature of some of the more radical Croat organizations in Australia, the government continued to refuse to take a strong stance against Croat extremists. Not even calls from within their own party were enough to move the ruling Liberal Party to action against those engaged in acts of terror on Australian soil.23 There were three primary reasons for this. This first, simply, was that both ASIO and the Liberal Party were ideologically ill-prepared to contend with rightwing as opposed to left-wing terrorism. Political violence, in the thinking of ASIO, originated with revolutionary ideologies such as Marxism, not reactionary ones such as those supposedly held by Croatian separatists (McKnight 1994, 251). Second, as the de facto political police of the Liberal Party, ASIO was hesitant to upset an important base of support for the ruling government. Eastern Europeans in general and Croats specifically were staunch supporters of the Liberal and Country Parties, in large part due to their shared anti-communist ideals. Even if the great majority of Croats in Australia were in no way associated with radical or terrorist organizations, most were at least sympathetic to the ultimate aims of such groups—i.e., the establishment of an independent Croatia free from communist or Serbian rule—even if they objected to the means used to achieve them. The government risked alienating a substantial voting bloc should they be seen as coming down too hard on Croatian clubs and associations which may have had clandestine terrorist elements but which also contributed to the needs and welfare of the larger Croatian community. The third reason was that by observing radical Croatian groups but not curtailing them, ASIO could more effectively study the techniques and methods of the Yugoslav State Security Directorate (Uprava državne bezbednosti, UDBa) operating in Australia. From as early as the late 1940s, UDBa had made the infiltration of nationalist and separatist exile organizations one of its top priorities. Importantly, UDBa’s aim was not the outright destruction anti-Yugoslav émigré political movements. Instead, it sought to subvert and weaken such movements while simultaneously using their continued existence to reinforce its own legitimacy.24 UDBa not only ran agents in many, if not all, of Australia’s Croatian

23 In

December 1969, two senior ministers—Paul Lynch of Immigration and William McMahon of External Affairs—wrote the Attorney-General to express concern about continued Croatian terrorism in Australia. Lynch wrote: “I feel it necessary to bring to your attention my concern at the likely serious consequences if Croat nationals in Australia are permitted to continue unchecked their terrorist activities and outrages.” McMahon, meanwhile, expressed concern that governmental inactivity had led Croatian extremists to “come to believe that they can act with impunity and that they can therefore, without risk to themselves, step up the level and frequency of violence.” According to McMahon, “the situation is now so serious that the Government must take whatever further action is within its power to put an end to these incidents.” UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 1, Item 1, App. A.8. (Letter by Mr. Lynch, then Minister for Immigration to the then AttorneyGeneral dated 3rd December, 1969.) and UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 1, Item 1, App. A.9. (Letter by Mr. McMahon as Minister for External Affairs dated 16th December, 1969). 24 This worked—as elucidated in a report by the West German government from 1961—on four levels. First, such organizations caused divisions and dissention within the totality of the émigré community, weakening the community’s ability to mobilize. Second, groups such as the Ustaša and

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separatist groups, but it also employed agents provocateurs in these groups in an effort to both destabilize them and to force the Australian government’s hand in dealing with them. “It was an article of faith among some ASIO officers,” as David McKnight has written, “that [UDBa itself] set off some of the bombs in an attempt to prompt the Australian government into action against the Croatians” (McKnight 1994, 256). Although Yugoslavia did not belong to the Eastern Bloc and its destabilization did not officially belong to the long-term goals of the Western powers, it was a state socialist country and therefore seen as a threat by the Liberal Party government. For this reason, any information that could be gleaned about its external security operations was viewed by Canberra as critical to the government’s larger struggle against global communism, even if this meant having to live with the continued threat of Croatian terrorism in Australia. In the meantime, Croatian separatists became increasingly more brazen in their use of violence in Australia as a form of political expression. During the early 1960s, violent acts were “limited” to organized violence at inter-ethnic football matches and knife and stink bomb attacks on Yugoslav migrant groups and their leaders. Quickly, however, the violence became more sophisticated and directed, as Croat extremists became adept at constructing pen and letter bombs with which they targeted Yugoslav diplomats and other vocal opponents of Croatian separatism. By the end of the decade, Croat radicals were constructing complicated and powerful explosive devices which were used to bomb various institutions of the Yugoslav state in Australia, including embassies, consulates, airline offices, and travel agencies. In June 1969, the Yugoslav consulate in Sydney was severely damaged by a bomb planted by Croatian separatists. Five months later, two sticks of gelignite exploded outside the Yugoslav embassy in Canberra. And a year after that, in October 1970, the Yugoslav consulate in Melbourne was destroyed by a powerful bomb which ripped through the building. Essentially, the Liberal Party was reaping was it had sown with its relatively laissez-faire attitude toward Croatian political extremism. Able to operate effectively unimpeded for nearly two decades, Croatian separatists became increasingly unconcerned about the acceptable boundaries of violent action in Australian society. Those boundaries seemed to be defined by the unspoken rule that, ‘as long as the violence stays in the Yugoslav community and affects only Yugoslavs or institutions of the Yugoslav state in Australia, we will look the other way.’ Unfortunately, as the Liberal Party would soon find out, with political violence and terrorism, such boundaries often mean very little.

ˇ Serbian Cetniks could be played off against each other, forcing them to spend more time dealing with one another than with the Yugoslav state. Third, radical émigrés were used to “frighten” the population of socialist Yugoslavia itself with the threat that the forces of fascism which had brought so much death and destruction to Yugoslavia during World War II still existed and still needed to be fought against. And finally—and in the eyes of the government in Bonn, most importantly— the activity of such organizations in West Germany served to demonstrate the inherent Nazism, chauvinism, pan-Germanism, and militarism of the German nation. PAAA, Bestand B42 (Band 98): Doc.1222/61 (Dec. 7, 1961) “Die kroatischen Exil—Ustaschen.”

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3 Romance’s End In the antipodean winter of 1972, the government in Canberra was rocked by two new crises brought about by extremist Croatian separatists. In June, Croatian militants embarked on a second incursion into Yugoslavia with the hope of inciting the local population to revolution. Like the action 9 years earlier, this second incursion met with failure, but not before forcing one of the largest military mobilizations in the history of socialist Yugoslavia. As was revealed in an aide-mémoire presented by Belgrade to Canberra on 16 August, 9 of the 19 militants involved in the “Bosnian incursion,” as the incident came to be known, were former residents of Australia, seven of them naturalized Australian citizens. Furthermore, the incursion had clearly been organized once again by members of the HRB in Australia. Remarkably, the Attorney-General at the time, Ivor Greenwood, refused to concede that radical Croatian separatism was a problem with which the government had to contend. As he declared in a press statement shortly following the Bosnian incursion, directly contradicting information held by ASIO and the Commonwealth Police, “investigations by the Commonwealth Police so far have not revealed any credible evidence that any Croatian revolutionary terrorist organization exists in Australia.”25 Unfortunately for the Attorney-General, the blatant disingenuousness of this assertion was brought into sharp focus just a few weeks later. On the morning of Saturday, September 16, two massive bombs exploded in the heart of downtown Sydney. One bomb was detonated outside the Adriatic Trade and Travel Centre, the other outside the nearby Adria Travel Agency. George Street, Sydney’s main shopping and business boulevard, was littered with shattered glass and bleeding bodies. The bombings—the sixth by separatist extremists in 1972 and twentieth since 1963—were by far the most destructive yet by Croats on Australian soil. They were also the first in which “non-Yugoslavs” were severely injured, drawing the greater Australian public into the violent struggle between Croatian separatists and the Yugoslav state for the first time. As brazen as this act of violence was, Greenwood remained resolute in his denial that radical Croatian terrorist organizations existed in Australia. In a defensive statement made in parliament just 3 days after the bombings, Greenwood repeated his comments from July, defying the Senate to doubt his word. He declared: Our investigation of those allegations [of organized terrorism] in Australia had proved that the allegations are without such a basis. Simply, it comes down to this. Does the Senate accept what is alleged by the President and Prime Minister of Yugoslavia in preference to what our own Commonwealth Police have found and what I have stated? (McKnight 1994, 257)

As it turns out, many in the Senate—at least in the opposition—did not believe him. They even accused Greenwood and the Liberal Party of not merely ignoring 25 UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 1, Item 1, App. A.16. (Press Statement by Senator Greenwood, when

Attorney-General, dated 20th July, 1972).

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the threat posed by Croat extremists, but in fact exacerbating it. In calling for Greenwood’s resignation, Labor MP Jim Cairn, who had long been one of the most vocal opponents of the Liberal Party on the Croat issue, declared “there is ample evidence of the existence of well organized terrorists for those who wish to act on it. But the Government seems curiously reluctant to do so . . . [Furthermore, Greenwood’s] attitude must have contributed substantially to the growth of this criminal Croatian movement” (McKnight 1994, 250). Effectively, the Sydney bombings shattered the reputations of both Greenwood and ASIO, and even cast into doubt the credibility of the Liberal Party. After over 20 years, governmental indifference and unresponsiveness to Croatian radicalism were clearly no longer viable. The crisis surrounding the Bosnian incursion and the Sydney bombings hastened the public’s already rapidly deteriorating support for the ruling party. This manifested itself in an election just 11 weeks after the George Street bombing. On December 2, 1972, the Liberal Party was swept from power for the first time in 23 years, defeated by Gough Whitlam’s Australian Labor Party. Few issues were given as much attention by the new government in its first weeks in power than the apparent shortcomings—both operational and political—of ASIO. In large part, this was a result of ASIO’s almost fanatical preoccupation with the anti-Vietnam War movement, which had become—as elsewhere in the Western world—a focal point for various dissenting groups in Australian society during the 1960s. From the mid-1960s until 1973, the great majority of ASIO’s energies went into tracking “revolutionary subversives,” meaning students, intellectuals, artists, and members of the New Left.26 It was also, however, a result of the ALP’s unease with ASIO’s clear inability to deal with the Croatian threat in Australia, regardless whether due to negligence or intent. Either way, the new Attorney-General Lionel Murphy made it clear from his first days in office that the ALP would not accept business as usual when it came to the handing of potentially serious security threats from the right by ASIO and the government. Murphy’s unease with ASIO in dealing with Croatian terrorists quickly turned to real concern in the early weeks of 1973. In February, Murphy traveled to Washington to meet with American law enforcement officers to discuss a number of issues. There, the Americans stressed that radical Croatian organizations in Australia— which the previous administration had denied even existed—had to be brought under control. During the early 1970s, there was a shift in strategy by one faction of Croatian separatists in West Germany and Australia, which advocated the formation of an “alliance” with the Soviet Union, in which Croatian nationalists would side with Moscow in the event of a Red Army invasion of Yugoslavia on the promise that the Soviet Union would allow the Croats to establish a neutral, independent Croatian state. In exchange, the Croats would allow the Soviet Union to establish a military air base in Mostar and a naval base in Kotor. This “Finland”

26 See

the chapter entitled “The anti-Vietnam War movement and ASIO’s counter-insurgency planning” in Australia’s Spies and Their Secrets (McKnight 1994, 209–226).

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solution to the Croatian problem—as the Croats themselves referred to it27 —set alarm bells ringing among the Western powers, which feared possible Soviet gains in the Balkans.28 The American law enforcement officials made it clear to Murphy that US foreign policy was intent on keeping the Western Balkans free of Soviet hegemony, which meant ending toleration of all Croatian nationalists, their proclaimed anti-communism notwithstanding.29 A more immediate concern for Murphy, meanwhile, was the imminent state visit of Yugoslav Prime Minister Dzemal Bijedi´c, who had been invited to Australia by the previous administration. In preparations for the visit, the Attorney-General ordered the Commonwealth Police to assess the security risk surrounding the Prime Minister’s visit. The response was alarming. The police had uncovered at least one definite organized plot by Croatian extremists to assassinate Bijedi´c and were following leads on several others. They also had reports of planned violence by individuals and small groups among the thousands of peaceful protestors expected to demonstrate against Bijedi´c’s visit. In the end, the Commonwealth Police informed the Attorney-General that it could make no guarantees for Bijedi´c’s physical safety while in Australia. Furthermore, Murphy discovered that ASIO was ignorant of both the planned assassination and the acts of violence, confirming his belief that ASIO, at the behest of the previous administration, had consciously ignored right-wing Croatian extremism for nearly two decades. Worse, Murphy became convinced that ASIO was deliberately trying to frustrate the new government’s policies toward both radical Croatian separatism and the country’s internal security service. Alone, either reality would have been cause for concern for the

27 The

most vocal proponent of this idea was the former Ustaša official Branko Jeli´c, founder of a more moderate West German Croatian separatist group called the Croatian National Committee (Hrvatski narodni odbor). As he wrote in Hrvatska Revija in 1970, “We have reached a situation in which the superpowers have reached a tacit agreement about their positions toward Europe. We in the Croatian diaspora must recognize this, and use it to our advantage. . .. Moscow wishes, in its own economic, political, and strategic interests, for a stable Europe. For this reason, the Soviets are not interested in disengagement, but rather negotiation. That such negotiations at times will prove dramatic cannot be doubted. We need to ensure, for our own future, that we are on the right side of those negotiations” (Jeli´c 1970). In Australia, the leading proponent of this idea was none other than Sreˇcko Rover, as ASIO had discovered as early as 1971. See: UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 1, Item 1, App. A.13. (Background brief by A.S.I.O. dated 2nd April, 1971 on Croatian National Resistance (H.N.O).). 28 As it turns out, these concerns were not entirely unfounded. In 1974, an important Czechoslovak defector, Major-General Jan Sejna, revealed a Warsaw Pact plan—dubbed Polarka—in which “fascist” elements would attack Yugoslavia from Austria, leading “loyal” Yugoslavs to appeal to Moscow for help in defeating the invasion. The fascist attack, however, would just be a pretext for the Soviet Army to invade and occupy both Yugoslavia and the eastern part of Austria. Sejna even suggested that the Bosnian incursion of 1972 was part of this plan. See Clissold (1979, 11). 29 This was not, however, the first time the American position had been made known to the Australian government. In July 1972, Australian Embassy staff in Washington met with State Department officials to discuss the issue of Croatian terrorism. UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 2, Item 5, App. B.26. (Copy memorandum from the Australian Embassy, Washington, to the Department of Foreign Affairs about the American government’s attitude on Yugoslavia).

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country’s top law officer. Together, in Murphy’s eyes at least, it was nothing short of scandalous. Murphy’s response to what he saw as ASIO’s politically motivated obstructionism was dramatic. In the early hours of March 16, Murphy raided the Canberra offices of ASIO, demanding to see all files the agency held on Croatians in Australia. Unsatisfied with what he found, Murphy decided to catch a pre-dawn flight to Melbourne for an early morning visit to the national headquarters of ASIO. To ensure that ASIO officials did not remove or destroy any files before his arrival, Murphy ordered Commonwealth Police to occupy ASIO and seal all safes, filing cabinets, and containers in the building. He also ordered them to keep all staff out of their offices and work spaces.30 In Melbourne, Murphy found a file which confirmed his suspicions. It contained a document, from an interdepartmental committee meeting on March 2, which suggested that ASIO had willfully withheld information from him concerning the activities of Croatian terrorists. The purpose of this, the document indicated, was to make certain that any future statements on Croatian extremism made by the Labor government “should not be at variance with those made by the previous government” (quoted in Hocking 2004, 42). Murphy also found that the files held by ASIO on Croatian terrorists were woefully lacking in practical information, suggesting either gross incompetence on the part of the agency or a clear political agenda. The political fall-out of the Murphy Raid—as the visits came to be known—was immediate. The Liberal Party attacked the Attorney-General, claiming that Murphy had not only thoroughly undermined the security agency, but in fact was trying to dismantle it. As one journalist close to ASIO and the Liberal Party wrote the day after the raids: “Police intelligence experts believe that yesterday’s examination of Australian Security Intelligence Organization files by Commonwealth Police officers have destroyed ASIO’s effectiveness. . .. Now that it was known that an outside force had been through the ASIO files its sources of information would probably dry up completely” (Canberra Times, March 17, 1973). This sentiment was taken a step further by the leader of the parliamentary opposition and former Attorney-General Billy Snedden, who stated explicitly that the intent of the raid was the abolishment of the security agency and proclaimed in parliament: “The government [is] trying to destroy ASIO and the first step toward destroying it was to discredit it” (quoted in Canberra Times, March 20, 1973). An editorial in the Liberal Partyfriendly Canberra Times, meanwhile, spelled out precisely what the implications of the Murphy Raid were for Australian society and politics: “Australia’s friends overseas will be thunderstruck at the awesome implications of the Attorney-General’s action in arranging Friday’s raids,” the editorial asserted. “Who will be pleased at Senator Murphy’s extraordinary actions? Every communist government, every right-wing extremist in the country, every foreign agent or spy, everyone with a past of improper political activity he would like to see expunged from official records” (Canberra Times, March 19, 1973).

30 For

an hour-by-hour description of Murphy’s raid on ASIO, see McKnight (1994, 267–271).

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In response, Murphy delivered a blistering attack on the previous government’s handling of Croatian extremism, particularly by his predecessor as AttorneyGeneral, Ivor Greenwood. In a ministerial statement delivered to parliament on March 27, Murphy repeatedly accused Greenwood and the Liberal Party of not only playing down the true nature of radical Croatian separatism in Australia but of in fact knowingly lying to parliament about the Croatian threat. “It is impossible to draw any other conclusion from the evidence,” Murphy asserted, “than that Senator Greenwood, on the most charitable view of his conduct, displayed an irresponsible indifference to information which was available to him and which proved up to the hilt the seriousness of the problem” of Croatian terrorism (Hansard, March 27, 1973, 531). This position, Murphy stressed, was symptomatic of the Liberal Party’s treatment of radical Croatian separatism from the moment it came into power in 1949. He continued: The long list of unsolved crimes of violence tells an eloquent story of the indifference of governments of 23 years’ duration to the “means” used by Croatian extremists to attain the goals [former Prime Minister] Menzies smiled on so benignly.31 The police have done their best with inadequate resources and no encouragement. They could hardly fail to draw the conclusion that successive Liberal government could not have cared less whether they succeeded or not in crushing Croatian terrorism. (Hansard, March 27, 1973, 536)

If this were not enough, Murphy accused Greenwood of deliberately deceiving not only parliament and the Australian public about Croatian extremism, but even ministers in his own party.32 For Murphy, there was no doubt that the Liberal Party had committed crimes in allowing Croatian radicals to act with the degree of impunity they had enjoyed: “The evidence I have already supplied [is] enough to convict the last government, through its Attorney-General, of misleading the Parliament and the nation, of deceiving a friendly foreign power, of imperiling the lives of Australian citizens by shutting its eyes to the evidence of organized terrorism . . .” (Hansard, March 27, 1973, 532–533). The issue, Murphy made clear, was that the previous administration had turned ASIO into a political tool of the Liberal Party. As such, the agency had no accountability to either the government or to the Australian people. It acted with impunity and operated outside the bounds of reasonable political liability. This situation, Murphy stated in no uncertain terms, had to end. Even with its status as a secret

31 See Menzies’ statement to the House of Representatives following the first incursion into Bosnia

in 1963. UMA (Fraser), 106-25 Box 1, Item 1, App. A.1. (The Menzies Statement of 27th August, 1964): Statement by the Prime Minister Robert Menzies in the House of Representatives entitled “Yugoslav Immigrant Organizations.” 32 Speaking about a case in which the then Attorney-General Ivor Greenwood lobbied to prevent the deportation of a known Croatian radical, Murphy declared, “in order to protect a terrorist from deportation, [Greenwood] misinformed the Minister for the issuance of a deportation order about the legal consequences for the terrorist of such an order. This is a serious charge but is supported by an earlier example of Senator Greenwood’s benign view of the rights of terrorists” (Hansard, March 27, 1973, 535).

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security organization, ASIO had to be instilled with some level of transparency and answerability. “The object,” Murphy declared, “ . . . is to see that ASIO keeps to its charter, to ensure that there is no abuse by the organization or individuals in it. There will be a report annually that I will make to parliament on the operation of ASIO and this will be a public document” (McKnight 1994, 260). Equally importantly, ASIO would be “reintegrated” into the larger apparatus of state security. Cooperation with both the Commonwealth Police and the executive government on issues which were a concern for all three bodies—such as Croatian terrorism—would become mandatory, as would the adoption of a common policy in dealing with such issues. This would all be part of a complete revamping of Australia’s internal security arrangement in order for the government to finally bring under control all forms of political violence in society—not just left-wing violence—and “cut out the cancer of terrorism from the body politic.” As Murphy stated bluntly and categorically: “toleration of terrorism in this country is over” (Hansard, March 27, 1973, 538).

4 Denouement The Murphy Raid marked the beginning of the end of ASIO as it had existed since the early 1950s. Shortly after the events of March 1973, Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam appointed Justice Robert Hope of the New South Wales Supreme Court to lead a Royal Commission into intelligence and security. The inquiry was meant to be a comprehensive examination of Australia’s security services, including their history, administrative structure and functions. Somewhat surprisingly, Hope’s final report, which was completed in 1977, actually recommended that the powers of ASIO be greatly expanded. He argued that the traditional Cold War counterespionage focus of ASIO had become outdated and that the agency had to shift its attention to other security threats such as sabotage, terrorism, and other “active measures” undertaken by foreign agents operating in Australia. At the same time, Hope made clear that ASIO had to be made formally accountable to both the government and the people of Australia. He recommended greater ministerial control of the agency as well as increased cooperation with domestic police and foreign intelligence services. Although the Commission’s findings certainly had their flaws (McKnight, 295–300), it also “was the first step on the long road to reforming and modernizing Australia’s security and intelligence services” (Aarons 2001, 437). Although the Commission shied away from recommending a complete overhaul of ASIO, the changes it demanded were substantial and fundamental. The ASIO of Menzies’s Liberal Party government was a thing of the past. Gough Whitlam’s Labor government, meanwhile, continued its offensive against Croatian terrorism in Australia. Radical émigré groups were closely monitored by both intelligence and law enforcement agencies and known Croatian separatists were repeatedly denied travel documents in order to disrupt international terrorist networks. By the mid-1970s, the number of bombings and other acts of violence committed by Croats had dropped precipitously, in large part due to governmental

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pressure on radical groups. In 1978, the Liberal Party government of Malcolm Fraser gave law enforcement agencies an additional tool in their fight against Croatian terrorism by passing the Foreign Incursions and Recruitment Crimes Act, which made it illegal to engage in any hostile activity in or against a foreign state. Just months after the act was passed, Commonwealth Police conducted two raids in which they arrested more than two dozen Croatian separatists and seized large caches of weapons and explosives. After protracted trials, one of the principal leaders of the HRB—Jure Mari´c—and six others were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.33 These convictions effectively marked the end of Croatian terrorist activities in Australia. After nearly three decades, the Australian government had finally brought Croatian separatism under control. It remains important to recognize, however, that the Australian state had never actually lost control of Croatian political violence, at least not in the traditional sense. Rather, a succession of governments—specifically those of the Liberal Party—tolerated Croatian violence through both indifference and political calculation. Only after the political landscape changed in Australia did the question of how to control the violence become an issue. This was not because the violence itself was of concern—although in part it certainly was—but rather because politically and ideologically it suited the plans of the new ALP administration. Whatever the reason, the ALP succeeded in politicizing the violence, thereby making control first necessary and then possible. Once it had done that, it was able to exert authority over the agency supposedly in charge of controlling violence— ASIO—which in turn allowed it to exert authority over the very political structure of the state. In this respect, the ALP’s control of violence had the same function of the Liberal Party’s ambivalence to violence: exercising power.

References Archives NAA(C)—National Archives of Australia (Canberra). PAAA—Politisches Archiv des Auswärtiges Amt (Political Archives of the Foreign Office, Berlin, Germany. UMA(Fraser)—University of Melbourne Archives, Malcolm Fraser Archives.

Newspapers, Media and Periodicals Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1991) “ Cloak & Dagger’: Croatian Six Conspiracy Case.” Four Corners [Television Program] (August 26). Canberra Times. Hansard (Parliamentary Debates, Commonwealth of Australia). Sydney Morning Herald. The Age. The Australian. 33 It was later revealed that the latter six Croatians had in fact been framed by an agent provocateur

of the Yugoslav secret service (Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1991).

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Published Materials Aarons, M. (2001). War Criminal Welcome: Australia, A Sanctuary for Fugitive War Criminal since 1945. Melbourne: Black. Aarons, M. and Loftus, J. (1991). Ratlines: How the Vatican’s Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets. London: Heinemann. Anderson, B. (1992). Long-Distance Nationalism: World Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics. Wertheim Lecture, CASA, University of Amsterdam. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large, Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Bock-Luna, B. (2007). The Past in Exile: Serbian Long-Distance Nationalism and Identity in the Wake of the Third Balkan War. Berlin: LIT Verlag. Brown, G. (2000). The diasporic challenge to identity: insights from the Australian-Croat experience. People and Place, 8(3), 68–73. Buši´c, J. (2000). Lovers and Madmen: A True Story of Passion, Politics, and Air Piracy. New York, NY: Writers Club Press. Cain, F. (1983). The Origins of Political Surveillance in Australia. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Cain, F. (1994). The Australian Security Intelligence Organization: An Unofficial History. Essex: Frank Cass and Co. Clissold, S. (1979). Croat separatism: nationalism, dissidence and terrorism. Conflict Studies, 103 (January), 1–21. Colic-Peisker, V. (2006). Ethnic’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ transnationalism: two cohorts of Croatian immigrants in Australia. Migracijske i etniˇcke teme, 22(3), 211–230. Colic-Peisker, V. (2008). Migration, Class, and Transnational Identities: Croatians in Australia and America. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Demmers, J. (2002). Diaspora and conflict: locality, long-distance nationalism, and delocalisation of conflict dynamics. The Public, 9(1), 85–96. Djuric, I. (2003). The Croatian diaspora in North America: identity, ethnic solidarity, and the formation of a transnational national community. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 17(1) (Fall), 113–130. Finnane, M. (2008). The public rhetorics of policing in times of war and violence: countering apocalyptic visions. Crime, Law and Social Change, 50(1–2) (September). Glick Schiller, N., Basch, L., and Szanton Blanc, C. (1995). From immigrant to transmigrant: theorizing transnational migration. Anthropological Quarterly, 68(1), 48–63. Hockenos, P. (2003). Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hocking, J. (1997). Lionel Murphy: A Political Biography. Melbourne, VIC: Cambridge University Press. Hocking, J. (2004). Terror Laws: ASIO, Counter-Terrorism and the Threat to Democracy. Sydney: UNSW Press. Hope, R. (1977). The Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security, Report 4, Vol. 2. Canberra: AGPS. Ivanovi´c, V. (2009). Ekstremna Emigracija u SR Nemaˇckoj i Jugoslavija. Istorija 20. Veka, 1, 139–147. Jeli´c, B. (1970). Hrvatska Revija, September. Jupp, J. (1988). Yugoslavs and Australian Politics. Politics, 23(2), 16–27. Kolendi´c, A. (1977). Iza jednog atentata (dokumentarna proza). Zagreb. Love, P. and Strangio, P. (2001). Arguing the Cold War. Carlton: RedRag. Lowe, D. (1999). Menzies and the “Great World Struggle”: Australia’s Cold War, 1948–1954. Sydney: UNSW. Lustgarten, L. and Leigh, I. (1994). In from the Cold: National Security and Parliamentary Democracy. Oxford: Clarendon.

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McKnight, D. (1994). Australia’s Spies and Their Secrets. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Morawska, E. (2003). Disciplinary agendas and analytic strategies of research on immigration and transnationalism: challenges of interdisciplinary knowledge. International Migration Review, 37(3), 611–640. Mursalo, T. A. (1981). In Search of a Better Life: A Story of Croatian Settlers in Southern Africa. Epping, Cape: Printpak. Pavlica, B. (1990). Antijugoslovenska aktivnost neprijateljske emigracije u SR Nemaˇckoj (1951–1984). Beograd. Portes, A. (2001). Introduction: the debates and significance of immigrant transnationalism. Global Networks, 1(3), 181–194. Procter, N. (1999). Serbian Australians in the Shadow of the Balkan War. Aldershot: Ashgate. Pryke, S. (2003). British Serbs and long distance nationalism. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 26(1). Schulte, A. (1985). Ausländer in der Bundesrepublik: Integration, Marginalisierung, Identität. Frankfurt am Main: Materialis-Verlag. Skrbiš, Z. (1999). Long-Distance Nationalism: Diasporas, Homelands and Identities. Aldershot: Ashgate. Skrbiš, Z. (2001). Nationalism in a transnational context: Croatian diaspora, intimacy and nationalist imagination. Sociological Review/Revija za Sociologiju, 133–145. Sopta, M. (1994). Unknown Journey: A History of Croatians in Canada. Downsview, Ontario: Polyphony. Toki´c, M. N. (2008). La violenza politica del separatismo croato nella Repubblica federale tedesca (1965–1980). Ricerche di Storia Politica, 11(3), 293–310. Toki´c, M. N. (2009). Landscapes of conflict: unity and disunity in post-world war II Croatian émigré separatism. European Review of History, 16(5), 739–743. Vertovec, S. (2003). Migration and other modes of transnationalism: towards conceptual crossfertilization. International Migration Review, 37(3), 641–665. Waldinger, R. and Fitzgerald, D. (2004). Transnationalism in question. The American Journal of Sociology, 109(5), 1177–1195. Winland, D. (2004). Croatian diaspora. In M. Ember, C. Ember, and I. Skoggard (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World. Volume I: Overviews and Topics (pp. 76–84). New York, NY: Springer. Winland, D. (2007). We are Now a Nation: Croats Between ‘Home’ and ‘Homeland’. Toronto: Toronto University Press.

Control of Terror—Terror of Control Jitka Maleˇcková

The character of terrorism is changing, any restraints that existed are disappearing, and, above all, the threat to human life has become infinitely greater than it was in the past. (Laqueur 1999, 7) Why has the new terrorism school of thought become so prevalent and so popular? We can first point to the emotional shock of the attacks of September 11th. It is tempting to attribute being caught off guard to the novelty of the threat rather than to lack of preparedness. At the same time, as a political fact of life, policy-makers tend to define any unforeseen threat as fundamentally new in order to call attention to it and to mobilize the support of the public for the government’s response. Furthermore the new terrorism model permits top-down processing of information. If policy-makers can rely on a set of simple assumptions about terrorism, they need not worry about a contradictory and confusing reality. The psychology of decision-making tells us that in the presence of incomplete and ambiguous information, policy-makers are prone to rely on prior cognitive assumptions. Doing so saves them time, energy, and stress. In the same vein, terrorism ‘experts’ might find it convenient not to have to take the time to study the long history of the phenomenon. (Crenshaw 2006, 55–56)

In the late 1990s, scholars started to speak about a “new wave of terrorism” (Rapoport 2004),1 “new breed of terrorist” (Stern 2000), or “new terrorism” tout court (Laqueur 1999; Simon and Benjamin 2000). After 9/11, policy makers and journalists took over the latter concept, emphasizing that we now face a completely J. Maleˇcková (B) Institute for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] 1 The “religious wave” emerged in 1979; although it shares some of the characteristics of the “new

terrorism,” Rapoport also points out continuities in methods, goals, and other characteristics of terrorists.

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new and unprecedented terrorist threat. According to this view, the character of terrorist organizations, their goals, methods, weapons, and targets, as well as individual terrorists and their motivation, have fundamentally changed. Today’s terrorists are believed to care less about political grievances and more about otherworldly rewards, particularly when it comes to Islam, which is usually associated with the new—religious, fundamentalist, “holy”—terrorism and hatred of “our way of life.” The new terrorism is considered more irrational and violent, and consequently less predictable and more dangerous than the terrorisms of the past (Hoffman 1998; Lesser et al. 1999; Laqueur 1999; Harmon 2000; Roy et al. 2000). Is the terrorist threat after 9/11 indeed substantially different from the threat posed by terrorism in the past? Is terrorism less foreseeable and controllable than it used to be? A number of studies argue both for the fundamental newness of the threat and for the continuity in terrorism. The claims are not based on comparisons that include successful and failed terrorist incidents, the characteristics of individual perpetrators and terrorist groups, and the perceptions of threat and control in the present and in earlier periods. A systematic comparison is impeded by a lack of information about terrorists and their acts in the past and missing data about the present, not to mention the varying definitions of terrorism or the changing classification criteria concerning available data. This chapter cannot replace a comparison based on systematic data. Instead, it looks at some of the often-quoted characteristics of the “new terrorism” from a historical perspective. It focuses on the characteristics of individual terrorists; the goals of terrorist organizations; and the predictability, control, and extent of the threat posed by terrorism. Using existing literature and pointing out data analyses that are usually not studied in this context, it asks whether available data support the hypothesis about the increasing loss of control.

1 Individual Terrorists In public perception, terrorists are poor and ignorant men, manipulated or irrational, if not outright psychotic. This is particularly the image of those carrying out suicide attacks, because people find it hard to understand that anybody might want to kill oneself in order to kill innocent victims. Also in scholarly literature the “new terrorists” are described as fanatics, suffering from mental problems, bent on vengeance and destruction (Laqueur 1999, 5). According to some scholars, all terrorism of the past was in fact suicide terrorism, as the likelihood of escaping alive was very low (Weinberg 2006). Others emphasize the specificity of current suicide terrorism when death is not only likely, but certain. In any case, the willingness to die in order to kill others has accompanied terrorism since its beginnings. The Russian anarchists chose the newly invented dynamite as their weapon because its use meant that they were likely to get killed, which distinguished them from criminals. As David Rapoport (2004, 50) notes, the “propaganda by the deed” attracted attention and respect precisely

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because “the rebel took action that involved serious personal risks that signified deep commitment.” When the public in various European countries in the late nineteenth century witnessed attacks on heads of states, middle-class citizens wondered how anarchists could reject their societies’ most sacred and established values and worried that the attacks were a sign of a beginning revolution (Coolsaet 2005, 22–23). Newspapers in Europe as well as the United States wrote about anarchists as “a gang of villains,” “mad dogs,” or fanatics.2 Although the occasional deranged individual could be found among the early anarchists, their acts, publications, and performance at trials suggest that generally, they had clear aims and followed rational plans (Crowder 1991). Psychologists agree that there is no one single terrorist personality and that terrorists are psychologically “normal.” Jerrold Post (2006, 18) asserts that terrorists are not clinically psychotic or depressed, severely emotionally disturbed or crazed fanatics, noting that terrorist groups weed out emotionally unstable individuals. Pakistani suicide bombers studied by Nasra Hassan (2006, 40) were described to her as courageous, resolute, and serious with no evidence of brainwashing, coercion, or psychological problems. Studies by Israeli psychologist Ariel Merari (2005, 75–76), who interviewed suicide bombers’ families, surviving attackers, and captured Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad recruiters, show that Palestinian suicide bombers represent their population’s normal distribution in terms of education, socioeconomic status, and personality type. The social status of terrorists—despite differences among various groups and countries—does not seem to change dramatically over time. According to Walter Laqueur (2001, 88), nineteenth-century terrorist groups had been poor, while more recently a differentiation occurred among terrorists with rich and powerful protectors on the one hand, and poor terrorist groups, on the other hand. This, however, concerns financing of terrorist groups, not the status of individual terrorists. For each Ravachol growing up in poverty there was an Emile Henry from a comfortable bourgeois family. The ideas of anarchism, including the “propaganda by the deed” motto, gained supporters among intellectuals and wealthy youth (Coolsaet 2005, 21). While certainly not all the social revolutionaries and anarchists of the nineteenth century belonged to the upper classes, few came from the poorest social strata and most had a better education than their average contemporaries. Members of Narodnaya Volya may not have been rich, but their social status was certainly higher than that of their poor and illiterate countrymen, recently liberated from serfdom. In the 1970s, Charles Russell and Bowman Miller (1977) compiled biographies of more than 350 members of 18 terrorist groups around the world, looking for similarities in their social origin, education, age, and family background. They found that more than two-thirds of the terrorists in the sample came from middle- or

2 During the trial following the Haymarket affair in 1886, the press called the anarchists “a gang of

villains” and “mad dogs.” On September 11, 1898, after the assassination of Empress Elisabeth, Czech newspaper Národní noviny wrote about the perpetrator as a fanatic.

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upper-class families, including families of doctors, lawyers, governmental employees, diplomats, clergymen, and police officers. The middle-class pattern prevailed even among Palestinians. The only exceptions were the ranks of the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army, who often came from lower classes. The vast majority of the terrorists were well-educated, two-thirds with at least a partial university education, most often in the humanities. Among the Palestinian leaders and cadres, most had middle-class backgrounds and some university education. Many terrorists were students, lawyers, economists, and medical doctors. Universities where students were exposed to anarchist and Marxist ideas were often recruiting grounds for terrorist membership. Some studies have suggested that today, terrorists are either poor or else they come from the middle classes only in the most affluent countries. In the Middle East, in particular, terrorists are claimed to be poor (Hudson 1999, 76–77). Jessica Stern (2003) is more careful in her formulations; nevertheless, she repeatedly writes about the connection between contemporary terrorism and poverty. A substantial body of recent research, including studies of social backgrounds of activists and cross-country data on the broader societal conditions influencing participation in terrorist acts, however, bring different results. In 2002 Alan Krueger and I conducted an analysis of the determinants of participation in the militant activities of Hizballah in Lebanon in the 1980s and early 1990s, which shows that the Hizballah fighters were more likely to have attended secondary school than members of the general Lebanese population. Although the gap is not statistically significant, the poverty rate was lower (28%) for members of the Hizballah military wing than for the rest of the population (33%). For a more relevant sample, based on the districts with a high proportion of Shiite Muslims from which Hizballah fighters were disproportionately recruited, the results indicate that poverty has a larger negative effect on the likelihood that somebody will join Hizballah (Krueger and Maleˇcková 2003). Other scholars who studied suicide attacks have come to the same conclusions. Among Pakistani suicide bombers studied by Nasra Hassan (2006, 38), 50% were middle- or lower-middle class, 30% were upper class or rich, and 20% were poor. According to Robert Pape (2006, 211–216), suicide terrorists are rarely socially isolated or economically destitute, but most often educated, socially integrated, and highly capable people who could have been expected to have a good future. More than half (54%) of the Arab suicide bombers in Pape’s sample had some postsecondary education and more than three quarters (76%) held working-class or middle-class jobs. Only 17%, compared to one-third of the general population in their societies, were unemployed or poor. Claude Berrebi (2003) compared data collected from biographies of members of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad from the 1980s and 1990s to population survey data and examined the link between participation in militant organizations and individuals’ income and education. His data set included information on 335 Palestinian militants. Only 16% of the members of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were characterized as poor—compared to 31% of the general Palestinian population. Berrebi’s analysis shows that both higher education and

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a higher standard of living are positively associated with participation in Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and with becoming a martyr. Of the 171 observations from which it can be determined whether or not the death was the result of a planned attack, 66 (39%) were suicide attacks. For this sample, the difference between the terrorists and the general Palestinian population (more specifically male Muslims) is even more significant: only 13% of suicide bombers (compared to 32% of the general population) were characterized as poor, while 54% (compared to 48% among the population) were considered average, 25% above average, and 8% rich. Fiftyfive percent of the suicide bombers (compared to 8% among the population) had some university education. The current wave of suicide terrorism is usually dated to the early 1980s. Some authors link it with earlier attacks, namely the Japanese kamikaze during World War II, although these attacks happened under considerably different circumstances (Hill 2005). Other scholars show that suicide terrorism is neither limited to nor explainable by Islam, bringing up the example of Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka or emphasizing other explanations for current suicide attacks (Holmes 2005; Hopgood 2005). Martha Crenshaw (2007) critically evaluated 13 books published on suicide terrorism between 2002 and 2006, showing the popularity of this topic in contemporary terrorism studies. Crenshaw mentions that it is no longer necessary to introduce an analysis of suicide attacks by explaining that suicide terrorism is not rooted in psychopathology or fanaticism or any single cause such as deprivation, religious belief, or frustration. She describes suicide terrorism as an adaptable and controllable tactic, which has an instrumental value for terrorist organizations, but whose popularity and effectiveness are limited. Based on these studies, Crenshaw estimates that the total number of suicide attacks worldwide since the 1980s is fewer than 1,500 while the number of terrorist incidents in the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base was more than 20,000. While these data are far from systematic, they nevertheless suggest that today, as in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, individual terrorists are neither poor nor ignorant compared to their compatriots and nor are they manipulated lunatics. Suicide bombers do not seem to substantially differ from other terrorists in these respects and suicide terrorism of the last couple of decades does not appear to bring a major break from the past.

2 Terrorist Organizations and Their Aims Scholars seeking to understand terrorism in its specific context point to different types of terrorism (nationalist-separatist, religious, left-wing, and right-wing, in one such classification); Rapoport (2004, 47) has identified four terrorist waves: (1) anarchist, (2) anti-colonial, (3) New Left, and (4) the current wave, religious. Scholars seeking a “root cause” of terrorism often look to social and economic conditions: even if poverty in itself is not a cause of terrorism, inequalities (relative deprivation) or rapid economic changes and marginalization resulting from globalization are breeding grounds for terrorist violence (Gurr 2006, 86–89). Particularly

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popular explanations of current terrorism are globalization and religion, which are argued to have superseded nationalism as leading causes of terrorism (Gotchev 2006; Bergesen and Han 2005). At the level of terrorist organizations, “new terrorism” is characterized by looser, geographically dispersed networks, which have replaced the former hierarchical and centralized groups. The new organizations are increasingly supranational and use developments in communication technology to switch from personal contact to mobile phones and to reach the audience through their websites. The new groups lack positive aims; if they come forward with any demands at all, these are vague and less possible to fulfill than in the past. Terrorist acts, it is often claimed, are not motivated by political considerations, but by religion, and spring from fanaticism and hatred (Laqueur 1999, 5; Sageman 2004, vii). Al-Qaida is the embodiment of the new terrorism. Marc Sageman brings particularly interesting insights into the organization, based on his study of 172 members of al-Qaida. He suggests that al-Qaida, as a part of the global Salafi Jihad, is “an emergent quality of the social networks formed by alienated young men who become transformed into fanatics yearning for martyrdom and eager to kill” (2004, vii). He shows that 70% of al-Qaida members in his sample joined the jihad in a country where they had not grown up and where they were as students, workers, refugees, or fighters, while another 14% were second-generation immigrants, often feeling excluded from the host society. Often they were lonely, not integrated into the community, and characterized by unfulfilled expectations. Sageman describes the process of joining the jihad, which he finds to be an essential factor in the formation of al-Qaida terrorists. He shows the example of the expatriate upper-middle-class young men who later became responsible for 9/11, emphasizing the lack of brainwashing and top-down recruitment and the relevance of networks of friendship, kinship, or discipleship that preceded formal involvement in a terrorist organization. Martha Crenshaw (2008, 34) argues that al-Qaida, characterized by the role of recruitment, networks of friends, small semi-independent cells, and inspiration by the deed, does not substantially differ from earlier militant groups. Robert Art and Louise Richardson (2007, 581) also conclude that while none of the groups analyzed by authors represented in the volume they edited is an exact parallel to al-Qaida, many of the groups share some features with it. A look at the previous periods of strong terrorist activity shows interesting parallels with the present and suggests at least some continuity in the history of terrorism. Like the late twentieth century, the late nineteenth century was a time of intense globalization, affecting the international character of terrorism of that period. This was represented, for example, by the idea of the Anarchist or Black International envisaged to coordinate a global terrorist campaign to overthrow existing governments. Other similarities with earlier periods include the progress of technology and changes in communication and transportation or the important role of diasporas. The telegraph and newspapers helped to inform the public about terrorist events very quickly and played a role similar to radio or television today. Railroads, and later the spread of air travel, enabled terrorists to move, collaborate, and inspire

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followers abroad. Russian anarchists, writes Rapoport (2004, 51), encouraged and trained other groups, even those with different political aims, just as al-Qaida provided funding, training, and sometimes weapons to various local terrorist networks (Sageman 2004, 41). Rapoport (2004, 52) also gives the example of the Terrorist Brigade: in 1905, it had its headquarters in Switzerland, launched strikes from Finland, got weapons from an Armenian terrorist group the Russian anarchists helped train, and was offered (and rejected) funds by the Japanese to be laundered through American millionaires. According to Rik Coolsaet (2005, vii), “[t]he particular brand of terrorism we witness today is bred by marginalization—as was the case in the past with its similar waves of terrorism. This terrorism is a symptom of a society gone awry. When a world changes too rapidly in too many dimensions at once, it makes—rightly or wrongly—large groups of people, nations, or countries feel excluded. And it is precisely this which constitutes the breeding ground for small extremist splinter groups searching for a way to justify their acts of terror.” Pape (2006, 4 and 79), who compiled and analyzed a database of suicide bombings and attacks around the world from 1980 to 2003, argues that suicide terrorism results from nationalism—the belief among members of a community that they share a distinct set of ethnic, linguistic, and historical characteristics and are entitled to govern their national homeland without interference from foreigners. Suicide terrorists, Pape states, share a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. It may be worth noting, however, that Pape’s data set ends in 2003, which may somewhat affect the results. In the last few years, the situation has changed; various Islamic groups now tend to use suicide attacks against prowestern moderate Islamic regimes in order to replace them with extreme Islamic ones (Pedahzur and Perliger 2006, 3). Farhad Khosrokhavar (2005, 109–138) attributes suicide terrorism in Palestine, Iran, and Lebanon to unfulfilled or disappointed national ambitions, with Islam harnessed for the Palestinian nation building. He mentions various aspects of Palestinians’ lives that could contribute to the appeal of militancy and terrorism (or “martyrdom”), from humiliation, feeling of inferiority and powerlessness, and search for personal dignity in fighting the stronger enemy, to experiences with Israeli violence and time spent in prison, to boredom due to high unemployment and restriction on movement, or disappointment from the Palestinian Authority and the example of other martyrs. A similar continuity can be found in the goals of terrorist groups. Religion as a motive is certainly not new; it has been central to terrorist campaigns since the nineteenth century, often in combination with national demands, as in the case of the Armenian or Irish struggles. Nasra Hassan shows a mix of religious and nationalist motivations among various Muslim groups. Whereas nationalist groups in Muslim countries “refer to freedom and fighting occupation, many Palestinian and Iraqi nationalists used Islamic terminology in their last will and testament. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Al-Qaeda affiliates in the Middle East have begun to insert homeland reasons in theirs. Suicide

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jihadis in Pakistan and, increasingly, in Iraq set their reasoning in sectarian terms and in the wider context of the Muslim umma (nation)” (2006, 30). Historically, no religion has had a monopoly on terrorism—not only have terrorist acts been committed by Jewish extremists, Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus, but in the period since World War II, Muslim countries have not been more likely to produce terrorists than other regions and religions (Krueger and Maleˇcková 2003). Muslims also do not have a monopoly on suicide bombing (Hill 2005; Hopgood 2005; Weinberg 2006). The recent increase in “Muslim terrorism” has been driven primarily by the large number of deaths in Iraq. This particular case brings about the question of whether the motivation is Islam and hatred of western values, or rather resistance to foreign invasion. One should also note that most terrorism is local, and while often targeting foreign citizens, military bases, or religious sites, the majority of the victims are among the local, i.e., Muslim, population.3 Stephen Holmes challenges the claim about religious motivation behind the attacks of September 11, both on the part of Osama bin Laden and those who hijacked the four planes in September 2001. Holmes argues that while those responsible for 9/11 may articulate their grievances in religious language, their acts are not necessarily motivated by Islamic fundamentalism. “Does Osama bin Laden want to eject the United States from Saudi Arabia because its troops were desecrating sacred soil, or is he aggrieved, like any anti-colonialist or nationalist insurgent, that the United States is plundering his country’s natural resources?” (2005, 133). The analyses of current terrorist attacks and statements of terrorist leaders suggest that while their aims may be more general and less realizable than freeing imprisoned comrades, terrorist groups have goals in mind that are political and often connect global and local with religious and nationalist demands. While we need a more systematic comparison of the demands of various groups, we have at least some anecdotal evidence in support of this view.

3 Predictability and Control The new terrorism is considered unpredictable and random and thus increasingly difficult to suppress. But is it really more unpredictable than it used to be? Is it less possible to control terrorism today than it was in the past? Whether we accept the concept of waves of terrorism or believe that terrorists are influenced by fashion, it is clear that in certain periods, terrorists’ methods and

3 “A conservative estimate puts the number of Muslim victims since the start of the wave of islamist

terrorism in the early 90 s at some 175,000 compared to some 4000 Western victims. This pattern has not altered since. The attacks in Casablanca in May 2003, in Muhaya (Riyadh) and in Istanbul in November 2003 and others, sadly confirm that Muslims are the ones to suffer the most under these attacks: intellectuals, civil servants, ordinary citizens, security agents in Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The year 2004 saw once again a marked increase in attacks against local targets in Muslim countries—a chilling reminder of the 1990s pattern” (Coolsaet 2005, 9).

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targets bear strong similarities. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there were assassinations of heads of states, in the 1970s kidnappings and hijackings, and in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries suicide bombings. Terrorists clearly choose the objects and means that are most likely to contribute to the achievement of their goals and affect the target audience. In autocratic regimes or traditional monarchies, it may make more sense to kill the king or prime minister. In democracies, terrorists want to affect the masses who can vote and influence the state’s policies, and therefore their victims are mostly common people with whom we can all identify. In each period, certain methods, targets, and times when violent acts are committed predominate. For example, Nasra Hassan (2006) shows that the perpetrators make a deliberate effort to choose optimal locations and timing. Describing suicide operations in Pakistan, she mentions that half of the suicide attacks have been in or near a place of worship, and that when the exact timing does not depend on the movement of the target, Lashkar e Jhangvi prefers to time a suicide operation to catch the evening news and the press deadline. Analyzing data from the National Counterterrorism Center, Alan Krueger (2007, 135) found that terrorists are most likely to strike in the morning hours, in time to enter the day’s news cycle. Other scholars have shown the connection between terrorist campaigns and elections in Israel. According to Claude Berrebi and Esteban Klor (2006), terrorists intending to sabotage the peace process strike more often when left-wing governments are in power, making the Israelis vote for hard-liners and against reconciliation. To the witnesses, terrorist attacks have always seemed as random as they do today. When the Austro-Hungarian Empress Elisabeth, “Sissi,” was murdered in Geneva in 1898, the press and public wondered why anybody would want to kill such a popular figure. The attacker, who declared himself an anarchist, confessed that he had intended to kill a member of a royal family and happened to learn about Sissi’s visit.4 While terrorism is not predictable, it is possible to discern certain patterns. More and less likely targets and times of terrorist attacks might be estimated. However, any such estimates will be time- and context-specific, as militants are likely to change their targets and develop new ways if the pattern of their activity is discovered. This is at least what we can expect based on past experiences. How many terrorist attacks are intercepted? There is no evidence suggesting that the ratio of unsuccessful to successful terrorist attempts has decreased in recent years. Some evidence suggests that control works. Interestingly, many of the recent home-bred terrorist cells in the United States (such as the Prison Islam group in California, the Buffalo Cell, the Miami 7, the Toledo group, the Virginia Jihad network, the Houston Taliban Jihad, the Fort Dix plot, or the alleged threat to the New York subway in 2009) have been discovered before being able to carry out attacks. It is highly unlikely that security agencies will share with the public the information on which of their strategies tend to work. However, some interesting theories have been put forward concerning the reasons why terrorist attempts fail. Gary

4 See

Národní listy, September 12, 1898, p. 1.

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Becker (2005) suggested that terrorists with lower education and economic status are more likely to fail in their suicide missions. “Recruits with good economic opportunities would only be willing to undertake suicide missions that have a relatively high likelihood of destroying some enemies too. For they would not be willing to go on missions that have little chance of succeeding since they would then prefer safer terrorist activities, or doing well economically while working peacefully. In this case, relatively highly educated terrorists will be sent on missions that are more likely to succeed in destroying their enemies as well as themselves. . . . The education of captured bombers would be less than the education of all bombers since low educated individuals, such as the many teenagers sent on suicide efforts to Israel, would go on missions with smaller chances of succeeding.”

Claude Berrebi and Efraim Benmelech (2007) tested this theory on a sample of Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel. Based on the Palestinian terrorist organizations’ websites as well as the Israeli Security Agency reports data, Berrebi and Benmelech created a database of all suicide attacks by Palestinians against Israeli targets in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza strip between September 2000 and August 2005. The database includes information on 148 suicide bombers, out of whom 42 were caught and 106 uncaught. The authors show that the caught suicide bombers are on average younger and significantly less educated. Suicide bombers who went beyond high school education are between 15 and 16% points less likely to be caught. Failure is not easy to define; not all the members of militant groups who were captured would have committed terrorist acts. Knowing that 72% of suicide bombers succeeded is not reassuring. But the number should be compared to other types of terrorist acts, which are much more widespread than suicide bombings. We would also need to have information on the successfully prevented incidents in the past before we could make any conclusions about a decrease in control of terrorism.

4 Threat and Response Pointing out similarities between terrorism today and in the past should not imply that terrorism has not changed. Al-Qaida differs from earlier terrorist organizations as well as from its contemporaries. Terrorist groups have used developments in technology to inform their choice of weapons and in particular have exploited the Internet to communicate and recruit and to increase their impact. The role of the media is considered essential for the current impact of terrorism: terrorists figure into their planning media coverage, which affects audiences around the world immediately and which helps shape our response to terrorism. Governments can use the media to deliberately misinform the public in order to prevent a divulgence of a counterterrorist operation or to avoid panic in case of a terrorist attack. The public puts pressure on politicians to act and on the media to inform in detail about threats. Taking the terrorist threat as a pretext, politicians may use the media to help further their personal and political goals. As Darren

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Davis (2007, 8–9) notes, studies on the mass media after 9/11 show that media tended to promote the preferences of political authorities in the Bush administration. Television mediated the terrorist threat, affecting the political preferences and attitudes of the public. Media can also contribute to the spread of fear. According to some scholars, western societies have been periodically affected by similar fears since the late nineteenth century: “We cannot underrate to what extent the world of that era lived under the spell of terrorism. With each new case of violence the citizens’ anxiety about the explosive powers in the lower ranks of society grew and the fear of anarchism led to hysterical fits among the public” (Coolsaet 2005, 23). Others believe that we are more afraid than in the past, which may in turn increase the risk of terrorist attacks. It is difficult to compare past and present fear, but possible to compare the threat from terrorism with other threats. Analyzing the change in the nature of collective violence in the second-half of the twentieth century, reflected in America’s “new war” on terror, Charles Tilly (2002, 21–24) put terrorism in the context of, on the one hand, nonviolent politics and, on the other hand, other forms of violence. Violence and terror have maintained close affinities with traditional political struggle, he asserts. Like conventional war, they represent the conduct of politics “by other means.” Tilly points out that about 100 million people were killed in the twentieth century as a direct result of action by organized military units backed by a government, which means that one million people were killed per year. In September 2007, the Global Terrorism Database of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) included 68,986 incidents that occurred between 1970 and 1997 (except for 1993): 132,269 people were killed as a result of these terrorist attacks. That means 4,899 people per year. The list is hardly comprehensive, but indicates that the number of victims of terrorism is small compared to those who died directly in wars.5 Alan Krueger (2007, 138–139) points out other statistics: While the risk for an American of dying in a car accident in 2005 was 1 in 6,700, the risk of dying in a terrorist attack was 1 in 5 million. The risk of dying from one’s own suicide is more than 500 times greater than the risk of dying in any kind of terrorist attack, and more than 2,000 times greater than the risk of dying in a suicide bomb attack. These numbers suggest that neither today nor throughout the twentieth century has terrorism presented a major threat to our lives or to western “civilization.” One may ask why then we are more afraid of terrorism than of more imminent dangers, and why we are ready to give up so much, including our liberties, for the illusion that we are more protected against it. Cass Sunstein (2005) explains this attitude by “availability heuristic” and “probability neglect.” He argues that human cognition and social influences make certain hazards stand out; people tend to be more worried when the danger of a situation

5 See http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/ for the explanation of the changes in numbers as the data have

been corrected.

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comes readily to mind than they are when the danger is more abstract. Through probability neglect, intense emotions—like fear—lead people to focus on worst-case scenarios and disregard the probability that they will occur (Sunstein 2005, 224– 225). States tend to exaggerate the dangers they face: threat inflation is a common feature of international politics (Cramer and Thrall 2009). This could in turn affect political choices of individuals, groups, and states and result in steps that restrict certain liberties or certain groups’ liberties, while creating an (often unjustified) impression of increasing control and safety. The terrorist threat is real and may increase in the future, especially in connection with weapons of mass destruction. However, it is questionable whether living in a society able to prevent most terrorist attacks is a worthwhile alternative. Autocracies are not immune to terrorist violence, but the ability to control and prevent terrorism arguably comes at the expense of freedom and liberties. Before a society decides to give up its civil rights it would be useful to know whether the repressions do indeed prevent or substantially limit the occurrence of terrorist acts, and what the trade-off is between civil liberties and control. Given that we lack (often classified) data for such an analysis, comparisons of counterterrorist policies in countries that have had experience with fighting terrorism and responses to terrorist threats in the past may be of interest in this respect. One of the purposes of terrorist acts is to cause an overreaction on the part of the state in order to turn public opinion against the state and in favor of the persecuted terrorists. During the anarchist attacks of the 1890s, for example, European governments introduced repressive legislation, including the ban on anarchist publications and the expulsion of foreigners connected with anarchism, criminalizing “suspicious” associations—measures that could also be used against any political opponents. In a volume devoted to responses to perceived threats to national security in American history, Dan Farber (2008) asks whether, when restrictions on civil liberties based on national security are corrected after the crisis passes, the backlash against repression can actually strengthen civil liberties in the long run, or whether the executive and legislative branches’ overreaction to perceived threats leave permanent scars on constitutional freedom. He argues that civil liberties and national security have been in tension since the foundation of the United States. In crises, regardless of their political allegiances presidents have focused almost exclusively on national security and neglected civil liberties. Farber also notes, though, that recent history since Vietnam leaves space for optimism because the support of the courts, the press, and the public for unilateral presidential action has decreased. Stephen Holmes (2008, 225–227) in the same volume argues that the Bush administration’s restrictions of human rights and civil liberties as well as its unprecedented emphasis on secrecy were counterproductive in the fight against terrorism. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia in February 2009, Stella Rimington, head of MI5 from 1992 to 1996, criticized the governments of Great Britain and the United States for exploiting public fear of terrorism to restrict civil liberties. “The US has gone too far with Guantanamo and the tortures. MI5 does not do that. Furthermore it has achieved the opposite effect: there are more

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and more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification” (Sengupta 2009). The report of the International Commission of Jurists from February 2009 finds many of the security measures introduced after 9/11 both illegal and counterproductive. The report also warns that the “war on terror” is repeating the mistakes made by the British in Northern Ireland. It points out how the failed detention policies in Northern Ireland led many young men to join the IRA, and asks what impact the sight of the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib may have on young Muslims (Sengupta 2009). The concrete antiterrorist provisions adopted by European countries after 9/11 differ, but antiterrorism legislation was chosen particularly by countries that had previous experiences with terrorism and/or some connection to the attacks of 9/11. Other countries, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Sweden, then chose not to adopt counterterrorist legislation and instead to treat terrorist incidents under criminal law as ordinary criminal offenses. This natural experiment could help us evaluate which legislation works better to prevent terrorism.

5 Conclusion The scholarly community is divided regarding the character of current terrorism, the threat it poses, and its impact on the perception of an increasing loss of control. The opposing views of terrorism experts are embodied in the works of two classics of terrorism studies, Walter Laqueur and Martha Crenshaw. While in his earlier works, Laqueur had shown the continuity of terrorism and the lessons drawn from the past, more recently he has started to warn against the imminent dangers brought by new developments in terrorism. Other proponents of “new terrorism” among scholars do not see the situation in such a bleak way. Jessica Stern, for example, writes, “[t]he bad news is that most constraints against terrorists’ use of weapons of mass destruction are eroding, and that the United States is particularly vulnerable. The good news is that there is much that can be done—and much that is already being done—to minimize the threat” (2000, 128). In the opposing camp, Martha Crenshaw (2006, 56) emphasizes the continuity of terrorism and shows the political conditionality, rather than cognitive value of the “new terrorism” concept. Crenshaw points out the policy implications of the concept: if terrorists are fanatics or madmen without clear political goals, there is no point in trying to address the general pleas that might inspire them (and their compatriots and supporters) and to try to distinguish between the extremist and moderate camps in the terrorist groups. It also means that past experiences with terrorists, counterterrorism, and seeking control are irrelevant to the current situation. Based on a comparison of 14 case studies, analyzing counterterrorism in the last 40 years, Robert Art and Louise Richardson (2007, 581) argue that there are similarities between terrorism today and in the past and that we can learn from the experience of earlier counterterrorism even when dealing with al-Qaida and the

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international jihadist network. Not only does al-Qaida share some characteristics with the terrorist groups that preceded it, but as a terrorist organization it has to perform similar tasks, recruiting volunteers, operating under conditions of uncertainty while moving from place to place, and ensuring its financial and organizational survival. That makes the new terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, susceptible to the counterterrorism techniques used by governments in the past. It is not possible to control every individual act of terrorism. But we have enough evidence to show that terrorists are not lunatics, striking anybody anywhere without reason. There is a logic and pattern behind their attacks. We need to know more about these patterns so that we can control them better. There is no doubt that terrorists will respond by changing their tactics. But the available data and existing research do not support the view that, compared to the past, our control is decreasing.

References Art, R. J. and Richardson, L. (2007). Conclusion. In R. J. Art and L. Richardson (Eds.), Democracy and Counterterrorism: Lessons from the Past (pp. 563–601). Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press. Becker, G. (2005). Terrorism and poverty: any connection? The Becker-Posner Blog. Available at http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2005/05/terrorism_and_p_1.html. Cited 9 September 2007. Bergesen, A. J. and Han, Y. (2005). New directions for terrorism research. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 46(1–2), 133–151. Berrebi, C. (2003). Evidence about the link between education, poverty and terrorism among Palestinians. Princeton University Industrial Relations Section Working Paper No. 477. Berrebi, C. and Benmelech, E. (2007). Attack Assignments in Terror Organizations and the Productivity of Suicide Bombers. NBER Working Paper No. 12910. Berrebi, C. and Klor, E. (2006). On terrorism and electoral outcomes: theory and evidence from the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50(6), 899–925. Coolsaet, R. (2005). Al-Qaeda: The Myth. The Root Causes of International Terrorism and How to Tackle Them. Gent: Academia (Translated by Erika Peeters). Cramer, J. K. and Thrall, A. T. (2009). Introduction: understanding threat inflation. In A. T. Thrall and J. K. Cramer (Eds.), American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear: Threat Inflation Since 9/11 (pp. 1–15). London and New York, NY: Routledge. Crenshaw, M. (2006). Have motivations for terrorism changed? In J. Victoroff (Ed.), Tangled Roots: Social and Psychological Factors in the Genesis of Terrorism (pp. 51–57). Amsterdam: IOS. Crenshaw, M. (2007). Explaining suicide terrorism: a review essay. Security Studies, 16(1), 133–162. Crenshaw, M. (2008). ‘New’ vs. ‘old’ terrorism: a critical appraisal. In R. Coolsaet (Ed.), Jihadi Terrorism and the Radicalisation Challenge in Europe (pp. 25–36). Hampshire, Burlington: Ashgate. Crowder, G. (1991). Classical Anarchism: The Political Thought of Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin. Oxford: Clarendon. Davis, D. W. (2007). Negative Liberty: Public Opinion and the Terrorist Attacks on America. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Farber, D. (2008). Introduction. In D. Farber (Ed.), Security v. Liberty: Conflicts Between Civil Liberties and National Security in American History (pp. 1–23). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

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Gotchev, A. (2006). Terrorism and globalization. In L. Richardson (Ed.), The Roots of Terrorism (pp. 103–115). New York, NY: Routledge. Gurr, T. R. (2006). Economic factors. In L. Richardson (Ed.), The Roots of Terrorism (pp. 85–101). New York, NY: Routledge. Harmon, C. C. (2000). Terrorism Today. London: Frank Cass. Hassan, N. (2006). Suicide terrorism. In L. Richardson (Ed.), The Roots of Terrorism (pp. 29–42). New York, NY: Routledge. Hill, P. (2005). Kamikaze, 1943–5. In D. Gambetta (Ed.), Making Sense of Suicide Missions (pp. 1–42). Oxford, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hoffman, B. (1998). Inside Terrorism. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Holmes, S. (2005). Al-Qaeda, September 11, 2001. In D. Gambetta (Ed.), Making Sense of Suicide Missions (pp. 131–172). Oxford, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Holmes, S. (2008). Conclusion. In D. Farber (Ed.), Security v. Liberty: Conflicts Between Civil Liberties and National Security in American History (pp. 208–227). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Hopgood, S. (2005). Tamil Tigers, 1987–2002. In D. Gambetta (Ed.), Making Sense of Suicide Missions (pp. 43–76). Oxford, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hudson, R. A. (1999). Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why: The 1999 Government Report on Profiling Terrorists. Guilford: The Lyons. Khosrokhavar, F. (2005). Suicide Bombers: Allah’s New Martyrs. London and Ann Arbor: Pluto. Krueger, A. B. (2007). What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism. Princeton, NJ, Oxford: Princeton University Press. Krueger, A. B. and Maleˇcková, J. (2003). Education, poverty and terrorism: is there a causal connection? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17(4), 119–144. Laqueur, W. (1999). The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction. Oxford, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Laqueur, W (2001). A History of Terrorism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Lesser, I. O., Hoffman, B., Arquilla, J., Ronfeldt, D., and Zanini, M. (1999). Countering the New Terrorism. Santa Monica: RAND. Merari, A. (2005). Social, organizational and psychological factors in suicide terrorism. In T. Bjørgo. (Ed.), Root Causes of Terrorism. Myths, Reality and Ways Forward (pp. 70–86). London, New York, NY: Routledge. Pape, R. A. (2006). Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. New York, NY: Random House. Pedahzur, A. and Perliger, A. (2006). Introduction: characteristics of suicide attacks. In A. Pedahzur (Ed.), Root Causes of Suicide Terrorism. The Globalization of Martyrdom (pp. 1–12). London, New York, NY: Routledge. Post, J. (2006). The psychological dynamics of terrorism. In L. Richardson (Ed.), The Roots of Terrorism (pp. 17–28). New York, NY: Routledge. Rapoport, D. C. (2004). The four waves of modern terrorism. In A. K. Cronin and J. M. Ludes (Eds.), Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy (pp. 46–73). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Roy, O., Hoffman, B., Paz, R., Simon, S., and Benjamin, D. (2000). America and the new terrorism: an exchange. Survival, 42(2), 156–172. Russell, C. A. and Miller, B. H. (1977). Profile of a terrorist. Terrorism: An International Journal, 1(1), 17–34. Sageman, M. (2004). Understanding Terror Networks. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sengupta, K. (2009). Terrorist threat ‘exploited to curb civil liberties’: security measures brought in after September 11 attacks ‘undermined the rule of law’. The Independent, Tuesday, 17 September. Simon, S. and Benjamin, D. (2000). America and the new terrorism. Survival, 42(1), 59–75. Stern, J. (2000). The Ultimate Terrorists. Cambridge, MA, London: Harvard University Press.

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Stern, J. (2003). Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. New York, NY: Harper Collins. Sunstein, C. R. (2005). Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, C. (2002). Violence, terror, and politics as usual: America’s “new war” reflects an epochal change in the nature of collective violence. Boston Review, 27(3–4), 21–24. Weinberg, L. (2006). Suicide terrorism for secular causes. In A. Pedahzur (Ed.), Root Causes of Suicide Terrorism. The Globalization of Martyrdom (pp. 108–121). London, New York, NY: Routledge.

Terrorism: Conditions and Limits of Control Friedhelm Neidhardt

Decades of dealing with terrorism have shown us how difficult it is to defeat. The problems of tackling it stem—as do the possibilities for countering it—from the general and specific features of terrorist activity. This becomes very clear when we analyze terrorism using approaches based on interaction theory and reference group theory. By its very purpose terrorist activity is designed for interaction. Terrorists engage in violence to provoke an adversary into a response that will benefit their own ends. This raises the kind of imponderables that characterize all social relations, because although the other side’s responses can be influenced they cannot be fixed. The already uncertain nature of all interaction is made more uncertain still by the particularities of terrorist activity. Terrorism is an exceptional activity that violates the taboo on violence, thus disrupting the existing order. An important point here is that terrorist violence occurs in asymmetrical conflict constellations. Terrorist movements “impose an oppositional force against what is perceived to be political, economic or ideological constraints enforced by hegemonic groups” (Boyes and Ballard 2004, 13). Since terrorism always constitutes an attack by the weak against a ruling power perceived to be stronger, terrorist groups and activities tend to be clandestine and the conflict they engender cannot be institutionalized. This means that for all sides involved, the terrorist conflict is a highly unpredictable field of operations and hence full of surprises. This already complex situation is further exacerbated by the self-willed reference groups we find behind the immediate warring parties, which are of key strategic significance for the actors’ prospects of political success. On both sides the expectations of supporters and sympathizers define incentives and restrict conditions. Furthermore, both sides compete for the attention and favor of the widest possible audience, which derives its information and forms its opinions through internationally operating mass media (Neidhardt 2006). If we understand control as having effective power over the conditions for achieving an objective, then the special nature of the fields in which terrorist and F. Neidhardt (B) Social Science Research Center, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] W. Heitmeyer et al. (eds.), Control of Violence, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0383-9_18,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

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anti-terrorist actors operate, together with their frame of reference, makes the risks greater than average and the outcomes of conflict difficult to predict. Nevertheless, as we will show in the following, the likelihood of success—for either side—is not completely indeterminable.

1 Provocation and Reaction If we are to understand terrorism, we must define it as a product of interaction whose genesis and development have been influenced by many different actors. What is more, its history has generally also been advanced by those who later fight it, and once it has come into being it is influenced as much by its adversaries as by its own manifesto. In order to identify the conditions under which counter-terrorism operates—for that is the perspective on which we focus here—it will be useful to begin our analysis by looking at the provocative aspect that distinguishes terrorism from other forms of opposition, namely, the terrorist attack, and to understand the strategy that makes the attack the central tactic of terrorism. Criminal acts in which property is damaged or people are injured or killed become terrorism when they are perceived and justified in political terms. They are understood as “violent assaults on the political order from the underground”; what is special about them is that they are “not primarily about the destructive effect of violence per se” but represent a “kind of signal” (Waldmann 2003, 38). Attacks are designed to demonstrate that violent opposition is possible (“propaganda of the deed”), and their aftermath is supposed to trigger discreditable reactions by the holders of power, who must demonstrate that they are the guardians of order. The question is whether and under what conditions the militant tactic of terrorist attacks can achieve the political strategy of undermining an apparently all-powerful system of rule. David Fromkin, in an often-cited argument, gives terrorism little prospect of success: “The decisive weakness of terrorism as a strategy is that its opponents have the choice. . .. If one chooses to respond not at all, or in a way other than the one they wish for, they will not succeed in their aims” (1977, 98). This thesis is, if not simply trivial, at least questionable, for we may counter by saying that under pressure from terrorism the options open to those in power can be severely curtailed. Above all, power cannot fail to respond. And when it does, it is difficult for it to respond appropriately. Those attacked by terrorism, generally systems of state power, are obliged to respond for several reasons. (1) Unlike ordinary criminals, terrorists believe their violence is justified and right. That is what makes it political. Terrorism is provocative not simply because it uses violence, but because it claims to possess some higher authority to do so. This violates the prerogative on which— more than any other—modern states base their system of order, namely, their sole right to suspend the general taboo on violence for particular purposes. So terrorist attacks unleash a legitimacy problem that touches the very identity of modern statehood. This explains why state actors are so enormously sensitive

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about terrorism. They cannot do nothing without losing the nimbus of their special status. (2) The existence of the mass media makes it especially difficult for the state not to respond because, in line with the media motto “if it bleeds it leads,” terrorist attacks possess exceptional news and entertainment value. This means that the state does not have the option of keeping the lid on terrorist provocations until they run out of steam. The death and injury of innocent victims arouses widespread public scandal, while the twilight underworld glimpsed in the background lends the drama a special fascination. The media profit from this, and it comes to the emergence of “a symbiotic relationship between terrorism and the media” (Hoffman 2003, 179). Without the media terrorists would be unable to wreak terror, terrorism would be impotent. For its real impact is not the immediate destruction caused by attacks; terrorism is too weak to defeat its adversary militarily. Terrorism functions by spreading fear and dread, for which it needs the media. And the media have their own interest in serving its “strategy of communicative violence” (Waldmann 2003, 18, 38 ff.). (3) If we were to quantify the risk of being personally affected by a terrorist attack following the scientific practice of defining a risk as the product of the probability of an event occurring and the extent of the harm caused the level of public concern ought to be very low indeed. The risk of becoming a victim of terrorists while traveling by air or rail is very much smaller than the statistical likelihood of being injured or killed in a road accident or by someone we know in our own home. Nonetheless, terrorist attacks are exceptionally effective in generating fear. Eurobarometer surveys conducted in the 2 months following the attacks of September 11, 2001, for example, showed that at the peak of the fear 86% of EU citizens were afraid of terrorism (European Commission 2002). This can be explained in terms of sociological risk research, according to which the population’s understanding of risk encompasses more variables than those that flow into the statistical concept of risk; namely, also the unacceptability of the harm, the predictability of its occurrence, and the ability of those affected to control the outcome themselves (Jungermann and Slovic 1993, 167–207; Kasperson et al. 2003, 13–46). Where the frame of reference is expanded to such an extent even sporadic attacks in far-off places can be perceived as subjective threats. The terrorist tactic of deliberately factoring in the space/time contingency of the attack and the unpredictability of the victims plays on that perception: nobody should know for sure when, where, and against whom the next attack will be. Under these circumstances no modern state can afford to fail to respond to a terrorist provocation. It cannot allow its monopoly of legitimate violence—on which its nimbus is based—to be destroyed; and the greater the extent to which a democracy depends on the loyalty of its citizens, the less it can afford to neglect their elementary security needs. Where a state feels no obligation to provide such security—or a “failing state” is simply unable to do so—there is in extremis every likelihood of the kind of violent unrest whose militant excesses have been seen in countries like Colombia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Indonesia, as well as a range of African states such as Somalia, Congo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia (Schneckener 2004, 11 ff.).

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In societies without functioning statehood terrorism can turn into guerilla war, at which point a militant vigilantism of self-appointed guardians of order emerges to combat it, compensating for state response deficits by taking the law into their own hands in ways often indistinguishable from the unbridled violence they claim to be fighting. It is therefore false to define the response errors that terrorists attempt to provoke through their attacks solely in terms of overreactions by which a state security policy becomes compromised as “disproportionate, unjust, and brutal” (Waldmann 2003, 41); terrorism research tends toward this one-sidedness. The problem of responding appropriately to terrorism is that both over- and underreaction must be avoided. But finding the right balance is difficult. For one thing, society has no automatic consensus about what under- and overreaction actually mean. And problems of appropriate response also arise out of the inherent dynamics of the conflict between terrorists and their pursuers.

2 Operational Conditions and the Likelihood of Error “War,” writes Carl von Clausewitz (1943 [1873], 32–33), “is the province of uncertainty; three fourths of those things on which action in war is based lie hidden in the fog of a greater or less uncertainty. . .. War is the province of chance.” That is even more true of the asymmetrical conflict constellations of the anti-terror struggle. The infamy of terrorism is a product of its weakness. Terrorists are not strong enough to fight in the open. Even if differences between terrorist movements must be taken into account, it is in general more or less true to say that terrorism hides underground, operating in small groups whose organizational structure remains relatively loose, directing surprise attacks against noncombatants at unexpected times and places. The more strongly these features are present, the more difficult it is to successfully counter terrorist methods. The difficulties are potentiated when dealing with international terrorism, where a terrorist infrastructure can be set up in zones where it is difficult for counter-terrorism forces to penetrate and establish a presence. Pakistan and Somalia are currently the two most prominent cases in point. If terrorist fighters are willing to conduct suicide attacks, their pursuers lack even the trail of living evidence that could lead from the attacks to the planning groups and support networks of the terrorist threat. Under these circumstances the field in which terrorism operates is indeed “in the fog of a greater or less uncertainty.” The conditions for a high hit rate are lacking. The security forces are faced with the Goliath problem. Their own strength finds no point of attack, for David, the adversary, is small and very nimble. In this situation— where governments are under great pressure to act and wield the superior power of a functioning state apparatus—the danger of overreaction grows. Overreactions are responses whose costs exceed the bounds set by the prevailing moral economy; they elicit counter-reactions that undermine a successful long-term conflict strategy. Dragnet searches and broadside attacks bring with them “collateral damage” that can be exploited to the detriment of the counter-terrorism forces.

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Here the persecution dilemma arises. “Persecution simultaneously causes fear (and resignation) as well as indignation (and further mobilization); it can both deter and motivate” (Neidhardt 1981, 246). And it is difficult to determine under which conditions the one is more likely than the other. The course of the fighting can be turned by chance events that nobody could predict; neither side can really know how determined the other is; there are hard and soft internal factions on each side, as well as resolvable and irreconcilable friend/foe constellations; and majorities shift over the course of a struggle in a way that nobody can calculate in the longer term. Under these conditions a conflict between terrorists and their pursuers must be an error-prone speculative project. It is dangerous to leave such a conflict solely to the immediate combatants. Then the probability of escalation grows. “Escalations are processes of circular interactions, where all involved contribute to widening the gulf. Each step by one side incurs positive feedback from the other, causing stimulus-response sequences that drag the conflict into growing turbulence” (Neidhardt 1981, 180). This vicious circle can be avoided if the frontline fighters remain connected to their hinterland; in other words if the directly implicated actors operate in a sphere that includes reference groups that are more distanced from the events and may even exert a moderating influence on assessments of the political consequences and moral costs of escalating conflict processes. Whether and to what extent such controls actually occur is an empirical question. Considering, for example, counter-terrorism operations against Al Qaeda, the case of the United States demonstrates that we cannot automatically assume that operations will be subject to effective controls by reference groups, even in a democracy. For much of the Pentagon’s war on Al Qaeda, neither the Democrats in Congress nor the courts and the media provided any checks or balances, and as a result the “collateral damage” of the “War on Terror” was able to grow almost unhindered. In the end the excesses did lead to the emergence of internal resistance, but the question of which kinds and degrees of counter-terrorism activity are classified and sanctioned as “overreaction” remains a matter of controversy. Wherever this line is drawn, it represents a restriction on the pursuers’ use of force; counter-terrorism, then, is punching below its weight, Goliath cannot do as he wishes. Of course, it must be expected that terrorists will exploit this in planning their operations. Their violence instrumentalizes the inhibitions of their enemies. But the question is whether terrorists cannot also be subject to pressure of moderation.

3 Reference Group Controls and Opportunity Structures Reference group analyses would appear to be productive not only for understanding the anti-terror struggle—in other words with respect to the counter-terrorism practices of attacked states—but also in explaining its opponents, the terrorists. In this field, Stefan Malthaner (2004, 2009) has published insightful empirical studies whose frame of reference can be expanded yet further. If we understand reference groups as normative in the sense that terrorist actors attempt to fulfill their perceived

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expectations, then exploratory case studies would need to ask in detail which real (or even just imagined) collectives these are, whose perceived expectations provide the orientation for terrorist movements—on the one hand because they identify with them and feel called to represent their interests (client relationship) and on the other hand because they require their sympathy and support.1 We also have to ask how strong these actors’ social ties are to milieus of reference groups that are positive for them (ingroup vs. outgroups) and ultimately also whether and to what extent these reference groups are networked (e.g., in self-affirming advocacy coalitions).2 On the other hand, it must be assumed that those in power (normally the state) and their anti-terror units are “negative” reference groups for terrorist actors, and here, too, the question arises as to how “close” they are to the terrorists and what real or merely invented role they play in their imaginations. Because both sides—terrorists and pursuers alike—operate in their own reference group systems, it would be instructive to determine whether and to what extent these systems overlap; whether there are forces in the field of conflict that could be mobilized as brokers in mediation processes and whether there is a shared audience whose patronage possesses strategic significance for both sides (role of third party). The hypothesis is that the varying environmental conditions affecting these factors define the opportunity structure both for terrorist activity and for the state’s responses, and thereby determine not only the operational conditions for both sides but above all their prospects of political success.3 On the one side, the reference groups set restrictive conditions for conduct of the conflict (in the case of counter-terrorism, for example, the latitude between state “overreaction” and “underreaction,” see above). But on the other, they also define favorable opportunities (in the case of state responses, one example would be social control by the population as part of counter-terrorism activity). We now move on to relate these circumstances to our analysis of the conditions under which terrorism operates, although the discussion must remain broad in its general perspective and selective in its examples. If we understand terrorism as a political project that seeks a change in power then its violence differs from common crime in that it has an elementary legitimization need to satisfy. Its “practical explanations” do not possess the quality of “apologies”; it requires “justifications” to create a good conscience for its deeds (Scott and Lyman 1976). To do this in such a way as to generate belief in its own legitimacy among its reference groups is politically decisive, but also difficult because it violates the widespread taboo on violence.

1 In

this discussion only “normative” reference groups play a role, not “comparative” reference groups on which research predominantly focuses (Merton 1957, 225 ff.). 2 Many of the questions mentioned here can be localized in the frame of policy analyses (see, for example, Heritier 1993), where the concept of “policy networks” is central. 3 One early and often-cited (although vague) definition of the “political opportunity structure” originates from Sidney Tarrow (1988). A version of the concept adapted to reference group theory is to be found in Neidhardt and Rucht (1991, 456 ff.).

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The strength of this taboo may vary geographically, but terrorism always needs an ideological resource for its self-justification. The underlying ideologies of the different terrorist movements diverge in this respect: social revolutionary movements cite different ideologies than ethno-nationalist ones; right-wing extremists draw on different fundamental beliefs than religious groups; and within these four types (Hoffman 2003, 2009 ff.) there are also individual variations. But all need the “framing” of particular motivations to politicize their ideologically based convictions. These can be categorized on three levels:4 – a scandalization of injustice and blame (the prevailing conditions are unjust and harmful; those who are to blame must be attacked); – a justification of violence (our own violence is “counter-violence” and is justified because peaceful alternatives have been tried but failed (“ultima ratio”); and – a plausible prospect of success (terrorist attacks show that counter-violence is possible, and the adversary’s responses demonstrate that it is possible to win). A mobilization frame differentiated according to these categories answers the questions of meaning posed by the group’s own clientele. It is decisive for the political success of terrorism that the relevant reference groups are able to find the postulated arguments and theories convincing and credible. If it is to succeed politically in the long term, terrorism must be able to generate a belief in the legitimacy of its struggle, and it can expect this to pay off in the currencies of material and symbolic support. Research identifies several examples where terrorist actors attempting to secure such support more or less match their actions to the expectations of their supporters and sympathizers. With respect to the aforementioned justifications, terrorism must appear potent in its attacks (“the propaganda of the deed”) but at the same time measured, not lashing out completely at random. In a similar way to that described above for the operating conditions of state counterterrorism, the social reference groups of terrorists can influence normative ideas about terrorist tactics as over- or underreactions. The observable inhibitions of terrorist movements demonstrate that such conditioning can be effective. To name just a few examples: Islamist extremists in Egypt and Algeria lost support following excessively gruesome violent acts, which triggered correspondingly drastic persecution. “Their own supporters and sympathizers turned against them,” forcing them to moderate their use of violence (Tucker 2001, 7). Following a suicide bombing that killed Jordanian men, women, and children attending a wedding party, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the mastermind of Al Qaeda’s activities in Jordan, responded to the indignation the event provoked in the population of his own country not with justifications but with apologies (Musharbash

4 In movement research a similar legitimation need is posited for the purposes of mobilizing protest.

David Snow and Robert Benford (1988, 199 ff.) distinguish three “core framing tasks” with respect to diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing; William Gamson analyses “injustice, agency and identity components” of “collective action frames” (1992, 7).

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2005, 1). His reaction would certainly have been different had the victims been nonMuslims and the attacks staged in New York or London rather than Amman. So the question of terrorist “overreaction” relates not only to the number of victims but also to the question of who is injured or killed.5 The particular cruelty of international terrorism (Tucker 2001, 5) is that it strikes predominantly against milieus and people far removed from itself and its domestic reference groups (Waldmann 2007, 55). Reference group theory can also explain why the Northern Ireland conflict remained a “low intensity war”: The permanent discussion between the IRA and its supporters about the limits of legitimate violence made an “inestimable contribution” to containing violence (Waldmann 2001, 227). This was possible because the activists remained rooted in the social networks of a “radical community.” The opposite was the case with the Red Army Faction (RAF) in Germany, which steadily lost its inhibitions about harming innocent bystanders as it became increasingly isolated from its clientele both ideologically and socially. At the beginning Ulrike Meinhof came in for sharp criticism within her group when a number of workers were injured in an attack on the Springer publishing house in Hamburg in 1972, because these were regarded as members of the “revolutionary subject” the RAF imagined its struggle was to liberate (Neidhardt 1982, 358). Later RAF “generations” expressed no regrets about attacks where innocent bystanders were killed or injured (Schleyer kidnapping, Buback assassination); a political movement had turned into an increasingly self-referential criminal gang. Separation from both real and virtual reference groups went hand in hand with a regression of the political purpose; by the end it was only about “the heroism of self-emancipation” and pure personal survival (Neidhardt 1981, 186 ff.). These examples support the hypothesis that reference group relations, as significant elements of the “opportunity structure” of terrorist activity, can significantly influence both the type and extent of the activities and also their political objectives. As Malthaner shows in his comparative analysis of different terrorist groupings, their influence is certainly “ambivalent”: reference groups can ensure a supply of material and symbolic resources but also engender “restrictions on the strategy of violence” (2004, 96) in the sense that they determine the upper and lower limits of legitimate terrorist violence. The stronger their social ties to the violent groups the more forcefully they can exert such a regulating function;6 this apparently succeeds best where the “negative reference group” of a terrorist group, namely, the chosen adversary, is an “external” enemy such as an occupying power or foreign “crusaders” (Malthaner 2009, 16). Under such circumstances the familiar “ingroup/outgroup” dynamic has an inwardly integrating effect (Coser 1965, 103).

5 Terrorist

movements differ in how specific their targets and how random their victims are depending on the tactics and objectives being pursued (Hoffman 2003, 209; Neidhardt 2006, 130). 6 “The thesis is that the influence and control of violence works through social ties with the militants’ constituencies, and is lost with the break-up of or disengagement from these relationships” (Malthaner 2009, 20).

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For the practical lessons to be drawn from our analysis it is decisive that the possibilities of politically successful responses to terrorism can also be derived from this same constellation. The dependency of terrorist movements on their clientele and the need for legitimization for their attacks represent the socially and ideologically determinable vulnerabilities in their political strategy.

4 Opportunities for Intervention The most important thing when dealing with terrorism is to differentiate. For all the difficulties stemming from the erratic and opaque nature of the conflict processes, the actors must be distinguished from the supporters who make terrorism materially possible and the sympathizers who symbolically affirm it, and both of them from the interested observers (bystanders), whose mass-mediated partiality is desired but not categorically assured. The rule of thumb for counter-terrorism is that the further the targets of its interventions are from the core group of terrorist actors, the less they can be conducted militarily and the greater the need for a political approach. Potential and actual sympathizers are the politically central and most malleable variable in the broad complex of terrorism. Where a dual strategy applies the repressive logic of persecution to both terrorists and their active supporters, it will attempt to act preventively on those whose applause the activists need if they are to believe in the purpose of their struggle, and who appear to them as potentially mobilizable supporters. “The decisive thing about the effectiveness of terrorism is always the sympathizers,” said former Federal Public Prosecutor Kay Nehm: “The so-called propaganda of the deed is meaningless if it is reaching nobody.”7 But with respect to the justifications for terrorism (Section 3), that presupposes that the pursuit of terrorist activists is sufficiently targeted and that so-called “collateral damage” is avoided. If we take into account the circumstances under which terrorism can appear legitimate, it becomes clear that it cannot be lastingly undermined as long as its sympathizers retain feelings of injustice and powerlessness. We cannot be rid of terrorism without making it difficult for the broader and narrower movements and milieus on whose approval it depends to lend it support. It must be noted that the collective deprivation that is exploited for political justification arises not only in the form of material poverty and symbolic humiliation, but perhaps even more through the perception of political repression as a restriction on their own efforts to institute reforms to overcome grievances (Boyes and Ballard 2004; White 1989). That perception cannot be changed without effecting change in the political, economic, and social living conditions of those who give succor to terrorism. The example of Northern Ireland shows how such strategies—supported and to an extent propelled by the cooperation of powerful reference groups (above all the American and British governments, increasingly also the Irish government)—were

7 Interview,

Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 27–28, 2006.

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able to arrive at a peace settlement after long struggles and many failed negotiations. Conversely, the Israel/Palestine conflict teaches us what happens when anti-terrorism strategies fail to adequately take into account the conditions of the lifeworld from which terrorism emerges. With Palestinian statehood weak and its development hindered not only by inside but also outside forces, the Palestinians’ own quasi-governments have been unable to effectively control Palestinian terror against Israel from within, while the consistently repressive character of the Israeli responses has had the effect of supplying terrorist groups with a steady stream of sympathizers who first legitimize and then also support them. As long as the population of the Palestinian territories feels permanently bullied and humiliated by Israeli policies, it will be inevitable that Hamas attacks, for Israel unbearable, will be celebrated “at home” and the suicide bombers feted as heroes.8 That Israeli governments, pressurized from within by ultra-religious groupings, were not restrained from outside from repeatedly deploying exclusively military tactics rather than taking a strategic political approach is above all because the most powerful external reference group in the conflict, the American government, refused to intervene effectively in the role of the “third party,” despite the wide geopolitical ramifications of the Middle East conflict. The conditions created by the Americans’ Iraq War have further reduced the chances of a resolution of the conflict.

5 Conditions of Success and Residual Risks The example of Palestine shows the conditions under which terrorism can endure and hold onto political support. “Terrorism can work” (Hoffman 2003, 83). Nothing demonstrates that better than the success stories where terrorism led first to ethnopolitical uprisings and thereafter to the formation of new states. Israel, Cyprus, and Algeria would never have attained statehood without the terrorist campaigns of the Irgun, EOKA, and the FLN, respectively. The chances of success for terrorism increase when it manages to internationalize the conflict. This expands the scope of reference groups on both sides. On the one hand, a media-mobilized “world audience” comes into play, which in the role of a “third party” can take up elements of the political cause of a terrorist grouping and scandalize purely military solutions. Going a step further, reference groups can also become involved in directly supporting terrorist militancy; for example, a government calculating benefits from the continuation of a conflict. The generally clandestine state “sponsoring” of terrorist groups also encompasses “support in the form of training, financing, logistics, and guaranteeing safe havens” (Gießmann 8 “Within

hours the Palestinian suicide bombers are heroes of their town or village. Duplicated posters appear on the walls. Relatives, neighbors, officials come to the home of the deceased, entering with the greeting ‘mabruk’ (congratulations). Financial support for the families is assured. Because many suicide bombers make self-glorifying videos beforehand, they appear later as stars as well as martyrs.” (Kucklick et al. 2002, 273).

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2002, 290). But even mere disinterest in politically weakening terrorism can help it to continue (by failing to improve the situation of those in whose name terrorists proclaim their liberation struggle, for example, in Palestine). The strategy of shaking its supporters’ and sympathizers’ belief in its legitimacy remains the most potent political weapon for degrading terrorism as a political movement. If it can be stripped of the good reasons with which it justifies itself, it will fail as a political project. What remains is to remind ourselves that those “good reasons” for terrorism include not only fighting against injustice and repression of its clientele, but also the promise to do this successfully (see above, Section 3). The “propaganda of the deed” loses its emotive power if it leads to nothing. Therefore no strategy against terrorism can do without persecuting terrorists and meeting their violence with violence. Political courtship of the sympathizers of terrorism is no substitute for the determined hunting down of its perpetrators. If terrorist groups are forced to remain clandestine and avoid open struggle, prevented from carrying out attacks, the clarion-call to their followers will be silenced, their resolve sapped. When terrorism loses sympathizers and supporters the probability of terrorist attacks occurring falls. As the social infrastructure shrinks it becomes more difficult to prepare and conduct terrorist activities. But that does not mean that terrorist attacks necessarily disappear. Terrorism can cease to be politically mediated without the fighting will and capacity of the active groups collapsing completely. Even if its actors become an avant-garde of nothing and nobody they can still— as observed in the example of the social revolutionary movement of the RAF (Neidhardt 1981, 187 ff.)—continue to develop and maintain a dogged belief in their own heroic ideological constructs to continue the struggle. And at least for a time, even as their base of reference groups slips away, the intensified solidarity of relatively small active groups in which the fighters live can suffice to provide a social base. If we are to understand the phenomenon of the terrorist, the way their lifeworld is shaped by the socializing effect of their shared struggle should not be underestimated. This effect has been well-known since the classic study by Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz on “Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II” (1948). In the cramped “lifeworld of the fox-hole” (Esser 2001, 412 ff.), even growing alienation from Nazi ideology and crumbling belief in the “final victory” could be compensated by “affection and esteem from both officers and comrades” (Shils and Janowitz 1948, 281), such that the will to fight on survived. The self-legitimizing achievements of terrorist groups forced underground and welded together by shared experiences of battle can turn out to be similarly impressive. The risk that terrorists’ will to fight will be accompanied by the capacity to do so has been increased by recent developments in the economy of terror. At least those movements able to draw on suicide bombers for their attacks require no complex escape preparations to protect their operatives and organization (otherwise one of the most difficult challenges of terrorist practice). The cost of the London transport bombings of July 2005 has been estimated at $8,000 to 12,000.

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To raise such a sum one needs neither wealthy patrons nor the proceeds of risky bank robberies or kidnappings. Even the smallest of groups without a mature and well-organized infrastructure can—appropriately instructed through the internet— conduct terrorism so to speak from scratch. Without long-term preparation and broad-based support, their actions will not turn out to be as sophisticated as the devastatingly symbolic effects of the September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington or the November 2008 assault on Mumbai. But that should by no means be taken to imply that large-scale destruction and large numbers of victims would be unattainable. Terrorists can increasingly direct their attacks at “soft targets” that cannot reliably be protected, such as urban shopping malls, public transport vehicles, and bus and train stations. Such targets offer tactical advantages. They are easy to access and offer good possibilities to escape undiscovered. If the political project of terrorism fails because the reference groups of its revolutionary program cannot be mobilized, it degenerates into common criminality, without necessarily becoming harmless in the process. The “operational conditions and the likelihood of error” described in Section 2 apply equally to the combating of such deformities of political terrorism, and perhaps more so given that their isolation from broad milieus of support reduces their vulnerability and the relative randomness of victim selection that is associated with “soft” targets considerably hampers state security efforts. So the upshot of our analysis amounts to the finding that terrorism can be defeated politically but there is no certainty that it can be routed by police or military means. Terrorists cannot win a war against a modern state, but they can often win “battles” that unsettle and agitate its population. No control system available to a modern state can prevent terrorist attacks from occurring and taking a considerable toll of victims. Terrorism remains an ongoing risk to order in the modern system of states. Not even excessively arming the state’s forces and instituting a heavy-handed security policy at the expense of ongoing curtailment of constitutional freedoms would be able to eliminate that risk. All that can be done—with rapidly increasing social and material marginal costs—is to reduce it. And the uncontrollable residual risk? We can only hope that even “post-heroic societies” remain capable of a modicum of “heroic imperturbability.” That appears indeed to be the “most important line of defense against terrorism” (Münkler 2004, 198, 210), because it can secure the body politic of the affected society against panic reactions. But heroic imperturbability being heroic, we cannot take it for granted.

References Boyes, D. and Ballard, J. D. (2004). Developing a sociological theory for the empirical understanding of terrorism. The American Sociologist, Summer 2004, 5–25. Clausewitz, C. von (1943 [1873]). On War. New York, NY: Random House. Coser, L. A. (1965). Theorie sozialer Konflikte. Neuwied and Berlin: Luchterhand. Esser, H. (2001). Soziologie: Spezielle Grundlagen, Vol. 6: Sinn und Kultur. Frankfurt and New York, NY: Campus.

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European Commission (2002). Eurobarometer. Report No. 56, ULR: http://europa.int/comm/ public_opinion. Fromkin, D. (1977). Die Strategie des Terrorismus. In M. Funke (Ed.), Terrorismus: Untersuchungen zur Struktur und Strategie revolutionärer Gewaltpolitik (pp. 83–99). Düsseldorf: WV. Gamson, W. A. (1992). Talking Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gießmann, H. J. (2002). Terrorismus mit staatlicher Duldung oder Förderung. In H. Frank and K. Hirschmann (Eds.), Die weltweite Gefahr: Terrorismus als internationale Herausforderung (pp. 279–292). Berlin: Spitz. Heritier, A. (Ed.) (1993). Policy-analysis: Kritik und Neuorientierung. Special issue 24 of Politische Vierteljahresschrift. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Hoffman, B. (2003). Terrorismus: Der unerklärte Krieg. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Jungermann, H. and Slovic, P. (1993). Die Psychologie der Kognition und Evaluation von Risiko. In G. Bechmann (Ed.), Risiko und Gesellschaft (pp. 167–207). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Kasperson, J. X., Kasperson, R. E., Pidgeon, N., and Slovic, P. (2003). The social amplification of risk: assessing fifteen years of research and theory. In N. Pidgeon, R. Kasperson, and P. Slovic (Eds.), The Social Amplification of Risk (pp. 13–46). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Kucklick, C., Kuczak, H., and Reuter, C. (2002). Selbstmordattentäter: Die Macht der Ohnmächtigen. In H. Frank and K. Hirschmann (Eds.), Die weltweite Gefahr: Terrorismus als internationale Herausforderung (pp. 263–278). Berlin: Spitz. Malthaner, S. (2004). Terroristische Bewegungen und ihre Bezugsgruppen: Anvisierte Sympathisanten und tatsächliche Unterstützer. In P. Waldmann (Ed.), Determinanten des Terrorismus (pp. 85–137). Weilerswist: Velbrück. Malthaner, S. (2009). Fighting for the community of believers: dynamics of control in the relationship between militant Islamist movements and their constituencies. Paper presented at the Conference “Control of Violence,” Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld University, September 10–13, 2009. Merton, R. K. (1957). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York, NY: Free Press. Münkler, H. (2004): Terrorismus als Ermattungsstrategie. In E. Reiter (Ed.): Jahrbuch für internationale Sicherheitspolitik (pp. 193–210). Hamburg/Berlin/Bonn: Mittler. Musharbash, Y. (2005). Sarkawi kämpft gegen Sympathieverlust in Jordanien. In SPIEGEL-online, November 18, 2005. Neidhardt, F. (1981). Über Zufall, Eigendynamik und Institutionalisierbarkeit absurder Prozesse am Beispiel einer terroristischen Gruppe. In H. von Alemann and H. P. Thurn (Eds.), Soziologie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht: Festschrift für René König zum 75. Geburtstag (pp. 243–257). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Neidhardt, F. (1982). Soziale Bedingungen terroristischen Handelns: Das Beispiel der “BaaderMeinhof-Gruppe” der RAF. In W. von Baeyer-Katte, D. Claessens, H. Feger, and F. Neidhardt (Eds.), Analysen zum Terrorismus, Vol. 3: Gruppenprozesse (pp. 318–391). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Neidhardt, F. (2006). Akteure und Interaktionen: Zur Soziologie des Terrorismus. In W. Kraushaar (Ed.), Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, Vol. 1 (pp. 123–139). Hamburg: HIS. Neidhardt, F. and Rucht, D. (1991). The analysis of social movements: the state of the art and some perspectives for further research. In D. Rucht (Ed.), Research on Social Movements (pp. 421– 464). Frankfurt am Main and Boulder, CO: Campus and Westview. Schneckener, U. (2004). Transnationale Terroristen als Profiteure fragiler Staatlichkeit. Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik. Scott, M. and Lyman, S. (1976). Praktische Erklärungen. In M. Auwärter, E. Kirsch, and K. Schröter (Eds.), Interaktion und Identität (pp. 71–114). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Shils, E. A. and Janowitz, M. (1948). Cohesion and disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 12, 280–315.

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Snow, D. A. and Benford, R. (1988). Ideology, frame resonance, and participant mobilization. In B. Klandermans, H. Kriesi, and S. Tarrow (Eds.), International Social Movement Research 1 (pp. 197–218). Greenwich Connecticut: Jai Press. Tarrow, S. (1988). National politics and collective action: recent theories and research in Western Europe and the United States. Annual Review of Sociology, 14, 421–440. Tucker, D. (2001). What is new about the New Terrorism and how dangerous is it? Terrorism and Political Violence, 13, 1–14. Waldmann, P. (2001). Konfliktkommunikation versus Friedensdynamik in Nordirland. In P. Ther and H. Sundhausen (Eds.), Nationalitätenkonflikte im 20. Jahrhundert (pp. 219–238). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Waldmann, P. (2003). Terrorismus und Bürgerkrieg: Der Staat in Bedrängnis. Munich: Gerling Akademie. Waldmann, P. (2007). Neuer Terrorismus. In K. Graulich and D. Simon (Eds.), Terrorismus und Rechtsstaatlichkeit (pp. 47–56). Berlin: Akademie Verlag. White, R. W. (1989). From peaceful protest to guerilla war: micromobilization of the provisional Irish Republican Army. American Journal of Sociology, 94(6), 1277–1302.

Fighting for the Community of Believers: Dynamics of Control in the Relationship Between Militant Islamist Movements and their Constituencies Stefan Malthaner

Two incidents in the early 1980s turned Western attention to the phenomenon of Islamist terrorism. On October 6, 1981, Khalid al-Islambouli, a lieutenant with the Egyptian army and member of the radical Islamist group al-Jihad, assassinated President Anwar al-Sadat during a military parade outside Cairo. Al-Islambouli became famous not only for his deed, but also for his words after the attack, when he shouted: “I have killed the Pharaoh, and I do not fear death!” His lawyer recounted how he spent the time during the trial in deep contemplation and had no doubts that: “They wanted to enter paradise. They considered themselves martyrs.”1 The other incident occurred about 1 year later, on November 11, 1982, when Ahmad Qassir, later claimed by Hizbullah as one of their own, drove a car bomb into the Israeli military headquarters in Tyre, South Lebanon, killing more than 140 people in what turned out to be the first in a series of suicide bombings culminating in simultaneous attacks on the American and French contingents of the Multinational Force in Beirut in October 1983, which caused a total of 304 fatalities.2 A group called “Islamic Jihad” claimed responsibility, threatening further attacks and declaring: “We are fond of death”.3 And the perpetrators not only willfully sacrificed their lives but they did so, according to witnesses, with a joyful expression on their faces. To Western observers, these new groups were puzzling and frightening. They seemed to be driven by religious imperatives and to act according to a logic entirely different from that of other insurgent or terrorist groups. Motivated by “a zeal to die and win a passport to heaven” (Newsweek, November 13, 1983), they seemed bereft of all restraints or worldly rationality.

S. Malthaner (B) Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany e-mail: [email protected] 1 Interview

with lawyer Abdel Halim Mamdour, Cairo, February 2005. later claimed the attack in Tyre and another one against the same target in 1983, but denied responsibility for (tactically similar) suicide bombings against the Multinational Force in Beirut. 3 Statement sent to the offices of AFP, cited in The Economist, October 29, 1983. 2 Hizbullah

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1 “Religious Terrorism”—Beyond Control? This study examines the behavior of militant Islamist groups and dynamics of control (and loss of control) in the context of their relationship with their constituencies; that is, those parts of a population envisioned and addressed as their reference groups, who are basically supportive of the militants’ aims and violent campaign.4 The background to this approach is the observation that most terrorist and insurgent groups claim to represent and fight in the name of a certain group or population, be that a national minority, the proletarian masses, or an ethnic community. So the first question is: To what extent—and in what way—do Islamist terrorists orient themselves toward a social constituency? Because Islamist groups proclaim their adherence to a religious frame of reference as their main point of orientation (in their case a particular interpretation of Islam) they are often considered to represent a form of “religious terrorism.” If this was conceived in the sense that these groups were driven by a “religious logic” alone, and that they oriented themselves predominantly toward an imagined transcendental sphere, “religious terrorism” could indeed implicate a loss of constraints on their behavior. As Bruce Hoffman argues in his exploration of “religious terrorism,” this type of perpetrator regard their violent acts as a divine duty or sacramental deed and therefore are not bound by those political or moral constraints one finds with other (secular) violent groups (Hoffman 1995, 272). This includes—most crucially to the purposes of this study—constraints resulting from the relationship with a “worldly” constituency or social base. Whereas secular terrorists seek to gain the support and sympathies of certain communities or parts of a population, religious militants execute their acts “for no audience but themselves” (Hoffman 1995, 273). Yet, this understanding of “religious terrorism” seems to apply only to very few and rather exceptional cases of religious militancy.5 The vast majority of violent groups adhering to a religious perspective do indeed orient themselves toward certain social groups and adapt their behavior accordingly. This results from the inherently social character of religion. While religious perspectives certainly include a transcendental, or “cosmic” dimension,6 and notions of the divine and the sacred shape symbolic language and violent acts, they must not be reduced to this aspect alone. Not only are “inner-worldly” orientations inherently part of ideas of redemption and religious action. Violent religious groups also have a genuinely religious but entirely worldly reference group: the religious community. Religion, as inter alia Appleby (2000, 9) and more recently Kippenberg (2008, 23–24) emphasize, is 4 The

term “constituency” is used here to denote the population—that is, real social groups—to whom the militants refer and with whom they actually interact, whereas “reference groups” denote an element of the subjective perspective of an actor; i.e., the actors’ way of orienting themselves toward certain groups, collectivities, or social categories (see Merton 1968). 5 For example, small, isolated “cults” such as the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo; see Malthaner (2005, 118–119). 6 On the role of transcendental dimensions and the notion of “cosmic war,” see Juergensmeyer (1988, 177–179; 2000, 145–163), and Rapoport (1984, 674; 1993, 445–454).

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in its origin a communal phenomenon. It is the product of communal action, rooted in the community of believers, which is at the same time its bearer and objective; one could say: the social substratum of religion. Reviving the faith, therefore, necessarily means reviving the faith of the community; and defending the religion implies defending the religious community. In addition, many violent religious groups have a directly political agenda, which is in part a consequence of the social character of religion: When addressing a community, religious revival is inevitably also a political movement. But many groups also directly address the state itself, seeking to re-make the social and political order. This is particularly true for most militant Islamist groups. “Islamism”—to finally clarify this term—is used here to denote a certain type of religious-political movement which emerged out of what is commonly called the “Islamic Awakening” in the Arab and Muslim world. This current had its roots in the late nineteenth century in the confrontation with colonialism, first emerged as a movement in the 1920s, and gained broad influence in many Arab and other Muslim countries during the second half of the twentieth century. One of its core characteristics is the notion that Islam proscribes a comprehensive and divine order for all aspects of personal, social, and political life. The French term for the phenomenon, “intégrisme,” refers precisely to this aspect. To that extent Islamism is a religious but also an essentially social and political movement as it refers to a religious community and aims at influencing its moral and political order. It propagates a return to the pure foundations of Islam, with reference to authoritative sources and historic precedents, denouncing folk religiosity as well as the political quietism of traditional religious establishments.7 So most militant Islamist movements refer to a wider community of believers, be it a confessional minority, a Muslim society, or the global ummah, whom they seek to lead back to the true faith by (re-)introducing a moral and ethical order, liberate from oppression, or defend against aggression from foreign enemies. And this orientation crucially influences their behavior. Khaled al-Islambouli was clearly willing to die when he carried out the attack on Sadat and, convinced that his deed fulfilled God’s purpose, he was confident of being received as a martyr. At the same time, however, the attackers saw their deed as part of the struggle for an Islamic order and for Muslims in Egypt, as one leader of al-Jihad explained: “They did not start from the wish that they want to go to heaven, and therefore they killed him. No! They wanted to change the system, of course!”8 Similarly, suicide attacks by members of Hizbullah (and affiliated groups) were part of a broader violent campaign to force American and other foreign troops to leave the country and to 7 The realm of political and non-political currents in contemporary Islam is, of course, multifaceted

and complex. The definition given here is meant to roughly circumscribe Islamism as a certain type of ideological framework and social/political movement, mainly those influenced by Hassan al-Banna (1906–1949), Abu l-Ala Maududi (1903–1979), and later Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) as the most prominent voices of a trend that can be traced back to the classical Salafiyya of the late nineteenth century. 8 Interview with the leader of an al-Jihad group involved in the attack, Cairo, January 2005.

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end the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon. And it is no contradiction that at the same time individual perpetrators considered the attacks acts of self-sacrifice and martyrdom, entitling them to heavenly rewards. In an interesting development, the method was drastically reduced after a series of suicide attacks in 1985 and early 1986, despite a large number of volunteers, and confined to very few high-profile operations—explicitly as a result of political considerations and after criticism from their constituency. Sheikh Hussein Fadlallah, at that time the spiritual mentor of Hizbullah, voiced a widespread feeling that young people were “wasted” in the attacks and argued for an end to suicide attacks, because: “present circumstances do not favor such operations anymore, and attacks that only inflict limited casualties . . . should not be encouraged” (Kramer 1997, 120).

2 Militant Islamist Movements and Their Reference Groups So, militant Islamist groups orient themselves toward certain populations, with whom they are in some form of relationship. In what way, then, does this reference entail or produce constraining effects concerning the militants’ violent campaign? Orientation on a certain community as an actor’s (significant) reference group has an essentially normative component. The concept of reference groups has its roots in the sociological school of Symbolic Interactionism, which describes the development of self-concepts in socialization processes, emphasizing the role of significant others in shaping individual identity and establishing norms of expected behavior (Mead 1934, 152–164). Reference group theory then pointed to the phenomenon of actors taking on values and norms of an identification group because they assume (or anticipate) the role of a member of this group and adopt their standpoint as their own, or because these groups are perceived as audiences whose judgment is relevant to the actors (Kelley 1952, 410–414; Merton 1968, 336–338). In the case of militant groups, constituencies become significant reference groups because the claim to represent a certain population (and their grievances and rights) bestows the militants’ struggle with legitimacy and essentially defines their self-concept as revolutionaries or resistance-fighters. Their aims acquire meaning only through the reference to these groups, whom the militants seek to defend and mobilize into supporting or joining their struggle.9 In addition, primary groups such as family, friends, and neighborhood communities may continue to constitute significant reference groups to individual fighters, who look to them for personal approval. As a result, militant groups depend on their constituencies’ “moral support”; that is, they rely on their basic approval and perceive evaluations and judgments concerning their violent campaign as relevant, which can make the militants adapt their behavior and even constrain violent practices. Of course, violent groups also depend on their constituencies’ practical support, such as providing supplies and shelter, and refraining from passing information to the security forces. And this dependence gives these

9 On

the reference groups of terrorist and insurgent groups, see Malthaner (2005, 85–90).

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populations considerable influence and leverage, which may reinforce the militants’ sensitivity to negative reactions and loss of support from these groups. Yet, identification with a constituency is not always straightforward, and does not always result in self-constraint. Militant Islamist groups also show strongly ambivalent forms of reference to a population, which makes relationships more complex and directly affects the reciprocal influence on their behavior. First, while identifying with a Muslim population and seeking to defend it against its enemies, Islamist groups also seek to “renew” this community by establishing a “truly” Islamic order, which ultimately means challenging and transforming its current social and political makeup. Similar to fundamentalist movements from other religious traditions (see Appleby 2000, 86–90; Rapoport 1993, 429–431; and Juergensmeyer 1988, 176), the Islamist perspective emerged in response to what were perceived as two simultaneous (and interconnected) threats to the religious community. The Muslim world was seen as dominated, exploited, and occupied by foreign (Western) powers. But at the same time, the threat was considered an internal one: Muslim societies had turned away from Islam and its obligations—seduced and deluded by Western cultural influences—which in turn weakened the Muslim community and made it vulnerable to foreign attack. So, defending the community had to be combined with leading it back to the true faith, which included efforts to introduce (and at times enforce) an Islamist cultural and social order. But transforming social life according to their vision of a Muslim society implies that the militants challenge and reject the community’s existing norms and values. And as we shall see, this approach to a population not only qualifies the militants’ normative reference, but can also cause conflicts between the militant groups and their constituencies. Second, militant groups may refer to concrete local populations, but can also orient themselves toward more abstract collectivities or concepts, such as the worldwide community of believers, or what Roy calls the “imaginary ummah” (2004, 3, 53), in ever-widening circles of geographical range and abstractness. Abstractness in reference entails a form of disengagement from “real” relationships within the actors’ immediate social environment, and the normative orientation toward more tangible constituencies may become devalued. Similarly, notions of divine imperatives and other forms of reference to the “hereafter” may indeed become dominant in exceptional cases. These forms of orientation are not mutually exclusive. And to a certain degree it is this twofold and seemingly contradictory character that is characteristic of the Islamist perspective: concerns for local/national populations together with the reference to the global ummah; aiming to defend and at the same time to renew the religious community; and adhering to the divine and the concept of a reality beyond this world together with “realist” pragmatism. But within this perspective, militant Islamist groups can develop priorities and shift their focus from defense to socio-cultural transformation, and from concrete to abstract forms of reference, with implications for their normative orientation. In the terminology of reference group theory, it is an actor’s orientation toward and identification with a certain group that makes them adopt and adhere to the norms and values of this group—and so produces self-restraint. And estrangement from a group diminishes this adherence. Yet, this reference—which is first of all

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a category of the actors’ subjective perspective—is part of concrete social relationships and emerges, evolves, and is reinforced or undermined in processes of interaction between the militants and their social constituencies. And changing forms of orientation, in turn, have an effect on support relationships, contributing to an interlinked and self-reinforcing dynamic of reference and interaction. Merton points to this pattern in his analysis of group relationships when he describes the process of an actor rejecting or disregarding the values and norms of a group, leading to estrangement and deterioration of relationships with other group members, which then induces the actor to gradually disengage from this group (1968, 265–274). This study argues that a form of influence and (self-)control over the behavior of militant groups emerges from normative reference to their constituencies, and that this influence can increase with the consolidation of support relationships, but also be lost with estrangement and the break-up of social ties; in both cases evolving in self-reinforcing dynamics of engagement or estrangement. Two short case studies illustrate patterns of interaction and orientation, and the resulting dynamics of control and loss of control: Hizbullah emerged in the early 1980s under the banner of “The Islamic Revolution in Lebanon,” but increasingly concentrated on violent “resistance” against a foreign enemy and the Shiite population as their reference group, while the Egyptian militant groups al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and al-Jihad radicalized in confrontation with the Egyptian state and carried out a violent campaign to bring down the “un-Islamic” government, but gradually lost their social base among the local population, resulting in a loss of constraints over their violent practices.

3 Radicalization and Estrangement: Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiyya and Al-Jihad in Egypt Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya (“The Islamic Group”) and al-Jihad (“Holy Struggle”) represent cases of violent radicalization against the organization’s own government and social order. Both emerged during the 1970s at the radical fringe of a broader Islamist movement calling for a return to Islam and for an Islamic order in Egypt. During its origins in the 1930s and 1940s, the Egyptian Islamist movement had a broader orientation and agenda, which included religious revival as well as defense against outside threats. The Muslim Brotherhood propagated the gradual Islamization of Egyptian society, but also fought against British political and cultural domination, and in a show of pan-Islamic solidarity sent volunteers to fight in Palestine in 1948 (Mitchell 1969, 56, 60; Lia 1998, 81). A more radical, “revolutionary” current focusing on transforming the Egyptian state and society by force emerged during the 1960s around the writings of Sayyid Qutb, and under a wave of repression by the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser. What is most relevant to our question is how this radical current re-shaped its reference to its constituencies by introducing the idea that the entire world—including contemporary Muslim societies—was in a state of ignorance (jahiliyya) equivalent to the times before the Prophet Mohammad. According to Qutb and his followers, change could only be

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brought about by a vanguard of committed (and enlightened) Muslim activists, who had to separate themselves and free their minds from the unbelieving culture and society surrounding them (Qutb 1981, 15, 34, 152). From this emerged what seemed to be a deeply ambiguous orientation and attitude toward the Muslim community as their reference group. On the one hand, the vanguard fought for and identified with this population, whom it called to the true faith “because we love them” (Qutb 1981, 259). On the other hand, they sought to separate from the society’s values, and Qutb advised his followers to carry on in their mission despite negative reactions from within this society: At the beginning, Qutb warned, “people may dislike this” (i.e., their message) and the vanguard should prepare for rejection and hostility (1981, 253). Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and al-Jihad both developed out of this radical current, but differed significantly in their structure and strategy, and the social ties to their constituencies. Al-Jamaa emerged as radical offshoot of an Islamic student movement, which had grown influential at most Egyptian universities during the late 1970s and remained comparatively moderate (and nonviolent) in Cairo and the Nile Delta, but radicalized in the Upper Egyptian cities of Minya and Assiut. Al-Jamaa began as an open group on the campuses and around mosques, and only in 1980– 1981, after the authorities had moved to curb its activities, formed a clandestine core to start a violent campaign against the Egyptian government. Al-Jihad was much smaller and developed independently from the student movement (though some of its members were students) in the form of secret, clandestine cells in Cairo and Alexandria, without any significant public work or open contact with their social environment. The two groups cooperated briefly for the assassination of President Sadat in October 1981, which was preceded and followed by waves of arrests and a ban on most Islamist groups and organizations, but then separated again over issues of strategy and leadership. Al-Jamaa re-emerged around the mid-1980s, when several of its mid-ranking leaders were released, and again established an open presence at the university of Assiut and in towns and villages of Upper Egypt, but also in several of Cairo’s sprawling informal settlements that had grown as a result of rapid rural-to-urban migration. Al-Jihad, in contrast, was reorganized by Ayman al-Zawahiri in Peshawar, where he had fled after his release, and from abroad established a clandestine branch in Egypt, mainly in Cairo. Both groups focused on the Egyptian Muslim population as their reference group and the Egyptian government as their main adversary. The “near enemy” (the Egyptian leadership) had, according to al-Jihad leader Abdel Salam Faraj, priority over the “far enemy” (Western powers and Israel), which could only be confronted when a truly Islamic state had been established in the region as a basis for this fight (Faraj in Jansen 1986, 192). Al-Jamaa had a much more local focus, being in much closer contact with the local population in villages and neighborhoods, and one of the major disagreements between the two groups was over strategy and the relationship with the population, as a former leader of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya explained: “The Dr. al-Zawahiri group [al-Jihad] they were believing in secret underground work. But al-Jamaa believed in public work, in the universities, in the towns, in

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the streets. . . . The public revolution, how we can move the public.”10 Both groups clearly envisioned themselves as an enlightened vanguard, which included an element of distancing themselves from the population. As one former member of al-Jamaa from Assiut recounts in his autobiography, the group emphasized the need to separate themselves from their social environment, including their families and previous friends, which was demonstrated by a distinct style of dress, beard, etc. (Al-Berry 2002, 88–92). Still, this member also emphasized that at that time al-Jamaa considered neither ordinary people nor policemen to be unbelievers (kuffar). During the phase of violent escalation (1988–1993), interactions between alJamaa and their constituencies were shaped by the group’s close involvement with its social environment, but also by more and more ambivalent forms of reference inherent in their increasingly radical perspective and, after the conflict escalated further, by a process of gradual estrangement and disengagement. Violent confrontations started in the late 1980s after local authorities and police began to move against al-Jamaa at the university in Assiut and in Cairo neighborhoods, which led to angry protests and violent clashes. By that time, al-Jamaa had managed to attract a considerable following around their activities at schools and in mosques, but also had acquired a central role in many neighborhoods. The group supplemented their preaching and religious lessons with charitable activities, collecting donations for needy families, organizing free meals on the Feast of Sacrifice, or providing basic health care. And due to its readiness to use force, al-Jamaa was also able to assert itself in several areas against family clans and other groups and to establish some form of order, driving out criminal gangs and mediating in conflicts between families, and often seemed to take over the role of a traditional patron, ruling and providing for a certain neighborhood (Fandy 1994, 618; Haenni 2005, 114–118, 125–127). At the same time, however, the group sought to propagate and eventually enforce their vision of an Islamic moral order and to prevent “un-Islamic” behavior. Merchants selling alcohol were threatened and at times harassed, wedding celebrations with music and dancers interrupted, drunks or alleged adulterers publicly flogged, “immodestly” clad women reprimanded, and in some cases video shops burned down.11 These forms of coercion and violence against members of the local community seemed to increase in parallel with the escalating confrontations between al-Jamaa and the police. While charitable activities—as well as al-Jamaa’s open criticism of oppression and corruption—initially earned them widespread support, the enforcement of norms of moral conduct was resented by many residents, and as Haenni shows for the case of the Imbaba neighborhood, gradually lost them sympathy among groups such as shop owners and merchants who had provided resources for their charitable activities (2005, 114–118, 125–127). One leader of the

10 Interview

with the former leader of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya for Assiut, London, July 2005. with residents of Assiut, March 2004, and with residents of a Cairo suburb, March 2005; also Ramadan (1993, 162–163), Rubin (1990, 73), Al-Berry (2002, 55).

11 Interviews

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group later acknowledged the adverse effects of attempts to impose Islamic rules of conduct: The problem which began involving hisba [enforcement of religious rules] was because of violations which were occurring in its use. . . . [These acts had] a negative effect on the people and led to their aversion of Islamic groups and to the call to Islam. This is what happened in Assiut and is the reason for a panic and very big outcry directed at all those wearing beards in Egypt and affecting the stability of the city, which hurt the call to Islam.12

The effects of these processes of gradual estrangement became visible when violent confrontations escalated and pressure on local communities increased. During earlier police operations, such as in the Cairo suburb of Ayn Shams in August and December 1987, many residents had shown solidarity with al-Jamaa and even joined their violent protests. Outraged by police brutality and arbitrariness, they sided with a group seen as unjustly persecuted, although, as interviews with residents of the area made clear, these sympathies did not translate into support for a planned and protracted violent campaign to bring down the government.13 When the police carried out a large-scale search and arrest operation in Imbaba 5 years later they met only insignificant resistance and the area remained calm—partly due to the large number of arrested militants (and innocent bystanders), but apparently also because by then relationships of support tying al-Jamaa to its social environment had been undermined by violent tensions with local residents. Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s violent campaign began in earnest in 1992, with attacks against police posts, Christian shops, and foreign tourists in Upper Egypt, but also against politicians and secular intellectuals in Cairo. This step was accompanied by a further radicalization of their perspective toward the Egyptian society, as indicated by an internal document with the title “Combat against the community which refuses to implement one of God’s laws,” which justified the murder of Muslim policemen, and also civilians, on the grounds that Muslims who were part of the attack against Islam were fair game.14 During the ensuing phase of violent confrontations (1993–1997), the dynamic of simultaneously escalating tensions and violence against members of local communities seemed to repeat itself on a larger scale, leading to further estrangement and weakening support, which in turn seemed to further radicalize the militants, resulting in a loss of constraints on violent practices. From late 1993 on reports about civilians killed by al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya for allegedly collaborating with the police became more frequent, and several bombs

12 Osama Hafez, al-Jamaa leader, discussing past errors and mistakes, in 2002. Speech recorded by

Mukrim Mohammad Ahmad, printed in al-Mussawar, no. 4055, June 28, 2002, 8–10. family of one al-Jamaa sympathizer explained: “Because of what happened, the arrests and the suffering, and they were humiliated and tortured to death—it turned into some kind of revenge between the victims’ families and their friends and the police.” The clashes in Ayn Shams, they said, “had nothing to do with any militant action against the government,” they were not terrorist acts like those in other parts of the country. Interviews with residents of Ayn Shams, Cairo, March 2005. 14 Cited and described by al-Berry (2002, 43). 13 The

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in public places in Assiut indiscriminately targeted the population.15 Around mid1994, about 2 years after the campaign started, al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya seemed to have lost most of their ground in the area of Assiut, until then their main stronghold, and the focus of violent confrontations shifted north to the region of Minya (particularly Mallawi), while Assiut became quiet. In Mallawi, the group turned ferociously against suspected “collaborators” from very early on, not only killing an increasing number of people, but also widening the category of “traitors” targeted by their attacks, which ranged from alleged “informers,” village guards, and local leaders to tractor drivers clearing sugarcane fields (a hideout for the militants). And the executions became deliberately designed to terrorize the local population into noncooperation with the police, as, for example, in Mallawi in 1995, when militants beheaded suspected informants in marketplaces in front of the villagers.16 Another form of violence between al-Jamaa and members of the civilian population occurred as a result of their attacks against village guards (ghafirs) and local policemen in the form of vendettas with families of their victims, who took revenge on families of the militants. In some cases, this led to several cycles of revenge, which occasionally escalated into veritable massacres, as in June 1995, when members of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya killed nine people in front of a mosque in Tanda, near Mallawi.17 By 1996, the group had been largely uprooted from their former strongholds in Upper Egypt, and took to hiding in sugarcane fields, caves, and irrigation tunnels instead of villages. Al-Jamaa’s violent campaign from 1996 on showed indications of an increasing loss of constraints on violent practices, despite the decreasing number of attacks, with a series of massacres against Christian villages and foreign tourists which culminated in the assault on the Hatshepsuth temple near Luxor, where six militants killed 58 tourists and four guards in November 1997. The attackers, according to several witnesses, mutilated some of their victims and later killed themselves when surrounded by the police, thereby revealing an emphasis on ritual symbolism and readiness to commit suicide not seen previously in al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya. The massacre was universally condemned, even by Islamists close to al-Jamaa, and led to a gradual cessation of violent actions and doctrinal revisions by the imprisoned leadership of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya (see the contribution by Khaled Al-Hashimi and Carolin Goerzig in this volume). Despite the fact that a number of al-Jamaa’s leaders resided in Pakistan and later in Afghanistan, and some were in contact and cooperated with Usama Bin Laden’s organization, the group as a whole showed few signs of moving to an international level of operations or adopting a global frame of reference. Refai Ahmad Taha, the 15 See

report of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, published in excerpts in al-Ahram, Jan. 22 to Feb. 2, 1994. 16 On the killing of alleged collaborators, see inter alia Chris Hedges’s report on incidents in Assiut, New York Times, Feb. 11, 1994; Khaled Dawoud’s account on the situation in Mallawi, AP, Oct. 18, 1994; AFP, Sept. 14, 1995. In late 1996, a local human rights activist from Mallawi explained: “The fact that they are only targeting informers is indeed a sign of weakness,” DPA, Oct. 25, 1996. 17 AFP, Dec. 8, 1994; APF, June 3, 1995; AFP, June 5, 1995.

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most senior leader in Afghanistan, signed Bin Laden’s 1998 Declaration of War, but withdrew after strong opposition from leaders in Egypt, and it was not until late 2006 that a number of former al-Jamaa members (led by Mohammad al-Hukaymeh) declared that they had joined al-Qaeda. Al-Jihad, on the other hand, moved to a global level of activities and adopted a global reference group after its campaign in Egypt failed and it lost most social ties with its Egyptian constituency and with the Egyptian Islamist movement, and was reduced to an existence in exile. Al-Jihad had re-appeared on the Egyptian scene in 1993 as a clandestine group, presenting itself exclusively via statements sent to news agencies and via its violent acts. It carried out a small number of high-profile attacks on politicians in Cairo using suicide bombers—a hitherto unknown tactic in Egypt which appalled many observers. One of the attacks, on Prime Minister Atef Sedki in November 1993, turned into a public relations disaster for al-Jihad when it failed to kill the politician, but killed a 12-year-old schoolgirl. After a wave of arrests in the same year destroyed much of its organization in Egypt, the group— led first by Sayyed Imam and since 1993 by Ayman al-Zawahiri—moved its base several times, from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Sudan and Yemen, Bosnia, and back to Afghanistan in 1996, where it joined Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, occupying many of the most senior positions in the organization. While al-Zawahiri had maintained until the mid-1990s that the fight against the Egyptian regime had priority, from 1996 on he increasingly adopted a global perspective and a global reference group. Under the heading “universality of the battle” he explains in his book Knights under the Prophet’s Banner that in the face of an international coalition of “Jews and Crusaders” attacking the Muslim nation, “the struggle for the establishment of a Muslim state cannot be considered a regional struggle”; it has to be fought on a global level, and it is the Islamists’ task to mobilize the “Muslim nation,” the worldwide community of Muslims.18 To sum up, the Egyptian groups underwent violent radicalization in confrontation with their own government, the “near enemy,” and in their efforts to establish an Islamic social and political order. Al-Jamaa started as an open group with a focus on direct social involvement with the population and a relatively strong base of support, which, however, they were not able to sustain for long after the violent confrontations began in earnest, also because the parallel radicalization of their efforts to enforce an “Islamic order” involved coercion and violence against the communities. The ensuing cycle of radicalization in perspective and behavior, and estrangement from their reference groups, apparently led to a loss of constraints on violent practices, facilitating extreme forms of violence including elements of ritualism, and among a smaller part of the group to the adoption of a global perspective. This “globalization” was very limited in comparison to those parts of al-Jihad led by al-Zawahiri, which as a clandestine and socially largely isolated group seemed bereft of those remaining social ties binding al-Jamaa—even in its

18 Ayman

al-Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, extracts published in al-Sharq alAwsat, Dec. 2, 2001.

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failure—to the Egyptian context. Whereas al-Jamaa ceased its operations after the disaster of Luxor, a considerable part of al-Jihad joined al-Qaeda’s project of global jihad.

4 Dynamics of Support and Control: Hizbullah in Lebanon The case of Hizbullah (“Party of God”) represents the development of an Islamist movement which underwent violent radicalization against what they saw as an outside enemy attacking the religious community. At the beginning, though, Hizbullah had a broader agenda, directed at renewing the religious community (and establishing an Islamic order) as well as defending it. After all, the group started with the strongest “Islamic-revolutionary” credentials possible. It emerged with close links to the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran, proudly proclaiming loyalty to Ayatollah Khomeini as the “Supreme Jurist”; its banner bore the programmatic slogan “The Islamic Revolution in Lebanon”. However, Hizbullah’s actual formation was triggered by the Israeli invasion and subsequent occupation of South Lebanon in 1982, and during its violent campaign gradually re-focused its aims and perspective. While its origin as part of the revolutionary movement of Iran profoundly shaped Hizbullah’s self-concept, it was “resistance against foreign occupation” rather than “Islamic revolution” which ultimately came to define its role. And from an initially pan-Islamic frame of orientation Hizbullah gradually shifted to the Shiite population of Lebanon as their primary reference group. The Israeli occupation of South Lebanon met soon with resistance from various armed groups, among them Amal, socialist groups, and Palestinian organizations. And considerable parts of the local population, suffering under humiliating security measures and economic disruptions seemed to sympathize with or actively support the insurgency, which by late 1983 had become a broad campaign of attacks and ambushes. Protests, demonstrations, and strikes were organized in Tyre and other towns, and in a number of villages, which became notorious as the “arc of resistance,” the civilian population openly attacked Israeli patrols with stones and blocked streets with burning tires.19 Hizbullah, too, was active in the insurgency against the Israeli forces in South Lebanon, and some of the most ferocious centers of resistance formed around Islamist clerics close to Hizbollah, such as Raghib Harb in the village of Jebchit. But the group was initially not in a position to benefit from emerging sympathies and support among the population. Formed in a remote area— Baalbek in the Beqaa Valley (which was at the time under Syrian control)—under the tutelage of Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran), the group behaved secretively and did not announce its foundation or present itself publicly until late 1984. For many Lebanese the name Hizbullah was at first connected mainly to reports about radical Khomeinist groups in the Beqaa, suicide bombings against American

19 See

L’Orient le-Jour, Dec. 4, 1983, and Dec. 15, 1985; Rieck 1989, 442/572/574, Smit 2000, 167/206), Jaber 1997, 22).

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and Israeli targets, and the abduction of foreigners in Beirut.20 Suspicions remained and the group was widely seen as radical, also because of reports that the Pasdaran and Lebanese Islamists had established an Islamic republic en miniature in Baalbek, enforcing an Islamic dress code and a ban on alcohol. Nevertheless, the group gradually built a following, first in the Beqaa, where Hizbullah also provided social services and built a small hospital, recruiting young men from the area and winning their families for the movement, and later in West Beirut and the southern suburbs. In South Lebanon, Hizbullah gradually established relationships of support in local communities, often around radical clerics, as one observer explained: “From 1984 on Hizbullah started arriving in the South. Local people started joining them. And when young people from the area joined them, some people started supporting them. But slowly. People wanted to know what they were doing. And the Israelis were very tough.”21 Meanwhile, local support for radical clerics and Hizbullah seemed resilient in the face of reprisals and pressure on the villages from the Israeli security forces. Villages such as Jebchit, Adloun, Maarakah, Kafra, and Yater were the target of repeated incursions, search-and-arrest operations, and curfews, but support for the resistance seemed rather to increase after these reprisals, as did the number of attacks around the villages.22 After this first phase of emerging support, however, the relationship between Hizbullah and the Shiite population in the South became marred by tensions and conflicts over certain violent practices and other forms of behavior around 1986– 1987, which resulted in a crisis of support in South Lebanon in the late 1980s. One controversial practice were suicide attacks against Israeli forces, carried out in 1985 by various insurgent groups (Hizbullah was responsible for one third of the 24 attacks in that year). Initially, popular because it was in some cases spectacularly successful, the tactic was increasingly criticized by leading clerics, who seemed to voice a growing uneasiness among the Shiite population, as one sympathizer of Hizbullah recounted: “At the beginning people were proud of the first martyrs [suicide bombers] . . . But then the atmosphere changed. Later people were against it. They had the feeling that the young men had killed themselves ‘for nothing.’”23 In other words, controversies and criticism revolved around Hizbullah’s military campaign not because it was considered illegitimate—“resistance” was still approved—but because the losses to one’s own side were considered too high and because it was perceived as excessive and costly. In late 1986, Hizbullah also adopted the tactic of large-scale open assaults on fortified positions, assembling 20 While

Hizbullah claimed the attacks on Israeli targets, it denied responsibility for the suicide attacks against American and French troops, and for most abductions of foreigners, with the exception of several kidnappings of alleged foreign spies. 21 Interview with former UNIFIL advisor Timur Goksel, Beirut, December 2006. 22 See, for example, the letter by the Lebanese envoy to the United Nations, August 24, 1984, UN Doc. S/16713, or the UNIFIL report for the period October 1984–April 1985 (UN Document S/17093), which gives a detailed description of typical procedures during the frequent search operations. 23 Interview with resident of West Beirut and Hizbullah sympathizer, July 2007.

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up to 150 fighters next to or within the occupied zone. While this tactic showed the group’s improved logistical capabilities and was at times very successful, it also exerted a heavy toll on its fighters. Again, the feeling was widespread that the young men—sons of the Shiite community—were “wasted” in the attacks.24 But relationships of support in South Lebanon were also undermined by Hizbullah’s attempts to “Islamize” the Shiite population and impose an Islamic moral order, which at times included elements of coercion and acts of violence, such as attacks on bars, nightclubs, or video shops, as reported after the Shiite takeover of West Beirut and the Israeli withdrawal from Tyre.25 Whereas in areas controlled by Hizbullah, like Baalbek and the southern suburbs, the Islamist lifestyle adopted by its followers more or less “naturally” influenced its surroundings, in other areas attempts to impose Islamic norms on its social environment provoked resentment and fear, and apparently led to a decline in support, mainly in some parts of South Lebanon, as a close observer of the situation noted: “When they tried to take over people’s lives, Hezbullah lost their support.”26 During violent confrontations between Amal and Hizbullah in 1988 and 1989, then, weakened support for the Islamists among local communities seemed to contribute to Amal being able to take over control in most parts of the South. Instead of estrangement and escalation, Hizbullah reacted to this crisis of support by adapting its behavior and putting constraints on its violent practices. And it seemed to gradually change its approach to their wider social environment, which led to a gradual re-consolidation of support relationships. These in turn seemed to induce a further shift in Hizbullah’s stance on engaging with the Shiite population and focusing on the Lebanese population as their reference group. Between the late 1980s and early 1990s Hizbullah went through a phase of reorientation and reorganization—facilitated by changes in the Iranian leadership, but also in response to the “crisis of support”—which included its social and public work as well as military tactics and strategy. The method of suicide attacks was reduced and confined to very few high-profile operations, and they gradually ceased costly open assaults on Israeli positions.27 And with increased training and new technologies Hizbullah’s military campaign became more effective, drastically reducing its own losses. Whereas the total number of attacks increased and casualties on the Israeli side remained high, the number of Hizbullah “martyrs” declined from 357 in 1986–1988—the highest number in the entire conflict—and 261 in 1989–1991, 24 Interview

with residents of West Beirut, July 2005. and to what degree Hizbullah used force in its efforts to introduce norms of moral conduct is debated, and Nasrallah denied that any “extremist” behavior of this kind occurred. Smit (2000, 225–226), Jaber (1997, 52–53), Rieck (1989, 591–592), and Sankari (2005, 218), among others, report incidents of this kind, similarly Rosiny (1996, 239) who rightly remarks that the perpetrators of these incidents were not always clear and many acts were probably perpetrated by Shiite groups not directly connected to Hizbullah. The fact that Sheikh Fadlallah warned on several occasions that, for example, destroying bars or clubs was “counterproductive,” however, can be regarded as an indirect confirmation that elements from within and around Hizbullah were involved (Rosiny 1996, 228, 238). 26 Timur Goksel, cited in Jaber (1996, 30). 27 On the discourse among Islamist clerics, particularly the role of Sheikh Hussein Fadlallah, see Kramer (1990, 141–149; 1997, 118–121). 25 Whether

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to 190 in 1992–1994, and 162 in 1995–1997.28 Simultaneously, there was a visible decline in efforts to prevent “un-Islamic” behavior. And Hizbullah massively expanded its social and charitable work, which by the early 1990s included medical care, financial assistance for the families of martyrs, cultural and educational institutions, and the Holy Struggle for Reconstruction (jihad al-bina, an organization that constructed infrastructure in the southern suburbs, and repaired and rebuilt homes in southern villages destroyed by Israeli attacks).29 Moreover, another innovation on the battlefield allowed Hizbullah to ease the pressure on the Shiite population in South Lebanon. From 1993 on the group used Katyusha rockets against northern Israel as an instrument of retaliation for IDF attacks on Lebanese villages, and in this way managed to force the Israeli forces to accept an informal code of conduct restricting both sides to attacking military targets only. In other words, Hizbullah undertook efforts to regulate and confine violent confrontations to secure their constituency and social base. This development was not coincidental, but the result of conscious self-restraint on the part of Hizbullah, which was directly linked to the group’s orientation toward (and relationship with) their constituency, as Hassan Nasrallah explained with striking clarity: There are checks and balances to which the resistance has committed itself for years now. In other words, we do not need anyone to impose restrictions on us, because the Lebanese people are our people, the destroyed homes are our homes, the dispossessed are our families, and we do not want our sons to die in vain. For example, we never carry out indiscriminate martyrdom operations; we have hundreds of would-be martyrs, and I come under pressure, every day, from young men eager to go out on martyrdom operations. I could easily tell any of them: take this explosive device inside the occupied zone, and when you meet two individuals from Lahd’s group, or an Israeli, detonate it. We do not execute operations of this kind . . .; we seek martyrdom and victory as a great reward for our people and nation, and to this end the resistance saw fit to impose certain restrictions on itself.30

During the phase when Hizbullah consolidated and expanded support relationships (1992–2000), changes in the group’s military campaign were accompanied by a further shift in their reference groups and a major political reorientation. The group had emerged in 1982 with a self-concept of—in the words of its later secretarygeneral, Hassan Nasrallah—“a revolutionary and Islamist current” with “a clear Islamist political vision.”31 Closely affiliated with the revolutionary leadership in Iran, Hizbullah had adopted Khomeini’s strong pan-Islamic vision, considering the Islamic Republic of Iran to be the “nucleus of the world s central Islamic state,”32 and explicitly rejecting nationalist concepts and the confinement of their agenda to the Lebanese situation: “We do not work or think within the borders of Lebanon,” as the group’s first secretary-general, Subhi Tufeili, declared, “we seek to defend

28 Author’s data, compiled on the basis of a list of martyrs (“shuhada al-muqawama al-islamiyya”)

published by Hizbullah, Beirut 2006. Hizbullah’s social and relief work, see Danawi (2002) and Palmer Harik (2005, 81–94). 30 Hassan Nasrallah, interview with al-Safir, April 30, 1996, in Noe (2007, 157). 31 Interview with Hassan Nasrallah in al-Khaleej, March 11, 1986, translated and published in Noe (2007, 26). 32 “Open Letter Addressed by Hizb Allah to the Downtrodden in Lebanon and in the World,” February 16, 1985, translated and published in Norton (1987, 167–189). 29 On

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Muslims throughout the world.”33 By the mid-1980s, Hizbullah had already begun to qualify its stated aim of an “Islamic Revolution in Lebanon,” declaring that an Islamic system could only be implemented with the consent of the other communities in Lebanon.34 And in 1991 the group’s leadership decided to engage with the Lebanese polity and take part in parliamentary elections—a policy later called infitah, or openness, which was opposed by hardliners on the grounds that the group would then cease to be a revolutionary movement (Norton 2007, 100; Hamzeh 2004, 110). Hizbullah’s more pragmatist political approach included what was described in the literature as “Lebanonization” (Norton 1998; Ranstorp 1998)—a shift in perspective and priorities toward Lebanon as its frame of reference, reducing its pan-Islamic orientation, further playing down any notion of the Islamic Revolution in Lebanon.35 And the group emphasized its role as “resistance” for the Lebanese people, as its reference group: “We are not a foreign army that has come from elsewhere to liberate another people’s land, we are part of this people, our land is occupied, and we want to liberate it.”36 Hizbullah’s new image as “Islamic resistance for Lebanon” was apparently approved by many Shiites, with the emphasis on “resistance” rather than on “Islamic.” A survey conducted in 1993 by Palmer Harik found 41% of Shiites naming Hizbullah as their preferred political party, while only 24% identified themselves as “highly religious,” and among this most pious group, only about half supported an Islamic state in Lebanon (Palmer Harik 1996, 56–58). Support grew further with Hizbullah’s military successes against the Israeli forces, and its resistance against Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996 temporarily earned them a degree of support throughout the Lebanese population bordering on national euphoria. Their orientational shift toward greater engagement with the Lebanese population apparently correlated with consolidating support on the local level too. By the mid 1990s Hizbullah could rely on cooperation of local residents for entering and leaving the security zone, collecting information about the Israeli troops, and preparing operations. Its fighters were able to hide in villages for months, and even established permanent cells in the occupied zone. Strongholds of the resistance, such as the village of Bint Jbeil, remained relatively constant over time, despite severe pressure by the Israeli forces, indicating resilience of support. Data on Hizbullah fighters killed in the campaign also supports the thesis of the group’s increasing social embeddedness in the South: The proportion of “martyrs” who came from villages in South

33 Statement

in al-Ahd, April 10, 1987, cited by Kramer (1993, 545). Letter,” see note 32, 175. 35 In 1992, Nasrallah stated: “Regarding the project of the Islamic Republic, I can assure you that we will never propose this option per se in Lebanon, neither through statements, slogans or speeches. . .. We are in fact saying to the Lebanese people that if they choose an Islamic system, we would hasten to support it.” Interview with al-Nahar, Sept. 11, 1993, published in Noe (2007, 90). 36 Hassan Nasrallah in an interview with Nida al-Watan, August 31, 1993, published in Noe (2007, 137). 34 “Open

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Lebanon rose steadily from 60% in 1989–1991 to 80% in 1998–2000.37 Hizbullah, too, killed alleged spies and collaborators—and not only official members of the “South Lebanese Army,” the Israelis’ local auxiliary force. Yet, these incidents did not seem to escalate in number or quality, and did not produce “revenge cycles” as in the Egyptian case, but rather seemed to decrease and become regulated over the course of the conflict. And in the late 1990s, the group began to transfer arrested “spies” to the Lebanese authorities to stand trial in an official court. Due to their widely accepted social and political role (and military power), Hizbullah became the mediator in a number of vendettas between powerful families, rather than a participant. By the end of the 1990s, Hizbullah had become in a way the “ruler” of the Shiites, not only because of its political support and administrative role (after it took part in municipal elections), but also with the expansion of its social, educational, and medical institutions penetrating the Shiite population and providing it with an extraordinary degree of control over the community. It also used this role to gradually introduce an Islamic moral order in a more subtle way via education and administrative regulations, or in its “rulings” in arbitration procedures and other forms of informal justice. The popularity of an “Islamic” dress code and lifestyle, and the demonstrated adherence to religious values visible by the turn of the century, was also a result of the victories of the “Islamic Resistance,” whose growing popularity helped spread its religious message and culture. In the case of Hizbullah, support relationships were shaped by, and in turn reinforced, the group’s orientation toward the Shiite population of Lebanon as their reference group. Confronted with occupation by foreign military forces, the militants’ violent campaign received widespread—if not unconditional—support which proved relatively resilient under pressure, but was undermined by controversial violent practices and attempts to impose an Islamic moral order. This crisis of support did not result in escalation, but induced a gradual process of adjustment and reorientation on the part of Hizbullah, with the group reducing attempts to impose a moral order, but also confining and regulating its military campaign, and reducing extreme forms of violence. At the same time, Hizbullah’s perspective shifted further toward greater commitment to the Lebanese (Shiite) population, playing down notions of Islamic revolution and pan-Islamic solidarity which had so dominated their self-concept and self-presentation at the beginning.

5 Conclusion: Patterns of Orientation, Interaction, and Control This study shows that one form of control over the behavior of terrorist or militant groups emerges from the relationship with their constituencies, when they adhere to norms and normative judgments of a certain social group with whom 37 Author’s data, compiled on the basis of a list of martyrs (“shuhada al-muqawama al-islamiyya”)

published by Hizbullah, Beirut 2006.

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they identify and toward whom they orient themselves as their reference group. The basis of this constraining influence is twofold: On the one hand, it results from factual dependence on practical support from a certain population, for example, non-cooperation with security forces and providing shelter and information. On the other, it rests on the fact that the militants refer to this group in legitimizing and giving meaning to their violent actions, and depend on it for sustaining and confirming their self-concept and their role as heroic fighters. This link is reinforced by personal ties between members of the groups and this population, which thus constitute a point of reference defining the militants’ social identity on several levels simultaneously. Consequently, confining influences on the behavior and violent practices of the militant groups are lost if these ties break down or disengagement occurs. The patterns in which forms of orientation, support-relationships, and elements of control evolve seem to be linked to the basic conflict structure. In cases where the militants’ violent campaign is directed against their own government and social order, escalating confrontations and the pressure they produce seem to become more disruptive for relationships of support and local social structures. Support relationships fragment under pressure, with large parts unwilling to support a violent campaign at high costs and breaking away, leaving only a hard core of supporters. At the same time, the militants’ perspective on society radicalizes, and the confrontations are accompanied by an increase in tensions and violence between the militants and their social environment; because the groups’ adversary is part of village communities (mayors, local policemen), and because the local population is the target of the militants’ agenda of social and cultural transformation. And these tensions undermine the community’s solidarity and cohesion. What seems to emerge, then, is a cycle of escalation, involving increasing pressure from security forces, radicalization and violence toward the local population, and estrangement and isolation from sympathetic sectors of society, which is then followed by forms of disengagement in the militants’ perspective and a loss of constraints on practices of violence. The second pattern holds in situations where communities perceive a threat to their existence and identity from an enemy clearly defined as foreign, particularly when this threat has a territorial dimension. In this case, a process as described by Picard for the Lebanese Shia takes place (1997, 190, 194): the violent threat reinforces the community’s collective identity, deepens its boundaries, and tightens social control; it becomes what Waldmann calls a “radical community” (2006, 133). Out-group pressure in this case tends to reinforce communal solidarity and support for the militants, because the community begins to identify with the militants in the sense that they are seen as defending the community against an outside threat and resurrecting its honor after experienced humiliations. And the militants gradually re-focus their agenda toward defending the community against the outside enemy, toning down notions of social transformation (the Islamic Revolution). Emerging support relationships, involve influence leverage not only because the militant group depends on tangible acts of cooperation, but also because they reinforce orientation toward the community as their reference group. This too seems to be a dynamic

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of support reinforcing orientation toward a community as reference group, producing constraints on violent practices and the adaption of behavior, with the effect of consolidating support relationships. In their general direction, the development of support relationships described above follows the analyses by Simmel (1955, 87–94) and Coser (1956, 87–95) of the effect of conflict on group structure: Out-group conflict, in which a group confronts an opponent defined as foreign, can increase in-group cohesion and reinforce group boundaries. Necessary preconditions for this effect to occur are a degree of group cohesion and consensus preceding the external conflict, and that the outside threat is recognized as a threat to the whole group, not just to parts of it; otherwise, external conflict can also lead to disintegration of the group (Coser 1956, 93; Williams 1947, 58). In violent insurgencies, collective identities are not always as clear-cut, of course, and do not always translate unanimously into categories of in-group and out-group. What can be said is that in cases where an enemy is indubitably perceived as “foreign,” and when community cohesion and identity has already been established and fortified in preceding conflict, for example, in sectarian conflict or conflict involving ethnic/nationalist/religious minorities, communal structures and support relationships may prove much more resilient—or may even be reinforced—during violent confrontations, with significant consequences for elements of control entailed in these relationships. The militants’ orientation is to some degree shaped by the direction of their violent radicalization against a foreign enemy, which induces a form of identification with their constituency that emphasizes protection over social transformation and is different from situations where the militants’ violent fervor is directed primarily against their own society. But the interesting point here, illustrated by the case of Hizbullah, is that dynamics resulting from involvement in certain forms of support relationships and emerging patterns of interaction and orientation seem to force a militant group on a certain track of development in a way “despite” their original agenda, exerting a form of influence that remains once these ties are established. By contrast, where the perception of the enemy and communal structures is not as clearly established, and when the threat is not necessarily perceived as concerning a community as a whole, conflict may result in exacerbating internal conflict, undermining support relationships as well as the constraints they entail.

References Al-Berry, K. (2002). La terre est plus belle que le paradis. Paris: JC Lattes. Appleby, R. S. (2000). The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Coser, L. A. (1956). The Functions of Social Conflict. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Danawi, D. (2002). Hizbullah s Pulse: Into the Dilemma of Al-Shahid and Jihad Al-Bina Foundations. Bonn: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Fandy, M. (1994). Egypt’s Islamic group: regional revenge? Middle East Journal, 48(4), 607–625. Haenni, P. (2005). L’ordre des caïds: conjurer la dissidence urbaine au Caire. Paris: Karthala. Hamzeh, A. N. (2004). In the Path of Hizbullah. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

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Hoffman, B. (1995). Holy terror: the implications of terrorism motivated by a religious imperative. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 18, 271–284. Jaber, H. (1997). Hezbollah: Born with a Vengeance. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Jansen, J. J. G. (1986). The Neglected Duty: The Creed of Sadat’s Assassins and Islamic Resurgence in the Middle East. New York, NY: Macmillan. Juergensmeyer, M. (1988). The logic of religious violence. In D.C. Rapoport (Ed.), Inside Terrorist Organizations (pp. 174–193). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Juergensmeyer, M. (2000). Terror in the Mind of God. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Kelley, H. M. (1952). Two functions of reference groups. In G. E. Swanson and E. L. Hartley (Eds.), Readings in Social Psychology (pp. 410–414). New York, NY: Henry Holt. Kippenberg, H. G. (2008). Gewalt als Gottesdienst: Religionskriege im Zeitalter der Globalisierung. München: C.H. Beck. Kramer, M. (1990). The moral logic of Hizballah. In W. Reich (Ed.), Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind (pp. 131–160). Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press. Kramer, M. (1993). Hizbullah: The calculus of Jihad. In M. E. Marty and R. S. Appleby (Eds.), Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance (pp. 539–556). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Kramer, M. (1997). The oracle of Hizbullah: Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah. In R. S. Appleby (Ed.), Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East (pp. 83–181). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Lia, B. (1998). The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt: The Rise of an Islamic Mass Movement. Reading, MA: Ithaca. Malthaner, S. (2005). Terroristische Bewegungen und ihre Bezugsgruppen: Anvisierte Sympathisanten und tatsächliche Unterstützer. In P. Waldmann (Ed.), Determinanten des Terrorismus (pp. 84–137). Weilerswist: Velbrück Verlag. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Merton, R. K. (1968). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York, NY: The Free Press. Mitchell, R. P. (1969). The Society of the Muslim Brothers. London: Oxford University Press. Newsweek, November 13, 1983, p. 69. Noe, N. (Ed.) (2007). Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. London: Verso. Norton, A. R. (1987). Amal and the Shi a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Norton, A. R. (1998). Hizballah: From radicalism to pragmatism? Middle East Policy, 5(4), 147–158. Norton, A. R. (2007). Hezbollah: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Palmer Harik, J. (1996). Between Islam and the system: sources and implications of popular support for Lebanon’s Hizballah. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 40(1), 41–67. Palmer Harik, J. (2005). Hezbollah: The Changing Face of Terrorism. London: Tauris. Picard, E. (1997). The Lebanese Shi’a and political violence in Lebanon. In D. E. Apter (Ed.), The Legitimization of Violence (pp. 189–233). London: Macmillan. Qutb, S. (1981). Milestones. Delhi: Markazi Maktaba Islami. Ramadan, A. A. (1993). Fundamentalist influence in Egypt: the strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Takfir Groups. In M. E. Marty and R. S. Appleby (Eds.), Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance (pp. 152–183). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Ranstorp, M. (1998). The strategy and tactics of Hizballah’s current ‘Lebanonization process’. Mediterranean Politics, 3(1), 95–126. Rapoport, D. C. (1984). Fear and trembling: terrorism in three religious traditions. The American Political Science Review, 78, 658–677.

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Rapoport, D. C. (1993). Comparing militant fundamentalist movements and groups. In M. E. Marty and R. S. Appleby (Eds.), Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance (pp. 429–461). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Rieck, A. (1989). Die Schiiten und der Kampf um den Libanon: Politische Chronik 1958–1988. Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut. Rosiny, S. (1996). Islamismus bei den Schiiten im Libanon: Religion im Übergang von Tradition zur Moderne. Berlin: Das Arabische Buch. Roy, O. (2004). Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Rubin, B. (1990). Islamic Fundamentalism in Egyptian Politics. London: Macmillan. Sankari, J. (2005). Fadlallah: The Making of a Radical Shi’ite Leader. London: Saqi. Simmel, G. (1955). Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations. New York, NY: The Free Press. Smit, F. (2000). The Battle for South Lebanon: The Radicalization of Lebanon’s Shi’ites 1982– 1985. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bulaaq. Waldmann, P. (2006). The radical community: a comparative analysis of the social background of ETA, IRA, and Hezbollah. In J. Victoroff (Ed.), Tangled Roots: Social and Psychological Factors in the Genesis of Terrorism (pp. 133–146). Amsterdam: IOS. Williams, R. M. Jr. (1947). The Reduction of Intergroup Tensions. New York, NY: Social Science Research Council, No. 57.

Baseless Jihad Khaled Al-Hashimi and Carolin Goerzig

1 Introduction According to conventional counterterrorism approaches, terrorist groups should be disintegrated and isolated. The corresponding strategy is to make terrorist groups and their ideologies unattractive and prevent them from building a base. For example, the report How Terrorism Ends, based on a working group convened by the United States Institute of Peace1 and composed of researchers such as Martha Crenshaw and Paul Wilkinson, concludes that “[o]ne of the most effective strategies at governments’ disposal may be to split off pragmatists from radical rejectionists. Such efforts can diminish public support for the terrorists and deny them a strong base from which to operate.”2 While the government should prevent looking weak by all means, terrorist groups should be deliberately weakened in order to pressure them into giving up on violence. A weak group lacking a substantial follower base thus promises more government control. Yet increasing control—for example, by weakening terrorists’ support—can have an ambivalent effect and does not necessarily guarantee a reduction in violence. Such is the case illustrated by the inner-Islamic debate. After al-Jamaa alIslamiyya’s ideological revisions, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (al-Jihad) soon came to emulate al-Jamaa’s change of mind, while al-Qaida ignored the calls to cease violence and instead labeled the revisionists traitors and government agents. Why, the question arises, did one group choose to become moderate while the other did not? The findings of this study are counterintuitive yet conclusive. A closer look at both groups quickly reveals that the Egyptian Islamic Jihad has a group of followers, while there was and still is no consistent support base standing behind al-Zawahiri, second in command of al-Qaida. Quite contrarily, terrorism experts widely talk of the amorphous movement as having mutated into an ideology. It seems the group K. Al-Hashimi (B) Technical University Berlin, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] 1 Together 2 USIP

with the British-based Airey Neave Trust. Special Report: How Terrorism Ends, May 1999.

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has become a brand, with McQaida successfully cornering the terrorism market. But whereas some authors describe the group as the leaderless jihad (Sageman 2008), this chapter looks at the implications of a baseless jihad and argues that it is precisely the lack of a defined support base which helps to explain how al-Qaida’s “leaders” continue to resist a ceasefire. That al-Qaida—ironically—translates as “the base” only leaves room for speculation. What can be gleaned from this case study? The state, as this chapter argues, will face an increasing loss of control over terrorist violence in the future if it aims at decreasing terrorists’ support base. In fact, the lack of a defined follower group forfeits the option of terrorist leaders’ change through dialogue. The three crucial factors that enabled al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s change of mind were closely connected to in-group dynamics and hence depended on the existence of a group. First, selective inducements by the government, in the form of releasing al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya members from prison, could be depicted by al-Jamaa’s leadership as beneficial and theologically sound, as retreat is permissible in case of weakness. Leaders without followers have a much harder time reacting in a similar way, as doing so would not imply saving followers from hardship and hence would not provide a face-saving exit. Second, communication within the group constitutes a form of bargaining power, as the leadership controls the implementation of revisions through communicating the new approach to their followers. Al-Qaida, in turn, cannot claim control of a base and is therefore devoid of any bargaining leverage. In fact, al-Jamaa’s revisions and incited inner-Islamic debate questions al-Qaida’s leadership and pulls the rug out from under the group. As al-Qaida—in addition to lacking a base—thereby turns baseless in its aspirations, it should not be surprising that the group answers to the challenge with rebuttals. Third, repression caused al-Jamaa leaders to feel sympathy and responsibility for its group members. Groups that do not have a bond with its support base but stay active simply by providing its brand to unknown volunteers are probably less inclined to feel a similar responsibility. In a way, depicting global jihad as an enterprise joining the competition for who can claim to be on the rightful path seems to sum up the picture. While for al-Jamaa’s leadership, its group members were no longer an instrument but a value beyond, al-Qaida lacks similar ties to its undefined support base. Without a group, leaders have less incentive to compromise. Weakening such baseless organizations further might henceforth lead to the very opposite of what is intended: a loss of control over violence. In order to present this argument, this chapter is divided into three parts. The first part gives background information on the inner-Islamic debate and the three respective groups. The second part will scrutinize al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s change of mind in order to derive three crucial factors that enabled the group’s transformation. The third and last part will compare the Egyptian Islamic Jihad’s and al-Qaida’s reactions to al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s transformation along the lines of the enabling factors extracted in the previous section, demonstrating that al-Qaida’s lack of a support base disables the otherwise enabling factors.

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2 Background Egypt’s al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya has revised its previously militant ideology and is now adopting peaceful means to spread its “message.” The group’s change of mind was initiated by al-Jamaa’s senior leadership, which at the time of the revisions had been imprisoned for about two decades and which went on to convince thousands of imprisoned followers to accept the revisions. Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s new role has had a ripple effect in the wider Islamist movement, including such groups as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida. The inner-Islamic debate has gained a momentum unparalleled by the frustrated efforts of the Egyptian government to take control of jihadi terrorism by means of repression and persecution. Whereas Egypt has recognized the potential of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya as a go-between and has come to encourage Islamists as moderators of other Islamists, this process is not without complications and can have ambivalent effects. The revisions of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and the unleashed inner-Islamic debate offer a case par excellence. Reconsidering the interpretation of religion as a justification for indiscriminate violence has encouraged a sister group of al-Jamaa, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, to announce its own revisions and equally to cease its bloodshed. At the same time, al-Qaida is still far from taking a similar step and instead seeks to use the “betrayal” of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya to keep its own self-legitimization consistent and convincing in order to prevent losing support for its all-out war against the far enemy.

2.1 What Happened? In the aftermath of the Luxor massacre in 1997, a representative of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s leadership read an announcement declaring the unilateral and unconditional termination of all violence against the state. Following several years of ideological revisions, al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya had come to the conclusion that the campaign of violence that had lasted for more than 20 years and cost thousands of lives was based on a wrong interpretation of the religious texts the Qur’an and hadith.3 Ten years later, another major militant group, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (al-Jihad), also declared a unilateral cessation of violence following its own ideological revisions.4 One of the original ideologues of violent jihadi ideology, Sheikh

3 Hadith

are narrations of the sayings and acts of the prophet Mohamed. peace declaration and texts outlining these revisions were first published in the Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm in summer 2007. Although the Egyptian Islamic Jihad has not resorted to violence in Egypt since 1995, its spiritual leader felt compelled to declare a formal peace agreement through revisions. Sheikh Sayyid Imam in his interview claims that those revisions are not intended for al-Jihad members only, but should be used as a guide for all fundamentalists in the world to renounce violence.

4 The

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Sayyid Imam,5 personally called upon al-Jihad’s followers to renounce violence and embrace a peaceful and nonviolent approach to reach their goal. That Sayyid Imam had retreated in 1992–1993 from an active role in the jihadi movement did not diminish his ideological authority. Both al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and Egyptian Islamic Jihad sent calls to al-Qaida’s leadership to give up its armed struggle. These calls are the more noteworthy considering that the ideological justification for violence the two groups had previously developed was later on accepted and modified to suit al-Qaida’s “far enemy”6 doctrine. Furthermore, the author of this doctrine, Ayman al-Zawahiri himself, was one of the founding members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad before becoming the cofounder of al-Qaida.7 The fact that the two largest jihadi organizations— responsible for decades of violence against locals and foreigners in the Middle East and beyond as well as for the assassination of Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat in 1981—are now turning to sociopolitical activism is causing a rift within other jihadi groups. The resulting debate within the Islamist and jihadi circles in the Arab and Muslim world has sent shockwaves throughout the region, yet has not been given enough attention in the West. Just as the assassination of Anwar Sadat took many by surprise, so did the ceasefire declaration by al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and later on by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Although neither group admits defeat or expresses remorse—and both groups reject any notion of surrendering to the government—they do admit mistakes have been made. And it is exactly this argument which both al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and later on the Egyptian Islamic Jihad use to explain the main reason for ceasing their violence. 5 Sayyid Imam, known as Dr. Fadl and Abdel Qader bin Abdel Aziz, was al-Jihad’s leader between

1984 and 1993, while Ayman al-Zawahiri was the second in command. Sayyid Imam himself wrote his book Master of Preparation: Jihad for the Sake of Allah in the late 1980s while he was in Afghanistan. A few years later he published Compendium of Holy Knowledge in 2000 pages, where he presented his vision of violence, calling for disobeying the state and justifying terrorist operations targeted at foreigners and Egyptians alike. 6 Al-Zayyat talks about change of strategy from near to far enemy. In the early stages of fighting, the focus was on the near enemy, the Egyptian regime. Afterward, the strategy shifted to target those who supported Arab regimes. The conclusion was that local governments cannot survive without military and financial assistance from the United States and Europe, thus making them legitimate targets in an attempt to indirectly affect the near enemy. 7 Ayman al-Zawahiri was originally one of the founding members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and in 1998 together with those loyal to him, joined forces with Osama bin Laden to form the International Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders, later to become al-Qaida. Initially, he disagreed with the idea of striking against the far enemy, and showed no interest in shifting strategy to attack Americans. However, once in Afghanistan, he changed his opinion and became a strong supporter of the idea that both near and far enemies should be attacked simultaneously. In his book Knights under the Prophet’s Banner he states: “to reemphasize what we have already explained, we reiterate that focusing on the domestic enemy alone will not be feasible at this stage.” Furthermore, he credits Sayyid Qutb for helping him shape al-Qaida’s doctrine. Qutb’s ideas helped them “realize that the internal enemy was no less dangerous than the external enemy and that the internal enemy was a tool used by the external enemy and a screen behind which it hid to launch its war on Islam.” The book was smuggled out of Afghanistan’s Kandahar region to the border city of Peshawar and then to London. It was later published in London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.

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In their books, which detail religious and theological rather than political aspects of the revisions, al-Jamaa’s leadership argues that violent jihad, although deemed justified at the time, did not bring the desired result and thus had to be redefined. In Shedding Light on What Went Wrong with Jihad, Sheikh Abdel Rahman et al. claim: “Jihad is neither the goal nor the intent. Jihad is the way to raise the banner of religion and God’s word. And if Jihad can’t achieve that, it is forbidden” (Al-Sharif et al. 2002, 45). Sheikh Sayyid Imam of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group further contributes with his arguments against violent jihad. In his declaration, Sheikh Sayyid points to necessary preconditions for waging violent jihad which do not exist today. Quoting the Qur’an and other religious scholars and historians, he concludes that the possibility for waging violent jihad exists only after jihad’s formative elements are present. Among these formative elements are a parity in numbers and equipment with the enemy, safeguarding Muslim children, women, and families, expenses necessary for jihad, and the differentiation of combatants from noncombatants.8 And since the campaign of violence was initiated without meeting the necessary religious preconditions, the whole project was doomed to fail from the onset. Adding to that, jihad also lacked religious legitimacy as it was initiated without popular consent and the population’s unanimous approval. Basically, during the campaign of violence, they had strayed away from the path, and instead of using jihad to reach their goal, jihad had become the goal. One of al-Jamaa’s senior leaders, the former commander of its military wing, confirms that wrong choices were made. In an interview he says: “We renounced violence only after years of self-searching and analysis of what we have accomplished throughout that period. We were wrong.”9 When asked whether they had simply lost the fight and surrendered to the government, he categorically denied it. Montasser al-Zayyat, the representative of the ceasefire initiative, also reiterated such an assertion. Both senior leader and representative elaborated upon accusations of surrender, and especially those stemming from al-Qaida: “Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s leadership and members were not and still are not afraid of death, but are only afraid of God. We stood up and faced the government directly. Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s members were ready to die for their cause, and spent decades in prisons, tortured and intimidated. In every court appearance, they all wore white robes expressing their preparedness and readiness to accept the death penalty with pride and dignity. They celebrated the deaths of their friends and brothers in arms because martyrdom guaranteed a place in heaven.”10 Every suggestion that the revisions were forced upon them in exchange for lenient prison sentences was immediately rejected. After all, one of the arguments is that even 8 Sheikh

Sayyid’s revisions cover a range of issues and topics. Apart from jihad, the revisions also recall recent history and shed some light on unknown events that had taken place. 9 Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya members that we spoke to have openly admitted that tragic mistakes were made in the course of their violent campaign against the government. 10 Interviews with Montasser al-Zayyat and senior members of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya were conducted in Cairo throughout the summer of 2006.

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after announcing ideological revisions, al-Jamaa’s leadership spent nearly another decade in prison before its last leader, Karam Zohdi, was allowed to go free in the spring of 2006, after more than 25 years in captivity. Throughout their books and in their interviews, former militants insist on the genuine nature of the implemented ideological revisions. However, most critics are still unconvinced of these revisions and point out that although the revisions are welcomed and they do admit mistakes, they fall short of offering a straightforward apology and express no remorse for past actions. Nevertheless, these revisions contributed to a drastic fall in terrorism-related incidents in Egypt and the Middle East in general in the last 10 years, and as such, even some of the staunchest critics consider them now to be genuine.

2.2 The Revisions’ Ambivalent Effects The Egyptian Islamic Jihad came to emulate al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and announced its own revisions. The group, led by Sayyid Imam, had become infamous for attacking state officials, tourist sites, and the infrastructure in Egypt, ascending to become one of the country’s most feared terrorist groups.11 It masterminded a coup attempt in 1974, allied with al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya before the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, attempted to murder several ministers in 1993, and claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan in 1995 (Halawi 2007a). The members of Imam’s al-Jihad were initially reluctant to follow al-Jamaa’s ceasefire initiative. Even when al-Jihad’s leaders made their own revisions in 2004, many group members did not support the initiative. Yet in 2007 Sayyid Imam himself issued a document of 100 pages calling a halt to all killings. And while several senior members of the group have attempted to announce similar revisions, “[al-]Jihad’s first leader alone wields the authority necessary to gain the support of the group’s various factions, whether imprisoned or abroad” (Halawi 2007b). For some jihadis though, the unfeasibility of establishing an Islamic state in Egypt meant that they needed to adapt to a new set of circumstances. After all, the hard-core elements within Islamist circles reject any compromise with authorities they perceive as un-Islamic. The establishment of one Islamic state—the Umma— is the end goal which, in their view, every Muslim must strive for.12 The liberation of Palestine is a starting point, but according to a commonly heard phrase within jihadi circles, all roads to Jerusalem lead through Cairo. Undeterred by the perceived betrayal and defeat of Islamists in Egypt, several members of both groups who remained in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal 11 The

Egyptian Islamic Jihad is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, and Egypt. 12 Islamists do not recognize secular or nationally organized states. Therefore, if Muslims are to be free of poverty and humiliation, they must aim for the establishment of an all-encompassing Islamic state ruled on sharia principles. For more on the difference between an Islamic state and a nationally organized state within the Islamic context see Bargouti (2008).

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felt compelled to declare a war on the far enemy.13 The ideologue of this new strategy to shift attention from the near to the far enemy is Ayman al-Zawahiri himself.14 Having realized that the strategy of targeting the near enemy—in this case the Egyptian government—failed to materialize, the logic of the new strategy dictates that supporters of the regime and those responsible for keeping it in power must therefore be dealt with. Inclined to stay loyal to the original goal of establishing first an Islamic state in Egypt and then in the rest of the Arab and Islamic world, the newly formed al-Qaida declared a fatwa15 against the United States and certain European governments. What explains the differing reactions to the peace initiative? According to Diaa Rashwan, the Egyptian “Jihad has always been characterized by schisms. . . although most leaders and members have deferred to the leadership of historical figures. . .” (Rashwan 2009, 131). Rashwan comes to conclude that the nature of al-Jihad poses complications to the group’s transformation. But whereas the case of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad still allows one to talk of a group characterized by members abiding to their leaders, Ayman al-Zawahiri’s al-Qaida has less of a clear organizational shape. Tellingly, Montasser al-Zayyat argues that internal divisions within the previously al-Zawahiri-led Islamic Jihad prompted al-Zawahiri to join the International Islamic Front (Al-Zayyat 2004, 66), later to be named al-Qaida. Yet al-Zawahiri’s doctrinal shift from the near to the far enemy was characterized by the breakup and disintegration of his followers, and his alliance with bin Laden and the resulting “base”16 in fact never managed to form a base beyond the provision of the brand McQaida (Al-Zayyat 2004, 66). Going global implied the loss of contact to a local ground. The striking difference between what was left of al-Jihad and what was to become al-Qaida lies in the diverging organizational contour. But how exactly are organizational contour and ideological revisions related? In order to provide an answer, the next part will look at al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s consequential about-face.

13 For

more on the difference, origins, and implications of the far and near enemy strategies see Gerges (2005). 14 Ayman al-Zawahiri is al-Qaida’s second in command after Osama bin Laden. 15 Within an Islamic context, fatwa in itself is not a law, but serves more as a judgment or nonbinding advice by an experienced Islamic scholar or religious figure. Just as one imam can issue a fatwa against violence, another one is capable of issuing a fatwa supporting violence. In 1998 Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa declaring war on all Americans, Jews, and corrupt Muslim leaders. Although he was not taken too seriously, several indiscriminate terrorist attacks against civilian targets worldwide showed that such a fatwa should not be ignored. Many al-Qaida sympathizers associated themselves with Osama bin Laden, turning his fatwa into an ideology to fight all enemies of Islam with theological reasoning. For more details and the transcript of bin Laden’s fatwa, see Gunaratna (2002). 16 Al-Qaida translates as “the base.”

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3 Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s Change of Mind Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya revised its previously militant approach and now strongly criticizes any association of violence with jihad. The revised definition of jihad focuses on passive resistance and peaceful methods: “Violence should be used as an absolute last resort, and only when one’s life is in danger. And even then, killing should be avoided at all costs” (Al-Sharif et al. 2002, 11). Citing al-Boukhari, a renowned Islamic scholar, al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya differentiates between war and murder. The Qur’an sets out rules for how one should treat enemies while fighting, and killing them should be only the last resort in case of self-defense. Murder is when one side kills for no reason (Al-Sharif et al. 2002, 11). Instead of resorting to jihad for no reason, new enemies are identified who are of a greater threat to Muslims and Islam than Americans and Israel: poverty, stagnation, and illiteracy pose a far greater danger to the future of Islam than any other evil (AlSharif et al. 2002, 11). And the only way to defeat such an enemy is through a jihad which employs teachers, doctors, and scientists rather than soldiers (Al-Sharif et al. 2002, 11). Jihad in this context becomes a long-term struggle to improve social and material well-being through education using core Islamic principles but relying on twenty-first-century technological means. Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya transformed because “violence and killings did not bring the desired results.”17 According to critical voices the group’s members sold themselves to the government either to betray their cause or to get out of prison. These voices assume a high rationale and pure calculation on the part of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya. However, the group’s members were “as they say now by themselves: very young and immature.”18 Mini-max cost-benefit calculus was not high on the agenda of these youngsters passionate for their cause. It was in the course of the group’s revisions that its leaders and later its members clearly distanced themselves from absolute terror. What is more, they have come to find a rational approach which is very well compatible with religion. How pragmatic and down to earth their new perspective has become is clear in the words: “When weighing interests, always choose the one which can be achieved in reality and be definite, and not only in a theoretical realm and hopes and dreams” (Hafez et al. 2002, 26). Al-Jamaa’s members assert that rationality and weighing options is what drove them to the revisions. They urge all Muslims to consider each argument in favor of and against every challenge in life: “Always look at good and bad. There is never 100 percent good or bad. One must make a choice. If we use violence, what is it that we gain? If violent jihad brings more bad, then there is no need for it and it is forbidden” (Al-Sharif et al. 2002, 11). Since violent jihad turned out to be counterproductive, it had to be reassessed. Without a realistic chance for success, jihad is neither promising nor legitimate. The leadership’s new insights into reality were closely connected to in-group dynamics.

17 Interview 18 Interview

with Montasser al-Zayyat, Cairo, summer 2006. with Prof. Emad Shahin, Cairo, summer 2006.

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Three factors that enabled al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s leaders’ change of mind were based on the existence of a follower group. Let us take a look at them.

3.1 Communication as Bargaining Power The insight to choose the interest which can be achieved in reality was gained through a communicative process—both between leaders and scholars outside the group and between leaders and their followers. Omar Ashour emphasizes the role of interaction with other political prisoners and Islamist movements. He also refers to the leaders’ mentioning that they feared the loss of control over their followers and the fragmentation of the group resulting from the followers’ contact with other prisoners (Ashour 2007, 618). This fear hints at the importance of the follower group in spurring the leaders’ revisions. A crucial question asks whether communications were the cause of the leaders’ rationalization process or whether the leadership was in fact rational from the very beginning and the group constituted merely a bargaining tool. After all, for the government, the ability of al-Jamaa to implement the ceasefire was pivotal, and only when the leadership seemed in control of the group did the government concede some inducements such as releasing prisoners. Simultaneously, the government seized the moment and encouraged the dialogues by providing logistical support such as enabling leaders to tour prisons. The debate over the group’s alleged rationality might not be decidable ultimately. Yet the case seems to testify that communications with the follower group was cause as well as tool of the new insights into reality. Without control over its group, the state might have reconsidered offering any inducements (Hafez 2003, 137).

3.2 Selective Inducements Positive reactions to inducements such as releasing prisoners early are a contentious topic within Islamic circles since they can and indeed are interpreted by some as a betrayal to the cause, which has been traded for worldly matters. Yet the very opposite can be argued. From a different perspective, the existence of a follower group comes along with a responsibility on the part of its leaders. Al-Jamaa’s leadership accepted this responsibility when it took the chance to liberate its supporters—a reaction quite compatible with theological reasoning. Among many stories from the history of Islam, one stands out as a primary example of why violence is not always the answer, even when deemed necessary. Many fundamentalists fear being labeled as cowards and traitors if they back down from the original oath to fight until the death, and this is probably the key driving motivator for not backing down. After all, death does not seem to deter them. In an attempt to dismiss all hints of cowardice if cessation of violence is declared, revisionists point to the example of Khaled bin Walid, who led a troop of Muslim men to fight infidels. Being vastly outnumbered, he ordered his army to retreat and head back

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home. When they returned, people labeled Khaled bin Walid a coward, a traitor, and wanted to punish him. However, Mohamed intervened and called him a hero, because he saved three thousand lives from a certain but futile death without accomplishing anything (Al-Sharif et al. 2002, 11). The emphasis on such a story shows the extent of the ideological and theological reforms. What is even more interesting is how rationality and reason substituted for passion, impulsive behavior, and the personal desire for revenge. Several high-ranking Islamists point out that even before our times Muslims weighed benefits against costs while Prophet Mohamed showed that spilling blood in jihad is not the goal. Islamic scholars say that only what is in the interest of society should be implemented, because what is good for society is also good for God (Al-Sharif et al. 2002, 11). Armed with such arguments and reasoning, the leadership convinced several thousand former fundamentalists to accept the revisions while taking the face-saving exit.

3.3 Repression and Sympathy More important than rational calculus from early on seems to have been what went on during the talks. While the debates were sparked by Islamic scholars outside the group, the transformation was closely connected to in-group dynamics. Debate was conducted in sympathy with other affected Muslims as well as in sympathy with in-group members. Thus, the group’s spokesperson al-Zayyat argues “for an end to the bloodshed and. . . that many innocent young people who had not committed any crime were in prison, and that thousands of families were suffering from poverty and other social problems because of the continued detention of their relatives” (Al-Zayyat 2004, 75). The group developed its rationale out of sympathy for one another. Rather than being driven by personal interests, they perceived the pointlessness of their fellows’ suffering. In one of their books they summarize this perception in the words: “What we said comes to the following: whatever a Muslim does should be for the good of a group and not only personal” (Hafez et al. 2002, 35–36). This sympathy with their fellows and the in-group discussions shaped their rationality of weighing options and deciding to save rather than slaughter other Muslims, as in the example of Khaled bin Walid, who saved 3,000 from a fight against 300,000. And maybe it is this sympathy that the group expresses by repeatedly citing verses from the Qur’an which is the essence of religion and which facilitated an altruistic rationality. Maybe it is this insight to which al-Zayyat refers when stating that “it had to do with knowledge and experience. They matured, read, and understood the book properly.”19 Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya realized that retreat in case of weakness is quite compatible with religion. It is rational and religious at the same time, because human life is saved. What makes this rationality so difficult to obtain is that nobody likes to 19 Interview

with Montasser al-Zayyat.

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admit or see weakness. It is easy to weigh costs and benefits if the result is positive. It is a challenge to do so if the outcome is not so cheering. It requires, as al-Jamaa has shown, sympathy with other humans, whose lives are no longer merely an instrument but a value beyond. According to Omar Ashour, repression by the government played an ambivalent role, complicating efforts to discern whether it actually constituted a cause of radicalization, deradicalization, or even reradicalization. Ashour concludes that the timing of the repression is decisive in determining the respective effect. Important for the argument at hand is the relationship to the follower group. Repression came along with sympathy because there were tangible ties between the leaders and the repressed followers of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya. The crucial impact of a defined follower base becomes even clearer when looking at the diverging reactions of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida. The next part will accordingly compare both groups to al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s about-face along the lines of the three enabling factors.

4 Enabling Jihad but Disabling Al-Qaida As has been demonstrated, al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s transformation had effects that extend beyond the group—namely, on the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and on al-Qaida. The incited inner-Islamic debate should not be underestimated in its impact. The debate between the Egyptian government and al-Jamaa can be viewed not only as serving to transform the jihadis, but also as an exercise in democratic debate for the government. As Diaa Rashwan notes, the outlook for other groups’ transformation is positive because al-Jamaa’s revisions both offer a role model for other jihadis, while also providing the Egyptian government with experience in dialogue. Amr El Choubaki, an expert from the Al Ahram Center in Cairo, eventually concludes that these revisions could even contribute toward preventing future terrorist attacks. Is this statement too optimistic? Maybe it is. Yet nothing is perfect, as al-Jamaa itself states succinctly: “Seeking the perfect Islamic society is wrong. If God wanted a perfect society, he could have done it” (Abdellah et al. 2002, 37). Indeed, the effects of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s transformation on other jihadi groups are not homogenous. While al-Qaida radicalized, clearly capitalizing on depicting al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya as betraying the cause, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad seized the opportunity and announced its own revisions. The three factors that enabled al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s change of mind were closely connected to in-group dynamics and hence based on the existence of a defined follower group. But whereas al-Jihad could ultimately count on followers who would abide with its highest leader’s decision, al-Qaida is much less in control of its base. This distinction between al-Jihad and al-Qaida is consequential and helps to explain why one group became moderate while the other did not. Accordingly, the implications of the (lack of the) enabling factors is discussed in the following.

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4.1 Communication as Bargaining Power When Sayyid Imam of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad himself called upon his followers to abide by a ceasefire, they eventually did. The title of Imam’s 100-page document containing the essence of his revisions is telling. His Rationalizing Jihad in Egypt and the World shows interesting similarities to al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s revisions. He asserts that it is not permitted to fight the rulers of Muslim countries today in order to implement sharia, due both to the group’s incapacity to accomplish such a task and to the damages, which would outweigh the benefits.20 He further states that “when a Muslim sets a goal for himself that exceeds his ability or that does not suit his situation then it is impermissible in Islam to use any illicit means to achieve this goal even if the goal itself is legitimate” (Schafey 2007). The process of rationalizing jihad and elevating it from its misinterpretation as the use of whatever means is necessary to achieve a goal is common to both groups. A consideration of damages outweighing the benefits of fighting can equally be found in al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s reasoning. Similar to al-Jamaa, the about-face of al-Jihad was characterized by a process of rationalization that differentiated between ends and means. The role of the follower group was therefore crucial. Although the Egyptian Islamic Jihad is, as Rashwan writes, characterized by schisms, thereby complicating the success of its transformation, most members and leaders of the group still abide by figures such as Sayyid Imam (Rashwan 2009, 131). The important role of the follower group becomes even more apparent if we look at the implications of an actual lack of such. Al-Qaida not only lacks a defined group with whom to discuss and communicate,21 but also the group is devoid of bargaining leverage, as it lacks comprehensive control over its supporters. This lack of control is explained by the group’s geographical extension as well as by its metamorphosis into an ideology. A process of rationalizing jihad is therefore much less likely. At the same time, al-Qaida’s reaction might very well be explained through rational calculation—at least in terms of a rationality that continues to justify the group’s raison d’être. By emphasizing that al-Jamaa’s members betrayed their cause in order to buy themselves a ticket out of captivity, al-Qaida apparently seeks to legitimize its own purpose and mobilize support. After all, it is through al-Jamaa’s change of mind—and especially the later revisions of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad—that alQaida increasingly enters a dead end. The conclusive inability to claim being on the only rightful path pulls the rug out from under the group. The shift to the far enemy doctrine and the resort to suicide missions can be interpreted as a move to actually gain support. Al-Qaida’s leaders have to stress that the revisions were a mistake and that their previous fellows gave up in vain— that is, that the goals of al-Qaida are indeed within reach. In order to convincingly

20 The

Middle East Media Research Institute, 25.01.2008, “Sayyid Imam vs. al-Qaida.” also implying that repression can backfire, since it hinders such communication by forcing the leadership into isolation.

21 Thereby

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make this case, the group innovated by developing the far enemy doctrine, emphasizing that the benefits of struggle are both higher now and also within reach. As the battle for Egypt was lost, a new enemy had to replace the old one. Whereas al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya emphasizes that the goals of their struggle would be better approached through peaceful means, al-Qaida simply stretched the ends to target the far enemy. In this manner, the end becomes more easily available, as attacking Americans became an easier goal to achieve than taking over the Egyptian state. Rather than being based on a clearly defined support base, building a base can be depicted as an actual goal al-Qaida aspires to reach.

4.2 Selective Inducements Sayyid Imam’s insight to retreat in case of weakness in order to avoid further harm resembles al-Jamaa’s invoking of the legend of Khaled bin Walid. Thus, Diaa Raswhan writes: “On the tenth anniversary of the initiative to stop violence that culminated in al-Jamaa’s revisions, an interesting development is taking place. Jihad, the second largest Islamist group in Egypt next to al-Jamaa, is doing the same” (Raswhan 2007). Apparently, al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s transformation had had far-reaching implications. Its initiative for ceasing its violence motivated the ideological revisions of its sister group—the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Whether al-Jihad merely wanted to make its way out of prison or not, the existence of a follower group facilitated a theological reversal provided by references to legends such as that of Khaled bin Walid. Al-Qaida, in turn, is far from buying into the two groups’ new message. Referencing self-interpreted religious texts, al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and Egyptian Islamic Jihad sought to obtain moral legitimacy and support within the Islamic world. Yet the ideological revisions that were first announced in 1997 are still a very contentious topic, especially for al-Qaida’s leadership. The cessation of violence by al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya prompted Ayman al-Zawahiri to publicly call them traitors of Islam, American spies, and Zionist agents even though he does not hide his respect for their previous accomplishments. Despite never having joined al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya, al-Zawahiri took al-Jamaa’s declaration as a personal insult, and in December 2001 he wrote Knights under the Prophet’s Banner,22 in which he uses a substantial part of his book to criticize al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and its spokesman Montasser al-Zayyat. Al-Zawahiri’s effort to discredit al-Jamaa’s ideological and religious revisions with his personal rebuttals shows the importance of these revisions. Although all jihadi groups followed an unwritten rule and code of conduct by not interfering with the affairs of other Islamist groups and refraining from any

22 The

London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat published excerpts from the book in December 2001/January 2002. Apart from Arabic text, certain parts were also translated into English.

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criticism regardless of what takes place, al-Zawahiri ignored this rule (Al-Zayyat 2004, 73). Al-Zawahiri’s reaction becomes comprehensible when considering that a lack of a defined follower group blocks a face-saving exit as taken by al-Jamaa or al-Jihad. Al-Qaida’s leaders could only save themselves if they accepted an amnesty, but then they would naturally appear as traitors. Montasser al-Zayyat, who had shared a prison cell with al-Zawahiri, tells in his book The Road to Al-Qaida how al-Zawahiri felt devastated that—when under torture—he betrayed one of his closest associates, an event that most probably pushed him to become a hard-core extremist.23

4.3 Repression and Sympathy Compelled to respond to al-Zawahiri’s criticism, the Shura Council of al-Jamaa alIslamiyya, led by Karam Zohdi—who at the time was still in prison—published a book in January 2004 dedicated exclusively to exposing a series of mistakes and half-truths al-Qaida uses in its ideology and propaganda (Zohdi et al. 2004). The book strongly criticizes the unilateral decision by Osama bin Laden and alZawahiri’s for the 9/11 attacks. In this book, the authors do not dispute al-Qaida’s love and dedication to defend Islam and do not label them as infidels, something they consider a grave sin (Zohdi et al. 2004, 6). The general assumption is that al-Qaida is a byproduct of current events, the collapse of the bipolar system, and the perception that someone needs to speak on behalf of all Muslims and fight the “oppressors.” But just as the West is blamed for its unjust policies toward the Arab and Muslim world, there is no shortage of criticism for al-Qaida. The strongest criticism is reserved for bin Laden’s strategy, which “brought unnecessary suffering to millions of Muslims in the Middle East and the West” (Zohdi et al. 2004, 7). The sympathy argument is closely connected to the existence of ties to a group. Simultaneously, the reasoning by al-Jamaa and al-Jihad refers to the well-being of all Muslims. Thus, they strongly criticize the 9/11 attack because Muslims were among the victims. Al-Qaida’s leaders, in turn, seem ready to sacrifice its people—arguably because they alienated themselves not only from what is actually possible but also from their alleged base. Whereas al-Jamaa and al-Jihad speak of sympathy for those who are oppressed, for al-Zawahiri this reaction to repression equals giving in. Al-Zawahiri strongly criticizes al-Jamaa’s spokesperson Montasser al-Zayyat for benefiting from security privileges not even enjoyed by government ministers. According to al-Zawahiri, this proves where al-Zayyat’s true loyalty rests, as he

23 Al-Zayyat

(2002). In his book Knights under the Prophet’s Banner, al-Zawahiri confesses of hardships endured in prisons: “. . .the toughest thing about captivity is forcing the ‘mujahid,’ under the force of torture, to confess about his colleagues, destroy his movement with his own hands, and offer his and his colleagues’ secrets to his enemies.” See Al-Zawahiri (2001).

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only promotes the ceasefire to serve the profiteers of the initiative. He goes on to explain that al-Zayyat’s reaction was a result of government pressure. For alZawahiri, al-Jamaa members are traitors. To clarify this he quotes the following story: The [prophet’s companion] Abdallah bin-al-Zubayr went into his mother’s house and . . .told her that the opponents were willing to give him any worldly goods he wanted if he abandoned the fight and he asked for her opinion. His mother replied: Son, you know yourself better. If you sense in yourself a desire for worldly goods, then you are an unworthy Muslim and your soul will perish.24

This quote clearly demonstrates how far al-Zawahiri is from exhibiting sympathy for the “unworthy Muslim.”

5 Conclusion Judging by counterterrorism measures in the last two decades, it has become apparent that terrorism cannot always be defeated decisively and that even employing original means can have an ambivalent effect. For example, weakening terrorists’ support bases can backfire, as the case of the inner-Islamic debate incited by alJamaa al-Islamiyya has illustrated. Egypt’s militant groups are the most important ones due to their early rise to notoriety, influence upon global jihadi ideology, contribution to Afghan mujahideens, and inspiration for al-Qaida. Fundamentalists in Egypt treated the campaign of violence against the regime only as a temporary affair, and once having established an Islamic state in Egypt, they would consolidate their forces and head to liberate Palestine. There is a common and well known agreement among current and former militants where it is claimed that all roads to Jerusalem lead through Cairo. Certainly, the ideological revisions that al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad have undertaken should not be ignored nor underestimated. The two groups based their entire ideological and theological reasoning for violent jihad almost exclusively on Sayyid Qutb’s writings. Qutb had inspired al-Zawahiri to join the ranks of militant groups. Now that thousands of former militants admit that their reasoning for violence was flawed and based on wrong interpretations of religious texts, Qutb is discredited and marginalized as well by default. The pivotal importance of these revisions placed a strain on former allies. A series of debates led eventually to splits within jihadi groups, thus weakening their appeal to new recruits. Infighting that ensued caused further rifts, and mutual accusations sparked a blame game between senior leaders. When the revisions were followed by a renunciation of violence, thousands of members were released from prisons. The Egyptian government almost immediately allowed lower-rank militants to walk free, and once assured that the peace initiative was indeed credible, it eventually released all of the leadership, although under certain conditions. 24 Al-Zawahiri

(2001).

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One cannot expect to influence every militant by pointing out flaws in ideology, but if flaws are revealed by individuals who carry a significant amount of credibility in the eyes of fundamentalist militants, the likelihood of more people renouncing violence increases. Fewer people will feel convinced that texts written for another era are applicable in the twenty-first century. The leadership of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad needed years of internal selfsearching to come to that very same conclusion. Revisions are now studied in the prisons of Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria. The apparent lack of theological reasoning that was based on certain selected and out-of-context details from religious texts is counterargued by those same details within their intended context, putting al-Qaida’s leadership into a defensive role. Bin Laden is well aware of Sayyid Imam’s great influence on al-Qaida members throughout the world and not only in Egypt. One of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad’s former senior leaders, Dr. Kamal Habib, told Al-Masry Al-Youm: “Sayyid Imam’s revisions will have a deep impact on alQaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially since more than half of its members come from the al-Jihad organization.” He pointed out that all jihadis in the world know Imam as al-Jihad’s intellectual theorist, which means that his revisions will have a global impact (Khatib 2007). Aware of the seriousness of the revisions, alQaida’s leader, Osama bin Laden, held several meetings in December 2007 with his senior assistants to study the means to prevent divisions inside his organization and to assess the situation (Khatib 2007). As some experts in the Middle East point out, revisions have done more damage to al-Qaida than the ongoing military operations. While prior to the revisions the language of religion was used to instigate violence, the language of religion is now used to call for peace. And although far from perfect and faced with criticism from all sides, so far it is this kind of communication that has contributed to the demobilization of thousands of militants. By calling on members to “halt operations for the sake of God’s pleasure,” reformists still apply theological reasoning, but for a reverse effect. Having a sense of control over their own affairs, some become compelled to reconsider future maneuvers. Fundamentalists may disregard secular laws and orders, but they will not ignore calls for cessation of violence from original ideologues. At the same time, weakening al-Qaida’s support base further can have a paradoxical effect. As this chapter has demonstrated, it is its lack of a defined follower group which explains al-Qaida’s radicalization and refusal to cease violence. Three factors that enabled al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad’s transformation were closely connected to in-group dynamics and therefore depended on the existence of a defined group. Clearly, the role of the leadership in spurring alJamaa’s and al-Jihad’s revisions was dominant. Yet a leader without a group cannot play a similar role and faces steep odds to compromise a militant approach. Whereas for al-Jamaa and al-Jihad repression led to sympathy with their group members, communication was key to bargaining power, and selective inducements could be accepted while saving face, al-Qaida’s lack of a defined support base hinders these otherwise enabling factors. For example, reacting to selective inducements positively and with grace turned out to be possible for al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya. In a way, both the Egyptian government and militants can thereby make a case for victory. Invoking the legend of Khaled

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bin Walid allows militants to step down gracefully, a very important factor. Being allowed to gracefully renounce violence eliminates the personal element of jihad that seeks revenge and as such creates a vicious cycle of violent attacks. The government, on the other hand, credits its security crackdown as a driving force for the militants’ surrender—a win–win situation. Yet it is not only the transformation and renouncing of violence by al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya that is at stake. The incited inner-Islamic debate sheds light on the implications of al-Jamaa’s change of mind for other extremist groups. Interestingly, al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s discourse discloses the motivations of other Islamists in an indirect yet undeniable way. Their revisions carry considerable weight in the eyes of Islamists in Egypt and beyond. What the group says thus turns into a message to the global Islamist movement. By pointing to the counterproductive effects of terrorism on the one hand and the much more constructive role of political engagement on the other, Islamists around the globe are tested in their credibility—and more important in the true nature of their ambitions. Thus, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad emulated al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya because it recognized the counterproductive consequences of continuing violence and the lack of sound ideological justification thereof. Al-Qaida, in turn, has attempted to discredit both groups’ revisions—most likely because it is aware of the revisions’ impact. Al-Qaida stresses that al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s and Egyptian Islamic Jihad’s revisions are not genuine, but rather a trick—a tactical maneuver or strategic option. The best way out of this is to judge by deeds. After all, “the fact of accepting political participation itself is a progress,”25 as Diaa Rashwan comments on al-Jamaa alIslamiyya. The group’s leader Karam Zohdi, in turn, has commented on al-Jihad’s change of mind: “One could say that the reason for this call is the situation that they are in and their desire to get out of prison, but the mere fact that they are looking into this in itself is the beginning of the road.”26 Al-Qaida, in turn, seems far from taking the direction toward moderation. In fact, many Islamists themselves are skeptical as to which road al-Qaida is taking. Accordingly, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt states that al-Qaida is like driving a car without a driver.27 This quote resembles a comment by al-Jamaa’s Safwat Abdel Ghani: “It is like flying an airplane; if you do not communicate with the others you crash.”28 Which road will al-Qaida take? According to a recent National Intelligence Council Report on Global Trends,29 the prospects for al-Qaida’s disappearing are good. In addition to the conviction that terrorism occurs in waves,30 the report states that al-Qaida will have difficulties in attracting members because of its indiscriminate tactics—especially its killing of Muslims.

25 Author

interview with Diaa Rashwan. Mohammed Ahmed interview with al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya leadership, Cairo, 2004. 27 Interview in Cairo, summer 2006. 28 Author interview with senior Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya member, Cairo, summer 2006. 29 National Intelligence Council Report on Global Trends. 30 See Rapoport (2003). 26 Makram

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Yet, a lack of members can—paradoxically—prevent the group’s leaders from reconsidering their violent approach and encourage them to keep “the base” alive as an ideology flexible enough to spread internationally. As has been shown here, attempts at taking control over terrorist violence have ambivalent effects. On the one hand, decreasing support for terrorism is desirable and important. Yet it can help to increase terrorism at the same time. Admittedly, this chapter presented a bleak outlook for control over terrorist violence in the future, but as al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya would say, “If God wanted a perfect society, he could have done it.”

References Abdellah, N. I. et al. (2002). Harma Al Ghouloun Fi Al Din Wua Takfir Al Muslimin. Cairo: Islamic Turath Book Shop. Al-Sharif, A. M. et al. (2002). Tasslit al-Addwaa ala ma Waqaa fi al-Jihad min al-Akhtaa. Cairo: Islamic Turath Book Shop. Al-Zawahiri, A. (2001). Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner. London: Alsharq Al-Awsat. Al-Zayyat, M. (2004). The Road to Al-Qaida. London: Pluto. Ashour, O. (2007). Lions tamed? An inquiry into the causes of de-radicalization of the Egyptian Islamic group. Middle East Journal, 61(4), 596–625. Bargouti, T. (2008). The Umma and the Dawla—the Nation State and the Arabic Middle East. London: Pluto. Gerges, F. A. (2005). The Far Enemy. Why Jihad Went Global. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gunaratna, R. (2002). Inside Al-Qaida—Global Network of Terror. London: C. Hurst. Hafez, M. (2003). Why Muslims Rebel. London: Lynne Rienner. Hafez, O. I. et al. (2002). Mubadara Waq’f Al Anf - Ru’uia Waquiiya wa Nazra Shariia. Cairo: Islamic Turath Book Shop. Halawi, J. (2007a). Jihad reconsidered. Al-Ahram Weekly, 874. Halawi, J. (2007b). Bidding violence farewell. Al-Ahram Weekly, 872. Khatib, A. (2007). Al Jihad’s revisions scare Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri. Al-Masry Al-Youm, Cairo. November 11, 2007. Rapoport, D. (2003). The four waves of rebel terror and September 11. In C. W. Kegley (Ed.), The New Global Terrorism (pp. 36–51). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Rashwan, D. (2009). the renunciation of violence by Egyptian jihadi organizations. In T. Bjorgo and J. Horgan (Eds.), Leaving Terrorism Behind (pp. 113–132). London: Routledge. Raswhan, D. (2007). The obstacle course of revisions: Gamaah versus jihad. Al-Ahram Commentary, 80. Sageman, M. (2008). Leaderless Jihad. Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century. Philadephia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schafey, M. (2007). Jailed Islamists revise jihad concept. Asharq Al-Awsat, London, November 26, 2007. Zohdi, K. et al. (2004). Istratigia wa Tafjirat Al-Qaida—al-Akhtaa wa al-Akhtar. Cairo: Islamic Turath Book Shop.

Part V

The Macro level: Violence in States in Crisis

Ethnic Riots in Situations of Loss of Control: Revolution, Civil War, and Regime Change as Opportunity Structures for Anti-Jewish Violence in Nineteenthand Twentieth-Century Europe Werner Bergmann There has been a considerable increase in social–scientific and historical research on violence since the 1990s (Schumann 1997; Brubaker and Laitin 1998). In particular, researchers have focused on the field of ethnic conflicts and violence, including forms of local collective violence such as lynching, riots against immigrants, and pogroms as well as organized forms of massacres and, finally, genocide (Bergmann 2003; Brass 1996). Anti-Jewish riots and pogroms in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, which have increasingly been the focus of research since the mid-1980s (Aronson 1990; Wynn 1992; Klier and Lambroza 1992; Berk 1985; and even earlier, Löwe 1978), will be the main topic here. This chapter examines the role that social control of violence plays in triggering a pogrom, influencing its development, and determining the level of violence employed, regardless of whether it is carried out by rioters or by bystanders, by victims engaging in self-help, or by the state control organs themselves. An overview of anti-Jewish riots over the last 200 years shows that their occurrence was not equally or randomly distributed, but that specific clusters are recognizable in regard to the phases and regions, in which there were specific causes for the outbreaks of collective violence against Jews. Although occasional outbreaks of violence are known to have occurred even during “peaceful” periods, they were usually related to specific local conditions and did not cause a wave of violence to spread beyond the surrounding region. Waves of pogroms, however, seem to occur most often during periods of political conflict and crisis when the state authority has either suffered a loss of power, making it less effective in exerting its control, or when it has become a conflict party that is consequently unable to protect the minority, sometimes even joining in the attack against it.1 Besides the connection between W. Bergmann (B) Centre for Research on Antisemitism, Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] 1 For example in France during the periods of revolution and during the Dreyfus Affair, see Gerson

(2006) and Wilson (1973); during the 1848 revolution in Europe, see Foa (1913) and Gailus (2002); during the civil war after the Russian Revolution, see Abramson (1999); during the Polish border wars, see Prusin (2005).

W. Heitmeyer et al. (eds.), Control of Violence, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0383-9_21,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

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pogroms and crisis periods such as civil war, revolution, and the unstable conditions of postwar eras, there is another point worthy of consideration: the level of violence committed appears to intensify over the course of time. Above all, the number of dead and wounded in single pogroms or pogrom waves rises considerably, and the degree of material damage also tends to increase. Before engaging in a closer examination of these questions on the basis of available historical material, I will first define more closely the specific form of a pogrom or antiminority riot.

1 Pogroms as a Form of Collective Violence To distinguish pogroms from other forms of collective violence, two theoretical approaches were linked: the power approach to intergroup hostility (also known as the competitive ethnicity model or as realistic group conflict theory), as it has been developed in the work of Blumer (1958) and Blalock (1967), and the theory of social control from Black (1983), who regards crime as a form of self-help against violations of normality or against a grievance. The former theories aim to explain the prerequisites of violence (external threat), while the latter explains the resulting reaction (Bohstedt 1994, 258). The concept of framing, developed in social movement research, serves as the link between these theories since the competitive situation must be transformed into a threatening scenario that legitimizes collective violent self-help as the last resort. Building on Senechal de la Roche (1996), who in turn follows Black’s approach, I define pogroms as a one-sided and nongovernmental form of social control, as “self-help by a group”2 that occurs when no remedy from the state against the threat which another ethnic group poses can be expected. The pogrom is different from other forms of control, such as lynching, terrorism, and vigilantism, in that the participants in a pogrom hold the entire outgroup responsible and therefore act against the group as a whole, and also in that it usually displays a low degree of organization. This and the nonparticipation of the state is what distinguishes a pogrom from other forms of violent ethnic conflict such as race riots, massacres, civil wars, and genocide. Pogroms are exclusionary actions, in which a part of the majority, through illegitimate claims or supposed attacks by a minority, feels called upon to act (Black 1983, 34).3 Pogrom violence, as seen from the perspective of the pogrom participants, is therefore a just form of punishment. This collective “control violence” always occurs, as John Bohstedt pointed out, on the “frontiers of legitimacy” between politics and crime. 2 Senechal

de la Roche differentiates with a four-part model made up of the dimensions of individual/collective liability and higher/lower degrees of organization with four forms of collective control violence: lynching, rioting, vigilantism, and terrorism. 3 The typical forms of violence displayed in pogroms, which, in modern society, are considered crimes, are described by Black as forms of conflict management, social control, and even as law in traditional societies: murder, mutilation, beating, confiscation or destruction of property, and forms of deprivation and degradation.

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In pogroms we are dealing with a triadic relationship: one ethnic group targets another ethnic group, with the state playing an ambivalent third-party role in the aggressors’ minds. On the one hand, the aggressors regard their self-help as legitimate; on the other hand, they “know” that they are infringing on the state’s power monopoly and that their actions are punishable. That the state does not act to ward off the “threat” against the in-group can imbue the violent self-help with the character of a loyal compensatory act or an act critical of the government. In the former, the aggressors regard themselves as the legitimate representatives of the majority and believe they are cooperating with the state, which remains inactive. There are indeed cases in which parts of the political elite and police tolerate—in some cases even participate in—the violent actions. Moreover, there are often recognizable differences in the conduct of local state agencies and the central administrations, which the aggressors in turn interpret as a legitimization of their actions. On the other extreme there is rapid and massive state intervention. If the state does intervene on behalf of the attacked minority or if it acts against members of the majority population, then in some cases the representatives of the state authority became the targets of violence (Nonn 1998, 397). This is not typical, however. If the control agencies intervene heavily, the pogrom activists typically do not attack, but instead yield to them. Thus, pogroms require a certain favorable political opportunity structure, in which the behavior of the government, police, public opinion, and bystanders fulfills a key function in the escalation of violence in intergroup conflicts. This triangular constellation, specific to pogroms, has a retroactive influence on the role of the state control organs, since representatives of the majority of society are to a certain degree party-affiliated and, moreover, are in many cases not the primary focus of the attack. In addition, crimes which have the character of “collective self-help” are usually treated comparatively mildly (Black 1983, 40).4 On the other hand, acts of collective violence always represent a challenge to the state’s monopoly of power, which it cannot forever tolerate, even when the elite shares in the rejection of the minority. Based on this triadic relationship, the following changes in the balance of power can lead to violent actions. Real or perceived claims on or gains of position by a minority (legally, politically, culturally, or economically) or a quantitative shift that benefits the minority and leads to a reaction of resistance by the group threatened by a loss of status— e.g., the Hep-Hep riots in 1819 as a reaction to the emancipation of the Jews, anti-immigration pogroms to hinder further immigration (Panayi 1993, 1–25; Olzak 1992), or revenge of an alleged “ritual murder” of a group member. The state, as central authority in the regulation of direct competition and in the distribution of collective goods, fulfills an important function.

4 The

lynching murders in the American South of blacks accused of assaulting whites, for example, were seldom prosecuted, although the perpetrators were known and could easily have been arrested. This is also true generally for the prosecution of pogrom participants. They were usually tried, but received for the most part light sentences.

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Situations of power displacement or general power decay on the state level. Two different constellations can be distinguished here: An unstable political situation: Due to a political murder, a system change, a lost war, a withdrawal of occupying forces, etc., the former ruling power has lost its influence, so that other actors try to seize power—sometimes even for a very limited “in-between period”—to reach certain goals before a new order is established (Goldberg 1990, 116–117).5 A power struggle in a revolution or civil war, which as a result of the absence of state protection, often leads to violence against minorities who are regarded as partisan to the internal or external enemy (Vetter 1995). In such cases “violent selfhelp” is an obvious alternative, since the state is regarded as restricted in its ability to act. The power model, however, must be extended to include the scenario in which the minority is attributed with causing a threat, a tendency caused by the general constellation of society. Crises of modernization that create destabilizing life situations—wars, hunger, or epidemics—and where the instigators are difficult to pinpoint—“framed” within a conspiracy theory—are often explained as intentionally motivated damage caused by and benefiting the minority. Thus pogroms require a certain favorable political opportunity structure, one in which public opinion and the behavior of the government, police, and bystanders fulfill a key function in the escalation of violence in intergroup conflicts. This triangular constellation, specific to pogroms, has a retroactive influence on the role of the state control organs, since representatives of the majority of society are to a certain degree party-affiliated. On the other hand, acts of collective violence always represent a challenge to the state’s monopoly of power, which it cannot forever tolerate, even when the elite shares in the rejection of the minority. The following analysis will focus primarily on the intervention of control organs and the political opportunity structure that influences the state’s ability to exert its authority and its position toward the minority requiring protection.6 In the model of collective violence, the political opportunity structure and the behavior of the control organs after the outbreak of violence function as intervening variables that play a key role in the outbreak of a pogrom and in the extent of violence engaged in during a pogrom (Table 1).

5 Goldberg

traced the 1945 pogrom in Tripoli, Libya, back to a situation of political anomie: With the Italians in retreat and the British invading, Libya in 1945 faced an uncertain political future and was in an “in-between period,” which Muslims used to restore the dominance over Jews that they had lost under Italian rule. 6 Neil J. Smelser (1963) identifies the operation of social control as one of the six determinants of collective behavior, and he underscores the importance of employing state sanctions against rioters in a “quick and decisive” manner. According to Bert Useem (1997, 357) “a public safe agency has to solve three problems related to capacity: strategy (force versus diplomacy), command (level, location, and unity), and preparation.”

Existence of a hostile ideology

External mobilization conditions: - season - weekday - holidays

Majority’s organizational level: - organizations hostile to minorities - available “masses” - agitators - media In-group communication: - rumors - media campaigns

Economic competition: - work - living conditions - education

Cultural tensions: - religious differences - ethnic differences - language differences - lifestyle Political competition: - ethnic parties - legal status

Political opportunity structure: - divided elites - violent conditions (war, foreign occupation, civil war, putsch, revolution) - absence of control organs

Intervening variables

Quantitative changes in the majority-minority ratio: - migration influx - migration outflux - population growth

Conditions for collective violence

|

Intervening variables

violence

Structure of settlement

Ideological intensification

Property damage

Number of victims among: - minority - majority - members of control organs

Extent of violence

________ Extent of ___Consequences

|

behavior of the control organs

Variables

Intervening

Trigger event as a symbol of Control organ’s response: the intergroup conflict: - local (trigger events) - regional - national Bystanders’ response: - local - national - international existence of “protocols of riots” Displacement of violence Arms from another target to the Number of rioters minority: - spreading to other target groups - infectiousness of violence Existence of self-defense groups

Outbreak of violence

violence

_______ Outbreak of

collective violence

Conditions for

political opportunity structure

Variables

Intervening

Table 1 Model of Collective Violence (based on Govea and West 1981, 353)

Counterreaction: - building up self-defense - counterviolence

Reactions at the expense of victims: - retraction of improvements - unequal treatment - expulsion Effect on the minority: - insecurity - economic ruin - migration

State authority’s reaction to perpetrators: - penal action - prevention

Consequences

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2 Historical Case Studies Helmut Walser Smith (2008, chapter 4) recently traced the noticeable increase in the number of victims in anti-Jewish riots since the turn of the nineteenth century back to four historical transformations: From “anti-Jewish violence centered on the community (the Gemeinde) defending its perceived rights to exclude Jews to anti-Jewish violence whose rationale was nationalistic, culminating in the accusation that Jews were traitors to the nation.” From “the threat of murder to actual murder, from word to deed . . . bounded ritual to bloody ritual.” The “murderous turn. . .in which the ritual boundaries of anti-Jewish riots were habitually broken, with mass murder following. . ..[This change] was enabled, and then furthered, by the state,” which was unable to exert control. The exploitation of anti-Jewish violence. This last step occurs when states—like the National Socialist regime—start to use anti-Jewish violence toward their own ends, which we find leads to other forms of violence such as massacres and genocide (Smith 2008, 117). Besides the historical dimension, an explanation of this development needs to also include the geographic distribution of anti-Jewish violence during this period, because it is striking that the level of violence in Central and Western Europe hardly changed until 1933, whereas escalation is clearly recognizable in the Russian Empire from the 1880s onward and in some of the nation-states founded after the World War I. For the historical analysis I have identified six phases as exemplary for the connection between opportunity structures and riots and also for escalations of the level of destruction: the phase from 1819 to 1848; the two Russian pogrom waves of 1881–1883 and 1903–1906; the pogrom wave that took place in the context of the Russian civil war of 1918–1921 and in the border wars during the process of Polish nation-building from 1918 to 1920; and finally, the pogroms accompanying the beginning of the German military campaign against the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 (Table 2).

Table 2 Anti-Jewish riots in Europe 1819–1941 19th Century

Fatalities

Year

Place

Number of riots

Jews

Rioters/Police

1819 1821 1830

Germany, Denmark, France Odessa Baden, Hesse, Franconia, Hamburg, Alsace et al. France/Alsace Neuenhoven (Rhineland) Hamburg Westfalia Nonnenweier (Baden)

40 1 30

– Some –

2

3–5 ca. 20 1 3 1

2 – – – –

1832 1834/1835 1835 1844 1846

–

– – – –

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Table 2 (continued) 19th Century

Fatalities

Year

Place

Number of riots

Jews

1848

Central Europe (France, Italy, Germany, Hungary) Langsdorf/Hesse Odessa Galati/Moldavia Odessa Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia Würzburg Lower Franconia Crete Bucharest Odessa Iannina (Greece) Stuttgart Bulgaria (Russo–Turkish War) Corfu/Zakynthos Pommerania Southwest Russia Sofia Pinsk Varna/Bulgaria Vratsa/Bulgaria Xanten/Rhineland Iuzovka (Cholera riots) Lodz (workers’ protest) Kolin Bohemia/Sudeten Crete France/Dreyfus Affair Bulgaria/Thracia Galicia Bulgaria Moravia Konitz/West Prussia

180

2

1 1 1 1 7 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 Many 2 30 259 1 1 1 1 ca. 15 1 1 3 Some

– – 5 1 – 1 –

1850 1858 1859 1859 1866 1866 1865/1866 1866 1866 1871 1872 1873 1876–1878 1881 1881 1881–1883 1884 1884 1885 1892 1891–1892 1892 1892 1893 1897 1897–1898 1898–1899 1898–1905 1898 1899 1899 1900

69 19 600 3 ca. 15 30

20th Century

– 6 1 – Some Yes – ca. 40

Rioters/Police

– –

– –

– – – – ca. 15

– 23 3 – –

–

2 20 1

1 – 12

– –

5 –

140 –

Fatalities

Year

Place

Number of riots

Jews

Rioters/Police

1901 1902 1903–1906 1903 1903 1905 1905

Kjustendil/Bulgaria Czestochowa Russia Kishinev Gomel Shitomir Kiev

1 1 758

5 – ca. 3,000 49 10 29 100

– – 2 8

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W. Bergmann Table 2 (continued)

20th Century

Fatalities

Year

Place

1905 1905 1905 1905 1905 1906 1906 1904 1905–1908 1908 1911 1913 1913 1913 1914–1915 1917 1914–1916

Kishinev Minsk Simferopol Kalarash Odessa Białystok Siedłce Lom, Vidin, Kjustendil Bulgaria Prague South Wales Saloniki Kolin Planów/Łodz Great Britain

1917–1921 1918 1918 1918 1918–1920 1918 1918 1918 1918 1919 1919 1919 1919 1919 1919 1919 1920 1920 1920 1921 1922 1922 1923 1930 1930–1931

Galicia, Warsaw province Ukraine/Civil War Northern Croatia/Slavonia Bucharest Galicia Poland/West Galicia/Lithuania Lvov Kielce Chrzanow (near Cracovia) Prague Pinsk Lublin Lida/Lithuania Vilnius and surroundings Baranów, Kolbuszowa Czsestochowa Minsk/Poland Poland Galicia Eger, Asch, Prague Memmingen Kattowitz Warsaw Germany Würzburg Poland (university cities)

Number of riots

3 Some 1 3 1 1 1 Some

Jews 15 100 50 100 400–800 70–200 84 – – – 2 – 7 –

Rioters/Police

100 1

– –

–

More than 60

More than 300

ca. 700 Some

30–60,000 –

–

2 5 More than 40

14 – ca. 400

ca. 450

1 1 1

72–150 4 2

1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 7 16 3 1 2 1 8 1 Some

410

35 29–39 80 A few hundred 17 5 28 60 or more 114

–

– – 5 1 – 1

– –

2 4 30

1 –

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Table 2 (continued) 20th Century

Fatalities

Year

Place

Number of riots

Jews

Rioters/Police

1931 1931 1932 1933 1933 1934/1935 1935–1937 1938 Nov. 1938 1940 1941 1941 After June 23, 1941 1941

Berlin Saloniki Lvov Radziłow Łodz Germany Poland Leutershausen Germany Dorohoi/Romania Jassy (Jasi) Romania Bucharest Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus Kaunas Lithuania Lvov Zloczow Wa¸sosz/Poland Radziłow/Poland Jedwabne/Poland

1 1 1 1 1 4 Some 1 Some 1 1 1 More than 35

– – – Some 5 20–30 – ca. 100 50–200 8–12,000 120–128 More than 15,000

– – 1 –

1 Some 1 1 1 1 1

3,800 8,000 4,000 More than 1,000 1,200 800–1,500 1,000

1941 1941 1941 1941 1941

1 –

– – – – – – –

2.1 Anti-Jewish Violence in the Revolutions of 1830 and 1847–1848 Anti-Jewish violence in the nineteenth century revolved around communal conflicts, which were triggered by the specifically local rights status of Jews, crises of subsistence (Jews, seen as usurers, were regarded as injurious to the local economy), and the perceived threat of alleged ritual murders. This assertion of a basically communal focus retains its validity even though many of the outbreaks of violence escalated into regional or even Europe-wide waves, e.g., the Hep-Hep riots of 1819, the waves of violence triggered by the revolutions of 1830 and 1847–1848, and others. If we take a look at the first half of the nineteenth century, we recognize two pogrom waves in which Jews became the general target of violence and where the political opportunity structure was not particularly favorable (the Hep-Hep riots of 1819; and the ritual murder charge in Neuenhoven and its environs in 1834), and two other incidents that occurred in connection with the July Revolution in France in 1830 and the 1848 Revolution. Both phases of revolution were an expression of a crisis of the feudal state order that found itself confronted by strong social

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oppositional forces.7 The revolution encompassed Belgium, Switzerland, parts of Italy, Russian Poland, and also disrupted order in Germany. Unlike the Hep-Hep wave of 1819, during which Jews remained the sole target, the anti-Jewish riots from 1830 to 1832 were part of a wave of protests that took place primarily during the early phase of the revolution, in September and October of 1830. For Volkmann (1975, 169), protests during this period were characterized by an immense diffusivity and overlapping of various causal complexities in which the tensions were deflected onto “scapegoats.” As with the Hep-Hep riots, the anti-Jewish form of action followed a practiced protest repertoire, which included throwing stones at the houses of Jews, breaking into their homes, destroying their furnishings, burning certificates of debt, and—less often—looting and beating.8 Serious injuries or fatalities, however, were extremely rare: no one died, for example, during the 30 anti-Jewish riots in 1832. This is also true for the wave of violence before and during the revolution of 1848. The anti-Jewish riots that occurred at approximately 180 locations in Europe (The Netherlands, France, Italy, and Austria-Hungary, including approximately 100 that took place at German areas outside of the Habsburg Empire), many of which had an antifeudal aim, made up the largest anti-Jewish wave of violence of the entire period of emancipation. At no other time in the history of the nineteenth century were the outbreaks of collective violence in Germany as widespread as during the years 1846 to 1849. We can join Gailus in characterizing this period as severe crisis years, during which German society underwent a transition from a corporative, feudal structure to a bourgeois, capitalistic one.9 In this phase of disintegration accompanied by a multitude of actions, rebellions, and tumults, a new solidarity developed while discrimination against certain groups also became more strongly emphasized (Gailus 2002, 43–44). This ambivalence is also apparent within Christian–Jewish relations: on the one hand, there was a strong liberal movement supporting the complete legal equality of Jews; on the other hand, a strong anti-Jewish trend found expression in pamphlets, rumors, and acts of violence. AntiJewish riots, which occurred less often than other forms of violent conflict, were

7 According to Nipperdey (1983, 366), the French July Revolution of 1830 had “exemplary charac-

ter and pan-European resonance,” since it was an expression of a general crisis of restorative order that could not easily be maintained. 8 Whether or not the authorities intervened or remained passive could have an effect on the degree of violence regardless of the protocols of riots. This was demonstrated by the so-called Heidelberger Judensturm when rumors spread throughout Heidelberg on August 25, 1819, that a “Jew riot” was being planned for that night. Indeed, “bands of Hep men,” mostly journeymen and guttersnipes, gathered in the evening and ran through the Jewish quarter armed with axes and crowbars. Joined by a large crowd, they broke into the houses of prosperous Jews, plundering and destroying the household contents and causing considerable property damage. The Neue Speyerer Zeitung placed particular emphasis on the fact that the looters were able to continue undisturbed for 3 h with neither the police nor the armed citizens’ guard that had paraded through the streets that very day intervening. Help came from 200 Heidelberg students who were able to prevent further mistreatment to the Jews and the plundering of their property. The students returned the following evenings with a (few) other citizens to patrol the area and restore order to the city (Wirtz 1981, 62). 9 For a general overview see Gailus (1990) and Tilly (1980, 143–174).

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embedded in a wave of violent action. Anti-Jewish tumults were at times part of an action that was primarily targeted at other groups (e.g., the gentry, customs officers, or corn dealers), but they also became the dominant form of action in some areas for a period of time. According to Gailus (2002, 44–45; 1994, 164–165), antiJewish attacks occurred most often during the food riots of 1846–1847,10 which had a less antifeudal aim. Moreover, they represented a rebellion “of wide classes on the basis of preindustrial goals and anticapitalist values,” which was more about defending traditional rights and less about a liberal political future (Gailus 1990, 500; 516). While Gailus (2003, 181–182) stresses the high level of physical violence that occurred both during confrontations between the military and the masses in the cities and in the public violent events in rural areas—which in part displayed forms of excess physical violence—the violence of anti-Jewish riots remained comparatively low, although the cry “death to the Jews!” was part of the rioters’ repertoire. Where is the explanation to be sought that the level of anti-Jewish violence remained comparatively low? In the nineteenth century local riots of this sort, which were responses to violations of the “moral economy,” were subjected to “protocols of riots” and the use of specific “contentious repertoires” as Charles Tilly has put it—that is, ritual limits that contributed to the self-imposed restraint in their use of violence by the participants (Tilly 2003, 81ff). Rules of ritual also extend to those attacked, who forgo intensive resistance. This tradition seems to disappear at the end of the century, when Russian cities underwent a structural transformation that included rapid population changes due to mass immigration; civil strife became widespread, and the old mechanisms of communal control lost their hold. Smith (2008, 138) rightly points out that the “defensive mentality” or the “reactive form” of the violence with which locals sought to uphold their longestablished rights and privileges was also directed against the state, which they perceived as “violating norms.”11 This is exemplified by the events of the 1830 and 1848 revolutions, where violence was committed against representatives of the old regime, such as civil servants and the nobility, as well as against Jews, whom the rioters perceived as unprotected oppressors. In this constellation, protecting Jews was a means for the state to enforce its own political aims and prevent revolution. Although the local law enforcement forces, comprising home defense forces and a sprinkling of policemen, did not represent a particularly strong repressive apparatus (though this could for the most part be quickly compensated for by calling on the military), citizens were aware that the authorities refused to tolerate violence against Jews, not least because the factors triggering disturbances, such as extended

10 Gailus

(1994, 164–165) identified 200 of these types of riots for Germany. sense of right was offended, the rioters also expressed outrage against the state, which had forsaken them and their communities” (Smith 2008, 138). Fliers also show the moment of status revision: “Bittschrift der Christensklaven an die Herren-Juden um Christen Emanzipation” (Erb and Bergmann 1989, 258).

11 “Their

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civil rights for Jews, were government initiatives. Hence, attacks against the minority were also attacks against the authority of the state. It is also important to recall that the state had enough means at its disposal to effectively curtail such riots, even once they had begun. Although the political movement of anti-Semitism, which went hand in hand with a severe economic depression, had injected a new, dynamic element so that animosity toward Jews since the 1880s was now nationalistically charged, anti-Jewish riots remained low level in terms of their violence—in particular as far as the number of fatalities and injured were concerned—until the end of the nineteenth century, and even beyond that time in Western and Central Europe.12 This is even the case for nationwide waves of violence, e.g., the wave that engulfed France during the Dreyfus affair in 1898 (30 riots, with two fatalities in Algiers), where, given the virulent nationalist atmosphere, a great deal of violence could have been expected. Most of the riots in this period were still anchored in traditional, local-conflict constellations, above all accusations of ritual murder, and targeted the symbols of Jewish property and possessions. This indicates that the rioters were seeking to redefine the economic status of upwardly mobile Jews and not instigate their total exclusion.

2.2 The First Wave of Pogroms in Imperial Russia, 1881–1883 The first Russian pogrom wave, perceived as particularly violent by the European public, seems to be an exception: 25 Jews and 25 rioters were killed in 259 pogroms. In terms of ratios, 50 dead in 259 pogroms means that in only every fifth pogrom was a person killed; thus, statistically, the level of violence here was clearly lower than later examples in the twentieth century. Nonetheless, this pogrom wave represents an escalation. Where are the causes to be identified? In addition to the major social and cultural distance between Jews and their Christian neighbors that was more evident given the large size of the Jewish minority, Aronson (1990, 219–220) stresses that for the Pale of Settlement in tsarist Russia the consequences of tsarist politics in the settlement districts were also a factor.13 The general leaning of state policies toward a minority plays an important role.

12 If fatalities or injuries occurred, it was usually among the rioters, e.g., in 1889, when the military

fired into the crowd in Holleschau (Hološov), Moravia, killing 5 rioters and injuring at least another 20 (Smith 2008, 148). 13 Klier (1989) also stresses that the East European Jews had developed a distinct ethnoreligious culture and that they remained ethnic strangers to their neighbors. Because they remained outside the local community they were excluded from the circle of obligation. This distance and bipolarity found clear expression in the cry, “The Jews are beating our people,” that was often heard when a tavern brawl caused the outbreak of a pogrom. For a theoretical analysis of the significance of functional and social distance between groups for the exertion of violence as a means of social control, see Senechal de la Roche (1996).

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Legal discrimination and generally hostile politics geared to curtailing the minority raises the probability of attacks and their degree of violence, which seem to be legitimate or indeed even desired by the state (Aronson 1990, 223; 231).14 This is particularly the case when parts of the political elite are openly opposed to the minority (Berk 1985, chapter 3).15 The state attitude has an effect on two points of the violence model (see Table 1): First, violence against a group that is disadvantaged or not consistently protected by the state entails less risk since the attackers believe themselves to be acting in agreement with the national policies (loyal pogroms).16 Second, these policies have an effect on the willingness of the control organs to react to the violence. They intervene less quickly and less severely in loyal pogroms. In 1881 several factors conducive to outbreaks of violence came together in Russia, triggered by the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.17 This assassination by a group of anarchists, which included a Jewish woman, led to a politically instable impasse, a situation potentially facilitating the outbreak of riots; not only was the state perceived as weak and incapable of exerting the full scope of its power, but it was well known that the new tsar, Alexander III, was a confirmed anti-Semite.18 Although the Jewish member of the group only played a minor role in the assassination, Jews as a group were now seen as enemies of the country and the Russian people and became the target of a wave of collective violence. The murder of the 14 In

Russia the outsider status of Jews found expression in the special legal category of “inorodtsky” or “aliens” which in the eyes of the peasants placed them outside the legal realm of protection. The Russian policies (the so-called May Laws from 1882) in reaction to the pogroms, which were regarded as understandable outbursts of popular wrath against the Jews, further reinforced this division. “Instead of ‘merging’ the Jews with the wider Christian community, the state must endeavor to protect the Gentiles from the myriad forms of Jewish exploitation. Such a goal was best secured by isolating and restricting the Jews. . .” (Klier 1989, 137). This set the basis for new collective violence which then appeared in the pogroms of 1903–1906. In many cases the pogromists cited the permission granted by the political leader, be it the tsar, Bismarck, or the military leadership. Klier (2002, 166) stresses the important role of rumors, which led the tsar to demand that his subjects “put the Jews in their place.” 15 “There was. . .a tradition in government circles of anti-Jewish sentiment, with its concomitant charge of ‘exploitation.’ Beyond this, however, a number of high-ranking personalities played an important role in the government’s change of view” (Berk 1985, 57). 16 This was seen in Russia, for example, where anti-Semitic agitation in newspapers was not prevented despite the common practice of censure. Lambroza attributes an important role to the state’s lack of control over the press. “The central government should have curtailed publication of inflammatory articles in the press. The government’s refusal to muzzle or censor these periodicals becomes a contributing factor in future pogroms” (Lambroza 1992, 211). 17 The unstable political situation after the tsar was assassinated made violence against outsiders, regardless of whether they were religiously or socially defined as such, relatively likely. For example on the same day that the first pogrom in Elisavetgrad broke out, a pogrom against Muslims in Baku also occurred. There were also rumors that there would be riots against the landed gentry (Klier 2002, 161). 18 On the divergent development of the emancipation process in tsarist Russia, where Jewish reforms and counterreforms were frequently interchanged, see Klier (1989, 144), who comes to the negative conclusion: “The legal treatment of Russian Jewry under the tsar was a consistent failure, with serious implications for the fate of a multinational, multiethnic state.”

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tsar could have had such a trigger effect, as the political reforms of Alexander II had initiated rapid social change by industrialization, urbanization, and commercialization, which in the eyes of the population led to an increase of economic exploitation by the Jewish minority.19 Contemporary observers and some later historians surmised that only through the planning and approval of the government could the violence have evolved into a wave of more than 200 pogroms of unprecedented violence (Boysen 1999). Not until the 1980s was another explanation put forth that questioned the responsibility of central planning for the widespread violence, instead attributing it primarily to the inability of the tsarist state to stop the violence quickly and effectively in the southwest (Aronson 1990; Wynn 1992; Klier and Lambroza 1992; Berk 1985). In southern Russia, a glaring understaffing of a poorly trained police force meant that local authorities were mostly unable to control any disturbances, while military reinforcements were not immediately available due to the region’s remoteness. It was not a coincidence that the wave of violence plagued the southwest of Russia while the northern regions of the Jewish Pale of Settlement experienced only few pogroms,20 since this area served as a destination of mass emigration for both Jews and non-Jews and new state and communal structures in the now more and more multinational cities had yet to be established to provide the ritual frame for limiting violence.21 Cities evolved into a stage for escalating violence with a high degree of physical damage and fatalities on both sides. (Jews used their large numbers to engage in strong and in part organized resistance which was regarded as a violation of the rules, and the violence could only be stopped through military intervention.) In rural areas, however, disturbances only demonstrated a low level of violence, and it was rarely directed against people. These riots often ended without the police or military having to get involved. Apparently, the rites of violence that we are familiar with from the anti-Jewish riots in central Europe continued to apply here as well (Klier 2002, 160). Laborers who came to the area to work during the seasonal harvest or in railway construction schemes were frequently involved in the urban violence. The level of violence in this “wild southwest” of tsarist Russia was generally very high, with alcoholism

19 Minister of Interior Ignatyev informed Alexander III that “that the rioters were protesting against

the policy of the last twenty years in which the expansion of Jewish rights . . . was particularly damaging to the poorest classes of the population” (Rogger 1975, 18). 20 Darius Stali¯ unas (2004) holds two factors responsible for the fact that hardly any classical pogroms occurred in the northwest provinces: the decisive action taken by the local authorities; and the economic backwardness of this region. After pogroms occurred in the southwest provinces, the government in St. Petersburg responded with orders which the governor of the northwest provinces implemented by strengthening the local police and placing the military on standby during threatening conflicts. 21 “Among the changes taking place in Russia during the late imperial period, the unprecedented growth of the cities and towns may well have had a far-reaching impact. The growth of industry and commerce and the influx of tens of thousands of impoverished peasants helped to create conditions of social dislocation, economic oppression, and civil strife. . . . This set the stage for the anti-Jewish pogroms of the late imperial period” (Judge 1992b, 43).

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also playing an important role.22 Klier (2002, 159) stresses that Russian pogroms should be set in the context of violence in Russia as a whole, for pogrom-style violence was quite common. In the second half of the nineteenth century the Russian state had to contend with mass violence by peasants and workers, incidents of urban disorder against the police, interethnic riots, and violence against tsarist rule by the rising revolutionary and nationalist (Poland, Finland, Armenia) movements. Taken together, these factors explain why the level of violence committed over the course of this pogrom wave was unprecedented: the weakness of the apparatus of repression, accompanied by discriminating national policies that held Jews themselves responsible for the conflicts; a migration situation in which there was only limited communal interaction; and large groups of young men representing a potential for violence all worked together to create a high level of violence, which included attacks against people. Despite this, however, it would be wrong to characterize this pogrom wave as state-sponsored violence, for “the pogroms horrified the new regime, especially because they were thought at first to be the work of revolutionaries” (Klier 1989, 136).23 Nevertheless, on the local level a certain connection to the rites of violence remained. Klier emphasizes that locals warned rioters against killing Jews. This, and the fact that the control organs finally managed to intervene quite heavily (25 rioters were killed), may explain why, despite the convergence of violence-conducive factors, acts of violence against persons resulting in fatalities or serious injury were significantly less than would take place in the pogrom wave 20 years later.

2.3 The Second Wave of Pogroms in Imperial Russia, 1903–1906 Smith (2008, 151 ff.) has rightly identified the pogrom wave from 190324 to 1906 in the Tsarist Empire as a turning point: about 3,000 Jews lost their lives in these

22 The

Russian government, educated public, and clergy perceived a growing social and moral crisis of the rural population, especially widespread drunkenness and depravity as well as violent behavior. “They claimed that villagers took on ‘the likeness of beasts’ in their drunken revelries, and pointed out with great concern . . . to violence spreading throughout the countryside” (Frank 1996, 82). 23 Just having entered office, Minister of Interior Ignatyev published a circular to all governors on May 5 demanding that they do everything in their power to prevent or stop violence against Jews because “rioters taking the law in their own hands were merely carrying out the schemes of the revolutionaries.” On May 23, 1881, similar instructions were sent out (Rogger 1975, 18). See also Governor-General Totleben’s successful prevention in the northwest provinces (Stali¯unas 2004, 127 ff.). 24 Despite the 51 fatalities—an unusually high number for that time—and the many hundreds injured, the Kishinev Pogrom, which Smith (2008) identifies as a turning point, followed the older pattern. In this case the escalation was due to the intense propaganda of the newspaper Bessarabets and in part to the incompetence of the local and regional authorities, in particular the passivity of the police, which did not take any preventative measures although pogrom rumors had been spreading and the Jewish communities had requested protection (Judge 1992a). The actual turning point is marked by the pogroms which occurred after the October Manifesto of 1905.

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pogroms.25 This poses the question, what had changed from the wave of 1881– 1883 in the very same area? Smith sees the key cause as stemming from a shift in the constellation from local issues to national concerns: in the pogroms of the early twentieth century, Jews were attacked because they were perceived as betraying the national interest. And indeed this framing played an important role, for by this time Jews were generally accused of having a negative influence on the nation. On the other hand though, other examples of anti-Jewish violence, like the wave of attacks in France accompanying the Dreyfus affair in 1898 and the accusations of ritual murder culminating in outbreaks of violence in Xanten in 1891–1892 and Konitz in 1900, remained low level, although precisely Dreyfus seemed to embody the prototype of the Jewish traitor of national interests.26 The peasant riots in Galicia of 1898, which broke out in conjunction with a “national awakening” campaign in the villages, still followed the communal, ritualized pattern, so that there were hardly any attacks committed against persons (Buchen 2006; Golczewski 1986). These examples show that the ideological level alone does not provide a satisfactory explanation. Instead, I would like to propose that five factors came into play which triggered the escalation. First, the pogroms of 1903–1906 have to be considered in the context of the first Russian Revolution and the Russo–Japanese War (with the destruction of the Russian Baltic Sea fleet at Tsushima in 1905), that is, they take place in a period of violent political conflict, involving strikes, mutinies of sailors, peasant revolts, and assassinations of tsarist ministers.27 Klier (2002, 158) sees a difference in the pogrom wave of 1881–1883, when the Russian state in his view had done everything in its power to prevent the outbreak of pogroms, and the ones between 1903–1906, when it responded less decisively, since the latter “took place when the state power was weak and under threat from a revolution. They were part of a general breakdown of order.” The connection to the revolution of 1905 is thus clear since, according to Lambroza (1992, 218), 674 pogroms occurred in the first 2 weeks following the enactment of the October Manifesto—more than 80% of all pogroms that took place between 1905 and 1906.28 Hence the rise in the level of violence during the course of the revolution is a consequence of the politicization 25 This

departure from the “normal” type of pogrom had already been acknowledged by contemporary Jews: One Jewish correspondent wrote in October 1905. “Let them plunder. We’re used to that. But why do they shoot, why do they blow us apart?” (Hamm 1993, 205). 26 “The patriotic element in the 1898 riots is unmistakable.” There were demonstrations in favor of the army and against Emile Zola, whose publication “J’accuse” was seen as an attack on the French army. In some cities “members of the armed forces themselves instigated anti-Semitic demonstrations” or behaved “sympathetically toward the demonstrators.” Nevertheless the local and national authorities were alarmed and riots were in most cases put down quickly (Wilson 1973, 791–792, 802). 27 The civil war-like circumstances are believed to have caused approximately 9,000 fatalities and injuries in 1905–1907 (Geifman 1993, 21, 264). 28 The total number of pogroms is approximately 758; a publication of that period lists 284 locations where pogroms occurred along with the number of dead and injured Jews and material damage for each incident (Szold 1906, 34–69).

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of ethnic antagonisms toward the Jews, who were seen as pioneers of the revolution. What we have here is a mix of both ethnic riot and a political struggle that follows other rules.29 The state generally responded to antitsarist demonstrations with extreme violence, e.g., a mass demonstration in front of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg on January 22, 1905, was put down by a massacre (“Bloody Sunday”). Second, it is important to recall that—unlike in France and the German states in 1830 and 1848—Jews were not identified with the old system, which was still in power, but rather were held to be opponents of tsarist rule.30 In Kiev, for example, the state even argued that the October pogrom was a patriotic Russian response to Jewish insolence and insurrectionism. Interest in having the police and military intervene was predictably low (Hamm 1993, 190). Thus, to a certain extent, the pogromists could count on the sympathy, and in many cases even the active assistance of, the control organs (Szold 1906, 70–89).31 If the leadership was unmotivated and incompetent, then the police, hampered in any event by their lack of numbers and poor training, were often incapable of and unwilling to bring the situation under control. At the same time, bureaucrats, however ambivalent they were toward the anti-Jewish mob violence, were more shocked than pleased by it; Russian policies were more concerned with controlling pogroms than with inciting them. Rogger (1975, 71–72), however, recognizes a possible exception in the “revolutionary years 1905–1906, when the central authority was divided and especially unsure of itself and the reach of its powers.”32 Third, the level of violence was raised significantly by the presence of militant nationalist, anti-Jewish organizations, which—like the Union of the Russian People (URP), known as the Black Hundreds—assumed a predominant position in the riots. “The Black Hundreds were less a political party than direct-action groups that took to the streets in support of the tsar and orthodoxy and against socialists, liberals, and 29 The

governor of the Mogilev province noted a general aggressive manner among Jews in comparison to the 1880s: “‘I’ve known this province for twenty-five years.’ In the 1880s there had been ‘Jewish oppression.’ Now ‘the Bund and the Social Democrats are all Jews. There are others, but the instigators are all Jews.’ Jews ‘are no longer submissive, no longer respect authority, no longer even acknowledge the police’” (Hamm 1993, 206). In the “Report of the Duma Commission on the Białystok Massacre,” the government was charged with the following: “The word ‘Jew’ and the word ‘conspirator’ were synonyms to the police and they used the word ‘revolutionary’ to designate a Jew or a conspirator” (Szold 1906, 71). 30 Die Pahlen-Kommission (1883–1888) “conceded that there was substance to a new kind of charge leveled against the Jews: their prominence in the camp of anarchism and revolution. This had given rise to the belief that Judaism was a natural breeding ground of subversion.” The Russian Minister of Interior Pleve announced in 1903 that he “considered the Jews, because of their characteristics and political activities, to be a danger to state and nation” (Rogger 1975, 24, 41). 31 In 1906 the Duma discussed the pogroms and the government’s involvement in them. See for this discussion and a respective resolution of the Duma Szold (1906, 85–89). 32 In Kiev, for example, representatives of the city council appealed to Minister of Interior Witte on October 18, the day the pogrom broke out, and he ordered by telegraph on October 19 for the pogrom to be stopped immediately. Local authorities did not call for it to stop until October 20 (Hamm 1993, 190).

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Jews. This often led to clashes, giving the URP an unsavory reputation for fomenting pogroms” (Weeks 2001, 428). This fact, however, was always denied by Russian officials. Fourth, if Jews renounced resorting to counterviolence in communal conflicts in Central and Western Europe (a strategy that had a pacifying effect), Jews responded to the pogrom waves by forming self-defense groups, sometimes even with the approval of the authorities. For Klier (2002, 165), “resistance was an accepted part of the ‘rules’ of a pogrom,” as long as Jews did not use firearms, which was seen as not playing by the rules.33 In these cases fighting became murderous and resembled a civil war, the more so as Jews in southern Russia made up a considerable portion of the population.34 This also contributed to the old protocols of riots’ being suspended. The attempt to respond to violence through self-help did not lead to a control of the violence but rather to its escalation. This was not, however, always the case. There were also cases when, in response to a threatened pogrom, thousands of Jews gathered together and were thus able to prevent violence. In other cases, Jewish self-defense was able to provide protection (Stali¯unas 2004, 127; the example is from Białystok, but it is from 1881). The final factor aggravating ethnic tensions was the critical economic situation in Russia at the turn of the century: high unemployment, fierce competition between Jews and Christians, the migration of indebted peasants to the cities, and a strong increase in the number of Jews, who in the urban centers of eastern Galicia, for example, made up between 20 and 67% of the population.35 The far higher level of violence—in particular the greater number of dead and injured—is therefore to be explained as follows: Jews were now considered enemies of the state order and Russian society, so that they could now be attacked without fearing repression by the authorities; hence, pogroms were in part counterrevolutionary riots, with other groups, such as workers and students, also subjected to violence; both sides of the divide were far better organized and armed in comparison to the more spontaneous local riots of the nineteenth century. The crux was the substantial absence of state control.36

33 In

the 1881–1883 wave of pogroms “almost all fatalities occurred when Jews used, or were accused of using, firearms to defend themselves in the course of a pogrom, usually by firing wildly into a mob” (Klier 2002, 166). 34 In Kishinev rumors about Jewish resistance increased the anger and fear of the enraged population. There were more victims and greater destruction in the areas where the Jews—still unorganized—attempted to defend themselves (Judge 1992a, 56–57). 35 Data taken from Prusin (2005), Appendix of Population Statistics, Table 2; see also Judge (1992b). 36 This is how Penkower (2004, 201) summarized the pattern of a pogrom wave: “Again and again, Jews fell prey to effective anti-Semitic press agitation, local official encouragement, police support, limited action taken against the pogromshiki, and a central government taking the role of the bystander, all the while accusing the Jews of being responsible.”

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2.4 The Pogrom Wave during the Russian Civil War, 1917–1921 This tendency is also evident in those cases of anti-Jewish riots that broke out as the Russian army advanced in the direction of Courland, Congress Poland, and Galicia during the World War I37 and accompanied the civil war after the October Revolution, as well as those riots that occurred in interwar Poland, as the borders of the new national state were under dispute. Here, the Jewish minority became caught between the conflicting parties. These pogroms made up one aspect of a general “brutalization of an East European region” between 1917 and 1921 (Wróbel 2003). The key role played by the absence of effective control is particularly clear in Ukraine between the fall of 1917 and April 1921, as 1,236 anti-Jewish riots were recorded, which claimed between 30,000 and 60,000 victims. Here all regular and irregular troops of the civil war parties were involved (the Army of the Ukraine People’s Republic, the Red and White armies, the troops of Poland, the armed units of Bulakh-Balakhovich, and ataman attachments),38 while calls issued by the Ukrainian government to cease anti-Jewish violence went unheeded. Since the troops were often led by warlords who were quite able to switch from one side to the other, the government was not in a position to impose sanctions. Although religious and national hostility toward Jews played a role in the pogroms in Ukraine, more important was the identification of Jews with the Bolshevist enemy and the suspicion that they were collaborating with them. Jews also presented an incentive for looting, since violence could be used to force “contributions” from them. The Red Army, which engaged in pogroms (106) less often than the Ukrainian, Polish, and White armies, and which usually tried to protect Jews, identified Jews as businessmen and classified them with the bourgeoisie so that they also became a target. Especially under the rule of Simon Petlura, beginning in November 1918, anti-Soviet forces engaged in pogrom violence as a means to fight Bolshevism. It is therefore more accurate to label many of the 50 to 60 37 Compare the expulsions and deportations of Jews and Germans from the front zone who in 1914

and April–October 1915 were regarded as possible collaborators. In the Jewish settlements this often degenerated into pogrom-like violence, with murder, looting, and rape, whereas the actions taken against Poles, Ukrainians, and Germans were not characterized by these atrocities (Prusin 2005, 55). “The treatment of Jews in the front zone reflected the ebb and flow of Russia’s fortunes in the war” (Prusin 2005, 59–60). Lohr (2003, 145 ff.; see also 2000) stresses that these pogroms were different from the Russian prewar pogroms due to the participation of the army, in particular of the Cossacks. The main theme was taking possession of Jewish property. The same pattern of plunder, rape, and murder is found in pogroms engaged in by Cossacks and Bulgarians during the Russian invasion of Bulgaria in 1876–1878, where Jews were officially declared a hostile element supporting the Turks (Shaw 1991, 192). 38 In all, 688 places were affected; more precise information is available for 531 locations. For more on these statistics, see Gergel (1951, 240). According to Gergel, 40% of the pogroms (493) were carried out by General Petlura and his generals, another 307 by insurgents and marauding gangs, and 213 by Denikin’s White army. The Red Army was responsible for 106 pogroms; however, some of them were carried out by troops that had switched to the Soviet side. The Polish army was responsible for 32 pogroms (Gergel 1951, 244).

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pogroms that took place each month from January to April 1919 as massacres since they were systematically committed by military units; but in general the surrounding population also participated. The number of pogroms per month increased to its maximum as other armies (Denikin’s Army) marched through: 95 in June, 138 in July, and 159 in August 1919. The example of Proskuriv illustrates the special form and brutality of these pogroms (Abramson 1999, 126 ff.). By mid-February 1919, Communists were able to persuade two regiments of government troops to rebel, but this backfired and the rebels were devastatingly defeated by loyal troops. In response, their commander, Semesenko, organized a spontaneous victory celebration for his troops and allowed them afterward to plunder and murder Jews from Proskuriv. Three hours later, headquarters, informed of the atrocities taking place, ordered the pogrom stopped. During these 3 h approximately 1,500 Jews—10% of the population—were murdered, some of them in a most brutal manner. According to Abramson (1999, 127), “the Proskuriv pogrom. . .was marked by its ‘disciplined’ military execution.” This is an example of how an extreme form of a pogrom could be carried out unpunished by an organized and armed unit with the clear approval of a commander, albeit against the will of headquarters. In this situation there was a lack of overriding state authority—or it was powerless to effectively control the troops. This example should be seen as a massacre that takes pattern from the form of a pogrom. The number of deaths were accordingly high: 11% of the civil war pogroms had more than a hundred deaths (100–1,500), another 13% between 50 and 100 deaths; but for many of the pogroms, since they occurred in villages, the number of deaths was less than 25 (in 10.6% of the cases there were no deaths at all). And yet the level of violence in comparison with the Russian pogroms of the 1880s is shown to be extremely high. There have been 31,000 pogrom victims documented, but the real number was no doubt twice as high.39 The Red Cross estimated at least 100,000 dead and injured with an average of 45 deaths per pogrom. The immense material damage must also be considered, since the pogroms also financially ruined the majority of Jews involved. While the anti-Bolshevik armies used pogroms as a method for fighting Bolshevism, the Red Army soldiers conversely (and much less often) attacked Jews as representatives of the bourgeoisie, and the virulent traditional hatred of Jews in Ukraine must also be taken into consideration, the context of the civil war is also decisive, since the power of the political and military leadership to control and impose sanctions was limited, with many military leaders and their troops fighting on their own account. Both sides could attack and plunder Jews as a substitute enemy in the civil war without fear of consequences. Organization, arms, and the context of war facilitated a high level of violence carried out without punishment. Pogroms were closely linked to political events and military victories and defeats. “They were a kind of political barometer, indicating the course of the battle of the 39 According

to Gergel’s statistics there were 34,719 fatalities at 531 locations, for which more precise information is available. If we add the number of dead at the other 164 locations and the injured who later died from their wounds, then his conservative estimate for the number of deaths lies between 50,000 and 60,000 (Gergel 1951, 246, 249).

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various political tendencies in Ukraine. The darkest period was the months from May to September 1919, when civil war reached its climax. These five months saw 625 pogroms and excesses. That is more than one-half of all the recorded cases” (Gergel 1951, 242).

2.5 Polish Border Wars, 1918–1920 At the same time, the years 1918–1920 were dominated by the struggle of the new Polish state to establish its eastern frontiers, which resulted in military conflicts with Soviet Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. In these years anti-Jewish riots also took place in other newly founded nation-states in eastern Central Europe such as the Kingdom of Serbia and Croatia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,40 and Romania, but overall they remained less violent and were far less numerous than in the Polish border regions, where the state sought to “nationalize a borderland” as Prusin (2005) has called it. Anti-Jewish outrages took different forms in the various regions of Poland. For instance, in Galicia in 1918, we find a situation of food shortages and hunger—traditional, ritually framed forms of social disturbance that were accompanied by attacks on Jewish shop owners, which cost lives (Polonsky and Riff 1981, 74).41 In contrast, in 1919–1920 we find a series of brutal pogroms as the Polish army advanced into eastern Galicia and Kresy Wshodnie in the spring of 1919 (Prusin 2005, 103 ff.) and during the retreat in the summer of 1920 in the border regions where heavy fighting took place, in cities like Lviv, Vilnius, Pinsk, Minsk, and Lida, all of which claimed a high number of dead (230 fatalities) and injured.42 Here Jews were the target of violence for two reasons. They were the only group who had welcomed the German and Austrian troops and were given preferential treatment by the occupiers for a period. This gain in status aggravated the mutual antagonism between Poles and Jews, with the “traditional anti-Jewish sentiments (evolving) into a xenophobic ideology of the masses” (Prusin 2005, 74). The exclusivist ethnonationalism, which was particularly encouraged by the National Democracy Party, presented Jews as the enemy of Poland. Anti-Semitism 40 In Hungary during the counterrevolution against the pro-Bolshevist Soviet government there was

also an “extraordinary rise in mob and paramilitary violence” against the former functionaries of the Communist regime, progressive intellectuals, Jews, union leaders, workers, and poor peasants. Half of the ca. 5,000–6,000 dead were Jewish (Bodo 2006). In Czechoslovakia, on December 1–2, 1918, anti-German riots in Prague reverted into anti-Jewish riots. In Holešov on December 3–4 riots occurred during which Jews were killed and the Jewish quarter was plundered (Polonsky and Riff 1981, 88). 41 These attacks were carried out by soldiers and peasants (Prusin 2005, 72); the worst riots in Kolbuszowa, Rzeszów district, cost eight people their lives and left hundreds injured. The unusually high number of deaths and injuries for this kind of riot can be explained by the participation of soldiers in a social revolt (Michlic 2006, 111). 42 Pogroms in Płock, Białystok, and Kielce were carried out by Polish soldiers from August to October 1920; then pogroms at more than 16 locations in the districts of Stanisławów and Zołkiew were carried out by the Ukrainian army and the Cossacks.

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and the fight against Jews therefore became a constitutive element in Poland’s struggle against foreign rule. Accordingly, terms like “struggle,” “battle,” and even “war against Jews” were used in propaganda, and the fight against Jews was declared to be a national struggle for self-defense.43 The founding of the nation-state reversed the power balance in favor of the Poles. In the context of the border wars, local Jews saw themselves in a difficult situation, for they had attempted to remain neutral in the Polish–Ukrainian conflict. The Battle of Lemberg between the Ukrainian and Polish units led to Jews’ being considered “hostile bystanders, if not enemies” by the official Polish side, who suspected them of collaboration with the Ukrainians. The pogrom in Lviv (November 22–24, 1918) claimed between 73 and 150 Jewish lives and a further 463 people were injured, while in street fighting, during which a Jewish militia (ca. 300 men) defended their neighborhood, around 200 Poles and 200 Ukrainians were also killed.44 A decisive factor in the high number of victims was once again the involvement of soldiers and armed Jewish resistance.45 Although the pogrom was neither ordered nor coordinated by the military leadership, it was enough that they gave pogromists free rein and finally restored order after three days of violence.46 As was the case with the Russian civil war, during which in 1920 pogroms carried out by Polish troops also occurred, the frequency and degree of pogroms varied depending on whether there were military operations, be it on

43 Michlic

(2006, 109) sees in this ethnonationalism one of “the main factors behind various anti-Jewish hostilities that occur in interwar Poland. There were also other factors behind hostilities, including economic greed and a desire to plunder and cause physical and moral injuries. . . . The myth of the Jew as a national threat constituted a premise for the legitimization of antiJewish violence as a national self-defense”; for more on violence as national self-defense and the complementary concept of Jewish provocation, see Michlic (2006, 117 ff., 125 ff.). 44 On the controversial figures, see Prusin (2005, 85); there were another 37 riots in West Galicia in November, likewise in East Galicia. 45 “At the time of the victorious celebration, a mob of civilians and solders rushed into the Jewish quarters, smashing windows, breaking into houses, and murdering people regardless of age or sex. . .. The assailants’ mood was fortified by the rumors that the attack was a ‘punitive’ expedition and that the Polish command had ‘granted’ the defenders of Lwow a free hand in Jewish quarters” (Prusin 2005, 81–82). Of the 2,815 registered attacks, 1,916 cases involved common Polish soldiers; 494, officer patrols; and 391 cases of soldiers and civilians acting together (Mick 2000, 142). The role of the military is even clearer in the example of Pi´nsk, which had for a long time been labeled a pogrom in historical literature although it was an execution of 35 Jews including women and children by a military unit (Tomaszewski 1986). 46 That the military leadership in Lemberg (Lviv) was responsible for not stopping the pogrom is illustrated by the example of Przymysl (Prusin 2005, 85), where, on November 11, the same basic constellation existed: a pogrom began but was prevented by the intervention of the Polish commander. Prusin (2005, 91) summarizes: “It stands to reason . . . that the conduct of the Polish command was the main factor behind the violence. Common soldiers were convinced that they had the permission to loot the Jewish quarters, and some Polish commanders believed that Jews were to be punished for their treachery.” In its unpublished report, the commission sent by the Polish Foreign Office expressed strong criticism of the Polish military leaders for not having carried out their duty (Mick 2000, 142).

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the offensive or in retreat (Polonsky and Riff 1981, 79).47 Besides the participation of soldiers, the lack of state protection played a role, whereby Polish society in part denied the pogroms, or even proclaimed that Jews deserved what they got.48 On July 2, 1919, the Polish minister of war defended in parliament the anti-Jewish violence of Polish units in Lida by claiming “that the Polish Army had the right to kill their adversaries.” “In his justification of the riots he referred to Jews as a Communist or Communist-minded community that was disloyal to Poland and therefore deserved the punishment” (Michlic 2006, 118). As the border conflicts ceased and the PolishSoviet Peace Treaty was signed on October 12, 1920, the massive anti-Jewish riots also came to an end. Although Polish–Jewish relationships remained very tense for the whole of the interwar period, it took until the 1930s before another wave of outrages, which, despite isolated deaths and an extremely heated anti-Semitic climate, remained far below the level of violence committed in the early postwar years. This was primarily because these were “civil” pogroms at a time when state control actually functioned, which demonstrates that there is no straightforward development toward an increasingly higher level of violence from the early nineteenth century onward.

2.6 Pogroms in the Wake of Operation Barbarossa In the wake of Operation Barbarossa, this area, above all the Baltic States and eastern Poland, in particular Galicia, witnessed a pogrom wave that eclipsed all which preceded it in brutality and numbers of victims.49 Exemplary for this phase are the events in Lithuania (in Kaunas, with 3,800 fatalities), in eastern Poland (on July 7, 1941, in Wasosz, ca. 1,200; July 7 in Radzilow, ca. 800; July 10 in Jedwabne, ca. 1,000 fatalities), and western Ukraine (June 30–July 2 in Lviv, with 4,000 fatalities; and many other places) (on Lwow, see Pohl 1997, 54ff). The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 set out that the Baltic States and the eastern part of Poland were to be occupied by the Soviet Union; thus, once the Germans invaded, within two short years this area moved from being an independent state to Soviet occupation and then German occupation. Petersen, who has comparatively analyzed these processes, sees the decisive factor in the power vacuum that arose between the retreat of the Soviet occupiers, who were despised because of their radical elimination of local elites, and the impending arrival of the German

47 For

example, there were riots during the retreat in Minsk-Mazowiecki, Siedlce, Luków, Białystok, etc., with many fatalities. 48 Michlic (2006, 109–110) identifies four levels of justification offered by Poles: “first, mandating and justifying anti-Jewish violence; second, paying tribute to the perpetrators of such violence as national heroes; third, shifting responsibility for such violence onto the victims; and finally, minimizing the unethical and criminal nature of such violence.” 49 Thirty-one pogroms with their fatalities are listed in Zbikowski (1993).

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troops: “These few days approximated a Hobbesian state of anarchy with a thorough disintegration of social and political control” (Petersen 2002, 95 ff.).50 This brief gap during the change of power provided the chance for an outbreak of aggression without running the risk of state measures and without fear of impunity. The question thus arises as to why this was directed against Jews and—as, for instance, in the case of Latvia and Lithuania—not so much against the Russian minority living there. As an explanation we can draw on the key assumption of the theoretical model, namely, that status changes in ethnic hierarchies can be a cause of collective violence, and this in a twofold sense: first, to defend against the impending threat of status loss; and second, to exact vengeance while regaining status after a loss of power. This is precisely the situation that prevailed in Lithuania, Latvia, and eastern Poland. Let us now turn our attention to the situation in Lithuania, where (in comparison to neighboring regions) there had seldom been any violence in Jewish–Lithuanian relationships. The Lithuanian national state widely excluded Jews from the political process in the 1920s, so that Jews were clearly beneath Lithuanians in the ethnic hierarchy, but the main foil for negative energies was the Polish minority. This changed abruptly upon the Soviet occupation, which was embraced positively by Jews, primarily as a form of protection from the Germans, and offered them the possibility of political participation.51 This complete reversal of social status, which was perceived by Lithuanians as a threat52 and additionally included the reproach of collaboration with an occupying power, was reversed again in June 1941 and, in a phase marked by the absence of social and political control,53 assumed the form of pogroms, bolstered by the arrival of the Germans, whose anti-Jewish ideology was well known. Not only were an unusually large numbers of Jews murdered in these pogroms, but also the extent of the brutal humiliation of the victims was striking. Petersen (2002, 97) has written about the pogrom in Kaunas: “The pogrom involved more than just killing Jews—at times the persecution took on the aura of public humiliation.” The rapid turnaround in the ethnic hierarchy evoked beliefs of

50 Stang

(1999, 75) also comments that there were “numerous days in Kaunas in which a power vacuum existed that the nationalistic circles sought to fill,” since by June 24 German rule had not yet reached all areas. For Sara Shner-Neshamit (1997), Lithuanian “partisans” had already appeared on the streets during the retreat of the Soviet troops. In her opinion, Lithuania was “in the first days of the occupation, before the German Wehrmacht completed its takeover of Lithuania, . . . in the hands of ‘The Activists’ Front of Lithuania and its murderous gangs. Jewish lives and property were at their mercy.” 51 “Although the vast majority of the Jewish population would suffer along with Lithuanians, the visibility of Jews in the Soviet governmental apparatus worked to totally change perceptions of the ethnic hierarchy” (Petersen 2002, 106). 52 A Jewish witness vividly describes this: “Every Jew held his head high. If he met a Lithuanian on the sidewalk, the Lithuanian would step off the curb to let him by. Before the Russians came, it had been just the reverse” (Petersen 2002, 105). 53 See a similar example in the pogrom of Tripoli, Libya, in 1945 (Goldberg 1990).

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injustice and emotions of resentment among Lithuanians: “The desire to put others ‘back in their place’ was strong” (Petersen 2002, 110).54 In some cases experts disagree on whether these pogroms were for the most part spontaneous outbreaks by the local population, as Gross (2001) has claimed for Jedwabne and Petersen for Kaunas (2002, 95 ff.), or whether the initiative and a degree of assistance by the Germans was also in play.55 It can be assumed that the pogroms were more or less instigated by German command units and tolerated by the German Wehrmacht, but that they were essentially carried out through nationalist militias together with the local population.56 Sandkühler (1996, 114; 112) may indeed be correct in his assertion that (for Galicia) “as a rule no special initiative by the Security Police or SD to trigger pogroms” was necessary. Instead the militias and parts of the population acted on their own, taking advantage of the opportunity to “get even” with the Jews.57 Even if parts of the local population participated in the pogroms—at least in Kaunas, Lemberg, and other locations in Galicia—the violence was initiated by the nationalist, anti-Communist militias, the Lithuanian Activist Front (Lietuviku Akyvistu Frontas, LAF) and the OUN in Ukraine, which first formed as partisans fighting against the Soviet occupiers and which was supported by the Germans even though no clear proof of agreements on carrying out the pogroms have been found. These armed militias wreaked an absolute bloodbath that could not have been carried out by a spontaneous crowd, even one that had

54 See

also Zbikowski (1993, 175), who writes of the need “to take revenge” and “to pay the Jews back.” A Lithuanian witness vividly describes this sudden status reversal. The fact that Jews were now serving in political functions and getting involved in the affairs of the population meant that Lithuanians “who lived peacefully for centuries together with the Jews, in the course of a single year literally came to hate them” (Zuvinats 1989, cited in Petersen 2002, 109). Zbikowski (1993, 174) sees the pogroms as a consequence of two processes: in the virulent anti-Semitism of the interwar period in the affected areas and in the “fresh” memory of the pro-Soviet attitude of Jews during the country’s occupation. Sandkühler (1996, 113) quotes a Lemberger flier in which the Jews are threatened with revenge: “You welcomed Stalin with flowers, we will greet Hitler by placing your heads at his feet.” 55 In contrast to Gross, Rossino (2003, 432) claims on the basis of German sources that “the outbreak of ‘popular’ violence against Jews was directly related to policies that the SS implemented during the brief ‘transitional phase.’” In contrast to Petersen, McQueen (1997) presents a different picture. Dieckmann (1998, 304) also refers to the “systematic character” of the pogroms. In his view the pogrom in Kaunas, in which the entire Jewish quarter was attacked and 3,800 Jews murdered in five nights, was instigated by the head of the Einsatzgruppe A, Walter Stahlecker. 56 See on this the first Einsatzbefehl (Deployment Order) from Reinhard Heydrich from June 29, 1941, in which the concealed support for self-cleansing efforts of anti-Communist or anti-Jewish circles was given. But the pogrom in Kaunas had begun on June 23, before this deployment order had been dispatched (McQueen 1997, 95). 57 Although Germans were somewhat involved in Lemberg, according to Sandkühler, the Einsatzgruppe C praised the Ukrainians for their “welcomed activities” before their arrival. The fact that the populations in different territories conducted themselves very differently (for example, in Kaunas and Vilnius) is for Petersen an indication that during pogroms the motivation of the people or the local political groups and the external influence of the Germans had to have worked together.

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been fomented by propaganda.58 That pogroms also placed a limit on the ruler’s monopoly of power, even when he was in agreement with the pogromists’ target, became clear in Lithuania when the German military administration, after its consolidation, disarmed the LAF partisans and “pogroms, at least in this ‘spontaneous’ and extraordinarily bloody form, came to an end” (McQueen 1997, 97). Murders were then carried out in the more “orderly” form of mass executions. A number of joint factors were decisive both for triggering these pogroms and their extremely high level of violence: (1) The period between the retreat of the Soviet troops and the invasion of the Germans provided the locals for a very short period with free rein to act (loss of control); (2) Armed national militias existed in Lithuania and the Ukraine, meaning that the organizational core necessary for the systematic execution of violence already existed; (3) During the Soviet occupation, Jews, in the eyes of the local population, had experienced a considerable gain in status at their expense and were regarded as supporters of the Bolsheviks; (4) Measures for “self-purification” were called for (for example, by the LAF) and supported or even provoked by the Germans,59 giving perpetrators no reason to fear consequences for their action; and (5) The fact that the NKWD, shortly before the retreat of the Soviet occupying forces, had arrested and deported thousands of people (as in Lithuania) and had hundreds of political prisoners murdered (as in Lemberg), triggered the pogrom and was responsible for the extreme level of the violence employed.

3 Conclusion As assumed by the theory, grave changes in social position experienced by groups, entailing a perceived status threat, form a key motive for collective violence. In normal times such status changes tend to occur less conspicuously, in gradual steps, and are sanctioned by the state, so that there are fewer potential occasions for outbreaks of collective violence and the “punishment” is far less violent. Should riots that possess a threatening potential occur due to local events, attempts to initiate violent “self-help” are usually swiftly dealt with by state control organs. In contrast, crisis situations such as revolutions, war, and regime change are characterized by how the status of groups change or threaten to change rapidly and drastically. In such

58 In

radio broadcasts to Lithuania from Germany on the eve of the German invasion LAF propagandists explicitly urged the population to take harsh measures against the Jews (McQueen 1997, 97): “The hour to finally settle the score with the Jews has arrived. Lithuania has not only to liberate itself from the Asian Bolshevists, but also from the many years under the Jewish yoke.” (Matthäus 2003, 81). McQueen (1999, 24 ff.) speaks of how in Lithuania an “entire myth of Jewish guilt” developed so that the pogroms became a kind of “self-purification” crusade in which the guilt of collaboration with the enemy was to be atoned for. Many non-Jewish Lithuanians also fell victim to this violence. See also the OUN’s propagandistic preparation of the Lemberg pogrom (Sandkühler 1996, 116). 59 Apparently, the Einsatzgruppe C and the Army High Command 17 had agreed not to interfere with the local population’s “blood court” against the Jews (Sandkühler 1996, 114).

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a situation violence is deployed as a means for reversing social status and affirming the dominant status of the majority group. In these situations, state control is either absent or weak, which opens up opportunities to act; in addition, the control authorities of the state itself may become actors in the violent actions. Thus forms a favorable opportunity structure for pogroms that also demonstrate a high level of violence. The changes in the extent of anti-Jewish violence between 1800 and 1945, with the exception of the Nazi regime in Germany, identifiable exclusively in Eastern Europe, are thus to be traced back to the altered position of the state or its control organs vis-à-vis the Jewish minority: the triadic relationship collapses because the control organs and rioters join forces against the minority.60 As antiJewish violence of the local, limited type took place simultaneously in these areas, it is clear that the high degree of violence obviously requires a special political opportunity structure in a number of cases, given here by a revolutionary situation as in imperial Russia around 1905, or in the Polish border wars of 1919–1920.61 Ideological factors play an important mediating role in these constellations, for they offer an interpretation of the position and/or behavior of the minority as a violation of norms such as betrayal or collaboration, which demands punishment, then undertaken in the form of direct, collective violence.

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Control and Chaos: Paramilitary Violence and the Dissolution of the Habsburg Empire Robert Gerwarth

1 Introduction On May 25, 1919, the conservative Austrian daily Innsbrucker Nachrichten observed that the end of the Great War had not made Europe a more peaceful place. Under the headline “War in Peace,” the paper pointed to the extraordinarily high levels of ethnic and revolutionary violence that had erupted in various parts of Europe since November 1918, most notably, but by no means exclusively, in the imperial shatter zones of Russia, Ukraine, Finland, the Baltic States, Ireland, Central Europe, Northern Italy, Anatolia, and the Caucasus (Katzer 1999; Wróbel 2003; Ylikangas 2002; Reynolds 2008; Smith 1998; Reichardt 2002; Gatrell 2010).1 If the war had caused carnage and human suffering on an unprecedented scale, the ultraviolence of the years 1914–1918 was nonetheless characterized by a high degree of state control over the combatant societies, which was only replaced by decentralized small-group violence after the official end of hostilities in November 1918. Paramilitary violence was a central feature of all of the myriad conflicts that erupted across Europe in 1918–1919. It was exercised by unofficial or quasi-official formations of volunteers who took into their own hands the military force monopolized in more normal times by the state, whether to oppose or support the existing order. The extent to which this generalized culture of uniformed or military politics led to violence on a large scale, depended, however, on a variety of factors. Paramilitary violence was most marked in ethnically or religiously diverse regions and borderlands, particularly in the disputed shatter zones of multiethnic empires (Bloxham 2009). Estimates of casualties related to the vicious fighting during the Russian civil war, for example, assume an astonishing death toll of between 2.5 and 3.3 million people (Poliakov 2000). The scale of this violence cannot simply be explained through the clash of competing ideologies as is often the case in the older

R. Gerwarth (B) College of Arts & Celtic Studies, School of History & Archive, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] 1 Innsbrucker

Nachrichten, May 25, 1919.

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literature on this subject. If Bolshevism had injected new energies into the complex interplay of radical and reactionary ideological agendas, violence was most extreme in areas of ethnic tensions where anti-Bolshevism was coupled with the doctrine of self-determination or quickly changing regimes. In Ukraine, for example, rapid changes of government unleashed surges of violence and retaliation from all sides. In the Baltic region, the collapse of the Tsarist Empire created a bewildering military situation, with German volunteer formations fighting Trotsky’s Red Army as well as Lithuanian nationalists, who in turn fought the Red Army to secure independence (Liulevicius 2000). In the collapsed Ottoman Empire, Armenian nationalists sought revenge for the genocide of 1915 and attempted to acquire territory in eastern Anatolia. Simultaneously, Greek nationalists hoped to conclude unfinished business from the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 by establishing a foothold around Smyrna (Izmir) in western Anatolia and realizing their vision of a “Greater Greece”—a military campaign that ended in a social disaster. Some 30,000 Greek civilians were slaughtered when Turkish forces under Mustafa Kemal retook Smyrna in 1922 while roughly 900,000 civilians fled to Greece, where a revolutionary junta overthrew the monarchy and executed the royalist generals whom it blamed for the debacle (Smith 1998). Although serious empirical studies on these conflicts are rare, it is possible to identify some basic similarities between them. The scale of the violence that occurred in many areas demonstrated the marked change of political culture that had been brought about by World War I and its outcomes. Violence was no longer an exceptional tactic, but had become integral to the plethora of new and highly dynamic movements active on the extremes of the political spectrum. In a world in which many regimes appeared to lack both solidity and legitimacy, the incentive to remain within the conventional political process had largely disappeared. The future appeared to belong, as proved to be the case with the Bolshevik ascent in Russia and the Fascist seizure of power in Italy in 1922, to those who showed the greatest willingness to resort to direct action. Events in Russia and Italy also demonstrated the scale of the social mobilization that underpinned the political violence of the postwar years. The politics of the postwar years was the noisy and turbulent politics of the street, the town square, and the factory, in which socioeconomic grievances, hostility to state authority, and new and recycled dreams of a “purified” community all fed into a localized and informal culture of political violence. Generally speaking, four decisive and often overlapping developments contributed to the manifold postwar conflicts that Winston Churchill dismissively referred to as the “quarrels of the pygmies” (Davies 2004). First, there was, of course, the militarist legacy of World War I. Typically, though not inevitably, those involved in the large-scale acts of collective violence that occurred between the Urals and the Elbe after 1917–1918 drew on the experience and weaponry of the Great War, and in many cases perceived their struggle as a continuation of the war or of the issues that it had raised but not settled. Yet, the war experience alone (which was not fundamentally dissimilar for German, Hungarian, British, and French soldiers) hardly explains why the world of politics was brutalized in some of the former

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combatant states after 1918, but not in others (Mosse 1990; Lyttleton 1982; Ziemann 2007; Schumann 2003; Prost and Winter 2005). Another major factor that contributed to the brutalization of politics was the Russian Revolution, which inspired disadvantaged, dispossessed, and war-weary groups across Europe to take up arms in order to redistribute wealth or simply to end the war. Lenin’s declaration that there would be “no more landlords” held a genuine appeal for impoverished peasants throughout central and eastern Europe and further afield. Propertied elites in turn mobilized to frustrate these claims. Third, there was the collapse of the multinational dynastic Ottoman, Habsburg, Hohenzollern, and Romanov empires, a historically unprecedented series of state failures that went hand-in-hand with the often violent attempts to create ethnically homogenous postimperial nation-states. One of the Great War’s most immediate consequences, especially in east-central Europe, was the destruction of established borders and regimes, creating vast spaces of limited statehood or government authority. Finally, but crucially, there was the experience of defeat in the Great War, an experience that reinforced the impression of a sustained loss of control over state and society, and accelerated collective violence in the former Central Powers. Defeat and revolution—more than the war itself—undermined traditional mechanisms for controlling violence such as state organs of repression and civil values. This essay will test these general hypotheses by engaging more closely with the emergence of paramilitary violence in two of the Habsburg Empire’s successor states: Austria and Hungary. In Austria and Hungary, just like in other parts of eastcentral Europe, paramilitary violence was generally most marked in the ethnically diverse borderlands, where irregular Austrian, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Slovenian, and Croatian militias—“nationalized” through imperial implosion and newly imposed border changes—fought against both internal and external enemies for territorial control, material gain, or ideological fulfillment. In these ethnically diverse borderlands, where state control over the monopoly of violence was highly contested or altogether absent, military conflict continued unabated after 1918, often taking an even more brutal form than during the Great War because the activists were no longer restrained by traditional military discipline. At a time when the Habsburg Empire’s control mechanisms over violence had collapsed and had not yet been replaced with new control regimes, paramilitaries sought to take the tasks of the failed states into their own hands. It is this wave of postwar paramilitary violence in postimperial Austria and Hungary, its origins, manifestations, and legacies, which this essay seeks to explore. In order to ascertain the extent to which control loss contributed to the actualization of paramilitary violence, the essay will primarily investigate nationalist perceptions of defeat and revolution in post-1918 Austria and Hungary. An investigation along these lines can build upon an extremely rich body of primary sources. Most important for a study that aims to explain the complicated processes of losing and gaining control in postimperial Austria and Hungary are the numerous memoirs, diaries, and letters written by former soldiers and paramilitary activists, in which the experiences of the end of the war and the immediate postwar period are narrated from a personal perspective. Handled with care and

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measured against other evidence such as police files, court testimonies, and victims’ accounts, these personal documents provide illuminating insights into the mentalities of violent actors and their communication strategies with the public at large.

2 Patterns of Violence: Origins, Manifestations, Legacies The transitional period of 1918–1919, characterized by the closely intertwined traumatic experiences of defeat, revolution, and territorial disintegration, had highly divergent effects on the male wartime generation of Austria and Hungary. While the vast majority of the roughly seven million Habsburg veterans who had survived the Great War returned to peaceful civilian lives in November 1918, tens of thousands of ex-servicemen did not. They constituted a small but very active minority of veterans, committed to restoring order within the chaotic postimperial nation-building process through violence. But even for those who joined Austrian or Hungarian paramilitary formations after November 1918, the experiences of the postwar period were highly divergent, not least because the levels of actual violence in Austria and Hungary differed remarkably: while approximately 1,500 people died in Hungary in 1919–1920 alone, the vast majority of the 859 political murders in interwar Austria occurred in the early 1930s, not in the immediate postwar period (Bodó 2004; Botz 1983). In order to explain the relative salience of the Austrian right in the years immediately after 1918, two factors need to be taken into consideration (Boyer 2003). First, the apparently limited activism of the Austrian right (limited when compared to the situation in Hungary and further east), owed much to the existence of a strong militarized left, most notably the Volkswehr and the socialist party guard, the Schutzbund (Schober 1988). In Tyrol, for example, 12,000 Heimwehr men, two-thirds of them armed, faced roughly 7,500 Schutzbund members in 1922 (Lösch 1986). The selflimitation of the rival violent entrepreneurs was the result of risk assessment, a strategy for survival since victory in a potential civil war was anything but a foregone conclusion (Botz 1985). Hence, throughout the 1920 s, both sides largely confined themselves to symbolically charged gestures of military strength such as the largely nonviolent Heimwehr and Schutzbund marches through “enemy territory.”2 Second, this is frequently ignored in historical analyses of interwar Austria, many of the most violent activists of the right spent much of the years 1918–1921 outside Austria. Austrian members of the infamous Freikorps Oberland, for example, including the future Heimwehr leader Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, helped to crush the Munich Council Republic in 1919. During the third Polish Uprising of 1921, to name another example, student volunteers from Innsbruck University joined the Upper Silesian Selbstschutz in its struggle against Polish insurgents (Gehler 1989; Falch 1997). In Hungary, on the other hand, the concrete experience of the Béla Kun dictatorship and the Romanian invasion created a climate in which the desire 2 Alfred

Vienna.

Krauss, “Revolution 1918?” B 60, 5e, p. 1, Krauss Papers, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv

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for violent vengeance seemed much more pressing and its implementation became feasible after the victory of Horthy’s counterrevolution. Despite the important quantitative difference in the levels of postwar violence, paramilitary subcultures in both successor states shared important characteristics. In both Austria and Hungary, the leading figures involved in setting up and running paramilitary organizations of the right were junior ex-officers such as Hanns Albin Rauter, Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, Eduard Baar von Baarenfels, Iván Hejjas, Pál Prónay, and Gyula Osztenburg, who had been educated and trained in the military academies of the late Habsburg Empire.3 In Hungary, it was not only Gyula Gömbös’s powerful veterans’ organization MOVE (Hungarian National Defense Union) or the Union of Awakening Hungarians, but also the much more sizeable Hungarian National Army that was dominated by former combat officers. Of the 6,568 volunteers who followed Horthy’s initial recruitment call of June 5, 1919, for the formation of the counterrevolutionary National Army, almost 3,000 were former army and cavalry officers and an additional 800 men were officers from the semimilitary border guards, the Gendarmerie.4 The vast majority of paramilitary activists in both successor states came from middle- or upper-class backgrounds (Kelemen 1923; Wiltschegg 1985). Born between the late 1880s and the early 1900s, the activists reached maturity in the turbulent years before or during the Great War, which remained the crucial experience of their adolescent lives. As the future Heimwehr leader Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, who had volunteered for military service in 1916, emphasized in his memoirs, he had been a soldier “with all my body and soul. For me it was the fulfillment of all my dreams and the self-evident purpose of my upbringing!”5 The often glorified experience of combat was inextricably linked with notions of the home front’s “betrayal,” culminating in the central European revolutions of autumn 1918 (Cornwall 2000; Rauchensteiner 1993). In explaining their refusal to demobilize and their determination to continue their soldierly existence after November 1918, Austria’s and Hungary’s paramilitary activists frequently invoked the horrors of returning from the front in 1918 to an entirely hostile world of upheaval triggered by the temporary collapse of military hierarchies and public order. The perceived loss of control over the “uneducated masses” was repeatedly pointed to as a key reason for using violence against those accused of creating this impossible situation. Hanns Albin Rauter, who returned to Graz at the end of the war, emphasized his first contact with the “red mob” as an “eye-opener:” “When I finally arrived in Graz, I found that the Communists had taken the streets.” 3 See,

for example, the very detailed autobiographical account of this education in Ernst Heydendorff, “Kriegsschule 1912–1914,” B 844/74, Heydendorff Papers, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna. 4 Béla Kelemen, Adatok a szegedi ellenforradalom és a szegedi kormány történetéhez (Szeged 1923), 495–496. 5 Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, “Aufzeichnungen des Fürsten Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg im Winter 1938/39 in Saint Gervais in Frankreich,” p. 16, Starhemberg Papers, Oberösterreichisches Landesarchiv Linz.

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Confronted by a group of Communist soldiers, “I pulled my gun and I was arrested. This was how the Heimat welcomed me.” Being arrested by soldiers of lower rank reinforced Rauter’s perception of having returned to a “world turned upside down,” a revolutionary world in which hitherto unquestionable norms and values, social hierarchies, institutions, and authorities had suddenly become obsolete.6 Experiences in Budapest were not fundamentally dissimilar. Upon arrival in Hungary from the front in the winter of 1918, the Hussar officer Miklós Kozma was one of many veterans “welcomed” by disorderly crowds shouting abuse at the returning troops as well as by ordinary soldiers physically attacking their officers.7 The broader central European context of revolutionary turmoil echoed such impressions. The future Austrian vice chancellor and Heimwehr activist Eduard Baar von Baarenfels, for example, reported back to Austria from revolutionary Munich how he had witnessed jewelry shops being plundered, and officers being disarmed and insulted.8 Again and again, it was the “unruly crowd” that featured prominently in these narratives of humiliation. In Kozma’s narrative, revolutionary activists always appeared as an effeminate “dirty crowd” often led by “Red Amazons,” a crowd “that has not washed in weeks and has not changed their clothes in months; the smell of clothes and shoes rotting on their bodies is unbearable.”9 What Baarenfels, Rauter, Kozma, and many others described was a nightmare that had haunted Europe’s conservative establishment since the French Revolution, a nightmare that had apparently become reality: the triumph of a faceless revolutionary crowd over the legitimate forces of law and order. The image they invoked was partly influenced by a vulgarized understanding of Gustave Le Bon’s Psychologie des foules (1905 [1895]), whose ideas were widely discussed in right-wing circles across Europe from the turn of the century. Le Bon’s juxtaposition of the barbarian masses and the civilized individual was also reflected in the ways in which many Austrian and Hungarian ex-officers described the humiliating experiences of being stripped of their military decorations by agitated crowds or lower-ranked soldiers.10 Confronted with public unrest and personal insults, Starhemberg’s “bitter anger” over defeat and revolution turned into “a burning desire to return to my soldier’s existence as soon as possible, to stand up for the humiliated Fatherland. . . .” Only then could “the shame of a gloomy present” be forgotten.11 Equally important for the remobilization of Austrian and Hungarian veterans was the experience of territorial disintegration. In the Treaty of St. Germain, the 6 Doc

I 1380, H, 2, Rauter Papers, NIOD (Amsterdam). Kozma, Makensens Ungarische Husaren: Tagebuch eines Frontoffiziers, 1914–1918 (Berlin and Vienna: Verlag für Kulturpolitik, 1933), 459. 8 Eduard Baar von Baarenfels, “Erinnerungen (1947),” MS B/120:1, pp. 10–13, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv. 9 Kozma. Ungarische Husaren, 461. On the “Red Amazons,“ see, too, the article in Innsbrucker Nachrichten, March 23, 1919, p. 2. 10 Starhemberg, “Aufzeichnungen,” 16–17. See also Emil Fey, Schwertbrüder des Deutschen Ordens (Vienna: Lichtner, 1937), 218–220. 11 Starhemberg, “Aufzeichnungen,” 20–22. 7 Miklós

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German-Austrian rump state was forced to cede South Tyrol to Italy, Southern Styria to the future Yugoslavia, and Feldsberg and Böhmzell to the Czech Republic, while also being denied the Anschluss with the German Reich, a ruling rightfully interpreted by politicians of the moderate left and right alike as a flagrant violation of the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination. Hungary was hit even harder: it lost two-thirds of its prewar territory and one-third of its population according to the provisions of the Trianon Treaty. Up until the summer of 1919, and in some cases even later than that, paramilitaries in all successor states (except Czechoslovakia) tried to create new territorial realities through (para-) military action, realities, which they believed the peacemakers in Paris could not ignore. From November 1918 onward, for example, Austrian volunteers were militarily engaged with Yugoslav troops in Carinthia.12 As a “victory in defeat,” the violent clashes between Yugoslav troops and Austrian volunteers in Carinthia soon played a crucial role in paramilitary memory culture, because they testified to the activists’ unbroken spirit of defiance against both external enemies and the weak central government. Carinthia was also synonymous with the Austrian paramilitaries’ alleged military superiority over the “Slavic enemy.” A popular poem of May 2, 1919, the day of the “liberation” of the Carinthian village of Völkermarkt, celebrated the Carinthian “freedom” from “the Slavic yoke” by emphasizing that “the freedom fighters triumphed over treason. . . . You, Slav, should remember the important lesson that Carinthian fists are hard as iron.”13 The interconnected experiences of defeat, revolution, and territorial disintegration also contributed to the mobilization and radicalization of the so-called war youth generation, those adolescent boys who had been too young to serve in the war and who were to gain their first combat experiences on the postwar battlefields of the Burgenland, Styria, Carinthia, or indeed in Upper Silesia, where hundreds of Tyrolese student volunteers fought alongside German Freikorps troops. For many of these young officer cadets and nationalist students, who had grown up on tales of heroic bloodshed but had missed out on their firsthand experience of the “storms of steel,” the militias appear to have offered a welcome opportunity to live out their violent fantasies of a romanticized warrior existence. As Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg correctly observed, many members of the war youth generation tried to compensate for their lack of combat experience through “rough militarist behavior” which was “nurtured as a virtue in large parts of the postwar youth” and which deeply impacted the general tone and atmosphere within paramilitary organizations after 1918.14 What is likely to have motivated these younger paramilitaries was both a violent rejection of an unexpected defeat and revolutionary unrest, as well as a strong desire to prove themselves in battle. Austrian and Hungarian officer cadets, in particular, 12 On

Carinthia, see Darstellungen aus den Nachkriegskämpfen deutscher Truppen und Freikorps, vols. 7 and 8 (Berlin: Mittler, 1941–1942); and the autobiographical account by Jaromir Diakow, B 727, Diakow Papers, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv. 13 On Carinthia and a reprint of the poem, see the anonymous text “Der Sturm auf Völkermarkt am 2. Mai 1919,” B 694, 31, Knaus Papers, Kriegsarchiv, Vienna. 14 Starhemberg, “Aufzeichnungen,” 26.

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who had been mentally and physically prepared for a heroic death on the battlefield, felt a deep sense of betrayal when the war ended abruptly in 1918. Once they had joined paramilitary units dominated by former shock troop officers, they were keen to prove their worthiness within a community of often highly decorated warriors and war heroes, a community that offered them the opportunity to act upon their adolescent power fantasies and to live up to the idealized image of militarized masculinity promoted in wartime propaganda (Gerwarth 2008). However, abstract ideological goals and romanticized fantasies about warriorhood were not the only reasons for joining a paramilitary formation. In addition, this applied primarily to Hungary, large numbers of landless laborers were attracted by the prospect of theft, plunder, rape, extortion, or simply by the opportunity to settle scores with neighbors of different ethnicity without fear of state reprisals (Bodó 2006). Together, the veterans and members of the war youth generation formed explosive subcultures of ultramilitant masculinity in which violence was not merely perceived as a politically necessary act of self-defense in order to suppress the Communist revolts of central Europe, but also as a positive value in itself, as a morally correct expression of youthful virility that distinguished the activists from the indifferent majority of bourgeois society unwilling to rise up in the face of revolution and defeat. In marked contrast to the upheaval that surrounded them, the militias offered clearly defined hierarchies and a familiar sense of belonging and purpose. The paramilitary groups were fortresses of soldierly camaraderie and order in what the activists’ perceived as a hostile world of democratic egalitarianism and Communist internationalism. It was this spirit of defiance, coupled with the desire to be part of a postwar project that would imbue meaning to an otherwise pointless experience of mass death during war, devalued by defeat that held these groups together. They perceived themselves to be the nucleus of a new society of warriors, representing both the eternal values of the nation and new authoritarian concepts for a state in which that nation could thrive. The paramilitaries’ inclination to use violence against their enemies was further exacerbated by fear of world revolution and news (some true, some exaggerated or imagined) about Communist atrocities both inside and outside their respective national communities.15 Although the actual number of casualties inflicted during the Red Terror of 1919 was relatively low, accounts of mass murder, rape, mutilation of corpses, and castration of prisoners by revolutionary “savages” in Russia and central Europe featured very prominently in paramilitaries’ autobiographies, where they served the purpose of legitimizing the use of violence against dehumanized internal and external enemies accused of pursuing a policy of total annihilation. Even in Austria, where only five representatives of the state executive were killed by Communist insurgents in the course of the revolution, there existed an acute fear of being “slaughtered” by the “Reds.” As the high school teacher Karl Hellering

15 See,

for example, “Revolution überall,” Innsbrucker Nachrichten, November 12, 1918, p. 2; “Bestialische Ermordung von Geiseln,” Innsbrucker Nachrichten, May 3, 1919, p. 2.

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wrote in the journal Grobian: “Before I wait until some Jewish-paid menial crushes my skull with a club or slams a knife between my ribs, I’d rather shoot so long as I have bullets.” (Botz 1983) Since the number of deaths inflicted by revolutionaries in Austria was remarkably low, such paranoid fantasies were largely the result of external events. Local newspapers in Austria frequently offered detailed reports about violent developments in Italy, Finland, Russia, the Ukraine, Hungary, and Bavaria that impacted profoundly on the way in which counterrevolutionary activists in Austria perceived their own situation.16 The revolutions in Munich and Budapest in particular featured prominently in the minds of Austrian paramilitary activists (if only as a scenario they desperately wanted to prevent repeating itself in Austria) and many of the atrocities attributed to the revolutionary Left were a direct reflection of the horror stories about the Red Terror that raged in Austria’s border states. In addition, some Heimwehr activists felt inspired by the example of Hungarian or German militias that fought in the borderlands or against Communist insurgents, defying the pacifist majority in their countries. “Full of envy,” Starhemberg recalled, “we fantasized about participating in the struggles of our German comrades who overthrew the Council Republic after Eisner’s assassination, or the actions of the Hungarian volunteer army, which restored Hungary’s honor under Horthy’s leadership.”17 In Hungary, where the Red Terror of 1919 claimed the lives of between 400 and 500 victims, violent fantasies of retribution were based on much more tangible firsthand experiences. The atrocities committed by the so-called Lenin Boys under the leadership of József Cserny in particular spurred the imagination of nationalist activists. After the fall of the Béla Kun regime, the time had come to avenge these crimes. Hungarian ex-officer Miklós Kozma wrote in early August 1919, “We shall see to it . . . that the flame of nationalism leaps high. . . . We shall also punish. Those who for months have committed heinous crimes must receive their punishment. It is predictable . . . that the compromisers and those with weak stomachs will moan and groan when we line up a few red rogues and terrorists against the wall. The false slogans of humanism and other ‘isms’ have helped to drive the country into ruin before. This second time they will wail in vain.”18 Wherever a temporary power vacuum allowed the militiamen to act upon these fantasies of violent retribution, they did. Prominent intellectual critics of the Hungarian White Terror such as the journalist Béla Bacsó and the editor of the Socialist Democratic daily Népszava, Béla Somogyi, were abducted and murdered by members of the Prónay battalion (Gergely and Schönwald 1978). A further 75,000 individuals were imprisoned, and 100,000 went into exile, many of them 16 See, for example, the following articles in the Innsbrucker Nachrichten: “Der Krieg im Frieden”

(May 25, 1919), “Gegen den Bolschewismus” (November 17, 1918); “Die Sowjetherrschaft in Ungarn” (March 26, 1919); “Die Verhältnisse in Bayern” (April 10, 1919); and “Bayern als Räterepublik” (April 8, 1919). 17 Starhemberg, “Aufzeichnungen,” 23. 18 Miklós Kozma, Az összeomlás 1918–1919 (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1935), 380. On Kozma’s war experience, see Kozma, Ungarische Husaren.

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to Soviet Russia, where Stalin eventually killed those who had escaped Horthy’s death squads. Given that many leaders of the Hungarian revolution, including Béla Kun, managed to escape before they could be arrested, others had to pay for their “treason” (Tokes 1967). Socialists, Jews, and trade unionists, when caught, were dragged into the barracks and beaten unconscious. “On these occasions,” the infamous Hungarian militia leader and temporary head of Horthy’s bodyguard, Pál Prónay, recalled, “I ordered an additional fifty strokes with the rod for these fanatic human animals, whose heads were drunk with the twisted ideology of Marx.”19 For Prónay and many others, the dehumanized (“human animal”) and denationalized (Bolshevik) enemy could be tortured and killed without remorse, because these acts were legitimized and necessitated by the holiness of the cause: the salvation of the nation threatened by a socialist abyss and territorial amputation. Against the background of war and revolution, the activists were convinced that they lived in an age of unfettered violence, in which the internal enemy, who had broken the rules of “civilized” military conduct, could only be stopped through the use of the same kind of extreme violence which their opponents were—rightly or wrongly—believed to have employed during the brief Red Terror in Bavaria and Hungary. The postwar project of “cleansing” the nation of its internal enemies was viewed as a necessary precondition for a national rebirth, a form of violent regeneration that would justify the sacrifices of the war despite defeat and revolution. In some ways, this abstract hope for national rebirth out of the ruins of empire was the only thing that held the highly heterogeneous paramilitary groups of Austria and Hungary together. Altogether, the paramilitary upsurge of the months after November 1918 looked more like an attack on the new political establishments and the territorial amputations imposed by the treaties of Trianon and St. Germain than a coordinated attempt to create any particular form of authoritarian order. For despite their common opposition to revolution and the common hope for national revival, the activists involved in right-wing paramilitary action did not necessarily share the same ideological aims and ambitions. Quite the opposite: paramilitary activists of the political right in Austria and Hungary were in fact deeply divided by their divergent visions of the future form of state: there were strong legitimist forces, particularly in the Hungarian community in Vienna, from where two attempts were undertaken to restore the last Habsburg Emperor, Charles I, to the throne of Saint Stephen, but also proto-fascist activists who despised the monarchy nearly as much as they loathed communism. Some royalist paramilitaries in Austria also demanded a restoration of the Habsburg monarchy (though not necessarily under the old Kaiser) and found themselves in direct confrontation with those in favor of a syndicalist form of independent Austrian government. Others, notably those organized in the Austro-Bavarian Oberland League, a radical minority of some 1,000 men, favored unification with the German Reich (Kuron 1960; Lösch 1986). For the

19 Pál

Prónay, A határban a halál kaszál: fejezetek Prónay Pál feljegyzéseib˝ol, ed. Ágnes Szabó and Ervin Pamlényi (Budapest: Kossuth, 1963), 90.

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großdeutsch right in Austria, defeat and imperial dissolution thus offered another postwar project whose fulfillment would justify the wartime sacrifices: the creation of a Greater German Reich. General Alfred Krauss, for example, who in 1914 had interpreted the Great War itself as a unique opportunity to renegotiate the power structure of the Habsburg Empire in favor of its German citizens, saw the collapse of the multiethnic Habsburg Empire as an opportunity for the ethnic “unmixing of peoples.”20 “Great is the time in which we live,” Krauss noted in a somewhat deluded essay of 1920, for großdeutsch “unification can no longer be hindered.”21 Furthermore, as the Oberland League phrased it in its pamphlet The Policy of German Resistance, the reestablishment of control over the masses was only possible through “a thoroughly critical engagement with the ideas of 1789, the ideas of the ages of the enlightenment and humanism. The ideas of 1789 are manifest in modern individualism, bourgeois views on the word and economy, parliamentarianism, and modern democracy. . . . We members of the Oberland League will continue on our path, marked out by the blood of the German martyrs who have died for the future Reich, and we will continue, then as now, to be the shock troops of the German resistance movement.”22 Waldemar Pabst, the chief military organizer of the Heimwehr, articulated similarly abstract ideas when he called for “the replacement of the old trinity of the French Revolution [liberté, egalité, fraternité] . . . with a new trinity: authority, order, and justice” (Kachulle 2007).23 Both pamphlets demonstrated quite clearly that the paramilitary world of postHabsburg central Europe was a world of action, not ideas. Against whom these actions should be directed was consequently one of the most widely discussed themes in paramilitary circles. For the former infantry general and commander in chief of the Habsburg Empire’s Eastern Armies Alfred Krauss, the “enemies of the German people” included “the French, the English, the Czechs, the Italians.” More dangerous than the nationalist enemies of other countries, however, were the internationalist enemies: the Red International, the Black International (political Catholicism), and, above all, the “Jewish people which aims at mastery of the Germans.” All other enemies, Krauss was certain, stood in the paid service of the latter.24 Unsurprisingly, given such widespread sentiments, Jews, although a small minority of no more than 5% of the Austrian and Hungarian populations, suffered most from paramilitary violence after the Great War. As Jakob Krausz, a Jewish refugee from the Hungarian White Terror, observed in 1922, “anti-Semitism did not lose its intensity during the war. Quite the opposite: it unfolded in a more beastly way. This war has only made the anti-Semites more brutal. . . . The trenches were flooded with

20 Alfred

Krauss, “Schaffen wir ein neues, starkes Österreich!” 1914, B 60, Krauss Papers, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv. 21 Alfred Krauss, “Unser Deutschtum!” 1920, 8–9. 22 “Die Politik des deutschen Widerstands” 1931, B 1477, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna. 23 NY4035/6, pp. 37–39, Pabst Papers, Bundesarchiv, Berlin. 24 Krauss, “Unser Deutschtum!” 7–13.

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anti-Semitic pamphlets, particularly those of the Central Powers. The more their situation deteriorated, the more intense and bloodthirsty the anti-Semitic propaganda became. The postwar pogroms in Hungary, Poland, and the Ukraine, as well as the anti-Semitic campaigns in Germany and Austria were prepared in the trenches.”25 As Krausz correctly observed, one of the main reasons for the violent anti-Semitism in Central Europe after 1918 was that Jews became the projection screen for everything the paramilitary right despised. Paradoxically, they could simultaneously be portrayed as the embodiment of a pan-Slavic revolutionary menace from the east that threatened the traditional order of Christian Central Europe, as “red agents” of Moscow, and as representatives of an obscure “Golden International” and western democratization. In Hungary, in contrast to Austria, anti-Semitic violence was tolerated by the state authorities and at times applauded by the nationalist press (Bigler 1974; Fischer 1998). A report on anti-Semitic violence published by Vienna’s Jewish community in 1922 reported that “more than 3,000 Jews were murdered in Transdanubia,” the broad region of Hungary west of the Danube.26 Although these figures are probably exaggerated, there can be no doubt that the White Terror specifically targeted Jews in substantial numbers.27 A typical case of anti-Semitic violence in Hungary was reported to the police by Ignaz Bing from B˝oh˝onye in October 1919: “During the night before 1 October, a group of sixty White Guards came to our community and ordered that every Jewish man had to appear immediately on the market square. The Jewish men, seventeen altogether, who were entirely innocent of Communist activity, followed the order. When they had assembled, they were beaten and tortured and—without any interrogation—they [the soldiers] started hanging them”—an act of violence that served the dual purpose of eliminating the “source of Bolshevism” and giving a public demonstration of what would happen to an enemy who fell into their hands.28 In Austria, anti-Semitism was similarly widespread even though it never assumed an even remotely similar violent character prior to 1938. Before 1914, antiSemitism in Austria had been common currency among right-wing politicians who bitterly complained about the high numbers of Jews from Galicia and the Bukovina who had migrated to Vienna. When Galicia became Polish in 1918 and the Bukovina Romanian, the number of Jewish migrants further increased, accelerated by large-scale pogroms in Galicia and the Ukraine. In 1918 125,000 Jews lived in Vienna, although German-Austrian nationalists maintained that the number was as high as 450,000 (Pauley 1990). The postwar influx of eastern Jews fanned anti-Semitic feelings in Vienna which—since the days of Karl Lueger and Georg

25 Jakob

Krausz, Ed., Martyrium: ein jüdisches Jahrbuch (Vienna, 1922), 17.

26 Josef Halmi, “Akten über die Pogrome in Ungarn,” in Martyrium, ed. Krausz, 59. See also Oskar

Jászi, Magyariens Schuld: Ungarns Sühne (Munich: Verlag für Kulturpolitik, 1923), 168–179. 27 Correspondence with His Majesty’s Government, presented to the Jewish Board of Deputies and

the Council of the Anglo-Jewish Association, October 1920, Foreign Office 371/3558, 206720. “Pogrome,” 64.

28 Halmi,

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von Schönerer—were never far from the surface and which had been reinforced by the popular wartime stereotype of the Jewish profiteer (Pulzer 1988; Boyer 1981; Healy 2004). After 1918, right-wing veterans maintained, “the Jew” had become the “slaveholder” of a defenseless German people, determined “to exploit our peril in order to make good business . . . and to squeeze out our last drop of blood.”29 The identification of the Jewish people as the string pullers behind revolution and imperial collapse was generally linked to the hope that “the German giant will rise again one day” and that then, “the day of reckoning must come for all the treason, hypocrisy, and barbarism, for all their crimes against the German people and against humanity.”30 Anti-Semitism after 1918 was further exacerbated by the widespread perception that a Jewish conspiracy was at the heart of the revolutions of 1918–1919. The fact that the leader of the Austrian Red Guards, Leo Rothziegel, and prominent members of the Social Democratic Party, such as Victor Adler and Otto Bauer, were Jewish was constantly referred to. In Hungary, too, the revolution and the Red Terror of the immediate postwar period were, in the eyes of conservative officers, inextricably linked with Jews, most importantly with the revolutionary leader Béla Kun and his chief military advisor, Tibor Szamuely (Lorman 2005). Immediately after the fall of the Kun regime in early August 1919, the lawyer Oscar Szõllõsy published a widely circulated newspaper article on “The Criminals of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” in which he identified Jewish “red, blood-stained knights of hate” as the main perpetrators of the Red Terror and the driving force behind communism.31 In Hungary (as in Austria), Jews were also held directly responsible for the military defeat of the Central Powers. According to Gyula Gömbös, Hungary’s subsequent prime minister, defeat was a direct consequence of the fact that the Jewish proportion of Habsburg Empire’s population was substantially higher (1:56) than in the Entente countries (1:227) (Sakmyster 2006). To proclaim publicly one’s anti-Semitism and to pride oneself on having used merciless violence against Jewish civilians subsequently became a common mark of distinction among the paramilitary activists of central Europe. In Hungary, where paramilitary atrocities against Jews were usually carried out with the tacit acquiescence of the authorities, the situation was particularly extreme. Pál Prónay, for example, collected the chopped-off ears of his Jewish victims as lucky charms (Bodó 2006). At a dinner party conversation, one of Prónay’s officers, György Geszay, proudly remarked that he had an excellent appetite that evening as he had spent the afternoon roasting a Jew alive in a train locomotive.32 In Austria, the situation was far less extreme. However, the language of violence used by Austrian paramilitaries certainly foreshadowed the infinitely more dramatic

29 Krauss,

“Unser Deutschtum!” 20. “Unser Deutschtum!” 16–17. 31 Oscar Szõllõsy, “The Criminals of the Dictatorship of the Proletaria,” in Cécile Tormay, An Outlaw’s Diary (London: Philip Allan, 1923), 2:226. 32 Memoirs of Max Bauer’s secretary, NL 22/69, p. 33, Bauer Papers, Bundesarchiv, Koblenz. 30 Krauss,

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wave of anti-Jewish violence of the late 1930 s and 1940 s. Whether Hanns Albin Rauter expressed his aim to “get rid of the Jews as soon as possible” as a student leader in Graz or Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg attacked the “Jewish war profiteers” as “parasites,” the rhetoric of violent anti-Semitism constituted a tradition on which radical nationalists would build in subsequent decades.33 Crude notions of violently “unmixing” the ethnic complexity of the Habsburg lands, coupled with militant anti-Bolshevism and radicalized anti-Semitism created fateful legacies for both successor states. The Hungarian White Terror revealed much of the later chauvinist and racist mood in the country, notably through its sudden and sanguinary animus against Jews. It revived with added fury (and on a broader popular basis) in the 1930 s, exacerbated by the frustrations caused by the Great Depression. In Austria, too, anti-Semitism and anti-Slavic sentiments would resurface with renewed intensity after the brief moment of political stabilization in the mid-1920 s gave way to economic depression and political turmoil. For many Austrian and Hungarian fascists of the 1930 s, the experiences of 1918–1919 provided a decisive catalyst for political radicalization and the emergence of political agendas whose implementation was merely postponed during the years of relative stability after 1923.

3 Conclusions It has been argued in this essay that postimperial Austria and Hungary witnessed the emergence of a sizeable paramilitary subculture of the political right, a subculture that was shaped and radicalized by the successive traumatizing experiences of war, defeat, revolution, state collapse, and territorial disintegration. Members of the male wartime generation active in this subculture fed on a doctrine of hypernationalism and apocalyptic fantasies, as they sought to reassert their control over a society which they perceived to be on the verge of revolutionary collapse. Fears of a permanent loss of control over formerly subordinate social groups and ethnic rivals went hand-in-hand with a growing determination to avenge their perceived humiliations at the hands of external and internal enemies. Central to the emergence of violent politics in postwar Austria and Hungary was a new political personnel. Revolutionary politics of left and right was no longer dominated by the lawyers, intellectuals, and trade union officials of the pre-1914 era. Instead, power—and more especially the levers of violent action—had passed to new figures, many (but by no means all) of whom had had direct experience of military violence in the First World War, and who depended for their authority within paramilitary groups on their radicalism of rhetoric and action. In the paramilitary formations of the extreme right, ex-officers brutalized by the war and infuriated 33 Doc

I-1380 Pr 6-12-97, 46–47, Rauter Papers, NIOD (Amsterdam); Starhemberg, “Meine Stellungnahme zur Judenfrage,” Starhemberg Papers, Oberösterreichisches Landesarchiv Linz.

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by defeat and revolution joined forces with members of a younger generation, who had come of age in a bellicose atmosphere saturated with tales of heroic bloodshed but had missed out on their firsthand experience of the “storms of steel” and who sought to compensate for their lack of combat experience by often surpassing the war veterans in terms of radicalism, activism, and brutality. Action, not ideas, was the defining characteristic of these groups. They were driven forward not by a revolutionary vision, but by a common rhetoric of the reestablishment of order and an interlocking series of social and ethnic antipathies. In the absence of a functioning state power, paramilitaries of different political convictions sought to fulfill the control functions of the collapsed Habsburg authorities. Their violence was thus at least in part an act of self-empowerment at a time when the social elites of the Habsburg Empire were more powerless than they had been for centuries. If the traumatizing experiences of war, defeat, imperial collapse, and revolution set the stage for serious tensions between different political, social, and ethnic actors, physical violence was most marked in those border areas of limited statehood where different ethnic groups with long-standing mutual antipathies suddenly witnessed a redrawing of borders. From the perspective of the former elites of the Habsburg Empire, the Slavic ethnic minorities were suddenly perceived as fifth columns, working toward the secession of whole border areas. Such perceptions often amalgamated with other ideological antipathies, notably anti-Bolshevism and anti-Semitism, into a single enemy image of Jewish–Slavic Bolshevism. The desire to cleanse the new nation-states of these broadly defined enemies gave paramilitary activists a vaguely delimited target for their retribution. Yet, if most activists in the successor states shared these beliefs, they differed in their ability to live out these fantasies. Whereas in postrevolutionary Hungary, shaken by a near complete breakdown of state authority, fantasies turned into reality on a large scale, Austrian paramilitaries at home either had to confine themselves to small-scale fighting in the Austrian borderlands with Yugoslav troops or they had to join forces with German Freikorps in Munich or Upper Silesia, where violent action against similar enemy groups was possible without fear of state intervention. The wave of civil wars in east-central Europe and the Balkans only ended with the conclusion of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, which specifically aimed “to bring to a final close the state of war which has existed in the East since 1914.” As a tentative political and economic stability was achieved and state authority reestablished in most parts of Europe by 1923, the large-scale violence of the immediate postwar years gradually disappeared. What did not go away, however, was a wider culture of violent rhetoric of ethnic exclusion, uniformed politics, and street fighting, which constituted one of the most durable legacies of the upheavals of the immediate postwar period, and which resurfaced in the early 1930 s when, shaken by the Great Depression, state control over violent subcultures was undermined once more. Acknowledgement I am most grateful for the financial support I received from the European Research Council, the IRCHSS, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. These grants enabled me to work on this essay.

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Failed States in Theoretical, Historical, and Policy Perspectives Jean-Germain Gros

1 Introduction Globalization and interdependence compel us to think afresh about how we manage our joint activities and shared interests, for many challenges that we confront today are beyond the reach of any one state to meet on its own. At the national level we must govern better; and at the international level we must govern better together. Effective states are essential to both tasks. Kofi Annan (2000)

These words from a former secretary-general of the United Nations underscore one of the realities and challenges of the post-Cold War era: the unsuitability of failed states in a world in which the solution to problems from global warming to poverty requires states that can act on their own, as well as in unison with other states and non-state institutions. Annan’s statement also confirms that the study of failed states has taken center stage in international relations. Some of the most influential works include I.William Zartman’s Collapsed States 1995, which is concerned primarily with Africa. Robert Rotberg’s When States Fail (2004) provides detailed and graphic descriptions of state failure and its consequences. Rotberg’s description of the failed state as “a polity that is no longer able or willing to perform the fundamental tasks of a nation-state in the modern world” and his notion that “failure is a fluid halting place, with movement back to weakness and forward into collapse always possible” underscore a fundamental aspect of state failure that is often ignored: its dynamic nature. Thus, state failure is underwritten by (limited) choice; rulers may forgo the projection of power in some geographic and functional areas, while displaying it in others. This chapter builds on these insights to develop a new taxonomy of failed states. At the same time, it takes issue with Rotberg’s equation of state failure with criminal violence and lawlessness, which overlooks an important fact: social control mechanisms in any society are multifarious. State failure may or may not lead to widespread human suffering, depending

J.-G. Gros (B) Department of Political Science, University of Missouri, Saint Louis, MO, USA e-mail: [email protected]

W. Heitmeyer et al. (eds.), Control of Violence, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0383-9_23,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

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on the magnitude of failure and whether non-state institutions are able to substitute for the debile state. Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff, and Ramesh Thakur’s Making States Work (2005) casts in sharp relief the problem of the failed state: “The human rights dilemmas of the twenty-first century derive more from anarchy than tyranny.” If the main existential threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the twentieth century was the all-powerful state (Leviathan), in the twenty-first century the primary menace is the all-powerless, or failed, state. This assertion underpins many of the prescriptive works on the issue, including Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart’s Fixing Failed States (2008), Francis Fukuyama’s State-Building (2004), and Paul Collins’s The Bottom Billion (2007). All of these studies take a sanguine view of the international community’s role in rebuilding failed states, even though they recognize the limits of its intervention. Failed states have also drawn the attention of the U.S. government, whose 2002 National Security Strategy flatly states, “America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones,” the European Union, the World Bank, and, perhaps above all, the Fund for Peace, which publishes the Failed States Index. This annual ranking of state viability in nearly all of the world’s countries is based on 12 social, economic, and political indicators, among them “mounting demographic pressures,” “sharp and/or severe economic decline,” “rise of factionalized elites,” and “intervention of other states or external political actors” (Fund for Peace 2009). Why these particular 12 indicators? The omission of the neoliberal policies of international financial institutions from the list of indicators is especially troubling, as many failed states implemented variants of these radically anti-state policies (Structural Adjustment Programs, or SAPs) in the 1980 s. It is also surprising that the Index makes no mention of geography, despite the state’s inextricable link to territory. Moreover, are the 12 indicators causally related, or “merely” correlated, to state failure? If they cause states to fail, how do they do so? What is their relative weight—how do these independent variables rank in order of importance in relation to state failure, the dependent variable? What is the relationship among these indicators—for example, do “mounting demographic pressures” cause “sharp and/or severe economic decline?” The Index does not connect the dots. As for the academic literature, it suffers from terminological promiscuity. There are failed, failing, fragile, collapsed, anarchic, predatory, weak, and LICUS (lowincome countries under stress) states, in addition to the labels of yesteryear: underdeveloped, developing, Third World, and so on. The literature is also largely ahistorical. Most analyses begin at the end of the Cold War, with a few harkening back to the decolonization period.1 Their authors tend to share a mechanical approach to the state and an aversion to examining external institutions as one of the causes of state failure. If states fail it is alleged, it is mainly because of corrupt

1 A notable exception is James Mayall. See James Mayall, “The Legacy of Colonialism,” in Simon

Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff, and Ramesh Thakur, eds., Making States Work (New York, Tokyo, Paris: United Nations University Press, 2005).

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local elites or some other internal defects that can be corrected through political engineering and timely outside intervention. The reality is that states are not simple institutions. States abate violence when they effectively monopolize its means, but this capacity also enables states to visit untold violence on those they do not like, including the innocent. In other words, violence can be a consequence of state absence as well as evidence of state malfeasance (Bates 2001). States facilitate economic development, but they also arrest it. Thus, not all states are worth saving. External actors can be useful in the rescue of failed states, but they can also contribute to the very failure they are called to rectify—sometimes inadvertently, sometimes deliberately. Too sanguine a view of the international community may lead to unwarranted optimism about the ability of external actors to uplift failed states. The record of institutional transplant is not very impressive. Given the many ambiguities and controversies surrounding the (failed) state, as an analytical construct and as a real-world phenomenon, it behooves researchers to expound on their use of the concept and extirpate as many of the ambiguities as possible. This may go some way toward reducing the theoretical weaknesses and conceptual laxity that pervade studies of the failed state. In this chapter I dissect the complete anatomy of the failed state. First, I spell out what the failed state is, following a (mostly) Weberian analysis. Second, I (re)construct a taxonomy of these states, based on previous work that has been modified in light of developments since (Gros 1996). Third, I theorize how states fail. And finally, I explore the limits and possibilities of the rehabilitation of failed states by the international community. The chapter is synthetic in its approach, drawing heavily from mainstream sources such as Max Weber (1978), the New Institutional Economics, rationalchoice theory, and the institutional development literature, and also from the more “radical” imperialism theories of Hannah Arendt, Rosa Luxemburg, and David Abernethy. Historical developments are seen through the prism of political science, in particular institutionalism, rather than history proper, as I am not a historian.

2 States and Failed States In this chapter the state is conceived in the Weberian sense, that is to say, as a political organization that wields exclusive coercive power over a large area and group of people, which power it uses to tax, maintain internal order, make war, peacefully engage other states (i.e., practice diplomacy), deliver social services, and protect property rights. The state, then, is an instrument of social control, but mainly for itself, or, as Weber notes, it is “a community whose social action is aimed at subordinating to orderly domination by the participants a ‘territory’ and the conduct of the persons within it, through readiness to resort to physical force, including normal force of arms” (Weber 1978). The state may be the most important secular institution of social control in modern society. Its domain is all-encompassing in space and functions: “Owing to the

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drastic nature of its means of control, the political association [i.e., the state] is particularly capable of arrogating to itself all the possible values toward which associational conduct might be oriented; there is probably nothing in the world which at one time or another has not been an object of social action on the part of some political association” (Weber 1978). Provided that states have monopoly over the means of violence (authority), political will, financial and human resources, and popular support (legitimacy)—in sum, capacity—they may do almost anything they want. However, the state is not the only game in town, for even the most authoritarian state rules with some limitations and requires a modicum of acceptance by its citizens. The aforementioned functions do not weigh equally in the calculus of state makers. Indeed, a good deal of statecraft entails figuring out the correct mix of these functions. Thus, state functions must be historicized and socially contextualized, although rulers throughout history have always been concerned with internal order and protection of their territory, which have a direct bearing on their longevity in power. The spatial, or geographic, dimension of state power is always relational: there is a center and a periphery. The center is personified in a national ruler (king, president, prime minister) and/or embedded in a capital city that plays host to the ultimate public authorities (central government, national government, federal government). In some cases— for instance, Abuja in Nigeria and Dodoma in Tanzania—centralized authority is ensconced literally in the middle of the territory. The periphery then is any authority structure or physical area outside the central government. The periphery is atomized into many constituent parts with just as many names: region, province, state, department, chieftaincy, city, county, village, countryside, hinterland, and so on. Using this description, we may “image” state power spatially in concentric terms, whereby power starts at the center and radiates out to the periphery, with the sum total of centralized and peripheral power making up what James C. Scott (2002) calls the power grid of the state. Depending on the structure of the state (e.g., whether the state is unitary or federal), peripheral power may be extremely dependent on centralized power, as in France and Japan, or it may have substantial independence to the point where it is seen as countervailing to centralized power, as in the United States and Germany. But even in those circumstances where the periphery has some autonomy (such as in a federal system), the basic functions of statecraft—maintaining order and waging war—are ultimately the responsibilities of centralized authority. The question is when centralized authority becomes involved in the affairs of state, not whether it should be. Still, dividing state power between a core and a periphery and imaging it as a grid is a useful exercise. What then is a failed state? A very good definition can be extrapolated from Max Weber, who is worth quoting at length again: As we consider them today, the basic functions of the “state” are: the enactment of law (legislative function); the protection of personal safety and public order (police); the protection of vested rights (administration of justice); the cultivation of hygienic, educational, social-welfare, and other cultural interests (the various branches of administration); and,

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last but not least, the organized armed protection against outside attack (military administration). These basic functions are either totally lacking under primitive conditions, or they lack any form of rational order. They are performed, instead, by amorphous ad hoc groups, or they are distributed among a variety of groups, such as the household, the kinship group, the neighborhood associations, the rural commune, and completely voluntary associations formed for some specific purpose. Furthermore, private association enters domains of action which we are used to regard exclusively as the sphere of political associations. (Weber 1978)

If one were to substitute “failed states” for “primitive conditions,” one would have a fairly accurate description. To return to the earlier metaphor, failed states are those whose power grids have experienced frequent, sustained, and massive breakdown, such that state authorities are no longer able to project real power on a consistent basis, if at all. In other words, they cannot amplify or exert power. The lack of amplitude is usually experienced first in the periphery, because states behave like discriminating monopolists and do not spread their assets evenly throughout their territory. Thus, the periphery is usually where the state first reaches its limits or even dissolves. However, it is important not to regard state failure always as a calamity, for, as Weber suggests, under “primitive conditions” functions hitherto provided by the state may be undertaken by non-state actors.

3 A Taxonomy of State Failure If one assumes that the paramount state functions are to maintain order and to protect territory and people from external aggression,2 and if further that state power in the performance of these tasks is organized in a geographic grid, with a core and a periphery,3 then there are several possible ways in which states can fail. State failure essentially has to do with loss of control by political authority in space and functions, but this loss has multiple characteristics.

3.1 State Failure Type I The state loses control over order maintenance and war making. It is no longer able to keep law and order among its citizens, nor is it able to protect its territory from external predators of whatever origin (other states, foreign terrorists, narcotics traffickers, and so on). This loss of control signals that the state has collapsed or become anarchic, meaning that there is no longer an overarching authority. However, this 2 Obviously,

states do much more than maintain order and protect their territory against external predators, but there are not too many political scientists who will disagree that, at minimum, all states worthy of the name must perform these two functions. These functions are very good proxies for others: a state that cannot maintain order among its citizens probably cannot tax them either, and if it cannot tax, it cannot deliver social services. Hence, state viability can be extrapolated from these two capacities, as opposed to examining the entire universe of state functions. 3 A core might be a capital city or a number of cities; the periphery would be any area outside of these agglomerations. A core might also be the home region of the dominant group(s) in a society, or an area where significant economic assets are concentrated.

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does not mean that life is necessarily Hobbesian. As Nature abhors a vacuum, some essential public goods may be provided by sub-state actors such as traditional authorities or by non-state actors such as local and international non-governmental organizations. One plausible example of a collapsed, or anarchic, state—the only one at the time of writing—is Somalia.

3.2 State Failure Type II The state loses control over internal order, but maintains it over the ability to wage war. This scenario is also rare. It typically occurs in a pre-collapse situation, where the state remains militarily strong enough to defend its territory against external enemies, but has lost so much of its legitimacy that it is vulnerable to collapse from within. This is the case even though, in theory, it retains considerably capacity for internal violence, as some warfare assets are of so-called dual use. Examples are the former Soviet Union from some time in the early 1970s to December 1991, the former Eastern European satellites, or Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam.4 One may surmise that North Korea is also in this category, but given the insularity of the regime, it is difficult to tell. But this much is predictable: with 11,000 artillery tubes and rockets aimed at Seoul, the downfall of Kim Jong-Il is more likely to come from within North Korea than from without (for instance, in the form of a joint US–South Korean invasion).

3.3 State Failure Type III The state loses control over the capacity to wage war but maintains it over internal order. In some cases, this may be the result of a deliberate political strategy (as may be Type II). It should be recalled that states behave like discriminating monopolists; they do not spread their assets evenly throughout the realm. They may deploy all of their coercive powers against their own citizens rather than splitting them between order maintenance and war making. There may be a standing army whose technical capacity is in waging war, but whose true raison d’être is repression of the population or absorption of poor and unemployed youth into the rank-and-file and elite young men into the officer corps (jobs for the boys). Rulers who think they may be in danger of being overthrown, and who have scant resources to work with, will tend to project those resources into the one area that will most immediately shore up their 4 The

eastern European cases deserve further elaboration. There, and in the former Soviet Union, what collapsed was the ideological-political apparatus, not the bureaucratic-coercive apparatus. In spite of their other weaknesses, these states had achieved a considerable degree of legal-rationalism in their bureaucracy. In some cases, this development predated communism. When communism collapsed as an ideological-political system, it did not bring down the entire state structure with it and chaos did not ensue in the way one might have expected of patrimonial states where the ruler is indivisible from the state. To a lesser extent, this observation applies to Ethiopia as well, where Marxism-Leninism, with its penchant for “bureaucratism,” probably made greater inroads than elsewhere in Africa, perhaps because Ethiopia has a long history of state building.

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power: maintaining internal order. International law and norms encourage authoritarian rulers in failed states to behave this way, because they remove the incentives for these rulers to build up their warfare capacity to fend off invasion by other states. Haiti under the Duvalier dynasty (1957–1986) experienced this type of failure. The elder Duvalier (Papa Doc) did not worry much about invasion by a rival state, such as the Dominican Republic. He was more concerned about being deposed in a coup by the army. Consequently, he disempowered the Haitian army in favor of the Tontons Macoutes, the paramilitary force responsible for much of the repression. This kind of situation is very interesting, because it demonstrates that (a) loss of control or failure is not always involuntary (states may decide that loss of control in some areas is acceptable); and (b) violence is not always a byproduct of the loss of control. On the contrary, violence can be a means of maintaining control, or attempting to maintain control, with the state as its main perpetrator.

3.4 State Failure Type IV The state lacks control over both internal order and war making, but this loss is neither complete nor permanent. Failure here is that “fluid halting place” Rotberg mentions. Typically, states exhibit greater capacity in maintaining order and waging war in the center than in the periphery; the periphery may be considered the weak link in the chain leading to state failure or, to employ the earlier metaphor, the node most likely to be severed from the power grid. Probably most failed states are in this category; they lose control in parts, perhaps significant parts, of their territory, but maintain it in some areas—typically the capital city and other urban centers and the home region of the national ruler. They are also able to perform certain functions of statecraft, albeit in perfunctory fashion. Sudan’s state has had no effective control in the south and lately in the west of the country, but Khartoum has had a government since independence that has exercised real authority in the north. The volatility of the Niger Delta has not prevented Nigeria from spending billions of dollars on a new capital in Abuja, where, unlike in the economic capital of Lagos, government functions with some efficacy. Ivory Coast, Congo, and (post-Duvalier) Haiti are further examples of this category. All three have nominal governments, although they have been on the brink of anarchy at different times in their history.

3.5 The Failed States Continuum Failed states, then, are not monolithic. The Failed States Index is problematic in part because it is not sensitive enough to important differences among failed states. Zimbabwe has strong capacity in maintaining internal order and at least residual capacity in waging war (as evidenced in its involvement in Congo in the 1990s), yet Zimbabwe ranks second after Somalia in the 2009 Failed States Index. The proximity of these two countries on the list completely misrepresents the actual distance between their conditions. Figure 1 “re-images” failed states differently. It arranges

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Fig. 1 State failure typology

failed states along a continuum, rather than ranking them in hierarchical order. A state’s position on the continuum may shift, because state failure is dynamic. Moving from left to right, the most common and mildest form of state failure is Type IV, where the state is able to function throughout much of its territory, albeit in a less than authoritative fashion. Typically, the state is more effective in the capital city and other urban cores than in the countryside or periphery. There may come a time when the projection of state power throughout the realm is not possible, in which case state makers will pay very close attention to where they deploy state assets. At first, they may forgo waging war in favor of maintaining internal order (moving to Type III configuration), since international law and norms help protect the integrity of their territory, which is the primary aim of making war. Several factors may contribute to this decision: a sudden and precipitous drop in world commodity prices that exacerbates budget problems, the threat of secession by rebel groups, massive street protests, even elections—in sum, events that have the potential of destabilizing internal order. But, depending on international circumstances, state makers may also forgo maintaining internal order in favor of waging war (becoming a Type II state). This will happen when foreign invasion is seen as a greater threat to their power than internal rebellion. Whether states forgo capacity in one area as opposed to the other depends on how state elites read political circumstances, and rank the threats to their power. They may even go back and forth between Type II and Type III in times of domestic and international turbulence, hence the 2D arrow (B). Ideally, though, state makers in weak states would like to have some capacity in both maintaining order and waging war (A). They prefer failure Type IV to either Type II or Type III. Finally, states may lose complete control over internal order, warfare, and all other functions, both in their core and periphery (experiencing Type I failure). In this case they become anarchic. This situation occurs when rebels overrun the remnants of centralized authority, but turn out to be unable to put “Humpty Dumpty” back together. The territory of the collapsed state may then be effectively divided among various rebel chiefs or warlords, followed by the consequences of high levels of violence, economic predation, and spoliation of the environment. So-called humanitarian intervention is typically aimed at returning failed states to some functionality,

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but since it seldom lasts long enough, nor commands the requisite resources to build fully working states, the reality is that such intervention often ends up (even under the best of circumstances) moving failed states from Type I to Type IV failure (as shown by Arrow D). One of the most glaring weaknesses in the scholarly literature is the equation of political and administrative dysfunctionality with social disequilibrium. Failed states are by definition dysfunctional, meaning their performance is suboptimal on many fronts, but suboptimal state function does not necessarily connote social disequilibrium. This point has profound practical implications. States can perform suboptimally without sinking completely into the abyss (Failure Type I). Moreover, poor states may choose suboptimal performance in order to lessen the chances of catastrophic failure. Conservatism can sometimes be a rational response to uncertainty. There are not more Somalias in Africa because most communities have developed informal mechanisms of control to cope with the lack of formal capacity at the state level. The paucity of interstate wars over territory on a continent whose political map was butchered by colonialism can be easily explained. Most African leaders have essentially accepted the principle of uti possidetis juris—in other words, the colonial status quo ante—thereby mitigating the imperative for war making. They have also enshrined this position in formal statutes, such as the charter of the former Organization of African Unity. This approach has many downsides but its one upside, interstate peace, cannot be ignored. Ordinary Africans have adjusted to the lack of state effectiveness in many countries by developing alternative systems of governance, some of which predate the modern African state. Sharia law is clearly anathema to the secular modern state in Nigeria, but because it has kept a semblance of order in the north, where the federal government is not always welcome, federal authorities have shown toleration, as long as the more extreme strictures of Sharia (e.g., stoning adulterers) are not applied. Lack of state does not connote social disequilibrium, nor does it automatically translate into loss of control. Even in Somalia, anarchy has not been accepted as a fait accompli. Until December 2006, Islamists had managed to restore control in some parts of the country; in Somaliland and Puntland, some order is being provided by sub-state authorities, who hope to turn these territories into states. In sum, in the game of state making, the state may be the most important player but it is not the only one. As in any collective effort, state making entails considerable negotiations and mutual adjustments among state, sub-state, non-state and even anti-state actors.

4 Understanding Why States Fail Unless it is understood how states fail, decisions regarding what to do about failed states will be tantamount to throwing darts blindfolded. Beyond identifying the (alleged) indicators of state failure, it must be demonstrated how these indicators cause states to fail, and why they and not others are indeed the causes. An

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overarching theory of state failure is not easy to arrive at, because (a) failed states are not monolithic, (b) progression from one type of failure to another is not linear, and (c) some variables may be impossible to operationalize and measure. Yet, because a theory is, at its most basic, a set of facts, conjectures, and principles that purport to explain a given phenomenon, it is at least possible to identify some of the common features connected to state failure and speculate on how they contribute to the outcome. Such an effort gains in strength if its approach is historical, which allows for a larger sample to be examined under different conditions. Also, we should recall that states are (political) organizations that presumably succeed or fail for the same reasons other types of organizations succeed or fail. Insights from other disciplines such as organization theory can be brought to bear on state failure. The outcome of the efforts of any organization depends on three things: its personnel (more generally, its resources), its design or structure, and the environment in which it operates. So it is with states, which fail for internal and external structural reasons, with human agency as the tipping point. The state, once again, seeks to achieve control in functions and in space. In the pursuit of control, the state faces internal institutional challenges, such as those connected to geography, demography, the economy, class, and ethnicity; it also faces constraints from the external environment, which it does not necessarily seek to control but at least wishes to neutralize. States try to buffer themselves against negative external contingencies, such as those produced by war or adverse international market conditions, while controlling their internal environment with a mixture of coercion and consent. By themselves, neither internal nor external conditions are sufficient to cause states to fail or succeed. Ultimately, state-making outcomes depend on how state elites handle the conjuncture of internal and external structural factors. The “managerial” element is therefore extremely important in the failure or success of states, which, after all, are political organizations. In sum, state failure must be theorized at the micro (elite), macro (internal-structural), and the meta (external-structural) levels, which I take up in turn.

4.1 The Micro-level: The Elites Rational choice theory is very useful for understanding the behavior of elite actors, who may be presumed to have one ultimate imperative: to stay in power. One challenge that has bedeviled state makers and their retainers has been how to effectively rule large groups of people and protect large swaths of territory from afar, despite the constraints imposed by military and transportation technology and split loyalties. In the early states, rulers regularly visited their realms. The presence of a ruler, especially one who was feared, reduced the chances of internal disorder or external attacks. In such patrimonial states, the influence of the ruler on peace and order is not dissimilar to that of the authoritarian father in a family setting. Weber notes: “In particular the German monarchs of the Middle Ages moved about almost constantly, and not merely because inadequate transportation compelled them to consume on

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the spot the supplies provided by the various domains . . .. The decisive fact was that only their continually renewed personal presence maintained their authority over their subjects” (Weber 1978, 1042). The personal projection of power by the ruler is not feasible in contemporary states for many reasons, not least geography and the complexity of modern government. Since the ruler cannot be everywhere at once, nor can he do everything himself, how does he project power in areas where he is neither physically present nor technically competent? The next best thing is to delegate authority to legitimate subalterns. Bureaucracy is the best means of governing multitudes spread across a wide area, but its relative efficacy does not guarantee the certainty of its creation. We can now identify one of the pathologies of state elite behavior: the chasm between the value orientation of rulers ensconced in traditional and charismatic forms of authority and the requirements of modern government, which call for authority to be shared, as well as lawful and competent (legal-rationality). Practically all contemporary failed states have been misled by putative strongmen who mistook their country for their household, treated the national treasury as though it were their personal piggy bank, considered elite members as either their “boys” or enemies, and in the process alienated the very people they needed to govern. Somalia had its Siad Barre, the former Zaire its Mobutu, and Haiti its Duvaliers. All failed to understand they could not govern their respective country like a kraal. What determines the value orientation of elites, and therefore their behavior? One factor is political culture, which shapes the past, the present, and may seriously constrain the future. Patrimonialism breeds patrimonialism, but not because it is a congenital defect of the ruling elite. The institutional structure in many failed states provides real incentives for rulers to behave in a patrimonial fashion, even when they may not personally be so inclined. In a political economy where there are few opportunities outside the state and where being out of power raises the risk of being compelled to take up long-term residency in the national penitentiary, it makes sense to plunder the treasury and keep power literally in the family. Amassing wealth guards against penurious retirement, and family rule provides strong guarantee against incarceration. A legal-rational state may result from social revolutions and other cataclysmic events; however, these punctuations in the prevailing equilibrium are rare. Another value-determining factor is the formal education of elites and the concomitant exposure to outside influence. One is struck in sub-Saharan Africa by the correlation between the educational achievements of African “founding fathers” and the states they made. Generally, the African countries that have done relatively well in state making were led by “philosopher-kings” during the first decade of independence (e.g., Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Léopold Senghor of Senegal); those that have fared poorly had at their helm semiliterate strongmen usually of military background (Idi Amin of Uganda, Jean-Bédel Bokassa of Central African Republic). The enlightened influence of “founding fathers” seems to endure, even after years of their departure from power. This would seem to confirm the path-dependent nature of elite behavior.

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4.2 The Macro-level: Internal Structural Factors Geography, another factor missing from the list of the 12 indicators in the Failed States Index, is not negligible in state making. The size of the territory determines whether state officials can be deployed throughout the realm. The more compact and integrated the territory of a country, the easier the task of state making; the inverse is also true. Geography does not simply make the movement of state officials easier or harder, it also influences the loyalty of the population to the state, as distance from the center can either reinforce or dissipate attachment to local norms. The quality of the personnel who make up the coercive apparatus and the extent of their loyalty to the ruler also matter. A key question in politics always is: Can those with guns be made to obey the orders of those without, especially when the enforcers are far away from the ruler? The affirmative answer to this question is surely one of the most significant achievements in the history of human organization. For if the ruler can safely delegate authority to those who are out of his sight—those who, at least in theory, can ignore his authority and even overrule it—his physical presence throughout the realm is not needed. Using the metaphor of the electricity grid, when the security of the main power source is assured, the substations can go on humming. If, on the other hand, the ruler cannot be reasonably certain of the security of his power, he will keep the generators of state power (meaning here the coercive instruments) to himself, for deploying them beyond the main power base (wherever the ruler is personally) is likely to create independent substations, or power centers, which could eventually pose a threat to his rule. This strategy is not without its own risk: there may be too many ambitious men close to the pinnacle of power to resist the temptation of trying to occupy it. Rulers always want to have enough guns and armed men nearby to protect themselves and their regime, but not so many as to allow a disgruntled associate to become an overnight sensation. We can now identify another macro-level reason why states fail: overextension. This occurs when the capacity of centralized authority to deploy force is outweighed by the size of the territory to be protected, that of the population to be policed, or both. This is probably the most common historical cause of state failure. It is also why state borders in some parts of pre-colonial Africa tended to coincide with how far troops could be deployed. In Akan-dominated pre-colonial Ghana, if the Asantehene could not protect you, you were not one of its subjects. Elsewhere in pre-colonial Africa, Africans who did not want to be claimed by states (or to pay taxes) often moved to where they could not be reached (Herbst 2000). The domestication, indeed militarization, of the horse was a decisive development, allowing African rulers to project power well beyond their immediate surroundings. The emergence of strong states in Islamic Africa may have had led less to do with the centralizing tendencies of the Qur’an (especially the concept of the Ummah) and more with the equine mastery of the followers of Muhammad. Theorists tend to assume that overextension occurs because of geopolitical miscalculation by state makers. It is often considered one of the casualties of empire making, whereby the marginal costs of expansion—maintaining armies and civil

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servants in new territories and pacifying new subjects—outweigh the marginal benefits. But overextension does not necessarily stem from territorial expansion. States do not always fail when their periphery is too big for them to police and defend against external attacks. Failure may also be the result of atrophy at the center. As I have remarked repeatedly, rulers do not deploy assets evenly throughout their territory, but instead deploy power where it is most likely to enhance the longevity of their rule. When resources are extremely limited, key ordermaintenance and war-making assets will be deployed closer to where the ruler can personally oversee their use. In this way, atrophy rather than expansion leads to failure. Over-centralization may be a sign of state strength, but it may also evince state weakness. The latter is the case when (a) resources are scarce, (b) power is insecure (often because of division among elite factions), and (c) the public administration is insufficiently bureaucratized. Failure can also be demand-driven or society-centered. State capacity may not undergo structural deterioration, but, because of changes in society (or the physical environment), is rendered ineffectual. Rapid population growth is usually a culprit in demand-driven, or society-centered, state failure. The more people in a given territory, the higher the need for state services, including protection or order maintenance. An increase in population can be beneficial to the state if it leads to an increase in tax receipts, which may allow for more and better services. But this will only happen if the economy is growing and can therefore absorb more workers, and if the workforce is legible to the state. In the absence of a growing economy (or mass emigration), population growth strains state capacity in a number of areas, most obviously in policing but also in the softer underbelly of statecraft: education, public health, and other social services. This is why states loathe refugee inflows, which they see as an unwelcome, rapid, even cancerous form of population growth. Refugees put tremendous pressure on resources meant for citizens. Thus, states usually insist that refugees be physically separated from the local population and the costs of their upkeep be borne by the international community. Most contemporary failed states face demographic and environmental problems, although to varying degrees of severity. Such states tend to be densely populated, have a high dependency ratio (minors outnumber adults because of high fertility rates), and suffer from severe land degradation caused by deforestation, desertification, and poor agricultural practices. Less than 2% of Haitian territory, for example, retains its forest cover. It is not hard to establish the connection between environmental degradation and state failure. Environmental degradation is typically acute in the countryside, where it causes people who owe their livelihood to the land to become poorer. Even in the best of times, they live close to the margin of subsistence, unable to produce a surplus to share with the state. Since the burden of taxation in developing countries tends to fall on farmers—not least because taxes on cash crops are relatively easy to collect, and because ruling elites are unlikely to tax themselves and their supporters—as the rural economy contracts, the state takes in less in tax receipts and consequently is able to do less. Furthermore, when the environment degrades,

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natural disasters (desertification, drought, hurricanes) increase in frequency or severity, putting additional strain on the state. Finally, environmental degradation causes people to migrate, internally to cities in their own countries and externally to richer countries. As members of a previously disorganized and silent mass arrive in the urban core, they demand protection, employment, social services, and political rights. When the state is unable to respond, it causes even more frustration. In this situation, environmental degradation pushes people toward the state, destroying the natural buffer created by distance and poor infrastructure. In time, this urban mass can become a truly potent force in politics, especially in small nations (such as Haiti, Jamaica, and much of the Caribbean) where geography compels physical proximity between rich and poor, ruler and ruled. Election to national office may require strong support from the lumpenproletariat, even though its members may remain marginalized in the economy, serving as little more than a reserve army of unskilled labor, votes, and violence, ready to be manipulated by cynical politicians. As a general rule, the closer people are to the state, the better are the opportunities to orchestrate its collapse, which in weak states may entail no more than the capture of the national ruler and of some strategic state assets. This is why ghettos, favelas, slums, and other urban settlements of undesirables tend to be located away from the centers of power and are often surrounded by security forces. Or if such areas are close to the seats of government, they must not be impenetrable to armed agents of the state. One of the paradoxes of the failed state is that it tends to be heavily militarized, meaning that a significant proportion of the state budget is officially devoted to the military (in Haiti shortly before the fall of the Duvalier regime, the figure was 40%). The connection between militarization and state failure is fairly straightforward: In the face of declining revenue, rising demand for services, and intra-elite division, state makers deploy resources toward the acquisition of the means of violence and the paying off of armed supporters, including the lowly hordes of street toughs who carry out the dirtiest deeds of regime maintenance. Increased military spending in the failed state does not necessarily improve its capacity to maintain order or wage war, as much of the spending goes toward the buying of loyalty, the acquisition of frivolous hardware intended to intimidate the population, or simply into the ruler’s foreign bank accounts. The state may be spending on security in theory while insecurity reigns in reality; indeed, its own agents are often the perpetrators of insecurity. This is because the state, having been prevented from establishing a bureaucracy by insecure rulers, often lacks the command-andcontrol mechanisms to monitor weapons, as well as the discipline and esprit de corps of a professional force. In Sierra Leone in the 1990 s, soldiers mysteriously morphed into rebels at night (so-called sobels). Haitian soldiers in the 1980s rented out their uniform and guns to criminals under the cover of darkness. The proliferation of small arms is a problem in nearly all failed states because of these practices, in addition to the porous borders and the availability of cheap weapons produced in China, among other places. The more that is spent on the military, the less is available for social services. The zero-sum nature of military spending is magnified by the severity of budget

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constraints in failed states, especially if they are not deemed strategically important enough by an external patron to benefit from large-scale military aid. Since all states rule by a combination of stick and carrot, providing fewer social services leads the state to rely on its authority to govern. But the more the state relies on brute force, the less legitimate it becomes, and the weaker is its hold on society. Some states may seem strong from a military standpoint but are in fact so weak that it sometimes takes only seemingly minor events to overthrow the government. If there is one thread that runs through all failed states, it is that their elites generally are profoundly divided over how to rule, which in turn severely impedes their ability to manage domestic and international challenges. This elite division is the tipping point, or catalyst, of state failure. Intra-elite fights often arise from differences in their value orientations and the requirements of modern governing (conservatives vs. reformers, dinosaurs vs. young Turks), on the one hand, and sectarianism, on the other hand. The first conflict raises questions about which elite faction should govern, while sectarian conflict is essentially about loyalty—to a so-called primordial community, such as an ethnic group or religious denomination, or to a more inclusive and “imagined” community, such as the nation. Telltale signs of elite division include contested elections, credible threats of secession (usually fanned by aggrieved elite sub-factions), actual civil wars, and frequent coups d’état. These events often presage state collapse, although their absence by no means indicates state strength. Ultimately, state failure is a failure of politics on a grand scale. In summary, states fail partly for internal reasons, which include geography, population growth, environmental degradation, social cleavages, militarization, and low economic growth, although not necessarily the lack of natural resources. However, these macro-level factors by themselves do not cause states to fail. Indeed, some of them also facilitate state making. But managing the complexities of these conditions requires a shared political governance structure. For example, the geography of the modern state makes it impossible for rulers to personally project power throughout the realm. They must entrust others to do so on their behalf, but who—unqualified relatives or tested citizens? By what means—elections or appointments? And how do they keep control after power has been devolved? Elites matter: their decisions tip the balance of the macro-level factors in favor of either state making or failure.

4.3 The Meta-level: External Structural Factors Up to now, I have theorized about the internal causes of state failure and made only passing references to external factors. Yet, states clearly do not fail (or succeed) for internal reasons alone. All states form part of an international system, in which they cooperate and compete. Even the poorest of states spend a disproportionate share of resources on war making, in part to prevent externally induced failure. Throughout the ages, war has been a major cause of state failure. History is an endless tale of state expansion and contraction by military means. Why contemporary literature on failed states has tended to discount the external origins of state failure is baffling, given the overwhelming weight of historical evidence and longstanding scholarship

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on the topic. I propose to theorize about the external causes of state failure, by bringing imperialism back in. A perusal of the Failed State Index for 2009 reveals certain commonalties among failed states that make a strong case for linking the failures to external forces and pushing the states’ history well before the end of the Cold War. First, all but one of the 38 countries in the red zone of the Index, those that scored the highest on the 12 indicators associated with “statelessness,” are in Africa (22) or Asia (15), with Haiti the only exception. No country in Europe is in this sub-category. Second, all of the top failed states were colonies of Europe, and most gained their independence in the twentieth century. In sum, they are very young states (except Haiti and Ethiopia). Third, most of the failed states (25 out of 38) implemented Structural Adjustment Programs in the 1980s and 1990s, which were profoundly anti-state and pro-market expansion.

5 The Two Imperialisms The geography, history, and economic-policy experience of failed states point to the role of external forces in their denouement. It is important to take a much wider and longer view of the failed state, rather than seeing the phenomenon strictly through the prisms of internal contradictions and post-Cold War politics. Yet, we must remember that the external environment is not immutable: how it contributes to state failure varies across time and space. As the institutions of international relations have evolved, states may no longer cause other states to collapse through annexation, and race cannot be used as a basis for denying states their rightful place in international affairs. To fully capture this evolution, the effect of external institutions on state failure must be examined over time. The failed state is partly the outcome of what David Abernethy (2000) perceptively calls “the dynamics of global dominance,” which began in the fifteenth century and continues today. This process coincided with the rise of the modern state on the ashes of feudalism, as well as the rise of capitalism, both of which are obviously connected but are animated by separate logics. The failed state thus has a long and complex history. That history is tied to the waves of state-based European expansion in 1492–1776 and 1848–1914, and the contractions that followed in 1776–1848 and 1914–1991 (Table 1).5 It is also tied to the expansion and transformation of capitalism. Hence, the failed state is partly the byproduct of two imperialisms, those of raison d’état and capitalism. The phases in the table can be further collapsed into two major categories: expansion-contraction I (1492–1848) and expansion-contraction II (1848–1991). 5 The

exception here is the former Soviet Union, whose expansion and contraction took place in the same period: 1914–1991. Obviously, I see the former Soviet Union, at the heart of which was mainly European Russia, as part of the process of the expansion and contraction of the European state, except that in the case of the former Soviet Union expansion did not take place across large bodies of water. The former Soviet Union was more reminiscent of a land-based empire than the salt-water empires founded by the European powers.

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Table 1 Phases of Western imperialism Phase

Duration

Direction

Location

1 2 3 4 5

1492–1776 1776–1848 1848–1914 1914–1945 1945–1991

Expansion Contraction Expansion Uncertain Equilibrium Contraction

New Worlda New World Old World Old World Old World

Source: Adapted from David Abernethy a Expansion occurred overwhelmingly, but not strictly, in the New World during phase 1, as the experience of India, Indonesia, and South Africa indicates

The sum total of state-based expansion and contraction, as well as capitalist expansion and transformation, constitutes the history of European imperialism with all of its consequences. Thus, my approach to the failed state is “Braudelian,” rooted in the notion of the longue durée.

5.1 Imperialism of Raison d’État Imperialism may be defined as an ideology that sanctions systemic expansion, even if this entails the use of force. Imperialism also engenders domination and relations of power. Imperialism is not only an ideology, it is also praxis; when undertaken by states, imperialism as praxis normally leads to territorial expansion. Depending on the location of the territory and people being conquered, expansion may take the form of annexation or of colonization. Annexation typically takes place when the subjugated territory adjoins that of the subjugator, in which case the imperial state expands at the direct expense of its neighbors: one political community gets bigger while the other becomes smaller or disappears altogether. States that expanded this way in the past, bringing under their formal authority a polyglot of cultural groupings over a large territory, were called empires. The key point is that the space so acquired was integral to the (empire) state, even though territories were sometimes accorded various degrees of autonomy. For example, the Ottoman Empire gave local rulers in the provinces relatively more freedom than the Roman Empire at its heights, but in principle Kurds and Syrians were all the King’s men. Territory could also be claimed through colonization, in which case the conquered territory remains separate from that of the conqueror but is legally subservient. The colony retained separate institutions, although those that predated colonization, as well as the ones created under the new dispensation, were expected to be supportive of the colonial project. Natives were subjects rather than citizens of the colonizing state (Mamdani 1996); they were under the jurisdiction of customary laws or the laws crafted by colonial authorities, although, depending on the colonial power, at some usually distant point into the future, they could become citizens of the mother country (as in the case of France). This bifurcation between subjects

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(colonized natives) and citizens was largely responsible for the violence and authoritarianism of colonialism, and, according to Fanon (1964), would come to transform the very psyche of the colonized. The designation of colony went typically to territories that were separated from the conqueror’s by a large body of water or land, or whose natives were deemed essentially different from (meaning inferior to) those of the colonizer. There were exceptions: Algeria was part of France, in spite of the Mediterranean; Hawaii became a US state in spite of the Pacific. The key thing about colonies compared to annexed territories was that their existence was largely instrumental. They were never meant to be entities for themselves: their purpose was to satisfy the needs of the colonizer (such as raw materials for the metropolis). This is absolutely critical for understanding the failed state. Colonialism created entities with differing potentials for independent success. The needs colonies were expected to supply were often economic. But, as Weber points out, imperialism was also about power, domination, and even the vanity of prestige. Imperialism was not always triggered by the need of capital to expand; it was sometimes underwritten by nationalism, even in countries that had undergone socialist revolution (e.g., Russia). Nationalism also helped gain the support of workers in colonizing countries for the colonial project. Thus, there were two types of imperialism, that of raison d’état and that of capitalism, distinguished by the degree to which colonialism fulfilled primarily noneconomic or economic needs. One of the most serious mistakes of the Marxist Left has been to equate imperialism with economic exploitation. European imperialism cannot be reduced to economic matters alone, nor should economics be granted more prominence than any other causal factor. Competition among European states for domination of other states and control over their own territories often led them to foreign adventures. Balance-of-power politics inside Europe was an important cause of imperialism outside Europe. Also, economic exploitation of the colonies did not always accrue to private producers. For example, the silver of Peru was appropriated, to a large extent, by the Spanish Crown. Overseas expansion was sometimes driven by population pressure, more so when the metropolis wanted to rid itself of “undesirables,” whether ethnic and religious minorities or common criminals (as in the case of Britain’s transport of convicts to Australia). Simply put, European expansion was an attempt to avoid state failure at home. It was driven by many of the same internal factors that cause contemporary state failure, such as demographic pressure and low economic growth. Religion also underlay expansion in some instances. European monarchs did apparently believe they had been anointed to enlarge Christendom, or at the very least stand as a bulwark against the expansion of other religions, Islam in particular. And finally, expansion occurred for its own sake—to prevent rival states from expanding—even if the benefits of further expansion were not always evident. The British had no reason to claim the area around the Gambia River other than to prevent the French from having a contiguous territory in Senegal. Even a French offer to trade the much larger (and, as it turned out, extremely profitable) Ivory Coast for that sliver of land was not accepted (Davidson 1992).

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What then is imperialism of raison d’état, as opposed to imperialism of capitalism? The key feature of imperialism of raison d’état is the conquest of territorialized space by states, whereas imperialism of capitalism is anchored in the extraterritoriality of markets. In other words, the two imperialisms express the expansion of different but interrelated systems: imperialism of raison d’état connotes the expansion of states; imperialism of capitalism connotes the expansion of capitalism as a mode of production, exchange, and accumulation. The institutions of imperialism of raison d’état are obviously states and their armies, while those of imperialism of capitalism are multilateral actors such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, as well as privately owned multinational corporations (MNCs)—although these are obviously backed by (economically imperialist) states. Diversity among these institutions may create policy differences, even conflicts, especially in the absence of coordination. In the 1980 s the World Bank and IMF pursued policies in the Third World that were profoundly anti-state. These agencies were the key implementers of the so-called Washington consensus, whose goal was to enlarge the sphere of free-market capitalism. These policies were often resisted by core states when they were imposed on client states whose importance lay more in their geo-strategic benefits (e.g., Egypt in the Middle East) than in their economic returns. Hannah Arendt ascribes imperialism of raison d’état to imperialism of capitalism. In her words, “endless accumulation of capital requires the endless accumulation of political power” (Arendt 1968). For Rosa Luxemburg, the tendency of capitalism to engender imperialism stems from overproduction or underconsumption—in any event, a propensity under capitalism for existing markets not to clear, which requires the creation of new markets (Luxemburg 1964). Both of these icons of imperialism theory view the two forms of imperialism as largely complementary and causally related. I believe instead that the relationship between the two variants is largely dialectical, consisting therefore of friction. In some instances, the interests of imperialism of raison d’état and those of imperialism of capitalism are concordant; in others, they are discordant. Sometimes one leads to another, sometimes not. In fact, it is a rare case, during either of the longer phases of expansion-contraction, in which state authority did not clash with economic– nationalist interests. Indeed, change in the political status of conquered territories, from colonies to independent states, often resulted from this conflict. The ultimate demise of imperialism of raison d’état occurred after World War II and took nearly 40 years to be completed.6 Imperialism of capitalism achieved hegemony during this time, except in the former Soviet Union, where imperialism of raison d’état held sway for another 40 years. The connection of these trends to state failure is very direct. Expansion engenders contraction, in the same way every thesis

6 The

end of the imperialism of raison d’état was not decolonization in the 1950 s, but rather the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991. This is why I locate expansion-contraction phase II between 1885 and 1991, rather than adopting David Abernethy’s timeframe.

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creates its anti-thesis. Each round of imperialist expansion saw the formation of new political entities more-or-less in the European image, that is, territorially bounded units with some centralized authority that is bureaucratically organized. However, one key difference was the legal status of these entities as colonies rather than independent states, except in the former Soviet Union where the imperialism of raison d’état followed the more classic pattern of annexation, because of the proximity of the former Soviet republics to Russia. Each contraction then saw the political transformation of the colonies into sovereign states. These states had varying capacity for being credible members of the international state system: some were good candidates for statehood, while perhaps most were not. The European states that created and inspired these independent states were born in the crucible of battles among European monarchs and the accompanying need for capital to sustain armies. Land scarcity in Europe hardened geographic borders; secular interstate wars and religious conflagrations consolidated national identities; ententes between monarchs and capitalists produced more-orless unified ruling classes; international norms allowed the absorption of defeated states by victorious ones, which kept smaller states alert. The net result was the development of states underwritten by legal-rational bureaucracies. This outcome did not proceed from the visible hand of perspicacious state makers. European monarchs resisted political modernization when they considered it a threat to their power. The bounded rationality of actors consecrates the inevitability of unintended consequences. There was nothing preordained about the rise of the modern state in Europe and its subsequent adoption as the most common method of organizing “imagined communities.” Nor is it being suggested that Europe’s is the only path to modernity. Still, if we grant a cause-and-effect relation between the conditions listed above and the development of states, these conditions did not exist in many of the European colonies that would later become independent states. Borders remained fluid, as pre-colonial authority was not always anchored in exclusive claims of territory; the transcendence of local identities never took place; and in sub-Saharan Africa the ruling elites (traditional authorities) from whom the “state” was taken away at the start of colonialism were not the people to whom it was returned at the end. These conditions produced conflicts between contending elite factions that undermined state making and in some cases produced horrific violence—such as in the struggle between Buganda and Uganda, which led eventually to the tyranny of Idi Amin, civil war, and the virtual collapse of the Ugandan state. The failed state, then, is partly the debris of the process of state formation and transformation engendered by European expansion and contraction roughly from 1491 to 1991 (from Columbus to Gorbachev), whether expansion was triggered by raison d’état, capitalism, or both. In other words, the failed state is the political expression of “the development of underdevelopment.” If this is true, we are left with an important question: Why are all postcolonial states not failed states? The answer lies in large part in the agency of state elites and the opportunities and constraints of the external environment.

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State elites who adjusted the colonial heritage to postcolonial reality were more likely to have successful states. The colonial state, as has been written extensively, was inorganic, imposed on the colonial society to serve the needs of the colonizing power. The more “irrational” the colonial state (in terms of territory, population, and social institutions), the greater the chances of postcolonial state failure—especially if independence did not result in any significant change, except obviously the political, from the old dispensation. The geopolitical map of postcolonial Africa has remained virtually unchanged from that of the colonial period. Imperatives such as war that earlier might have resulted in territorial reconfiguration or better governance have been dissipated by international law and norms, or Africans have found informal ways to mitigate their impact. During the Cold War, states that barely existed beyond the capital city could substitute foreign aid for taxation (with this aid often earmarked, ironically, for rural development). This substitution precluded the kind of grand bargain between local notables and central rulers that elsewhere produced bureaucracy and liberal democracy. State capacity in key areas remains woefully inadequate in postcolonial Africa, which explains the continent’s underdevelopment. This description would seem to apply primarily to the failed states of the second wave of expansion-contraction. It is just as relevant to the failed states of the first wave (1492–1848). It is seldom acknowledged that the earlier period saw just as many failed states as there are now. Most of the countries that became independent during this period experienced at least one civil war, including the United States. The difference between the early failed states and the late failed states is that the former were able to make the necessary adjustments to succeed—eventually. Using the imperialist ideology of manifest destiny, the United States expanded from the Atlantic all the way to the Pacific. Because its neighbors were very weak “states,” American postcolonial adjustment essentially consisted of territorial expansion, with brute force leading the way and on at least one occasion, the dollar (the Louisiana Purchase). By contrast, Mexico and Columbia (Granada) shrank as a result of US actions. Adjustments were neither always expansive nor voluntary. Argentina, because it was sparsely populated in relation to its landmass and did not have a large population of blacks, welcomed emigrants, who were mostly Europeans. In this way, its population increased without the challenges posed by a multiethnic society. Brazil had a large African slave population during colonialism, but postcolonial Brazil was ruled by Brazilians of European stock, which facilitated Brazil’s entrance into the concert of nations in the nineteenth century. Some countries that tried to adjust at the territorial expense of their neighbors (such as Paraguay during the War of the Triple Alliance, 1864–1870) failed and had to find new ways to avoid becoming failed states. Often in Latin America, the state was captured by a military strongman (caudillo), who presided over a Caesarist state; the unpredictability of extreme personal rule was moderated by the caudillo’s military status, which placed some (limited) checks on his power. Adjustments in the region also took the form of industrialization, which was typically state-led and, although it was financed by borrowed foreign capital, facilitated state making.

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In sum, adjustment took various forms and was not accomplished overnight. Some countries had a more enabling external environment, in addition to a relatively favorable internal milieu and deft rulers. Others lacking these advantages utterly failed to adjust. New states with a powerful ally—in essence, an external sponsor—were more likely to succeed. They could count on military assistance to repel external attacks and put down internal rebellions, and a sponsor was also a trading partner, which mitigated isolation from a hostile former colonizer. This sponsorship was crucial, as former colonial states were built with an orientation toward the outside world. Autarky is the enemy of any state or political economy based on trade. Because race was a major factor in international relations, colonies settled by Europeans who then became the ruling class in the postcolonial order (such as the United States, Argentina, and Brazil) were more likely to be accepted by established European states in the nineteenth century than former colonies whose postcolonial ruling class was non-European in origin. Haiti was one of the few exceptions to this pattern in the first phase of expansion-contraction. Colonies that had ineffectual centralized authority were more likely to become failed states after independence than colonies with a history of effective state making. Also, countries that lost their ruling class during the transition from colony to independence were more likely to become failed states, as well as to experience economic decline, than those whose ruling class was enlarged to accommodate new members as a result of social revolution (Fistein 2006).

5.2 Imperialism of Capitalism One of the defining features of capitalism is mobility. All of the modes of production that preceded it were, to varying degrees, territorially dependent. As much as hunter-gatherer bands were mobile, they probably did not travel very far if game, berries, fruits, and nuts were plentiful. Both slavery and feudalism tied people to the land. Capitalism, by contrast, is less beholden to boundaries. Obviously, industrial capitalism ties workers to factories, but not to the same degree that previous modes of production interwove labor with space. Indeed, capitalism has an uncanny ability to render workers obsolete (such as through mechanization) and thus uproot them from their place of work. Modern technology makes it possible for work in one firm to be spread around the world and then “assembled” in cyberspace. Capitalism is mobile in order to survive. Capital (or capital goods) must constantly be reabsorbed into the production process to keep the engines of economic growth humming. To avoid crises of overproduction, or what former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan called “irrational exuberance,” capitalism must constantly expand. Thus, the driving force behind the imperialism of capitalism (also known as globalization), like that of the imperialism of raison d’état, is expansion—except that what expands is capital, not territory. Since states are slowacting entities almost by definition, and since they are responsive to non-capitalist pressures, such as nationalism, capitalist expansion requires institutions that go

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beyond states. Since World War II these have been the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and more recently the World Trade Organization (formerly the GATT). These multilateral institutions, backed by the major capitalist countries, are entrusted with one mission: to open up hitherto national economies to capitalist penetration. Of the 38 failed states in the red zone in the 2009 Failed States Index, 25 have had to implement some form of World Bank and IMF-imposed structural adjustment programs (SAPs) since 1981. SAPs were profoundly anti-state: they advocated lower taxes on internationally traded goods, a major source of revenue for weak states; privatization of state-owned enterprises, which loosened state control of strategic industries (e.g., gold in Ghana); and reduction in the size of the civil service, which generally meant the early retirement of the most experienced personnel. (In Cameroon the retirement age was brought down to the early age of 55.) By themselves SAPs may not have caused states to fail, but clearly they did not help them get stronger. SAPs contributed to the further hollowing out of dependent states, reducing their ability to manage the manifold challenges of state making. In the late 1990 s, the Bretton Woods institutions had an epiphany. They began calling for rebuilding of failed states, perhaps realizing that capitalism requires working states where it seeks to expand. Table 2 summarizes this section. Table 2 Causes of state failure Micro-level

Macro-level

Meta-level

Elite value orientation Elite division

Geography Population growth Low economic growth Social cleavages Environmental degradation Militarization

War Embargo Adverse terms of trade Colonialism International law Neoliberalism

6 Rebuilding Failed States Rebuilding failed states is one of the pressing challenges of our time. It is simply not sustainable, in the long run, for at least one-fifth of humanity—the so-called bottom billion—to live in political communities that cannot adequately provide basic public goods. The shrinking of distance through transportation and communication technologies makes failed states a problem for people living outside these states as well. The attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, and the 2002 US National Security Strategy finding make this all too clear. Failed states also severely impede the expansion of capitalism, a necessary condition for its survival. In sum, even though external institutions have contributed to state failure, they also have an interest in rebuilding failed states. But if the dangers posed by failed states are now universally recognized, how to remake them with external assistance remains shrouded in conceptual ambiguity, policy tentativeness, and discursive confusion.

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That state-building efforts are often mislabeled as nation-building, by major world leaders no less, speaks volume about the enormous scope of the work to be done. While recognizing the diversity that exists among failed states, I wish to pose the question: Should—and can—failed states be fixed? If we define the failed state as lacking in capacity to perform the basic functions of statecraft, such as taxing, providing protection and social services, and upholding property rights, then in theory, rebuilding failed states entails helping them develop these and other capacities. In reality, the problem is much more complex, not least because state building is really institutional capacity building, which takes years if not centuries, and is achieved through evolution rather than imposition. Francis Fukuyama (2004) has identified four areas of institutional capacity that can be transferred to failing states: organizational design and management, institutional design, legitimacy, and social and cultural factors. Their transferability can be placed along a continuum ranging from high to low (see Table 3). They can also be thought of in terms of a formal-informal dichotomy, with formal institutions being transferable. Arturo Israel (1989) suggests that the transfer of institutional capacity is facilitated by the degree of specificity connected to organizational goals and performance, as well as competition. A hybrid model of institutional capacity based on these concepts is shown in Table 3. Organizational design is the most easily transferable component of institutional capacity. New organizations, management techniques, and personnel can be “parachuted” into a new setting. The more technical their tasks, the more easily these Table 3 The components of institutional capacity Component

Goal specificity

Performance specificity

Transferability

Examples

Organizational design

High

High

High

Institutional design

Medium

Medium

Medium

Legitimacy

Medium/low

Medium/low

Medium/low

Socio-cultural factors

–

–

Low

Policing Justice Central bank Water Electricity Road Taxation Constitutions Political Governance Systems Tradition Charisma Bureaucracy Democracy Trust Elites Consensus Solidarity Responsibility

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organizations can be imported, even under adverse local conditions, because of the deference that “experts” normally enjoy. The success of Doctors Without Borders, even in the toughest places on earth such as Somalia and eastern Congo, may be related to the facts that the delivery of medical care, especially advanced emergency care, requires highly skilled personnel, and medical service itself rarely occasions conflict even among the most bitter foes. The transparency of performance measures also helps. Clear performance metrics are components of an effectiveness ethos. In policy terms, it may be easier for external actors to help establish a central bank than, say, to reduce illiteracy; police reform may be justified on similar ground. The question is whether organizational (re)engineering can survive the withdrawal of external support if it lacks internal legitimacy. Institutional design is characterized by medium transferability. This is because institutions are less easily insulated from the local environment. By institutions here we mean political institutions: constitutions, legislatures, political parties, elections, and so on. External actors can help countries design democratic political systems, but these cannot ultimately be sustained without local support—a lesson that modernization theorists in the 1950s and democratic transition specialists in the 1990 s should have learned from their experience as consultants to governments and international organizations. Legitimacy has medium to low transferability. External actors cannot tell countries which political authority structure is right for them, but they can assist in the evaluation of alternative models. They can also demonstrate the consequences of political choices, as well as help countries transition from one basis of legitimacy to another. For example, there is no model of democracy that would be legitimate in all countries, but since elections are widely accepted as a legitimating tool of democracy, external actors may assist by providing technical and financial support to local election officials, as well as by sending their own teams of observers. In some instances, the verdict of external actors may go some way toward legitimizing political institutions in failed states. Finally, institutional capacity includes social and cultural factors, which are of low transferability. Norms, values, and mores are the backbone of cultures. They evolve over long periods of time, and because they are informal, they and their effects are often poorly understood by outsiders. Still, much of what happens in society depends on these informal institutions, for the state cannot possibly craft rules for every situation and place police officers at every turn to make sure that people comply with its rules. The prevailing values of any community, therefore, are extremely important determinants of the quality of interaction among its members. There can be no order in any society without a minimum of hierarchy, that is, without a group of people who have a disproportionate and legitimate voice in political governance. There is also no order in society without a modicum of solidarity. A culture of trust affects economic transactions very differently from one of suspicion. Responsibility encourages accountability in government. These values cannot be imposed from the outside, although they can change as a result of exchange with other cultures. This externally influenced cultural change does not occur overnight. India remained

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fundamentally India even after nearly 300 years of British occupation, although the British did leave a legacy of political institutions such as parliamentary democracy along with a legacy of violence. Local demand for lasting institutional change is of much greater consequence than external good intention, which leads us to ask which conditions might produce local demand for a better-performing state. Elites will demand better-performing states when they cannot purchase the services normally provided by states on the open market, most notably security. Since non-elites typically experience physical insecurity first, because they live in more dangerous neighborhoods and lack private resources to purchase adequate security, they, too, are likely to support reform. In the idiom of game theory, all players now have an incentive to play or cooperate, because they have similar interests or can all gain. Because any political system becomes more credible when it is able to provide security, capacity in this area may increase public confidence in the government’s ability to deliver other social goods. Thus, limited demand for more effective security may start a chain reaction in favor of institutional reform in other areas. Security also happens to be an area where the interests of the international community and those of people in failed states converge, further increasing the chances of cross-border cooperation. But it is quite a challenge to transform this supposed harmony into programmatic decisions. Generally, institutional transfer is characterized by high failure rates at least initially, because of the nature of the local environment, but donors are often under pressure to demonstrate quick successes to their constituents. If failed states are to ever be “fixed” with assistance from external actors, this dilemma will have to be resolved. Luckily, the proper sequencing of institutional transfer may offer a way forward. Some institutions can be implanted successfully even in failed states, if they are correctly designed. Among them are security services, a judicial system, electricity generation and distribution, water delivery, a central bank, a tax system, and road building and maintenance. These institutions might be components of state remaking, and some of them (such as security and justice) cannot be realistically contracted to non-state actors anyway. Other institutions that are less susceptible to transfer, such as electoral democracy, might be entrusted to sub-state authority and civil society actors, with a preference for local NGOs or foreign NGOs that have a proven record of performance in the host country. In this way, donors can show results to their constituents while they simultaneously improve institutional capacity in failed states. Regaining control in limited areas at first, such as internal security, border protection, justice, taxation, and monetary policy, as well as in basic services such as providing clean drinking water, garbage collection, and electrical power, may make recipient states credible and legitimate in the eyes of their citizens, thus enabling them to take on more difficult tasks in the future. Moreover, increased capacity in these areas may attenuate intraelite conflicts, the tipping point of state failure, or at the very least allow the state to keep these conflicts within reasonable bounds. Just because the international community cannot change everything does not mean it can change nothing, but there is no guarantee of success either. Unfortunately, the international community has had

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its priorities exactly backward: in the post-Cold War era, it has oversold democracy and the market economy, precisely the institutions it cannot transfer, at the expense of state remaking.

7 Conclusion This chapter has tried to examine failed states in all facets of their existence: their characteristics, etiology, and rehabilitation. I hope to have cleared up some of the confusion in the scholarly literature and, in the process, to have modestly advanced knowledge of a problem that is as complex to grasp intellectually as it is to solve politically. In the final analysis, state failure is a failure of politics on grand scale, with manifold consequences. The solution must be political on an equally large scale, but informed, it is to be hoped, by the lessons of the past.

References Abernethy, D. (2000). The Dynamics of Global Dominance. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Annan, K. (2000). “We the Peoples”: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century. New York, NY: United Nations, Department of Public Information. Arendt, H. (1968). The Origins of Totalitarianism, Vol. 2. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and World. Bates, R. (2001). Prosperity and Violence. New York, NY, and London: W. W. Norton. Chesterman, S., Ignatief, M., and Thakur, R. (Eds.) (2005). Making States Work. New York, Tokyo, Paris: United Nations University Press. Collins, P. (2007). The Bottom Billion. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Davidson, B. (1992). The Black Man s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State. New York, NY: Times Books. Fanon, F. (1964). Toward the African Revolution. New York, NY: Grove Press. Fistein, D. (2006). Social Revolutions in Small States. Unpublished Dissertation, Department of Political Science, University of Missouri-St. Louis. Fukuyama, F. (2004). State-Building. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Fund for Peace (2009). http://www.fundforpeace.org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task= view. (Accessed August 9, 2009) Ghani, A. and Lockhart, C. (2008). Fixing Failed States. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Gros, J.-G. (1996). Towards a taxonomy of failed states in the New World Order: decaying Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda and Haiti. Third World Quarterly, 17(3), 455–472. Herbst, J. (2000). States and Power in Africa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Israel, A. (1989). Institutional Development. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Luxemburg, R. (1964). The Accumulation of Capital. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press. Mamdani, M. (1996). Citizen and Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. National Security Strategy Report (2002). http://www.globalsecurity.org. (Accessed July 23, 2009) Rotberg, R. (Ed.) (2004). When States Fail. Princeton, CT: Princeton University Press. Scott, C. J. (2002). Seeing Like a State. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society, Vol. II. In G. Roth and C. Wittich (Eds.), Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Zartman, I. W. (1995). When States Collapse. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Putting Out the Fire with Gasoline? Violence Control in “Fragile” States: A Study of Vigilantism in Nigeria Andrea Kirschner

1 Introduction Around 70 years ago Norbert Elias ([1939] 2009), reflecting on the western experience with modern state-forming processes, predicted that the state monopoly of violence would expand to encompass the whole globe and in the process eliminate violence from everyday life. It is empirically evident that this prediction has not been fulfilled (although I would for the moment leave open the question whether that observation suggests a process as yet uncompleted or an ebb tide flowing back to a future without state monopolies of violence). Either way the question of how to deal with the “most important of all political problems, the taming of collective violence” (Trotha 2005, 32) remains central to the twenty-first century’s political and scientific debates over statehood and the various ways it has developed—debates that may concern the “denationalized” violence of so-called “new” wars, the “internationalized” violence of transnational terrorism, or “privatized” violence in the context of war economies. All these forms of violence are discussed in close connection with the “weak,” “failed,” and “collapsed” states “discovered” when the Cold War ended.1 What these debates share in common is that they all tend to convey rather gloomy prospects of future possibilities for restricting collective violence. Attributes such as unleashed, uncontrolled, or denationalized violence point, on the one hand, to its increasing uncontrollability both on the part of the states in question and on the part of international actors and organizations. On the other hand, such debates suggest that the violence observed internationally since the end of the Cold War would appear to have departed from an otherwise unspecified framework or tolerable level. A. Kirschner (B) Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany e-mail: [email protected] 1 Of

course weak and failed states existed before the fall of the Berlin Wall, but because they were usually quickly “absorbed” by conquering states as colonies, protectorates, or other political units they did not figure as a “problem” for the international community. It is in this sense that we speak of these states being “discovered” (see also Gros, this volume).

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More than any others, the states of the African continent—which played a prominent role in these debates from the outset and has often been described as the region of the world with the lowest degree of political order or even as a byword for anarchy and violent social collapse—would seem to confirm the thesis of increasing loss of control over violence discussed in this book.2 “New” mercenaries, “warlords,” and rebels are evidently challenging the state monopoly of violence there and elsewhere. Private security contractors and military firms are penetrating the “outsourced” core state responsibility of guaranteeing security (sometimes even at the government’s behest) and have come to symbolize the creeping commercialization and denationalization of violence in wars and other violent conflicts. Yet, it remains a question whether such empirical observations can still properly be characterized as “loss of control.” The counter-argument is that such an interpretation would imply a state-centered understanding of control where only particular (i.e., state) actors and institutions are responsible for controlling violence and where control of violence can only be ensured via particular mechanisms. Ultimately this argument relies on the “(wishful) thinking of political science textbooks and international law concerning a world order for use of force, which is based on the state monopoly of violence” (Schlichte 2000, 161). To tie the theoretical question of control of violence and its eminently political consequences exclusively to the state would mean, in many parts of the world and especially in sub-Saharan Africa, to be condemned to failure—in terms of both scientific analysis and the plausibility of options for political action—because here we find processes of creation of political order that to different degrees and on different levels differ from or even contradict the state-forming processes we are familiar with (Trotha 2005, 32). Of course, states in the so-called Third World were losing control over violence before their fragility was discovered.3 Indeed, for a long time there seem to have been forms of “fragmented” control over violence involving social institutions that are more integrative than the abstract rules of a modern state apparatus

2 Jackson

and Rosberg’s article “Why Africa’s weak states persist” (1982) and Zartman’s essay on “Collapsed States in Africa” (1997) could be said to mark the beginning of research on “weak” and “collapsed” states, respectively. Herbst (2000, 261) is also convinced that “Although state failure does occur elsewhere, it occurs most often and most dramatically in Africa.” 3 Of course it is not only the “fragility” of states that raises questions about control of violence; excessive “strength” does so even more. In the same way as the state is sometimes regarded as the solution and sometimes as the main obstacle to goals such as development and democracy— depending on which way the scientific and political wind is blowing—the same can be said of its role in controlling violence and providing security. Attempts have been made to reflect this by drawing a terminological distinction between the “under-consolidated” and the “overextended” or “over-intrusive” state. These represent, so to speak, the two extremes along a continuum of statehood where the former is unable to fulfill its key function of protection after losing control over violence whereas the latter, through its own great potential for violence, represents a threat to its own citizens (Spanger 2002, 6). States that are “strong” in this sense can fail too and collapse, namely, when they exert repressive control over the population but “lack participative elements and despite their ‘strength’ fail to fulfill important social functions” (Hippler 2005, 26).

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and enjoy greater legitimacy and popular confidence (Schlichte 2000, 162; Tetzlaff 2001, 223). In order to grasp such fragmented forms of control of violence analytically, terms such as “oligopolies of violence” have been introduced (Mehler 2003; Trotha 1995, 130). Works on state and non-state “orders of violence” (Trotha 1995; Neckel and Schwab-Trapp 1999; Bakonyi et al. 2006) also point out the heterogeneity and plurality of order systems that exist partly in explicit distinction from, but also sometimes in “complementary cooperation” with state order systems. At the same time the adoption of this term also represents an attempt to get to grips with the fact that although we are used to thinking in binary codes (state/no state, order/chaos) the disintegration of state order and the privatization of violence need not automatically be associated with chaos and a Hobbesean state of nature—i.e., something akin to an “absolute” loss of control over violence (see also Mbembe 2001, 76). Whereas such works attempt to address a gap in research into state failure by analyzing what is “there” in place of an intact state in the western understanding (Lambach and Debiel 2007), talk of loss of control, if treated with insufficient differentiation, leads back into a semantic framework that defines the historical and contemporary experiences of the societies in question not in the language of what is, but in the language of what is not (Randeria 2001, 86). Thus, such a perspective stands in “the predominant tradition of comparative research in the social sciences, which emphasizes difference and contrast instead of variety and similarity.”4 Despite this proviso, “control of violence” and “loss of control” can certainly still be used as meaningful analytical categories for closer examination of the dynamics of violence in the context of “hybrid” statehood, i.e., where the state’s assertion of a monopoly of violence remains incomplete. But here control of violence must be conceptualized not as something static that particular actors “possess” at a particular point in time, but rather as a dynamic, fluid process, and as a relationship between different social actors. So instead of making hardly quantifiable statements about more or less control, we can see control of violence as a struggle between different actors that is ultimately about gaining power and legitimate authority. As Migdal puts it, “scholars dealing with the maintenance of order and change in society as a whole need an approach that brings this struggle for social control into stark relief” (2001, 49). Control losses always also imply control gains—although this is not necessarily a zero-sum game, because complex relationships of cooperation and/or control gains by particular actors can lead to expanded control possibilities for other actors. Furthermore, control of violence is subject to many preconditions, because establishing a stable order always requires more than mere power of sanction (Popitz 1992). If it is to endure, every system of order also needs to be felt worthy of recognition, legitimate. That means that neither state control regimes nor non-state groups can ever guarantee lasting and effective control of violence solely on the basis of

4 A.

Béteille, Society and Politics in India (London 1991, 254), quoted from Randeria (2001, 86).

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repression and sanctions. It also follows that if we assume that legitimacy and recognition are preconditions for a system of order, control of violence not only creates security, but also at the same time is closely tied to a cultural identity-generating function. Thus, according to Elias (1983) the provision of symbolic orientation is—alongside controlling violence and safeguarding material reproduction—an elementary function of any social order and must therefore exist in both state and non-state order systems. Proceeding from a notion of control of violence as a process subject to many conditions, this article uses the example of Nigeria to examine the role of vigilante groups in controlling violence in the context of a hybrid state order. The central thesis here is that vigilante activities are not necessarily a sign of the state losing control of violence, as could be assumed from the usual debates about “failed” states. The point is rather that vigilantes are interwoven with the state via complex relations of cooperation and competition; they both strengthen and weaken different dimensions of statehood at the same time. Nigeria, as different researchers have variously demonstrated, sadly represents a particularly suitable case study for examining phenomena of violence and its control. Guichaoua, for example, says: “Scholars studying conflicts might classify Nigeria as one of the most challenging of terrains in which to explore various conflict-related theories” (2006, 6), and identifies poverty, the existence of natural resources, and the country’s multiethnic composition as relevant factors. Similarly Osaghae notes that this country “is arguably one of the most complex countries in the world and belongs to the genre of the most troubled complex societies called deeply divided societies” (1998, ix). Reno also finds that “Nigeria is an ideal venue to investigate why armed groups develop different organizations and aims, even when confronted with similar incentives and resources” (2005), 131). Including vigilante groups in research on fragile statehood would seem long overdue, the issue having rarely been systematically examined to date. This would seem especially astonishing given that vigilantes create a form of law and order that enters into opposition to the state, while still depending on it as their point of reference. Where vigilantes often act as the (sometimes externally controlled, sometimes selfappointed) “extended arm” of at least certain segments of a regime, they undermine the clarity and unambiguity of the dividing lines between public and private, formal and informal, state and non-state spheres. Ultimately they raise the empirical and conceptual question of whether they should be regarded as a sign of the “weakness” of a state or, quite the opposite, as a token of its “strength.” So, the prime intention of focusing on this group is not to identify the state’s possible deficits in control of violence, what the causes are, and how they might be “rectified” (possibly with international support), as most works on this subject do.5 Instead I investigate the question of how vigilante groups in the context of “fragile” statehood actually control violence and how they as such—in an apparent

5 For

discussion of various external intervention approaches see literature surveys by Reinhardt (2004), Mair (2004), Klingebiehl (2005), or Gros (this volume).

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paradox—help to both weaken and “revive” the state. Because vigilantes simultaneously produce and control violence, these groups illustrate the ambivalence of control of violence through civil society groups especially clearly. As well as addressing several deficits in research into state collapse, this approach also allows us to cast light on several “dark corners” in research into “civil society.” Whereas the normative Eurocentric concept of civil society as a “utopian model” that semantically presupposes civility and the civil excludes the “bad boys” from the outset (Reichardt 2001, 46), I assume here that “real civil societies” (Alexander in ibid., 46) can only be studied if the “bad boys” are also understood as a part of civil society.6 It would hardly seem promising to define vigilante groups analytically in the theoretically inadequate residual category of an “uncivil society” simply in order to keep civil society pure according to the normative requirement for the civil to be non-violent. For the “unruly, the uncivil and the ones who are capricious and hard to nail down are just as significant in local politics as more angelic ones” (Lund 2007, 6). However, research on civil society in Nigeria has to date primarily investigated civil society groups in terms of their importance for recent democratization developments. Studies aiming to provide a critical re-examination of the numerous possible roles, ambivalences, and ambiguities of civil society groups and thus provide a more balanced appraisal of civil society, on the other hand, still represent exceptions (for example, Ikelegbe 2001).7 As I describe the aforementioned struggles between different actors, their fluid relations of competition and cooperation, and the violent dynamics that these release, I will free myself from the bird’s eye perspective of the country scale and zoom in on smaller-scale zones and “areas of limited statehood” which lack the monopoly over the means of violence but where, nevertheless, effective and legitimate governance may be sustained through various actors (Risse 2008).8 I will proceed as follows: In the next section I deal first with the extent to which Nigeria can be characterized as a “fragile” state at all. Here I return somewhat more generally to the debate on fragile and collapsed states, although the limited space available precludes a more detailed discussion of the now vast literature on the subject. 6 Knöbl

(2006), for example, also points to the “peculiar conjunction of violence and civility.” However, he assumes that this can only be understood by focusing analysis on the state and its activities, while here the opposite perspective is taken without ignoring the effect of state activities. 7 According to Jega, for example, the identity politics of civil society groups that have become ever more prominent since the 1980s have had an extremely ambivalent effect on the democratization process: “[P]olitics of identity may make civil society groups vibrant and active in their interpersonal relationships, as well as in the context of state-civil relations, but such vibrancy may not necessarily be a catalyst for popular democratisation. On the contrary, it may indeed pose serious obstacles to democratisation by raising the stakes in the competition for political power and the mobilisation of negative forms of identity politics to prop up this competition for power” (Jega 2000, 38). 8 Risse’s concept of “areas of limited statehood” (2008) opposes the idea of “failed states” and directs attention instead to “areas, i.e., territorial or functional spaces within otherwise fully functioning states in which the latter have lost their ability to govern.”

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Then I turn my attention to vigilante groups in Nigeria, using a comprehensive literature survey to examine the question of what potential such groups have for controlling violence (compared with state actors) and what ambivalences they produce when they throw up the problem of controlling the “violence controllers.” Lastly I try to draw more general conclusions with regard to the possibilities and limits of vigilante groups with respect to control of violence and to outline certain profitable future fields of research in this connection.

2 Nigeria: A “Fragile” State? In the scientific and political debate, the answers to the question whether Nigeria represents a “weak,” “fragile,” “failed,” or even “collapsed” state are by no means uniform, varying according to which models are applied for the concept of the state, the “typology of collapse,” and the development stages of “state failure.” Nor do I intend here to provide an assessment of the “quality” of Nigeria’s statehood. As well as the virtual impossibility of assessing and evaluating in the space available here the indicators discussed in the literature, there are also other reasons for abstaining from the current “classification craze.” One of these would be the “ideological component” that is especially associated with terms such as “weak” or “failed” state, and implies a standpoint rooted in modernization theory that we thought had been superseded (Hippler 2005, 23). For that assumes that we can distinguish between “successful” and “failed” states, with the “modern” nation-state functioning as the positive norm against which the degree of weakness of the states of the so-called Third World is measured. Furthermore, in the (neo-)realist tradition such typologies assume that states can be conceptualized as uniform actors or undifferentiated monolithic structures. But this renders the aforementioned social struggles for power and control of violence very difficult to tackle analytically. And ultimately such classification attempts need to be treated with caution, not least because their repercussions are also eminently political. If a conference sponsored by the United States National Intelligence Council treats Nigeria as “a candidate for state collapse” (Harnischfeger 2006, 56), this automatically brings up discussions about possible external intervention strategies, each with their own potential for conflict. In view of these limitations, the following discussion should be regarded as an outline intended merely to give a few insights into the debates about the condition of and prospects for Nigerian statehood. Lambach (2002, 93), for example, classifies Nigeria as a state that has been “weak” for large parts of its history, and one “characterized by occasional manifestations of failure, but never leading to the complete collapse of central institutions.” Although the legitimacy of the changing regimes may have been called into question, he argues, the same does not apply to the legitimacy of the state as a whole. Akude (2007) comes to a similar conclusion, that Nigeria has not as yet crossed the threshold to state collapse. He sees the Nigerian state as being characterized above all by corruption, neglect of economic development, lack of infrastructure,

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and dilapidated health and educational facilities, exacerbated by steadily rising unemployment and inflation and not least the state’s inability to provide security for its citizens, leading him to conclude, “It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the Nigerian state project has failed” (ibid.). Nevertheless, he regards a collapse of the state as unlikely because that would presuppose a disgruntled section of a fragmented elite capable of bringing down the state, whereas in fact the Nigerian political elite is “still united in the philosophy of personal enrichment through access to state power, and a conscious attack on the state could possibly deny the elite this opportunity” (Akude 2007, 12). Thus, the state remains ideologically attractive, not least due to the “rentier income” with which it is associated (Tetzlaff 2001, 226). Jega, on the other hand, does see Nigeria involved in a “collapse of state institutions, structures and agencies” (2000, 31). Unlike Lambach he believes that the legitimacy of the colonially created state as a whole has been called into question, as well as that of the changing regimes (ibid., 35, 38). For this he blames above all the economic crisis of the 1980s and the increasingly authoritarian manner in which the military regime tried to suppress and contain popular agitation against the associated crisis management measures (i.e., structural adjustment programs). According to Jega, these led to a “process of decomposition of the state” characterized by a steady erosion of state legitimacy, chaotic management of the economy, institutional decay, and the inability of the state to provide the basic socio-economic and security needs of the people (ibid., 31).9 The non-profit organizations International Alert and Saferworld are also critical of the Nigerian state, although they do credit the government with a certain will to “good governance” and list respect for human rights and good relations with neighboring states and the international community as additional criteria for evaluating the “quality” of the state. “Nigeria would best be described as a ‘weak but willing fragile state,’ as it does show political commitment to reform and to engage with its neighbours and the wider international community. Nevertheless, state capacity is characterized by a failed development process, mismanagement and corruption. Judicial, military and police structures are all ineffective, partial and inconsistent, leading to a culture of impunity and human rights abuse” (International Alert and Saferworld 2005, 7). Behind the opinions sketched out above lie concepts of the state that define statehood primarily through the provision of particular services and public goods and regard the weakness or collapse of states as an expression of their “bad performance.”10 The state’s ability to protect its citizens’ lives and physical safety,

9 Here

we see an indication of the connection between the “strength” of the Nigerian state— as evidenced by the repressive treatment of social protests by its security services—and the decomposition attested to by Jega (see also note 3). 10 Making respect for human rights one of the “measures of quality” of statehood also reflects the changing understanding of sovereignty since the 1990s, as the idea of state and societal sovereignty as principles in their own right has come to be superseded by a legitimization that is “relational, relating to the way internally rooted conflicts and external demands for peace and security are dealt with” (Zitelmann 2001, 11). State sovereignty, hitherto understood as a defensive right

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without which, to quote Hobbes, one can no longer speak of a state, thus represents the core criterion for functioning statehood, whereby this relates more strongly to the capacity to create internal peace than to defense against external dangers.11 For Jega, the Nigerian state has also failed in this role as a conflict mediation instance bearing responsibility for ensuring a balance of interests between the different groups in society, because successive governments have become “increasingly incapable of a credible mediation and arbitration between conflicting and potentially explosive identity-based interests” (2000, 31). This argument is ultimately based on the assumption that the state “is the only imaginable way to organize communal life peaceably” (Anderson 2004, 2). This involves a perception of the state as an order system that is superordinate to rulers and the ruled, is organized according to rational principles, and is not bound to individuals. Being an apparatus, a political Anstaltsbetrieb (Weber [1992] 1980, 29), this state must—according to the expectation linked to this conception—provide dependable products of rule vis-àvis the ruled, with the provision of security via a legitimate monopoly of violence representing the primary task. Another relevant factor within the context of the debate about the “condition” and prospects of the Nigerian state, however, is a further concept of statehood: the state as nation. Alongside its function as guarantor of security and provider of other public goods and services, all concepts of the state agree that the state also has a function as a symbol of collective identity. So according to such approaches, a lack of identification with the state—which often results from a lack of faith in its abilities and in the will of the respective government to provide the aforementioned services—is thus another yardstick for the fragility of statehood. Authors who base their work on this criterion come to the conclusion that the “Nigerian idea” is mired in a crisis of legitimacy, one expression of which is that several groups question the existence of the Nigerian state and aim at secession or demand that it be restructured (Johnson 2001, 81). They argue that although the authorities’ national identity policy of the 1970s and 1980s made successive symbolic and legislative attempts to suppress “traditional” forms of identity (which were dubbed primordial, centripetal, and counter-productive) through slogans such as “One Nigeria” or “One Nation, One Destiny” and constitutional amendments insisting on “a federal character,” the crisis of legitimacy of the 1980s led citizens to retreat more and more from the “Nigerian” identity that the post-colonial state had sought to promote, looking instead toward communal, ethnic, religious, and other forms of identities (Jega 2000, 31). According to this view, Nigeria thus represents a “weak” nationstate with which its citizens cannot identify in times of crisis but which—on the contrary—drives them to search for new identities (Johnson 2001, 81). According to Osaghae (1998) the reason that the West African nation today appears as a “crippled giant” is to be found in the interaction of endogenous and exogenous factors.

(“sovereignty as control”), has been reinterpreted to mean a duty in a social contract between a state and its citizens (“sovereignty as responsibility”) (Debiel 2004). 11 Hobbes, De Cive, quoted from Anter (2004, 118).

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The state, he points out, was “crippled from the beginning by the nature of its colonial creation and integration into the global economy, and has remained crippled by corrupt and authoritarian regimes, the inability to overcome its divisions, and the inability to determine its manifest destiny in the face of a hegemonic world order” (ibid., x). Some assessments of the fragility of the Nigerian state address at least implicitly the spatial dimension, and thus respond to the criticism of this branch of research (which at the beginning applied a very simplified state/failed state dichotomy) by taking into consideration territorial or segmental restriction of “state failure.”12 Certain authors, for example, emphasize that above all in the periphery far from the big cities a “distanced relationship to the state” can be found (Lambach 2002, 93; see also Gros in this volume). Furthermore, fragile statehood—measured in terms of (perceived) security deficits—is, according to such approaches, experienced most intensely in the so-called “no-go area.” This is “a social island that may be spatially quite close to the centres of state power and authority, but which is not easily accessible to state representatives” (Abrahams 1998, 25). The Niger Delta, in particular, is a place where soldiers and police fear being deployed, but districts in big cities like Lagos and Kano where fear is omnipresent can also be regarded as no-go areas (Akude 2007, 12; Oruwari 2006; Alemika and Chukwuma 2005). If we see the state first and foremost as a monolithic, rationally bureaucratic apparatus and an order system superordinate to the rulers and ruled, then the Nigerian state—measured against the Weberian ideal type as outlined here—must appear as fragile, if not failed. From that perspective the significant presence of vigilante groups can only be interpreted as corroborative evidence. According to an alternative perspective defined above all by Joel Migdal and his “state-in-society” approach, modern states are always marked by two elements: image and practices (Migdal 2001, 16). The image of the state here reflects the notion of the rationally organized political Anstaltsbetrieb. As Migdal says, “the image is of a dominant, integrated, autonomous entity that controls, in a given territory, all rule making, either directly through its own agencies or indirectly by sanctioning other authorized organizations . . . to make certain circumscribed rules” (ibid.). This image of the state is closely linked to the idea of the state as a nation, as an “imagined community” that is inherently limited and sovereign (Anderson 1983). According to Migdal this notion of the state must be seen in conjunction with the concrete actions of office holders and those parties who are outside the state apparatus, the result being repeated “encounters” between state and society. Migdal sees such practices as “organized performative acts” of state actors and agencies that may reinforce the image of a state or weaken it (2001, 18–19). The focus here is not on the state as a monolithic apparatus but on the strategies of actors who make the state their own. These strategies are characterized here by privatization and personalization, with 12 Herbst

in particular has pointed out that “effective territorial control” as a minimum condition of modern statehood is typically never present in full in the very large countries of the African continent (2000). Instead the state’s access to its territory is uneven and hence the strength of its presence, as perceived by the population, varies.

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state offices becoming the personal property of the owners and a private source of income for clientelist politics (Förster 2007, 57). This kind of notion of statehood allows us to elaborate on the complex power relationships between state and vigilante groups and their respective registers of violence control, and to examine in greater detail the extent to which vigilante groups strengthen or in fact weaken the notion and practices of the state as a central authority of violence control and what relevance they have to the idea of Nigerian nationhood.

3 Control of Violence in Nigeria: Vigilantism and the State Before turning to the phenomenon of vigilante groups in Nigeria, we must first consider what is meant here by vigilantism and vigilante groups.

3.1 The Notion of Vigilantism The word “vigilante” is of Spanish origin and means “watchman,” “guard,” “guardian,” or “regulator.” Its Latin root “vigil” means “awake,” “watchful,” or “observant.” According to Abrahams these different shades of meaning reflect both the variety of forms of vigilance and vigilantism in different times and places, and the wide range of attitudes these modes and actors of violence control can elicit (Abrahams 1998, 5). Referring to the “South Carolina regulators,” Brown describes vigilante groups as “organised extra-legal movements the members of which take the law into their own hands” or as “associations in which citizens have joined together for selfprotection under conditions of disorder” (1963).13 Johnston sums up the main vigilante characteristics as follows: “vigilantism is a social movement giving rise to premeditated acts of force—or threatened force—by autonomous citizens. It arises as a reaction to the transgression of institutionalized norms by individuals or groups—or to their potential or imputed transgression. Such acts are focused upon crime control and/or social control and aim to offer assurances (or ‘guarantees’) of security both to participants and to other members of a given established order” (1996).14 Working from that understanding of the term, vigilantism can thus be seen, on the one hand, as a reaction to a perceived or feared loss of order, especially with respect to physical and legal security, in which case it is directed toward stabilizing or restoring the old order. Rosenbaum and Sederberg, for example, refer to vigilantism as “establishment violence,” which “consists of acts or threats of coercion in violation of the formal boundaries of an established sociopolitical order which, however, are 13 R.

Brown, The South Carolina Regulators (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), quoted from Abrahams (1998, 7). 14 L. Johnston, “What is vigilantism?” British Journal of Criminology 36, no. 2:220–236, quoted from Abrahams (1998, 7–8).

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intended by the violators to defend that order from some form of subversion” (1974, 542). On the other hand, the phenomenon can also be located outside an established order and have changing that order as its goal. In either case the suppression of deviant behavior stands at the center of vigilante activities (Kowalewski 2003, 339), and control of particular forms of violence that are regarded by society as deviant behavior represents a major share of this. It should be emphasized, however, that an organization’s purpose is not only to pursue particular goals, but also to ensure its own survival (Hagedorn 2008, 8, following on from Selznick). Consequently vigilantes—like other groups and organizations—are subject to many influences and transformation processes that may make it more difficult to definitively classify them as vigilante groups at a particular point in their history (Hagedorn 2008, 30). Thus, in the literature the groups discussed here as vigilantes are also referred to as “ethnic militias,” “gangs,” or “area boys.” Abrahams points to another important reason why vigilantism is so hardly to pin down: “It occupies an awkward borderland between law and illegality, and the veil of secrecy that cloaks much vigilante activity also provides cover for deception, so that it is by no means always what it seems or claims to be” (2007, 422). Some authors also include under the heading of vigilantism forms of popular mob justice (mostly spontaneous and unorganized), punishment of alleged criminals by individuals who believe they have not been sanctioned appropriately, and personally motivated revenge attacks. However, these phenomena are explicitly excluded from the definition applied here. What we are concerned with here is forms of control of criminality and violence that are collective and to a certain extent planned and institutionalized, and represent a response to perceived or real deficits in state security institutions in these areas and explicitly not with “firefly events,” which lack any institutionalization and which arise and disappear suddenly and unexpectedly (ibid., 340).15

3.2 Vigilantism and the State—Major Lines of Debate Discussions about the relationship between vigilantism and the state tend to alternate between two opposing positions. Some see vigilante activities as a reaction to the state being largely absent, especially with regard to the provision of security, while others on the contrary consider vigilante groups to be passive organs of execution of the state. The “frontier theory” (Brown 1975; McGrath 1984), which was developed in the United States to explain the emergence of vigilante groupings in the 15 “By ‘institutionalized’ I mean organizations which have developed certain rituals and ceremonies

that distinguish them from other similar organizations and which have produced a formal and informal structure with rules and role expectations. Furthermore, its members identify with the organization, and the organization gathers support from at least some elements of the broader community” (Hagedorn 2008, 8).

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remote frontier zones of the American Wild West, was crucial in defining the first of these two perspectives in that it assumed that vigilantes only arise in the absence of law enforcement, thereby ignoring the many cases of vigilante groups facilitated, encouraged, and sponsored by the state (Kowalewski 2003, 341). The second view is represented by Porter (1987), for example, whose historical analysis of the “vigilant state” concludes that it was quite common for rulers to have a strategy of creating vigilante agencies (primarily in the shape of “secret political police forces”) with the task of monitoring and combating potential political adversaries: “Every government in the world has employed such an agency at some time or another, and most governments have never in modern times been without one” (Porter 1987, 1). For a long time in history policing was the responsibility of non-state actors. In central Europe and North America it was a task assigned to public institutions and groups authorized by religious, economic, community-based, personal, or political connections before they were displaced by the state police organs that were finally created in the nineteenth century (Hönke 2009, 17–18). Likewise the establishment of law and order in precolonial Africa as well as in colonial and finally post-colonial states of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was marked by a plurality of actor networks and overlapping domains. In similar fashion to nineteenth century Europe neither the colonial nor the indigenous police forces of local rulers served the prevention and combating of violence and crime; they were rather designed for maintaining dominance (ibid.). Sen and Pratten (2007, 6) come to the following conclusion: “Non-state self policing has a very long historical trajectory to which the history of state policing, not just state failures, has contributed in large measure” (emphasis added). Within this context vigilante groups can be conceptualized neither exclusively as mere state organs nor as opponents or a substitute for state failure. In fact the two perspectives outlined here both refer to a closely interwoven relationship between vigilantism and statehood. Even if state practices are criticized, challenged, or complemented by vigilantes, a certain idea of statehood always remains the crucial point of reference: “Vigilantism cannot exist alone but only alongside and, typically, on the frontiers—structural and/or cultural—of state power” (Abrahams 2007, 423). The complex relationships between state actors and vigilante groups are defined by tolerance, complicity, rivalry, or militant opposition; I will use the following example of Nigeria to examine these relationships and their influence on the practices of violence control and the idea of the state as the central authority controlling violence. The specific ways such vigilantes exercise control of violence and the way they are thus also integrated in the symbolic and economic order will be addressed. The following questions are of particular interest: Why are vigilante groups in Nigeria so widespread? How are vigilante groups linked to state actors and what comparative advantages might such actors possess over state agencies? And what ambivalences do they produce through their mechanisms of control of violence?

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3.3 Vigilantism in Nigeria and Its Historical Precedents The hybrid state order of Nigeria provides both the context in which numerous vigilante groups in the country were able to establish themselves as alternative “forces of law and order,” and also the structural framework in which these actors operate. Nigeria possesses a complex landscape of vigilante groups that permeates all regions and all segments of society. As elsewhere on the continent, it is a “vigilance of youth,” making young people not merely vandals, but also “vanguards of a public sphere whose contours are unexpected” (Pratten 2007, 38). Most common in the south are “ethnic militias” and “area boys,” best known among them the Bakassi Boys who were active from 1998 to 2000, and the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) (Harnischfeger 2003, 2006; Nolte 2004; Adebanwi 2005; Gore and Pratten 2003; Pratten 2007; Reno 2005; Guichaoua 2006). Urban youth gangs are mainly concentrated in the major cities of the federal states of Lagos and Edo (Omitoogun 1994; Albert et al. 1994), while the Niger Delta is a catchment area for numerous social movements such as the Ijaw Youth Council, the Niger Delta Vigilante Group (NDVG), and the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Front (NDPVF), along with smaller street gangs and, again, ethnic militias such as the Egbesu Boys (Ukeje 2004; Ifeka 2006; Watts and Zalik 2006; Oruwari 2006; Ikelegbe 2001). In the predominantly Muslim north, yan daba and yan hisba, who use religious and regional identities to distinguish themselves from non-Muslim “outsiders” in other regions, are the main groups of young vigilantes (Casey 2008; Last 2004). Furthermore, there is a countrywide phenomenon of “campus cults”—student fraternities that generally cut across ethnic and religious affiliations (Bastian 2001).16 The great prevalence of vigilante groups indicates that vigilantism plays no small role in control of violence in Nigeria.17 As already indicated, vigilantism as a form of self-policing is not a new phenomenon in Africa. In fact, today’s vigilante groups in Nigeria can cite many historical precedents. Back in precolonial times youth organizations such as warrior bands, secret societies, militias, and small groups of night-guards already played an important role in vigilante activities. Their “job” was not just to ward off attacks from neighboring communities and protect their community against theft and witchcraft, but also to assist in law enforcement by punishing criminals and 16 The

space available here precludes providing a differentiated analysis of the activities of the different vigilante groups. For simplicity’s sake I speak of the vigilante groups and only pick out particular groups as examples. It is inevitable that this “homogenization” of violent vigilante formations will gloss over differences in violent activity that have implications for the controllability of vigilante violence. For that reason additional differentiated analyses that systematically identify such variations are vital. 17 Furthermore, it is also difficult to pin down any more precisely (for example, using data on vigilante activities) the weight of these groups because adequate statistics on vigilante activities are not available. There is also a problem of interpretation: as shown below vigilantes themselves are sometimes involved in ordinary crimes and in violent power struggles between different vigilante groups, which means that in some cases it is difficult to clearly classify their activities.

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those who were more generally considered a threat (Sesay et al. 2003, 17; Omeje 2005, 73). At the same time, such groups served as a means of socialization and a sort of rite of passage to adulthood in that they provided space for young men to assert themselves and prove their manhood (Ya’u 2000, 164; Waller 2006, 82). Thus, such traditional vigilante groups served in precolonial times as an important means of control of violence in two senses. First, the young men helped directly to defend their local communities against violent external attack. Second, such groups represented a means of enforcing community discipline among young people and provided a channel for the social integration of young men, who were able to earn respect and recognition (Ya’u 2000, 164). This also kept young men “under control,” because the system largely prevented them from challenging the social order—which in traditional African societies was principally characterized by a strict hierarchy where the young were clearly subordinate to the elders (Diouf 2003). These precolonial predecessors serve as an important discursive reference point and as a source of legitimacy for present-day vigilante groups in Nigeria. By drawing on such historical discourses, in which youths were cast as “moral guardians of the community” and enforcers of community rights, morals, and laws (Nolte 2004, 65), today’s vigilantes do not simply “represent or memorize the past, they enact the past, bringing it back to life” (Pratten 2008, 199, following on from Bourdieu). In particular against a state perceived by many as imposed and “alien,” the possibility of recourse to “their own traditional” mechanisms of control of violence represents a decisive advantage that vigilante groups have over “modern” security agencies. It should be emphasized, however, that the precolonial concept of vigilantism in Nigeria mainly referred to “un-armed voluntary citizen groups created in local communities to help the security forces confront common criminality and social violence by arresting suspected delinquents and handing them over to the police” (Amnesty International 2002, italics added). In other words, this was largely a form of “supplementary” non-violent control of criminality and violence—which is still recognized by Nigerian law today—whereas vigilante activities not involving the police are explicitly forbidden: “Any private person arresting any other person without a warrant shall without unnecessary delay make over the person so arrested to a police officer, or in absence of a police officer shall take such person to the nearest police station.”18

3.4 Mistrust of State Controllers of Violence: An Opening for Vigilantes What we have in Nigeria today, on the other hand, is generally a form of violent “self-help” that is legitimized through popular dissatisfaction with the state, especially in the field of providing security. Instead of being a mere supplement, vigilantism is increasingly regarded as a substitute for a police and legal system that 18 Nigerian

Criminal Procedure Act, section 14 (1), quoted from Amnesty International (2002).

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is perceived to be inadequate and unwilling or inefficient in the establishment of law and order. Ever since the days of authoritarian military regimes in Nigeria there has been a deep-seated mistrust of the police, who are seen as unreliable and corrupt, and even today the population often experiences that “many criminals are safe from prosecution because they come from prominent families or enjoy the patronage of influential politicians” (Harnischfeger 2003, 29). Whereas the rich can relatively unproblematically buy themselves out of the hands of the police, poorer people are unlikely to be able to afford the bribes demanded by many police officers. In this situation vigilante groups that are able to convince the population that they—unlike the police—are not corrupt enjoy popular trust and are to a certain extent recognized as a “police force poor people can rely on” (Guichaoua 2006). In the eyes of many Nigerians the police not only fail to offer adequate protection (Alemika and Chukwuma 2005), they are also themselves often perceived as repressive and despotic or even as behaving like a foreign “occupation force:” “People are permanently under siege and the fear of illegal detention.”19 And conversely the police, too, often regard the population as uncooperative, unsupportive, and antagonistic.20 Ojie sees one reason for this intense mutual hostility between the police and the Nigerian public in the legacy of the British colonial police, which was “an occupation force that diligently served its master’s interest and was completely alienated from the oppressed colonized masses that perceived it as corrupt and brutish” (Ojie 2006, 559). But he also blames the sociopolitical and economic milieus in which the Nigerian police operate for them becoming corrupt bribe takers, intimidators, harassers, and extrajudicial killers. Their behavior, he says, reflects the attributes of successive totalitarian regimes and stems from inadequate training, inferior equipment, and poor remuneration (ibid., 560–561). The population’s feeling that it is not seldom at the mercy of the police is often ultimately also due to the lack of local police control—responsibility for police matters is held by the central government in Abuja, which is extremely distant even in simple geographical terms. Vigilante groups, by contrast, are frequently much more under the control of the local population, because “if they were to start killing at random, they would immediately lose their privileged position and become just one more gang among many others” (Harnischfeger 2003, 31). So, a police force that is present on the ground but perceived as a threat represents a problem for the population, while elsewhere insecurity rules because there are no police present at all. For instance, it is hardly possible to persuade police to enter the aforementioned no-go areas in the Nigerian cities and especially in the Niger Delta, because their unpopular status often makes them victims of vigilante groups (HRW 2002, 2003). In such areas of limited statehood vigilante groups, on whose protection the population depends, therefore enjoy a territorially bounded monopoly on violence.

19 The

News, August 10, 1998, p. 17, quoted from Harnischfeger (2003, 29). et al. 1991, quoted from Ojie (2006, 560).

20 White

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3.5 Time, Space, Identity: Vigilantes at the “Frontiers” of the State This clearly illustrates one dimension of what Abrahams fittingly described as the “frontier phenomenon” (1998).21 Vigilante groups overcome “spatial frontiers” and find diverse ways to penetrate areas to which the state has only limited access, or none at all. At the same time they also help to constitute frontiers, in order better to be able to control the areas in question. For example, in some urban areas they seal off whole blocks and stop residents from passing. This often goes hand-in-hand with the overcoming of “temporal frontiers” (Abrahams 1998, 25). Vigilantes become active at times when state security forces are more or less absent. Here too, vigilante groups themselves create new temporal frontiers, for example, in the form of curfews (marking out people who are still on the streets at these times as “especially suspicious”). In such cases “the night patrol’s route marks an alternative spatiality which maps a set of resonant spatial practices whose meaning and control are beyond the grasp of the state.”22 Such processes of crossing frontiers and establishing new ones also include “cultural frontiers” (Abrahams 1998, 25). These arise between population groups or between parts of the population and the state “center” when particular values and ideas are not shared. In Nigeria, a “rhetoric of unity” is often called on when drawing such symbolic frontiers (Pratten 2007, 45). Reference to a shared ethnicity, religion, ancestry, or generation thus generates diverse symbolic boundaries to divide insiders from strangers, good from bad, vigilantes from criminals, etc. (ibid., 49). Because these attributes are often also linked to one another by chains of equivalence, where, for example, a stranger is always also a potential “criminal,” such “criminals” can only be pursued by those who adhere to the local “standards of criminality” rather than abstract universal ones. Here we find another comparative advantage of the local vigilante groups. Often the state fails—in the eyes of the local population—in its task of ensuring security by failing or even refusing to recognize that a certain kind of behavior constitutes a serious offence by local standards. In such cases, the state may well appear passive or even to be an active ally of the “locally defined public enemy” (Abrahams 1998, 25). Vigilantism may thus emerge owing to discrepancies in the perception of what constitutes a crime, which ultimately stem from the “polyvalent nature of the concept of crime” (Buur 2007, 80). For while some acts clearly fall under penal codes, others may be considered by a particular community to be criminal but in fact be governed by penal codes that instead protect those who commit them. In certain societies abortion would be a case in point. Thus, the question of what is perceived as effective or ineffective control of violence is often

21 This

frontier perspective diverges fundamentally from the long-prevailing social scientific frontier theory for explaining vigilantism, whose numerous theoretical blind spots and problems Kowalewski rightly criticizes (2003, 340–341). 22 M. De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 93, quoted from Pratten (2007, 50).

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governed less by objective standards, but is instead intimately interwoven with the identity politics of a community and its ideas about legality. Vigilante groups as such challenge the state order in two ways. On the one hand, they enforce or punish patterns of behavior where the state’s legislation fails to do so, and as such they provide an alternative moral order and different evaluations of deviant behavior. At the same time vigilante practices construct alternative community boundaries and appeal to identity concepts independent of the largely discredited Nigerian nation-state, and in so doing call into question the idea of Nigerian nationhood.

3.6 Magic and Occult Forces: Alternate Sources of Power and Legitimacy While the formal state legal system has to prosecute witchcraft, magic, and other occult forces, vigilante groups are able to use these in their “administration of justice” and turn them into special power resources of their own. This is another comparative advantage of vigilante groups. In fact, the widespread local support for vigilante groups is often based on their use of magical forms of detection and protection that are believed to protect the “innocent” (Harnischfeger 2003, 30–35). The major defining characteristic of the Bakassi Boys, for example, was their supposed possession of a peculiar type of occult power that made them impervious to bullets. Two main types of charm were used: defensive, for example, to prevent harm from a bullet or machete, and revelatory, to extract confessions (McCall 2004; Omeje 2005, 76). Oaths and magical initiation rites offer the vigilantes protection by sowing fear among potential enemies, boosting self-confidence, and cementing loyalty and cohesion within the group (Guichaoua 2006). Furthermore, the groups are able to “seal themselves off” from the outside world by using secret signs and words to communicate. Protected in this way vigilante groups can dare to arrest and execute a “category of persons whom the police would not dare to touch, namely witches and sorcerers” (Harnischfeger 2003, 32). The use of magic and occult powers, generally in a context of public spectacle, compensates for the vigilante groups’ inferior weaponry. For instance, according to Omeje, the Egbesu Boys in the Niger Delta are outmatched by the military power of their adversaries but draw on the spiritual power of the ancient Egbesu deity in their homeland, a magical device that makes up for their limited firepower (2005, 81). This also means that vigilante groups have no need to show any great presence of numbers (Harnischfeger 2003, 25). The knowledge that they have occult forces on their side allows them to exert a kind of “invisible control” by securing their presence in the minds of the population—and especially of potential criminals—through public executions that have a deterrent effect and generate a certain feeling of safety among those parts of the population that stand under their protection. Punishment ceremonies and public spectacles also boost the vigilantes’ popularity and legitimacy by drawing on precolonial “rituals of verification,” which establish truth, guilt, shame, and accountability (Pratten 2007, 51; 2008, 196).

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The arrangement whereby trials that often decide over life or death are conducted in secret, while punishments are administered publicly represents an exact inversion of modern legal process as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution (Harnischfeger 2003, 36). A further inversion of western legal principles is that the justice of the vigilante groups is organized as a “closed system” rather than following the principle of separation of powers. In fact, in Nigeria the separation of judicial and executive powers seems actually to obstruct the course of justice in that the police, for instance, often decline to hand over detainees to the courts because they do not trust the judges, having often seen criminals set free in return for bribes, while police officers themselves take payment for releasing detainees or carry out extrajudicial killings (ibid.). Vigilantes have no need to take this “roundabout route,” because those who track down criminals are generally also those who pass judgment and carry out the sentence. The origins of this kind of closed system (a form of vigilantism that the Nigerian state explicitly prohibits) can be found in the vigilantes’ great mistrust of a police force they regard as unreliable, as the following statement by an OPC member shows: “Once we arrest criminals, we kill them because such person is dangerous to live within society and again the police are not reliable because you could find out that the criminal you gave them is released the next day.”23 The vigilantes’ recourse to violent self-justice is also not least a matter of self-protection, because they must often fear that those whom they have dealt with will seek revenge. The end result is violence unleashed by a wave of mutual mistrust encompassing the police, judges, vigilantes, and the rest of society. Nonetheless, these legal principles find support among broad sections of the population, precisely because they promise greater effectiveness and take effect immediately, which is also the reason why they are sometimes described as “jungle justice.” They echo the pragmatic precolonial attitude to justice, which was designed above all to bring about swift decisions in order to prevent conflicts escalating bloodily (Harnischfeger 2003, 36). And especially for the poorer sections of the population they provide alternative “traditional” routes for settling disputes where long-winded formal written procedures are an obstacle for people of whom many are illiterate (Guichaoua 2006). Here it again becomes clear that vigilante groups call into question the state as an order system and its image as the central regulating institution. By essentially being a reverse reflection of state law, vigilante practices of justice are not just a challenge to the Nigerian state; they appear here as the antithesis of modern statehood.

3.7 Vigilantes as Providers of Social Security: Showing Up the State Providing independent channels for fighting crime and informal justice systems is not the only source from which vigilante groups draw their legitimacy. They also 23 A

member of the OPC, quoted in Guichaoua (2006).

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compensate to some degree for other state deficits perceived by the population, and contribute to a certain extent to supplying “social security,” which encompasses the provision of legitimate and accountable institutions as well as healthcare and basic education (Nolte 2007, 219; Guichaoua 2006). However, in providing minimal public goods in the form of security, redistribution of resources, and enhanced order and predictability in everyday life and by denouncing corruption, vigilante groups are never acting simply as selfless benevolent organizations. Instead, they are also attempting to build support by demonstrating to citizens the incapacity of the Nigerian state to serve public interests (Reno 2005, 129, 136). Thus, as well as compensating for perceived state deficits, vigilante groups are also always interested in “showing up” the state. This is sometimes—for example, in the case of the OPC—used as a legitimizing resource for articulating their own ethno-political agenda (ibid.). Where vigilantism demonstrates the state’s deficits and inadequacies in providing physical and social security, it provides a popular counter-narrative to the legitimacy of the Nigerian nation-state (Pratten 2007; Ikelegbe 2001).

3.8 Involvement in Politico-economic Networks: Resource and Achilles Heel The points put forward thus far have clearly shown that vigilante groups stand in manifold ways in a competitive relationship to the state and question both the idea of the nation-state of Nigeria and the state as an order system and sole authority controlling violence. It is where state security actors lose legitimacy due to practices perceived as unreasonable and unjust that vigilante groups appear to gain it on the basis of their “grassroots appeal” and the ability to cite popular historical precedents. Their “ethnicized” and “indigenized” legitimacy remains limited, however, and extremely precarious; vigilante groups owe their success not only to broad popular support, as indicated above, but also to the backing of local politicians and businessmen. In fact, many Nigerian state governments have tolerated local vigilante groups as a complement to or substitute for regular police operations, and in some cases actively promoted and encouraged them (Sesay et al. 2003, 16ff; Reno 2005, 141). The Bakassi Boys, for instance, were legally sanctioned as state vigilante services by some federal states and the governor of Lagos called for Yoruba fighters from the OPC to be given police powers for enforcing law and order (Harnischfeger 2003, 2006). While this official support for vigilantes is often based on their perceived ability to control crime more effectively than the relevant agencies of the state, vigilante groups are often deployed as a power resource by local politicians, for whom links with local vigilante groups provide more than just immediate protection for themselves and their supporters as hired bodyguards or security services (Reno 2005, 138). Engaging “irregulars” also helps them—under the prestige-garnering cover of enforcing law and order—to intimidate their political opponents. This allows local elites to maintain their grip on power and to gain a certain degree of autonomy from

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central government. State governors are prohibited from setting up their own police forces by the Nigerian constitution, which they feel gives unfair power to central government. This led the governor of Anambra State, for example, to state that ultimately he did not care whether he exerted control through an official state police force or the local Bakassi Boys vigilante group: “I’ll prefer something I’ll control, whether you call it police or you call it anything. This is because when I make my own law, I will have somebody to enforce it.”24 Through their close connections with local politicians vigilante groups are also integrated in the local political system, which allows them to engage in national distributive networks. Vigilantism thus always reflects more than just competition over control of criminality and violence between different groups or with the state. Vigilante practices also always involve “struggles over the codification of rights and privileges that result in political economic power” (Casey 2008, 98). Yet, their closeness to politicians and businessmen poses a dilemma for vigilantes: they become increasingly dependent on their backing and material support, and in the process risk losing the popular support on which they also depend. Because vigilante groups legitimize their activities as the “ethical” response to disorder and the illegitimate wealth of the criminals they target, they risk immediate withdrawal of support if the suspicion arises that they themselves might be part of the very “disorder” they criticize by functioning merely as tools in the hands of corrupt politicians and businessmen (Smith 2004). Often vigilantes thus attempt to restore their reputation and respect by demonstratively punishing “criminals” whom the state authorities are plainly attempting to protect (Harnischfeger 2003, 40).

3.9 Between Rejecting and Strengthening the State: An Intermediate Conclusion The points made thus far clearly show that vigilante groups pose many different challenges to the state. Providing an alternative regime of violence control puts them in competition with the state as an apparatus and a central authority of order. They likewise continue to weaken the idea of the Nigerian nation-state, which has in any case been increasingly compromised by the practices of the state-run security authorities. It has nevertheless been possible to show that vigilantism cannot be interpreted as indisputable evidence of the weakness of a state. In fact the phenomenon evidences complex relationships between various actors involved in the control of violence, which cannot be clearly assigned to either the non-state or the state realm; while Nigerian vigilante groups “portray themselves as resisting order, sticking up for ordinary people, and doing the job that the state fails to do . . . they do not project a ‘revolutionary anti-state message’” (Gore and Pratten 2003, 232).

24 Lagos-based

weekly Tell, March 26, 2001, p. 43, quoted from Harnischfeger (2003).

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Recalling the differing dimensions of statehood outlined above, the relationship between state and vigilantes has more complex dimensions than might be suggested by the simplifying perspective of state failure. Vigilante groups and state-run security institutions form regimes of violence control that are based not only on different sources of legitimacy, but also overlap and in turns complement and rival each other. Seen from the perspective of the population, the result is a fragile, dynamic field (both temporal and physical) comprising realms of risk and of relative security (Korf and Engeler 2007, 233). At the same time, vigilante practices constitute traditional, indigenous practices of violence control in the population, which continually expose the alien nature of the modern state and thereby weaken the idea of the state as the legitimate and sole authority of violence control. As a rule, while vigilantes transform relationships of power within the state and may claim to be based outside and in opposition to an ineffectual state, the latter remains, nonetheless, the principal addressee of demands for security, justice, and social welfare (Pratten 2008; Nolte 2007). This is shown, for example, by the practices of “screening” political candidates and tracking local government expenditure, which reflect a desire to monitor local politicians and demand more accountability and transparency rather than constituting a fundamental challenge to the state’s order and authority. And even the demand by most vigilante groups for a more equitable distribution of the state’s oil revenues “reflects the belief that a state that has the means to improve its citizens’ lives should do so, and confirms [their] official demands for greater, not less, state presence and responsibility” (Nolte 2007, 231). As Anter rightly points out, “new” and “alternative” orders are always set up out of an established order (2004, 107). Especially when a “break” with an order that is regarded as illegitimate is aspired to, the “alternative” order necessarily legitimizes itself in relation to the one from which it wishes to distinguish itself. As we have seen, vigilante groups in Nigeria thus oscillate between existing and future, nation-state and segmentary concepts of order. This demonstrates that it is misleading to think of vigilante groups as order systems “separate from” the state, in the sense of understanding them as a completely distinct entity. If, instead, we understand vigilantism as a “frontier phenomenon,” this also reflects various blurred boundaries between different systems of order, such as between private and public, formal and informal, secret and open, legal and illegal. Following Pratten (2007), we could therefore argue that vigilante groups do not really constitute an order separate from the state, but should instead be regarded as “twilight institutions”—organizations characterized by their movement in and out of a capacity to exercise public authority, by operating in the twilight between state and society, between public and private (Lund 2007, 6). Vigilantes are thus paradoxical counterparts of the state, being themselves the problem as well as the solution of violence control, being enemy and partner of the state at the same time. The flip side of this “flexibility” and the status of the vigilantes as twilight institutions is, however, that their base of legitimacy and support among both the population and the local elites is extremely vulnerable. This circumstance also represents a decisive factor for the ever-present threat of uncontrolled escalation of vigilante violence and raises the problem of controlling the “controllers of violence.”

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3.10 The Problem of Controlling the Controllers of Violence: Ambivalences of Vigilante Practices Nigerian vigilantes provide an especially clear example of the ambivalence of control of violence. While some celebrate them as order-bringing heroes with magical powers, others condemn them as criminals for their sometimes extremely violent methods (McCall 2004).25 Given that while exercising control over violence many of today’s Nigerian vigilante groups themselves resort to violence alongside softer mechanisms such as conflict mediation, the question arises of whether and to what extent this form of violence can be controlled in turn. Many authors paint a rather gloomy picture here. Harnischfeger, for example, sees politicians and businessmen increasingly losing control over “their” vigilante groups, leading to a situation where minor incidents suffice to trigger a wave of violence (Harnischfeger 2003, 2006). Ikelegbe, too, sees the killing of state security officials and the kidnapping for ransom of oil company employees in the Niger Delta as evidence that the top leadership of one of the Niger Delta vigilante groups, the International Youth Council (IYC), has lost control over its young membership (2001, 13). In considering how the controllers of violence can themselves be controlled, a major problem seems to be the way Nigerian vigilantism, as described above, is always also bound up with identity politics. Where vigilante groups arise on the basis of ethnic, religious, regional, or other collective membership—and at the same time reinforce those identity constructs—their protective functions are necessarily exclusive and of limited reach. Although identity politics may have a certain violence-regulating function within the group because vigilante groups depend on the ideological support of their ingroup, the consequence for other groups may be lack of protection or even active threat. Because the “stranger” is always suspected of being a potential criminal or even a force of “evil,” who requires surveillance or prosecution, a kind of domino effect occurs.26 Each group thinks it needs to acquire its own vigilante “protection force,” which, in turn, makes other neighboring groups feel insecure and respond with the formation of their own vigilante defense. This creates a climate of fear where the “other side’s” controllers of violence appear no less (and possibly more) threatening than their “formal” counterparts from the Nigerian state. For the latter are at least formally answerable to a central institution, even if very distant, whereas vigilante groups are accountable only to their interest 25 Above

all their involvement in violent, religiously tinged conflict (especially in 2000 and 2002) and also their participation in various kinds of local ethnic conflicts regularly brings vigilante groups to the attention of local and international human rights organizations (Amnesty International 2000; Human Rights Watch 2002, 2003). 26 According to Abrahams a perception of the adversary as “evil” is a typical characteristic of vigilantism: “[V]igilantes typically lay claim to the moral high ground as the guardians of society. Their enemies are not simply rivals, they are also evil” (1998, 78–79).

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groups (Francis 2005, 20). As long as vigilante groups enjoy the support of their respective communities it is very difficult for the enforcement agencies to effectively police them. Consequently, the police often act with extraordinary harshness against the vigilantes—to the point of extrajudicial killings—which in turn increases their supporters’ mistrust and dislike of the state security agencies (Ya’u 2000, 176). Where different vigilante groups, police and army units, and the private security companies often employed by the richer sections of the population are operating within a territory, and are generally integrated in competing politico-economic networks, there is a permanent danger of violent clashes in which especially brutal acts of violence are committed in order to demonstrate a group’s power to rivals and the public (Harnischfeger 2003, 42; 2006, 59). In addition, internal power struggles, which like ideological conflicts are often closely linked to control of local markets, may—as in the case of the OPC—lead to vigilante groups fragmenting into rival factions and thus to an uncontrolled escalation of violence (Guichaoua 2006; Harnischfeger 2003, 41). Another way in which this economization of violence manifests itself is when vigilante action “oscillates between a genuine provision of services and what could, in some instances, be labeled a protection racket” (Guichaoua 2006). Because local government and the vigilantes both generally profit from such joint protection schemes (HRW 2003, 9–10) the population has no instance to turn to that might control and punish such practices. And finally, the use of magic and other occult forces is another significant factor making it difficult to control vigilante violence. Whereas the sentences, as already mentioned, are carried out in public and generally have to demonstrate particular brutality, the “trials” are not only intransparent, but in fact “invisible.” Because they take place in secret (following the model of the precolonial secret societies) they are completely immune to public scrutiny. But rather than provoking public protest such practices enjoy a very good reputation, because the widespread mistrust in Nigeria applies not only to state institutions, but also to “normal” fellow-citizens. “It is reassuring to know that judgment is rendered by alien, invisible powers, not by one’s fellow humans, as human authority is scarcely to be trusted” (Harnischfeger 2006, 63). Yet, it is not only as “supernatural legal instances” that occult forces fulfill an important function. In the face of the insecurity and powerlessness experienced by many Nigerians in the face of everyday violence and intransparent political processes, the belief in an invisible magical “order” also functions as a source of orientation that gives meaning to what is apparently meaningless. Thus, recourse to magic acts rather like a “cognitive control mechanism.” “Decline, which affects all spheres of social life, is experienced as a collective trauma for which people have no explanation. By linking it to witchcraft, evil is personified, making it comprehensible and opening avenues to take countermeasures” (Harnischfeger 2006, 59). That such countermeasures often turn out to be exceptionally brutal is then accepted not least because according to the “magical” narratives they can never affect the “innocent.”

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4 Conclusion It is clear that control of violence by vigilante groups is in many respects very difficult to assess. Vigilante practices without doubt often contradict standards of human rights and democracy. The possibilities for controlling vigilante violence are therefore also limited. Especially when the activities of the self-appointed guardians of justice and order—as in the case of Nigeria—are intimately bound up with identity politics, protection and security necessarily remain selective and limited in their reach.27 They are accountable (if at all) only to their ethnically, religiously or locally constructed ingroup, and the suppression and punishment of deviant behavior is directed above all against members of other groups. Integration in politico-economic networks and “security markets” increases the risk of uncontrolled escalation of vigilante violence, both territorially and in terms of its intensity, because the greater the competition between the different operators in the security market, the greater the danger that groups will seek to distinguish themselves from other operators by committing especially severe acts of violence. In response, other social groups may out of fear set up their own “protection force” thus further expanding the presence of vigilante groups. The “magical nature” of legal principles and punishment practices found among many vigilante groups in Africa represents a particular challenge, as it often makes public control practically impossible.28 These problems and ambiguities of vigilante groups should in no way be played down. However, given that in the context of hybrid statehood investigated here, those features also characterize the state apparatus and its security forces, the latter is, as has once again become clear, no more immune to being instrumentalized for sectional interests, profit-seeking, and power hunger. Furthermore, if we take seriously the finding that many states are not yet (or no longer, depending on one’s interpretation) capable of controlling violence (on their own) and also the finding that control of violence exists even where the state’s own control is weak (meaning that in pragmatic terms vigilante groups often represent the only alternative), this may point to opportunities (including for external actors) that are not picked up by state-centered concepts and policies. Especially in the context of hybrid statehood investigated here there is a need for more careful identification of those vigilante groups that make a functional and transparent contribution to control of violence, and which are recognized by large parts of the population as legitimate. There is a need to analyze how such groups could be included in programs such as security sector reform and how they might be used to supplement the violence control of the modern state. Of course, such recourse to autochthonous structures and forms of order bears the risk of states

27 As Abrahams rightly notes, “‘[J]ustice’ in this context is not so much a deep philosophical issue

as a gut-level feeling of satisfaction that perceived wrongs are righted through the identification and punishment of those who perpetrate them”(1998, 154). 28 On the role of magic and witchcraft in postcolonial Africa see Moore and Sanders (2001).

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becoming caught in the dilemma of relying on support from vigilante groups in order to be able to ensure a degree of security at all, and in the process risking a progressive weakening and delegitimation of state legal and security institutions. Yet, the Nigerian example also demonstrates that although the idea of the state may have been shaken in many quarters, the state itself has by no means abdicated as the central institution of violence control. This is seen not least in the fact that for most vigilantes the state remains the main address for calls to restore state order and accountability. Furthermore, it is also clear that vigilantism means more than punishing and preventing behavior regarded as deviant according to the standards of the group. Vigilante groups constitute a system of order that ensures a certain degree of security through control of violence, but at the same time is closely tied to a symbolic indentificatory function. They are part of social networks that have been created or “reactivated” as a response by society to a perceived state dysfunctionality in fields that include security and justice. As well as exploiting the “existential gap” (Tetzlaff 2001, 222), they also use the “identity gap” that arises when the symbolic integrative power of a nation-state is shaken. Thus, vigilantism as a “frontier phenomenon” appears not only where the state has lost territorial access to its citizens, but also where its ideological grip has weakened and its legitimacy is contested, so that “the problem is one of reaching hearts and minds rather than actual places” (Abrahams 1998, 169). To assume that the phenomenon of vigilantism would automatically disappear if the state was simply to (resume) dealing with crime and violence effectively would be to underestimate this symbolic identificatory function of the vigilantes. Whereas the appearance of vigilante groups may certainly be seen as a side-effect and an important indicator of social disintegration, vigilantism also has an integrative dimension. In the context investigated here vigilante groups ultimately offer young people (especially men)—often marginalized and lacking prospects for the future—a feeling of belonging and a context in which they can fulfill a task that is regarded as meaningful and generally socially recognized. Accordingly we should ask how vigilante groups could be involved more strongly in disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs (DDR), which have to date been primarily tailored to excombatants from civil wars. Furthermore, vigilantism is not merely a response to inadequate law enforcement by the state, but can also be an indicator of the social contentiousness of the legal principles themselves. This is the case when vigilante groups in Africa make it their job to pursue “witches,” just as when anti-abortion movements in the United States take violent action against those whose behavior is no longer officially punishable under amended legislation. In both cases vigilantes show that the question of what should be classified as “violence” warranting control can be highly controversial within a society and is historically contingent. This should be taken into account in research on control of violence just as much as the contingency of the actors and means involved in control of violence, which is admittedly not unlimited. Accordingly, such research cannot concern itself exclusively with the prospects for (re-)establishing the state monopoly of violence, but

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must also direct attention to other actors and mechanisms based on a broader understanding of “control of violence” because that is the only way established empirical facts such as the process of fragmentation of violence control can also be grasped analytically. As Abrahams found in his study spanning many regions of the world, “[V]igilantism has appeared in too many different times and places in the world for any culturally specific explanation to be wholly satisfactory” (Abrahams 1998, 189). That means that more internationally and historically comparative research is needed—a systematic and theory-led investigation of when and where this diverse phenomenon appears in its different guises and what its manifestation tells us not only about the condition of a state and its capacity to control violence, but also about social conflicts and the condition of the available conflict regulation instruments. Ultimately that could throw up interesting findings and comparisons that also include those smaller-scale areas of limited statehood in the western hemisphere where we would not usually speak of “fragile states.” Acknowledgment I would like to thank Alex Veit for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

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Concluding Remarks Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Wilhelm Heitmeyer

As well as demonstrating the ways in which different societies bring forth their own specific forms of control of violence, the contributions brought together in this volume also show how social and political conditions are shaped by the effects of control. Almost all the contributors agree that while control of violence often remains an unattained goal, it is nonetheless an essential prerequisite for ordered social coexistence. If we understand control of violence as the surveillance and monitoring of all areas of life and the prevention of any and every manifestation of violence, then it has of course always been imperfect in the past and remains so today. A completely non-violent society is of course just as much an impossibility as total control of violence. Violence is employed as a matter of course in social interactions: as a defensive response, as a resource for action, and as a group manifestation; while social disintegration processes for their part help to create individual and collective conditions under which violence appears to offer successful options. Even totalitarian societies of fascist or state communist provenance have proven unable to fully control or prevent violence. Quite the opposite in fact: the continuing existence of violent crime represents an enduring challenge to their claim to exert total control (Brückweh 2005). On the other hand, uncontrolled expressions of violence threaten the very basis of individual and collective life, destroy material resources, erode the certainties of life planning, and undermine one of the central justifications for the existence of the state, namely that it channels, tames, and in the long term monopolizes violence. Even in societies where the state lacks a proper monopoly on violence, other instances such as ethnic groups, competing elites, or churches exercise social control—and thus control of violence—directed toward ensuring the survival of the given system of rule and engendering a minimum of legitimacy. Even in those societies where violence functions as a general and accepted medium of social communication, its destructive effect is nonetheless contained and controlled. A new line of research highlights how weak and incomplete the state monopoly on

H.-G. Haupt (B) Department of History and Civilization, European University Institute, Florence, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

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legitimate physical violence actually is in a global perspective, the extent to which it has generally been the exception rather than the rule in the historical process of state-formation, and how much analyses gain when they treat it as such (Risse and Lehmkuhl 2007). When we home in on the aspect of control, our analytical attention is inevitably drawn toward that part of the spectrum of potential state and political interventions involving the state’s prohibitive possibilities of state activities regulating and disciplining the citizen. Efforts to control violence generally go hand-in-hand with a strengthening of the state apparatus for surveillance and use of force, and often also with restrictions on public and private rights, above all on the citizen’s possibilities and options for action. Tightening the control of access to schools by using porters and private security services, swipe cards, and CCTV has repercussions on the internal structure and atmosphere of the school as a place of free exchange. Measures to expand control of Internet access and use, bank transactions, and travel in the hunt for potential terrorists and their networks quickly reach a point where freedom within society is subordinated to the desire for security. Critical constitutional scholars warn explicitly of this danger (Grimm 2008). On the larger, international scale, heavy outside intervention in and control of societies where the state’s monopoly of violence is incomplete or nonexistent can end up perpetuating conditions of civil strife and parallel structures of legal and illegal violence, as well as consolidating manifestations of imperialist dependency. In all these cases, on levels from the individual to the nation-state, the mechanisms of control, in particular control of violence, are of a top-down nature, a strengthening of central instances at the expense of the citizen. The necessity to control violence in order to establish and maintain the legitimacy of the state compels its organs to deploy the force over which they enjoy a monopoly not only effectively, but also proportionately, and to obtain the broadest possible approval for their interventions. Where control of violence encounters energetic resistance it is robbed of much of its effectiveness, as Friedhelm Neidhardt demonstrates for the example of terrorism. Where state instances fail to win the approval of the majority of the population for their fight against violence, their actions remain ineffective. Nor can the delegation of control powers to non-state institutions such as private security services release the state from its responsibility for public peace and security. The danger of over- or under-reaction remains as the central dilemma of state control of violence. As Bernd Weisbrod underlines, violence is not only a response to existing circumstances; it possesses its own intrinsic logic. Its performative character means that violence also requires state instances to develop definitions, symbols, and rituals that grant their particular interpretations of acts of violence general currency and acceptance in the public contest with other forms of depiction and interpretation. The organs of repression also need to adapt the forms their intervention takes—and often also their internal organizational culture— to the requirements arising out of new control cultures based more on consent and communication. We need look no further than the recent history of interventions by French police in the banlieues or Greek police in political demonstrations to see how quickly, even in a parliamentary democracy, violent measures rooted in a repressive

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logic of control can arouse and radicalize protests. Klaus Weinhauer’s contribution shows the extent to which conflicts between West German police and demonstrators in the 1960s resulted from an outdated organizational culture in the police—which had been shaped in the militarized environment of National Socialism—clashing with a society that had begun questioning authoritarian styles of control. The literature on state control activities highlights the danger of a “fraying out” of the state monopoly, which can occur when the private use of violence or private security services coexist with or even supplant state organs (Schlichte 2000, 167). Thome’s thesis (2004) that the state monopoly of violence has weakened over the past 50 years also belongs in this context. The case studies presented in this volume do not necessarily confirm that diagnosis. Rather, they show pogroms and paramilitary violence outside the bounds of the state generally occurring in historical situations where the state apparatus has been weakened and control instances severely impaired during crises of the existing order or after severe setbacks in war. In this constellation, as Werner Bergmann explains, the violence of pogroms can be interpreted as order-generating in the eyes of the participants. Similar goals were pursued, as Robert Gerwarth illuminates in his contribution, in post-1918 Austria and Hungary by young men joining together in paramilitary gangs to profit from the collapse of functioning control regimes and seek new structures of order. But these have been specific phases, almost always followed by a restoration of territorial and symbolic order, and the restitution of the legitimacy and efficacy of the state’s core organs of violence. Even though vigilante groups in Nigeria today may, as Andrea Kirschner’s contribution shows, reflect and respond to widely perceived losses of control by the state, they remain at the same time closely tied to the state apparatus. Non-state control instances can sometimes play a role in control without this fundamentally calling into question the role of the state. According to Genschel and Zangl, the state’s function merely shifts “from power monopolist to power manager” (2007, 10, translated). Although the state is now by no means the sole instance of control of violence, its role thus still remains central. Jean-Germain Gros argues that one of the most important tasks of the international community is to strengthen existing states and, where necessary, to work to revive them. The contributions stress that actors and organizations at the levels below and above that of the nation-state tend to be supplementary to state institutions of violence control rather than substituting for them, and tend to work through them rather than completely independently. In this volume, violence control is treated not only as a state strategy, but also as one element of a complex constellation of violent actors in their respective milieus. This connection has been addressed especially closely in terrorism research, which points up the importance of a base of support for the perpetrators of terrorist acts, and the necessity to create a broad accord between the wishes of the base and those of the activists. As Friedhelm Neidhardt underlines, as well as control actors having to measure their responses to acts of terrorism—in order to avoid loss of popular acceptance through over- or under-reaction—the terrorist groups themselves must satisfy the wishes of their base or risk losing logistical and symbolic support. Here, as Stefan Malthaner shows, reference groups exert an influence that may have a radicalizing effect on terrorist groups, or conversely may place limits on violence.

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The attitude of these constituencies to the question of civilian and military targets has a direct influence on the choice of means of violence. As Kahled Al-Hashimi and Carolin Goerzig show, debates within Islamic societies about the legitimacy of terrorism are an important factor in negotiations and initiatives to end violent activities. Numerous contributions address perceptions of control deficits. These do not arise automatically out of weak or poorly organized control regimes, but depend on particular constellations and actions. Dagmar Ellerbrock demonstrates how gun ownership did not register as a problem in nineteenth-century Germany until a broad press campaign pointed out the dangers, while Mate Tokic shows that the Australian state felt no need to act against Croatian terrorists based within its territory until the matter was made an issue of political concern. As Dirk Schumann’s contribution shows, shooting incidents were already occurring in the United States before the 1990s, but were not turned into a “moral panic” by the media. There are circumstances where it is the form of media representation and group pressure that turn actions and situations into problems, and generate the perception that control is required. Cultural attributions play an important role here. Taking the example of rampage shootings, Glenn Muschert and Massimo Ragnedda establish the importance of the mass media in disseminating and shaping perceptions of violence, while Ralph Larkin’s contribution emphasizes the centrality of shifting ideas about manliness in the historical development of school shootings. If violence is to be adequately prosecuted and controlled, the controllers of violence need to come up with satisfactory definitions. The history of the fight against crime shows how strongly the definition of criminality is tied to social scaremongering and pathologization, even where scientific principles of perception of reality are being applied (Becker 2002, 2005; Habermas and Schwerhoff 2008). In these times phenomena of violence quickly get assigned to particular categories in order to create fields of action for control measures and justifications for state instances. The widespread criminal categorization of actions carried out with political intent reduces regional aspirations, social conflicts, or political demands simply to the question of the use of violence. And because in the modern political understanding this is the privilege of the state monopoly alone, these actions are rendered illegitimate. Particular definitions of violence and violence control may also open up new opportunities for action. Stating that the United States was at war after 9/11 allowed President George W. Bush to dramatize the situation and call on the full arsenal of military means. Defining particular non-European forms of state organization as “failed states” revives colonial labels and elevates a restoration of statehood to the status of a development imperative. Control discourses that postulate the newness of violent phenomena as posing a special threat have a similar effect, as Jitka Maleˇcková shows in her critical reflection on the “new terrorism.” All these problem definitions and control strategies relate to stereotypes with the power to justify a broad spectrum of control activities. The literature has already highlighted the dangers of a control policy that seeks a broad mobilization of the population against potential or actual wrongdoers in order to exert control over particular parts of society. Here the state acts, as Garland

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puts it, “through civil society and not upon it” (2001, 140). The separation of state and society is overridden, mistrust and intolerance toward minorities are promoted, and as a consequence cohesion within society is undermined. Violence control is no longer seen just as the responsibility of specialized state institutions, but as the duty of the whole population. This objective is also behind the European Union’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy (2005), “But addressing this challenge [terrorism] is beyond the power of governments alone and will require the full engagement of all populations in Europe and beyond.” Such a mobilization inevitably involves special scrutiny of individual personality development and self-optimization. This is the attraction of neuroscientific approaches that promise to identify aberrations of the character at an early stage and treat them with drugs. Especially in the discussion about the prevention of school shootings, we find a clash of different approaches. Whereas one school of thought emphasizes that prevention is in principle possible and calls for a tight web of control, as Rebecca Bondü and Herbert Scheithauer do in their contribution, others refuse to absolutize psychological processes and point to the importance of losses of recognition as one element of social disintegration processes. In this social context Nils Böckler, Thorsten Seeger, and Wilhelm Heitmeyer describe school shootings as one element of the shooter’s loss of control over his own life. The role of the loss of traditional family structures in explaining crime and violence is demonstrated by the comparative study by Steve Messner, Benjamin Pearson-Nelson, and Lawrence Raffalovich, which thus supports an interpretation of school shootings and other individual acts of violence that builds on social constellations. The contributions by Charles Tittle and Helmut Thome bring in the importance of mechanisms of selfcontrol and the ambivalent role of the conscience in the origination and control of violence. Certain authors highlight how problematic it is to apply control to specific spaces, groups, or whole societies, rather than the individual. Cohen already identified this tendency in crime-fighting in the mid-1980s, when he wrote, “the day is ending for all forms of individual intervention. The real master shift about to take place is towards the control of whole groups, populations and environments. . .. In this movement technology and resources . . . are to be directed to surveillance, prevention and control, not ‘tracking’ the individual adjudicated offender, but preventive surveillance . . . of people and spaces” (1885, 127). Here attention is leveled, on the one hand, toward specific parts of cities where violence is concentrated and toward groups held to be susceptible to violence, such as soccer fans, skinheads, and rightwing extremists, and, on the other hand, on the global scale toward regions and states from which violence originates and which have to be controlled. The bounds that have to be observed between necessary violence prevention and pre-emptive action based on prejudice are not always easy to draw even under conditions of rule of law, as becomes clear in the contributions by Hans Kippenberg and Levent Tezcan on the relationship between religion and violence. Challenging the one-sided demonization of religion as the justification and motivation for violent action, Kippenberg and Tezcan both identify specific circumstances under which religious communities use violence; generally when they perceive outside threat or loss of internal

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coherence. This differentiated way of looking at things represents a clear departure from the general suspicion—widely disseminated by the media—that Islam is the root cause behind terrorist attacks. It also takes up the suggestion formulated by Michel Wieviorka that societies must learn to understand violence better and research more thoroughly the motives of the perpetrators as well as taking better account of the expectations of the victims. The authors brought together here provide above all an introduction to the conditions of and possibilities for violence control, and sketch out for specific situations the preconditions under which violence can be limited and controlled. What they do not identify is any clear tendency that could be characterized as an increasing loss of control over violence.

References Becker, P. (2002). Verderbnis und Entartung. Eine Geschichte der Kriminologie des 19. Jahrhunderts als Diskurs und Praxis. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Becker, P. (2005). Dem Täter auf der Spur. Eine Geschichte der Kriminalistik. Darmstadt: Primus. Brückweh, K. (2005). Mordlust. Serienmorde, Gewalt und Emotionen im 20.Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Cohen, S. (1985). Visions of Social Control: Crime: Punishment and Classification. Cambridge: Polity Press. European Union (2005). Council of the European Union, The European Union CounterTerrorism Strategy, 30 November 2005, 14469/4/05 REV4, http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/ en/05/st14/st14469-re04.en05.pdf. Garland, D. (2001). The Culture of Control. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Genschel, P., and Zangl, B. (2007). Die Zerfaserung von Staatlichkeit. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 20–21/2007, 10–16. Grimm, D. (2008). Die Freiheit sichern! In B. Zypries (Ed.), Die Renaissance der Rechtspolitik (pp. 25–30). München: Beck. Habermas, R., and Schwerhoff, G. (Eds.) (2008). Verbrechen im Blick. Perspektiven der neuzeitlichen Kriminalitätsgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Risse, T., and Lehmkuhl, U. (Eds.) (2007). Regieren ohne Staat? Governance in Räumen begrenzter Staatlichkeit (Schriften zur Governance-Forschung, Band 10), Baden-Baden: Nomos. Schlichte, K. (2000). Wer kontrolliert die Gewalt? Leviathan, 28(2), 161–172. Thome, H. (2004). Theoretische Ansätze zur Erklärung langfristiger Gewaltkriminalität seit Beginn der Neuzeit. In W. Heitmeyer and H.-G. Soeffner (Eds.), Gewalt (pp. 315–45). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Subject Index

Note: The letters ‘f’ and ‘t’ following the locators refer to figures and tables respectively. A Accountability, 59, 270, 410, 579, 583, 587 in government, 559 of migrants, 175–176, 179 patterns of, 272 Achievement-oriented society, 253 Action of control, 16–19 “controlling state,” 16 object of control, 17 “potential violent actors,” 18 practices of liberty, 18 science and media, 18 third parties, 18 reflective, 106–107 settings promoting violence, school shooting, 277–279 close attention, 277 interaction processes, 278 sources of recognition, 277–278 social action, 145–161, 537–538 social action theories, see Religious violence, social action theories Actor, 17, 19, 22, 140, 160, 207, 237, 241, 446, 450, 574 Adolescence, 99, 242, 278, 281, 286, 370 Affect modulation, 167–171, 180 Africa apartheid, 58 Great Lakes genocide in, 52 Islamic, 546 postcolonial, 555 pre-colonial, 546, 574 sub-Saharan, 545, 554, 564 vigilantism, see Vigilantism in Nigeria Agency assumptions, self-control theory based on individuals, 113

personal, 94, 113, 123 self-control, concept of dimensions, in human agency perspectives, 126f in perspective of human agency, 126f Aggregated self-control of individuals, 104–105 weak guardianship, 105 Aggression acts of, 154 control, 305–306 fantasies of, 303–304 masculinity and, 284 self-esteem/guilt/shame, 128–133 “existential shame,” 132 guilt anxiety, 131 “harm,” perception of, 132 shame, antisocial potential of, 129 shame–guilt cycle, 132 solitary guilt, 130 structural anomie theory, 129 “transgression,” 131 state failure and, 539 super-ego and, 134 Alcoholism, 500 Al-Hashimi, K/GoerzigI, C., 38, 454, 467–484, 596 Alienation, 250–251, 256, 339, 386, 441 Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and al-Jihad, Egypt, 450–456 assassination of President Sadat, 451 Bin Laden’s 1998 Declaration of War, 455 constraints on violent practices, 454 development, 450–451 Imbaba neighborhood, case of, 452–453 “near enemy”/“far enemy,” 451 phase of violent escalation, 452

599

600 Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya (cont.) “un-Islamic” behavior, prevention of, 452 violent campaign, 453–454 Jihad, 474–477 communication as bargaining power, 475 example of Khaled bin Walid, 475–476 repression and sympathy, 476–477 selective inducements, 475–476 threats to Muslims and Islam, 474 Al-Jihad, Egypt, 450–456 assassination of President Sadat, 451 Bin Laden’s 1998 Declaration of War, 455 constraints on violent practices, 454 development, 450–451 Imbaba neighborhood, case of, 452–453 “near enemy”/“far enemy,” 451 phase of violent escalation, 452 “un-Islamic” behavior, prevention of, 452 violent campaign, 453–454 Al-Qaeda, 38, 158, 173, 421, 455–456 Al-Zawahiri, Ayman, 451, 455, 470, 473, 479 Amok, 331, 347 “Analphabetism,” forms of, 127 Anarchism, 417, 425–426 Anarchist, 366, 380, 416–421, 423, 426, 499 Annual Review of Sociology in 1999, 65 Anomie, concept of, 85, 126, 139, 349, 490 structural anomie theory, 129 Anti-Bolshevik armies, 506 Anti-Jewish violence first wave of pogroms in Imperial Russia (1881–1883), 498–501 pogroms as form of collective violence, 488–491 “collective self-help,” 489 Hep-Hep riots in 1819, 489 model of collective violence, 491t power approach to intergroup hostility, 488 “self-help by a group,” 488 theory of social control from Black, 488 triadic relationship, 489 pogroms in wake of Operation Barbarossa, 509–512 pogrom wave during Russian civil war (1917–1921), 505–507 Polish border wars (1918–1920), 507–509 revolutions of 1830/1847–1848, violence in, 495–498 riots in Europe (1819–1941), 492t–495t

Subject Index second wave of pogroms in Imperial Russia (1903–1906), triggering factors, 501–504 Anti-Semitism, 49, 178, 328, 498, 507, 511, 527–530 Anti-Subject, 51 Anti-violence policy educational initiatives, 358 efforts in schools, 353, 355–356 programs, 340 Assumptions, self-control theory based on, 111–114 “assumptions of necessity/convenience,” 111 attraction to criminal behavior, 112 consumers of theories, confusion of, 111 general strain theory, 111 individuals, personal agency, 113 misbehavior, 112–113 personal experience, 113 Australia (1949–1973) antipodean winter of 1972, 406 anti-Titoist Croatian separatists, 399 anti-Titoist separatist groups, 401 ASIO, 397–398 counter-subversive activities, 399 Australian Army’s Citizens Military Forces (CMF), 402 Australian Labor Party (ALP), 396 Bosnian incursion/Sydney bombings, public reaction, 406 Communist Party of Australia (CPA), 398 Croatian Club and the Australian Croatian Association, 400 Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood (HRB), 396, 401 denouement, 411–412 “Finland” solution, 406–407 government’s leniency toward radical Croatian émigrés, 396, 401 “Operation Kangaroo,” 401 picking sides and choosing battles, 397–401 political fall-out of Murphy Raid, 409–410 reasons for no action against Croat extremists, 404–405 romance’s end, 406–411 “Serbo-communism,” 401 uneasy bedfellows, 401–405 visit of Yugoslav Prime Minister, 407 wire-tapping of “suspected” terrorist leaders, 403

Subject Index Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), 396–400, 402–411 Austria anti-Semitism in, 528–529 interwar, 520 salience of the Austrian right, factors, 520 See also Habsburg Empire, paramilitary violence and dissolution of Authorities crisis of, 214–216 military, 62, 347 orthodox, 180 pagan, 147 religious, 159, 172, 174 school, 233, 251, 280, 289 state, 19, 21–22, 24, 31, 159, 201–202, 528, 539, 543, 582 B Baader, Andreas, 378, 380 Bargaining power, 468, 475, 478–479, 482 Bergmann, W., 39, 487–513, 595 Berlin leaking-project, 36, 307–309 Betrifft: Erziehung. (journal), 250 Bin Laden, Osama, 422, 470, 473, 480, 482 Blackboard Jungle, 237–238 Black Hundreds (Union of the Russian People (URP)), 503 Book of Revelation, 149–150 The Bottom Billion, 536 Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, 149 Bullying, 234, 237, 244, 254–255, 267, 276–277, 281, 286, 289, 296, 307, 317, 330, 332–336, 340, 351, 356 public awareness in school, 330 youthwars, 332 See also School shooting, loss of control Bureaucracy, 205, 540, 545, 548, 555, 558 C Capacity for acting, 277, 279 collective discipline, 104, 109 to deploy force, 546 Ellis’s notion of arousal, 102 idea of affect control, 125 institutional capacity, components of, 558–560, 558t, 560 for internal violence, 540 loss of control over to wage war, 540–541 in maintaining internal order, 541–542 predictive, 94 for “role taking,” 126 for self-regulation, 97, 103

601 of society to regulate itself, 13–15 to wage war, 540–541 See also Failed states Capitalism, 53, 250, 321, 388, 550, 552–554, 556–557 “global” financial capitalism, 53 imperialism of, 556–557 IMF-imposed structural adjustment programs (SAPs), 557 “irrational exuberance,” 556 mobility, 556 Care child care protocols, 99 givers of children with strong self-control, 92–93 giving, 99 health, 452 self-care, 136 Causal mechanism, 94, 101–102, 111, 123 Causes failed states, 557t for fear in society, 289–290 root cause of terrorism, 419 school shooting, 288–289 school violence and control in Germany and US, 245–246 violence as cause of loss of control, 23–24 Ceasefire, 468, 470–472, 475, 478, 481 Charisma, 329, 366, 387–388, 545, 558 Civilization process, 10–11, 49 Civil society, 159, 206–207, 220, 226, 331, 560, 567, 597 Civil war, 7–8, 31, 40, 52, 215–216, 220–222, 224, 367–368, 378, 488, 490, 531, 549, 554–555, 587 English Civil War, 7 model of protest policing, 215 Russian civil war of 1918–1921, 492, 505–508, 517 Clinton and sex wars, 328–329 “Arkansas Project,” 329 “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, 329 Coercion, 9–10, 13, 15, 17, 20, 25, 27, 101, 132, 234, 417, 452, 455, 458, 544, 572 Collective discipline, 104, 109–110 Collective violence, 8, 24, 27, 365, 425, 519, 563 individual and perception patterns, 27 outbreaks in Germany, 426 pogroms as form of, 488–491 “collective self-help,” 489 collective violence, model of, 491t Hep-Hep riots in 1819, 489

602 Collective violence (cont.) model of collective violence, 491t power approach to intergroup hostility, 488 “self-help by a group,” 488 theory of social control from Black, 488 triadic relationship, 489 Urals and the Elbe after 1917–1918, 518 Colonialism, 53, 447, 536, 543, 552, 554–555, 557 Columbine Columbine Effect, 305, 353 massacre, 234, 262 post-Columbine attacks, 350 pre-Columbine 1990s, 254–255 public health approach, 255 social-ecological approach, 255 Communication as bargaining power, 475, 478–479 channels of protest policing, 223–224 gun violence/control in Germany 1880–1911 public communication, 206–207 in school shootings, 346–348 classroom avenger shootings, 347 mass-media accounts, 346–347 via media, shooters, 349–350 Community -based recreation, 108 of believers, see Militant Islamist movements and their constituencies Communist-minded, 509 -designated surrogate parents, 108 discipline, 576 economic necessity and, 107 gay, 321 international, 39, 403, 537, 547, 560, 569, 595 -level framing, 351 migrant, 177 or group level phenomena, 103 “purified,” 518 radical, 438, 462 religious, 34, 159–160, 167, 446–447, 449, 456 self-control, link with, 104 socialization, 108 structures, 97, 105, 110, 122 values of any, 559–560 Competence expressive, 125–126 instrumental, 125 moral, 121, 126

Subject Index See also Self-control, concept of Conscience, concept of, 133–140 cognitive developmental approach, 134 conscience, treatment of, 133 “ego-syntony”/“morality,” 135 experience of self-transcendence, 138 heteronomous and autonomous conscience, 135 moral balance, conception of, 137 “moral disengagement,” theory of, 139 typology of conformity motives (Nunner-Winkler), 136–137, 136t Conservatism, 180, 543 Constituencies, 36, 38, 324, 445–452, 596 influence of, 36 See also Militant Islamist movements and their constituencies Contingencies, 93, 96–97, 122, 544 neglect of, 96–97 criminal opportunities, 97 cross-national variation, 97 exercise of self-control, 97 opportunity, 96–97 overuse of self-control, 97 See also Weaknesses, self-control Contraction, 549–551, 553–556 See also Failed states Control agents, 19, 186, 197 ambivalence of, 25, 39, 262, 567, 584 balance theory, 13–14, 274, 276 culture of, 354, 357 deficiency of, 305–306 dilemmas of, 22–23 external, 13–15, 27 formal, 13–14, 25 informal, 15, 19, 33, 306 institution(al), 25, 33, 65–87, 167 internal, 19 interpersonal, 295 intrapersonal, 305 loss of double loss of control, theory of, 261 over to wage war, 540–541 violence as cause of, 23–24 mechanisms, 4, 10, 12–13, 15–22, 24–27, 32–33, 36–37, 39, 519, 535, 543, 548, 574, 576, 585, 594 organs, 487, 489–491, 499, 501, 503 social, see Social control as state repression or social self-regulation, models of social order, 7–9

Subject Index Adam Smith, cooperation and normative systems, 8 Hirschman, repression/harnessing of human passions, 8–9 individual and collective violence, 8 Thomas Hobbes, political theory of, 7 strategies, 14, 16–18, 20–23, 25, 27, 30, 34–35, 37–38, 250, 256, 289–291, 596 style, 22, 35, 274 of terror, see Control of terror theories, 13, 111–112, 123 understanding of, 6–21 origins, 6–7 paradigm of control, 15–21 sense of domination/verification, 6–7 sociological and historical perspectives, 7–15 of violence, see Control of violence Control of terror individual terrorists Hamas, 418 Hizballah fighters, 418 MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, 419 “new terrorists,” definition, 415 Palestinian Islamic Jihad, 418 Palestinian suicide bombers, 417 “propaganda by the deed,” 416 suicide terrorism, 416 Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, 419 “new terrorism,” 415 predictability and control, 422–424 democracies, 423 Lashkar e Jhangvi, 423 terrorist organizations and aims, 419–422 Al-Qaida, 420 anarchist or Black International, 420–421 “Muslim terrorism,” 422 religious motivation behind 9/11, 422 root cause of terrorism, 419 suicide terrorism, 421 terrorist threat after 9/11, 416 threat and response, 424–427 antiterrorist provisions after 9/11, 426–427 media, role of, 424–425 See also Control of violence Control of violence ambivalence of violence, 5–6 “essentially contested concepts,” 5–6 structural violence, concept of, 5 “violent action,” 5 anti-violence programs, 340

603 concept of, 3 empirical fields of, 28–32 Lax enforcement of weapons laws, 338–339 normative environment/hypermasculine ideal in schools, 338–339 perception patterns and social conditions, 25–28 “pre-modern” outbreak of ethnic violence, 5 relationships of, 21–25 role of rational, bureaucratic state, 4 sensitizing concept, 4 social order and problem of controlling, 3–5 understanding of control, 6–21 See also Control of terror Corporal punishment, 234, 241–242, 278 Counterculture, 148, 315–317, 320 Counter-revolution, 324, 371, 376, 504, 521, 525 Counter-terrorism, 38, 432, 434–436, 439, 597 conditions of success, 432, 436 over- and under reaction, 434, 436 persecution dilemma, 435 Crime/criminal attraction, 98, 102 behavior attraction to, 112 definition, 124 morality, predictor of, 98 criminalization of Islamic charitable organizations, 158 General Theory of Crime, 13, 121 “November criminal,” 368 opportunities, 96–97 vigilantes at the “frontiers” of state “polyvalent nature of concept of crime,” 578 Croatia anti-Titoist Croatian separatists, 399 Australian Croatian Association, 400–401 Croatian Club, 400, 404 Croatian Liberation Movement, 402 Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood (HRB), 395–396, 401 immigrants, 401 nationalist groups in Australia, 400 radical Croatian émigrés, 396, 401–403 right-wing Croatian political organizations, 400 separatists, 37, 395–397, 399, 401, 403–412

604 Croatia (cont.) terrorism, 37, 397, 405, 408, 410–412 See also Australia (1949–1973) Cross-national homicide trends in late twentieth century data sources/variables/measures, 67–70 cultural context, 70 death statistics, WHO/ICD, 67 determinants, material/demographic/integrative/ cultural, 68 income inequality, 69 infant mortality rate, 70 material context, 68–69 model specification, 67 population, 70 dynamic modeling of homicide rates, 80–84 systematic trends in homicide, 70–79 Cuban Missile Crisis, 51 Cult, 148–149, 165, 169, 325, 331, 380–381, 389 Culture/cultural of control, 354, 357 counter-, 148, 315–317, 320 gun, 192–193, 195, 317 hippies, of, 315–316, 320 influences, 97, 122, 153, 449 link between violence and, 48 new peer-group youth, 238 police, organizational, 214, 225, 594–595 postmodern, 323 reflective behavior, of, 109 scripts, 283–284, 347–348, 350 self-control, 105 sub-, 131, 139, 246–248, 254, 317, 327, 330, 332–334, 339–340, 350, 521, 524 violence, of, 350, 356, 375–377, 389 D Darfur crisis, 52 Defeat of America in Vietnam War, 322 of Barry Goldwater in 1964, 323 of Islamists in Egypt, 472 of Nazism/collapse of Third Reich, 338 and revolution, 519, 522–523, 526, 531 See also Failed states Der Pauker (The Crammer), 237–238, 242 Deterrence, 101, 123 Developmental pathway, 304 Deviance organizational, 305

Subject Index secondary, 14 Dialogue, 177–179, 468, 475, 477 governmental, 179 Die Deutsche Schule (journal), 249–251, 253 Die Halbstarken, 237 Discipline collective, 104, 109 school, 242, 252–253 self-control values self-discipline/self-restraint, Salt Lake City, 106 Discipline and Punish, 11 Divorce rates, 68–69 and control variables, changes in, 82t–83t See also Homicide rates, dynamic modeling of Doctors Without Borders, success of, 559 Doctrine of hypernationalism, 530 Doctrine of self-determination, 518 Dominance, 9, 80, 222, 277, 284, 319, 338, 348, 490, 550, 574 Domination, 6, 11, 53, 315, 321, 323, 332, 334, 339–340, 450, 537, 551–552 Double loss of control, theory of, 261 Dutschke, Rudi, 377 E Ecological phenomena, 110 Ego-syntony, 135–136, 138 Egypt al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and al-Jihad, 450–456 assassination of President Sadat, 451 Bin Laden’s 1998 Declaration of War, 455 constraints on violent practices, 454 development, 450–451 Imbaba neighborhood, case of, 452–453 “near/far enemy,” 451 phase of violent escalation, 452 “un-Islamic” behavior, prevention of, 452 violent campaign, 453–454 defeat of Islamists in, 472 Egyptian Islamic Jihad (al-Jihad), 467 Egypt’s al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya, 469 Elias, Norbert, 10, 49, 56, 389, 563 Elite division, 548–549, 557 End to violence subject and violence, 47–51 subject policies, 60–63

Subject Index anti-subject, 61 floating subject, 60 hyper-subject, 61 non-subject, 61 survivor subject, 62 victims’ perspective, 55–60 violence and globalization, 51–55 Enemy far, 451, 469–470, 473, 478–479 near, 451, 455, 470, 473 English Civil War, 7 Ensslin, Gudrun, 378, 380 Environmental degradation, 547–549, 557 Envy, 166, 171, 389, 525 Eretz Yisrael, concept of, 153 Ethnic cleansing, 52, 59 Ethnic conflict, 487–488, 584 Ethnic group, 139, 234, 488–489, 531, 549, 593 Ethnocide, 56 Ethnonationalism, 507 Exceptional Case Study Project (ECSP), 296 Exclusion and classification, school shooting, 262–263 control strategies of, 20 and separation, 241 Explanation causes for shooting, reductionist, 265 of criminal conduct, 122 Extremism, 176–179, 396, 402, 405, 408–410 F Failed states causes, 557t imperialisms, see Imperialisms, failed states 12 indicators, 536 macro-level: internal structural factors demographic and environmental problems, 547 environmental degradation, 547–548 intra-elite fights, 549 military, increased spending, 548 overextension, 546–547 population growth, 547 meta-level: external structural factors, 549–550 commonalties among failed states, 550 Structural Adjustment Programs, 550 micro-level: elites, 544–545 formal education of elites, 545 patrimonialism, 545

605 projection of power by the ruler, 545 outcome of efforts of any organization, 544 overextension, 546 rebuilding failed states, 557–561 components of institutional capacity, 558t institutional design, 559 legitimacy, 559 security, 560 US National Security Strategy, 557 values of any community, 559–560 state failure typology, 542f states, 537–539 functions of statecraft, 537 national ruler, 537 taxonomy of state failure state failure typology, 542f type i, loses control over order maintenance and war making, 539 type ii, loses control over internal order, 540 type iii, loses control over capacity to wage war, 540–541 type iv, lacks control over both internal order and war making, 541 “Family legitimacy” thesis, 79–80 Fantasies, violent, 36, 267, 274, 278, 286–288, 300–301, 303–305, 356, 523, 525 “Far enemy” doctrine, 470 “Fatalism,” 126 The Feminine Mystique, 321 Feminism, 321, 328, 336 Firearms, 35, 148, 187–188, 191–195, 197, 199–200, 202, 204–205, 224, 276, 290, 296, 299, 301–302, 307, 504 Fixing Failed States, 536 Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 234 Foucault, Michel, 9, 11–12, 18, 20, 29, 76 Framing concept of, 488 of conflict, 154 in media, 385 legal framing of terrorist act, 374 news of Columbine, 351 of particular motivations, categories, 437 political framing of violence in public speech acts, 388 school shootings, 265, 351 of situation, 150, 152 of social problem, 355 Freikorps, 337, 366, 368–370, 376, 380, 387, 520, 523, 531 Frontier phenomenon, 578, 583, 587

606 G The Gang, 246 Gangs, 235, 237–240, 246, 251, 254, 317, 340, 379, 382, 389, 417, 438, 452, 505, 510, 573, 575, 577, 595 violence, 322, 382–383, 417, 438, 452, 573 GCI, see German Conference on Islam (GCI) Genealogy of Morals, 174 General strain theory, 111 “General Theory of Crime,” 13, 121–125 Geneva Convention, 155 Genocide, 4–5, 48, 52, 399, 487–488, 492, 518 Great Lakes genocide in Africa, 52 in Rwanda, 4 German autumn, 382, 385 German Conference on Islam (GCI), 177 German–Russian treaty of Rapallo, 368 The Germans, 11 Germany, gun violence/control (1880–1911), see Gun violence/control in Germany 1880–1911 Gerwarth, R., 39, 376, 517–531, 595 Globalization, 26, 51–55, 60, 419–420, 455, 535, 556 violence and, 51–55 See also Violence and globalization Global Salafi Jihad, 420 Goldstein, Baruch, 152, 154 Government accountability in, 559 dialogue, 179 step toward control activities, data/debate/legislation, 205 Governmentality, concept of, 12, 20 Gratification, 99, 101–102, 113, 122–124 Great Lakes genocide in Africa, 52 The Green Berets, 322 Gros, J,-G., 39, 535–561, 563, 566, 571, 595 Group anti-Titoist separatist, 401 A-Team, paramilitary group, 327 consciousness-raising groups, 321 dynamics, 224, 253, 468, 474, 476–477, 482 ethnic group, 139, 234, 488–489, 531, 549, 593 GCI, working groups, 178 mass suicide, North American Peoples Temple group, 148 militant groups, 38, 420, 424, 448–450, 469 militant Islamist groups, 446–449 nationalist groups in Australia, 400

Subject Index nations, geo-cultural groupings, 77f new peer-group youth, 238 peer group, recognition in, 276–277 power approach to intergroup hostility, 488 projects and group work without firm control, 242 reference group controls and opportunity structures, 435–439 militant Islamist movements and, 448–450 theory, 431, 438, 448 right-wing hate groups, 326 “self-help by a group,” 488 vigilante groups, see Vigilantism in Nigeria Guerrilla, 62, 134, 217, 366, 377–379, 383, 395 urban, 366, 377–379 Guilt anxiety, 131 “existential shame,” 132 “harm,” perception of, 132 self-esteem/shame/aggression, 128–133 shame, antisocial potential of, 129 shame–guilt cycle, 132 solitary guilt, 130 structural anomie theory, 129 “transgression,” 131 Gun culture, 192–193, 195, 317 Gun violence/control in Germany 1880–1911 contexts, categories, questions, 185–189 control, delay of, 199–203 bans on arms, 202 1909/1910, bearing arms in, 201 observations, 200–201 control, varying features of, 208–209 time and perception gap, 209 handguns, omnipresence of, 198–199 cultural embedding of weapons, 198 knives to guns, 189–192 culture, 192 locations, 191 means, 191 motives, 191 perpetrators and victims, 190–191 reason for culture of, 192 material base, new weapons, 193 attractiveness, 194 dissemination, reason for, 194–195 gun-producing industry, growth of, 195 pistols, list of, 193 technological development, 193 transformation, features of, 193

Subject Index occurrence and perceptions, 187–189 Lübeck situation, 188 Senate of Hamburg, summary by, 189 pre-modern patterns meet modern technology, 197–198 failure of violence control, 197 pre-modern violence control habits of violent interaction/control, 196–197 step toward control, 203–208 government activities, data/debate/legislation, 205 gun laws to control politicized violence (1928), 208 interruption in 1914 by World War I, 208 media attention to gun violence, 203–204 newspaper coverage/press campaign, 205 parliamentary debates, 204 politicization of gun violence, 206–207 public communication, 206–207 violence/control balance, 209 Gush Emunim, 152–153 H Habsburg Empire, paramilitary violence and dissolution of anti-Bolshevism, 518 paramilitary violence, 517 patterns of violence, 520–530 anti-Semitism in Austria, 528–529 Austro-Bavarian Oberland League, 526–527 European revolutions of autumn 1918, 521 experiences in Budapest, 522 “Golden International,” 528 Hungarian White Terror, 529 interwar Austria, 520 Jewish–Slavic Bolshevism, 530 postwar project of “cleansing” nation, 526 salience of Austrian right, factors, 520 “source of Bolshevism,” 528 transitional period of 1918–1919, 520 Treaty of St. Germain, 522–523 warriorhood, fantasies, 524–525 war youth generation, 523 Russian Revolution, 519 Haiti, 541, 548, 550, 556 Halloween vandalism, 240

607 Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), 153–154, 158–160, 417–419, 421, 440 Hanns-Martin Schleyer, assassination of, 376–386 “battle against terrorism,” 384 contemporary media regimes, 376 creation of urban guerrilla, 376 “Das Konzept Stadtguerrilla,” 380 demonstrations of self-starvation, 381 “fascist dramaturgy,” 383 “generation of Auschwitz,” 381 “German autumn” of 1977, 382 “Kommando Holger Meins,” 382 “massacre of Mogadishu and Stammheim,” 383 “mass psychology of fascism,” 380 “military option,” 383 news management, 384 Red Army Faction (RAF), 376 Socialist Students Union (SDS), 376 voluntarist reasoning, 376 Hedonism, 106 Hegemonic masculinity in crisis, 322–323 defeat of America in Vietnam War, 322 parodies, 322 postmodern culture, 323 Heimwehr, 520–522, 525, 527 Heitmeyer, H/Böckler, N., 29, 36, 261–291 Hep-Hep riots in 1819, 489 “Hippies,” culture of, 315–316 Hizbullah in Lebanon, 456–461 Hassan Nasrallah, 459 Holy Struggle for Reconstruction, 459 infitah, or openness, 460 insurgency against Israeli forces, 456 Islamic resistance for Lebanon, 460–461 Islamic revolution, 456 Lebanonization, 460 relationship Shiite population, 457–458 Hobbes, Thomas, 7, 49, 145, 205 Homicide rates, dynamic modeling of, 80–84 changes in divorce rates and control variables, 83t “family legitimacy” thesis, 79–80 alternative intimate relationships, 80 “depopulation” of American homes, 80 regressions, changes in divorce rates and control variables, 82t results, 82–84 statistical procedures, 80–82 Homicide, trends in cycles, 66, 77, 79, 84 downturn of, 72, 74, 76–77, 79, 84–86

608 Homicide, trends in (cont.) results, cross-national patterns, 76–79 homicide rate, 77f–78f nations, geo-cultural groupings, 77f nations, reversal of increase in homicide rates, 79f spline regression modeling, technique of, 70–76 application/utility of, 72 Iceland, 72, 73f Japan, 74, 75f Norway, 72, 74f Venezuela, 74, 75f upturn of, 78 Honor, 105, 139, 148, 153, 174, 187, 196, 198, 375, 383, 462, 525 Hungary, 39, 496, 507, 519–531, 595 Hypermasculinity, 325, 331, 337 of National Socialism, 337 See also Masculinity and school shooters I Identity Arturo Blasi’s interpretation of identity, 137 assertion of identity, 271–272 Christian Identity movement, 326 collective identity, 56–57, 462, 570 cultural identity, 566 gender role identity, 284 “identity gap,” 587 identity of potential perpetrators, 28 identity politics, 584 militants’ social identity, 462 of modern statehood, 432 moral identity, 135 national identity policy, 570 Nigerian identity, 570 politics, 179, 567, 579, 584, 586 positive identity, 57 religious identity, 176–177, 181 social identity, 274, 283 violence-prone identity, 337 Ideology anti-Jewish ideology, 507, 510 ethno-nationalist, 5 free-trade ideology of Reagan–Bush era, 326 hegemonic ideology of masculinity, 316, 324 of high school, 332, 339 “ideology of the pure deed,” 370 imperialist, 555

Subject Index Jihadi ideology, 469, 489 justification for violence, 470 of Marx, 526 Nazi ideology, 441 racist ideology, 326 upwardly mobile society states, 273 Idi Amin, tyranny of, 545, 554 Imperialisms, failed states expansion-contraction I/II, 550 imperialism of capitalism, 556–557 IMF-imposed structural adjustment programs (SAPs), 557 “irrational exuberance,” 556 mobility, 556 imperialism of raison d’état, 551–556 colonization, 551 competition for control over other states, 552 demise of, 553–554 designation of colony, 552 diversity among institutions, 552 religion, 552 territorial reconfiguration, 555 phases of Western imperialism, 551t Impulsivity, 92, 124 Incentives, selective, 20, 287, 431, 541, 545, 566 Individual and collective violence, 8, 27, 62 Inducements, selective, 468, 475–476, 479–480, 482 Institutions control, 25, 33, 65–87, 167 diversity among, 552 legitimacy, 86 “twilight institutions,” 583 Integrated theory, 98, 112, 123 Integration “confessionalization of integration policy” of Muslim migrants, 179 governability, agent of integration age of multiculturalism, 175–179 See also Religion and control of violence social disintegration theory, 268–274 Interaction escalation, dynamics of, 284–289 habits of violent interaction/control, 196–197 of individual factors, deficits, 267–268 phase of violent escalation, al-Jihad, 452 processes, school shooting, 278 Symbolic Interactionism, 448

Subject Index International Classification of Diseases (ICD), 67 Internet, impact of, 275, 300, 306, 311, 331, 337, 424, 442, 594 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 378, 418, 427, 438 Islam(ism), 61, 178, 447 inner-Islamic debate, 38, 467–469, 477, 481, 483 Islamic Jihad, 445 militant, 445–463 of Taliban, 180 Israel American protestants, restoration of Israel in Palestine, 154–155 premillennialism, 154 re-establishing of Jewish temple, 155 insurgency against Israeli forces, 456 struggling for palestine as Islamic Waqf concept of eretz Yisrael, 153–154 wars, redemption/settlements in occupied territories, 151–153 Israel and Arab states, conflict between, 152–153 Kook’s doctrine, 152 Six-Day War in 1967, 151 treaty of Oslo, 152 Zionism, interpretation of, 151 J Jewish–Slavic Bolshevism, 531 Jews, see Anti-Jewish violence; Israel Jihad al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s change of mind, 474–477 communication as bargaining power, 475 example of Khaled bin Walid, 475–476 repression and sympathy, 476–477 selective inducements, 475–476 threats to Muslims and Islam, 474 background, 469–473 al-Jamaa’s leadership, 471–472 Al-Qaida to give up armed struggle, 470 assassination of Anwar Sadat, 471 happenings, 469–472 Imam’s al-Jihad, 472 reactions to peace initiative, 473 revision’s ambivalent effects, 472 unilateral cessation of violence, 469 Egyptian Islamic Jihad (al-Jihad), 467 Egypt’s al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya, 469

609 enabling Jihad, disabling Al-Qaida, 477–481 al-Zawahiri’s criticism/reaction, 479–480 communication as bargaining power, 478–479 factors, 477 far enemy doctrine, 478 repression and sympathy, 480–481 Sayyid Imam, 478 selective inducements, 478–479 Luxor massacre in 1997, 469 Jones, Jim, 148–149 Juvenile delinquency, 35, 237–238, 240–243, 246–247 K Kieler Zeitung, 204 Knights under the Prophet’s Banner, 455, 479 Kook’s doctrine, 152 Korean War, 51 L Labeling, 14, 18, 25, 235, 291, 339 Landshut hijacking, 383 1923 Lausanne Treaty, 531 Leaking, 36, 298–299, 307–309 Lebanon Holy Struggle for Reconstruction, 459 infitah, or openness, 460 insurgency against Israeli forces, 456 Islamic resistance for, 460–461 Islamic revolution, 456 Lebanonization, 460 relationship with Shiite population, 457–458 Level macro, 31, 33, 38–40, 86, 103, 485–598 meso, 29, 33, 36–38, 363–484 micro, 28, 33, 35–36, 86, 231–361, 544–545, 557 See also Failed states; Violence and control, fields of relationship LICUS (low income countries under stress), 536 “Life adjustment” approach to education, 238–239 The Logic of Control, 15 M Maccabean revolt, 147 Making States Work, 536 Maleckova, 37 Martyrism, 50

610 Marxism, 404 -Leninism, 380 Masculinity and school shooters America, hegemonic masculinity in, 317–319 Clinton and sex wars, 328–329 control of violence, 338–340 Germany, rampage shootings defeat of Nazism/collapse of Third Reich, 338 hegemonic masculinity in crisis, 322–323 “hippies,” emergence of, 315–316 hypermasculinity of National Socialism, 337 new militarism and paramilitarism, 326–328 rampage shootings in US from 1980s, 332–335 Reagan, Ronald, 323–325 wars, 319–320 women’s movement and gender politics, 321 youthwars, 329–332 See also Individual entries Masculinity wars African American men, 320 Black Panther Party, 320 free-trade ideology of the Reagan–Bush era, 326 Hippies culture, 320 middle-class youth movement, 320 right-wing hate groups, 326 Masochism, 51 Massacre Luxor massacre in 1997, 469 of Mogadishu and Stammheim, 383 Montréal Massacre, 348 targeted school violence school shootings/rampage and, 296 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, 350 Media communication in school shootings, 346–348 classroom avenger shootings, 347 mass-media accounts, 346–347 communicative processes, role of, 346 framing, 351 mass media, 350–352 coverage of 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, 351 social problem, 350 and “moral panic,” 234–235, 596

Subject Index natural history of school shootings, 352–353 Columbine Effect, 353 fatal attacks, 352 natural history of social problems, 352 risk tolerance, 353 safety, definition, 353 social values and conflicts of values, 353 Rashomon effect, 345 research on effects of media violence, 357–359 shooters communication via media, 349–350 degradation ceremonies, 349 Montréal Massacre, 348 natural born killers, 350 performative script, 348–349 post-Columbine attacks, 350 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, 350 wilding, 349 social control as communicative response, 354–355 anti-violence policies, 355 attacking symbolic targets, 355 cultural conflict, 354 social restructuring of schools, ignored, 354 violence, 300–301, 303–304, 351, 354 See also Media Meinhof, Ulrike, 378, 382, 438 Memory, 47, 56, 58, 152, 329, 357, 373, 511, 523 Mental disorder, 266–267, 301, 303 Meso-level phenomena, 29, 33 Messner, S. F., 65–87, 103, 123, 129, 597 Micro-level phenomena, 28, 33, 35, 86, 544, 557 Middle East conflict, religious violence, 150–159 American protestants, restoration of Israel, 154–155 premillennialism, 154 re-establishing of Jewish temple, 155 Armistice Demarcation Lines of 1949, 151 Israel’s wars, redemption/settlements, 151–153 Israel and Arab states, conflict between, 152–153 Kook’s doctrine, 152 Six-Day War in 1967, 151 treaty of Oslo, 152 Zionism, interpretation of, 151

Subject Index Judea and Samaria, 151 “resistance fighter” vs. “terrorist,” 155–156 additional Protocol (I) to Geneva Convention, 155 terrorism, definition, 155–156 Resolution 242, 150 September 11, War in the Way of God (Ghazwa) declaration of war in form of fatwa, 157 Spiritual Manual, 157 “World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders,” 156 struggling for Palestine as Islamic Waqf, 153–154 concept of eretz Yisrael, 153–154 Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), 153 Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), 153 revival among Sunnis, 154 US war against Islamic networks, 157–159 criminalization of Islamic charitable organizations, 158 executive order 13224, 158 Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center, 158 Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, 158 “Subject: Humane Treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees,” 157–158 zakat committee, 158 Migration, 104, 187, 202, 238, 241, 399, 451, 491, 501, 504 Militant groups, 38, 420, 424, 448–450, 469 Militant Islamist movements and their constituencies development of support relationships, 463 Egypt, al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and al-Jihad, 450–456 Hizbullah in Lebanon, 456–461 militant Islamist movements and groups, 448–450 “religious terrorism,” 446–448 Militarism, 324, 326–328, 336–337, 405 Militarization, 546, 548–549, 557 Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla, 379 Modern societies, control of violence, 9–12 Foucault, “disciplinary societies,” 11–12 Norbert Elias, 9–10 “panoptic” mechanism of power, 11 rule, 9–10 Weber, control as rule, 9–10

611 Zygmunt Bauman, 11 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, 509 Monotheism, 146–147, 169 Montréal Massacre, 348, 352 Moral balance, conception of, 137 Moral disengagement, theory of, 139 Morality, 34, 92, 98, 100, 122, 124–125, 135–137, 136t Moral panic, 35, 234–236, 238, 243, 249, 252–254, 346, 388, 596 Muschert, G. W., 35, 262, 265, 267, 336, 345–359, 596 Music riots, 219–225 Muslim migrants, accountability of, 175–176 religion and governability “confessionalization of integration policy,” 179 Muslims, moderate, 61, 175, 421 My Lai massacre, 62 Mysticism, 169 N Nasrallah, Hassan, 459–460 National Counterterrorism Center, 423 National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), 221 Neidhardt, F., 14, 22, 27, 37–38, 431–442, 594–595 New militarism and paramilitarism, 326–328 A-Team, paramilitary group, 327 Brady Amendment, 328 characteristics of new warrior, 327 conservative organizations/militias, 328 events of revolts, 328 fall of Soviet Union, 327 Nizkor Project, 328 Vietnam syndrome, 327 Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Front (NDPVF), 575 Niger Delta Vigilante Group (NDVG), 575 Nigeria, vigilantism in, see Vigilantism in Nigeria Norms cultural, 284 of inviolability, 285 moral, 137, 140 normative environment, 338–339 oriented mechanisms of control, 27 social, 7 North American People’s Temple, 148 O Oil shock of 1973, 243, 249 One-Dimensional Man, 315

612 “On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law,” 145 On the Road to Armageddon, 155 Operation Kangaroo, 401 Order maintenance, 539–540, 547 social, 3–5, 7–8, 10–11, 17, 21, 39, 84–85, 159, 168, 170–171, 339, 354, 449–450, 462, 566, 576 Organisation Consul, 367–369 Organization conservative organizations/militias, 328 control within social environment/organizations, 305–306 criminalization of Islamic charitable organizations, 158 deviance, 305 failed states, outcome of efforts of any organization, 544 organizational deviance, 305 police, organizational culture, 214, 225, 594–595 terrorist, 37, 328, 384, 395, 403–404, 406, 416, 419–422, 424, 472 terrorist organizations and aims, 419–422 Our Nation’s Schools—A Report Card: “A” in School Violence and Vandalism, 243 Overextension, 546–547 P Palestine, 147, 151–155, 158, 173, 383, 421, 440–441, 450, 472 American protestants, restoration of Israel in, 154–155 premillennialism, 154 re-establishing of Jewish temple, 155 struggling as Islamic Waqf, 153–154 concept of eretz Yisrael, 153–154 Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), 153 Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), 153 revival among Sunnis, 154 Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), 417–419, 421 Paradigm of control, 15–21 field of action of control, 16–19 “controlling state,” 16 object of control, 17 “potential violent actors,” 18 practices of liberty, 18 science and media, 18 third parties, 18 forms and styles of control, 19–20

Subject Index external forms of control, 19 formal, 19 informal, 19 risk society, 20 strategies and mechanisms of control, 20–21 authoritarian or totalitarian dictatorships, 21 control strategies of exclusion, 20 two dimensions of control, 16 state and private/formal and informal, 16 Paramilitarism, 326–328 Parliamentarianism, 527 Partisan war (Bandenkampf ) of World War II, 217 Paternalism, 217 Peer group, 93, 100, 238, 262, 266, 273–274, 276–281, 286, 289, 291, 301, 330 influence, 98 new peer-group youth, 238 pressure, 240 recognition in group, 276–277 rejection, 301 Perception patterns/social conditions of violence control, 25–28 control deficit, 28 “global governance,” 26 “historical automatism,” theory of civilization, 27 individual and collective violence, 27 modern subject, 26–27 phenomena of “shifting violence,” 27 social level, 25–26 state level, 25–26 “under-enforcement of law,” 28 of violence, 38, 187, 199, 202, 207–208 Performance violence, 366 Performative script, 36, 346, 348–349, 354–357 Phi Delta Kappan (journal), 247 Pogroms first wave in imperial Russia (1881–1883), 498–501 as form of collective violence, 488–491 “collective self-help,” 489 collective violence, model of, 491t Hep-Hep riots in 1819, 489 model of Collective Violence, 491t power approach to intergroup hostility, 488

Subject Index self-help by a group, 488 theory of social control from Black, 488 triadic relationship, 489 during Russian civil war, 1917–1921, 505–507 second wave in Imperial Russia, (1903–1906), triggering factors, 501–504 in wake of Operation Barbarossa, 509–512 Police, organizational culture, 214, 225, 594–595 Policing of collective protests in West Germany (1960s), see West Germany, policing of collective protests in 1960s Polish border wars, 1918–1920, 507–509 Polish-Soviet Peace Treaty, 509 Polish–Ukrainian conflict, 508 Polish Uprising of 1921, 520 Political opportunity structure, 436, 489–490, 491t, 495, 513 Population civil, 456 contours of, 68 cross-border, 85 features of, 70 related to changes in homicide rates, 83 repression of, 540 size and age structure, 84 state and, 547 Poverty, 83, 491t, 547, 549, 557t Power approach to intergroup hostility, 488 communication as bargaining power, 475 economic, 54 model, 490 “panoptic” mechanism of, 11 projection by the ruler, 545 self-empowerment, 171–175, 388, 531 state power, response, 432–433 Vigilantism in Nigeria, sources of power and legitimacy, 579–580 Premillennialism, 154 Prevention classical types of, 177 school shootings control and prevention, 306–311 See also School shootings, prevention situational crime, 34, 140 “un-Islamic” behavior, 452 Prisoner, 148, 379, 382–383, 385, 475, 512, 524 Propaganda among Croatian immigrants, 401

613 anti-Semitic, 528 armed, 379 by the deed, 365–367, 378, 386, 388, 416–417, 420, 432, 437, 439, 441 Fascist propaganda in Australia, 400 by gunshots, 377 state murders, effect of, 383 Protocol (I) to Geneva Convention, additional, 155 Provocation, 37, 220, 432–434, 508 terrorist, 433 “Proxy” wars, 53 Psychologie des foules, 522 R Race, 176–177, 243, 256, 488, 550, 556 Racism, 178, 235, 316, 321, 323, 330, 356 Radicalization, 38, 222, 281–284, 450–456, 462–463, 477, 482, 523, 530 Raison d’État, imperialism of, 551–556 American postcolonial adjustment, 555 colonization, 551 competition for control over other states, 552 demise of, 553–554 designation of colony, 552 diversity among institutions, 552 religion, 552 territorial reconfiguration, 555 Rampage shootings in Germany defeat of Nazism/collapse of Third Reich, 338 in US from 1980s, 332–335 boldness of elite students, 334 Eastern establishment, 333 Reagan Revolution, 334 “the silent majority,” 333 “thrasher” subcults/“Goth,” 333 Rashomon effect, 345, 467 See also Media Rathenau, Walther, see Walther Rathenau, assassination of Rational choice theory, 537 Rationality, 123, 125, 127, 235, 265, 365, 445, 474–476, 478, 545, 554 “Reaganomics,” 325 Reagan, Ronald, 323–325 Berkeley Free Speech movement, 323 decertify PATCO, 324 liberation of youth/women/gays/ minorities, 323 “Reaganomics,” 325

614 Reagan, Ronald (cont.) “rust belt” of manufacturing industries, 325 Social Security disability payments, 325 “stagflation,” 324 Recidivists, 104 Red Army Faction (RAF), 366, 376, 384, 387, 389, 438 Reference groups, militant Islamist movements and, 448–450 forms of orientation, 449 influence and control, behavior of militant groups, 450 Symbolic Interactionism, 448 Reference group theory, 431, 438, 448–449 Regime change, 487–513 Relationships of control and violence, 21–25 ambivalence of violence control, 24–25 “establishment violence,” concept of, 25 dilemmas of control, control measures as triggers or escalators of violence, 22–23 perceived appropriateness, 22 “wave phenomenon,” 23 losses of control as prerequisites for the genesis of violence, 21–22 violence as cause of loss of control, 23–24 Relative frustration, theory of, 48 Relativity notion, 99–100 Religion and control of violence affect modulation, 168–171 Alevis, regulation in, 170–171 monotheism, 169 Mufti of Australia, debate on his statement, 169 mysticism, 169 problem of modern societies, 170 regulation of behavior, 168 regulation regime, 170 sanctions, 168 sin, 168 armed violence and theological legitimacy, 167, 171–175 classical martyrs, 174 Grand Mufti’s statement, 172–173 legitimacy of violent act, 172–173 main traditions in Islam, 172 self-empowerment, 171, 175 suicide bombers, 174 Durkheim’s theory of religion, 165 governability, agent of integration in age of multiculturalism, 175–179 Bradford Citizenship Madrassas Project, 177

Subject Index “confessionalization of integration policy,” 179 countering religious violence through religion, 177 Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, 178 GCI, working groups, 178 Imams as community leaders, 179 Islamism and security, 178 Leadership Development Project, 177 Muslim migrants, accountability of, 175–176 policy of repression, 175 security dispositif (Foucault), 176 social contract with Muslims, 178 religion and governability, accountability with migrants “confessionalization of integration policy,” 179 sacred and violence, connection, 165–166 sacrifice, blood/bloodless, 165–166 Religion, monotheistic, 146, 166, 168–169 Religious community, 34, 159–160, 167, 446–447, 449, 456 Religious scripts, 155, 160 Religious terrorism, 446–448 global ummah, 447 “Islamic Awakening,” 447 Religious violence, social action theories American scenarios, Jonestown to Waco/Freemen of Montana, 148–150 “Bible babble,” 148 Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, 149 “Jonestown” and concept of “cult,” 148–149 “Last Days” and Freemen of Montana, 149–150 mass suicide, North American Peoples Temple group, 148 practice of exodus or hijra, 148 theory of social action, 150 “white night,” 148 cycle of violence, options beyond, 159–160 ethic of responsibility and conviction, 160 messianism or apocalypticism, 159 paganism, 160 quietism or activism, 159 treaties with gentiles, 160 monotheism and violence, 146–147 Assmann’s reconstruction, 146 “counter-religion” of Moses, 146 Maccabean revolt, 147

Subject Index “Mosaic distinction,” 147 religious violence in Middle East conflict, 150–159 See also Middle East conflict, religious violence; Religious violence, social action theories Repression, 61–62, 238–239, 242, 441, 450, 468–469, 477, 480, 482, 504, 519, 540–541, 566, 594 apparatuses of repression, 24, 39, 501 control as state repression or social self-regulation, classical models, 7–9 of human passions, 8 imperialist repression, 376, 378 policy of repression, 60, 175 political repression, 439 preventing access to apparatuses of repression, 24 and sympathy, 476–477 See also Jihad Responsibility and accountability, 559 and conviction, ethic of, 160 “imperative of personal responsibility,” 261 individual and collective, 62 parental, 107 police, 577 of teachers and administrators in school, 340 Revisionism, 371 Revolution cultural revolution, 324 French Revolution, 48, 495, 522, 527 Hungarian revolution, 526 Islamic revolution, 180 in Lebanon, 450, 456, 460–461 July Revolution in France, 495 October Revolution, 505 against oppression, 337 power struggle in a revolution, 490 Reagan revolution, 331 Russian Revolution, 502, 519 socialist revolution, 321, 552, 556 Vietnam revolution, 378 Riot anti-Jewish, 487, 492, 492t, 496–498, 500, 505, 507, 509 policing, 214–216, 224–226 Risk of abuse, 200 age group of 15–24, high risk in, 82, 84 factor, 101, 255–256, 286, 297–298, 301–309

615 failure, 385 of glorifying violence, 358 groups, 18 perceptions and tolerance in schools, 353, 356 religion as risk fosters, 179 society, 20 -taking/seeking, 102, 123–124 of terrorist attacks, 425, 433, 441 of violence, 245 Risky thrill syndrome, 102 Rule, 9–12 See also Modern societies, control of violence Russian civil war of 1918–1921, 492 Russian Revolution, 502, 519 Russo–Japanese War, 502 S Sacrifice, 147, 153, 165–166, 174, 445, 448, 452, 480, 526–527 Safe School Study, 244–246 Safety definition, 353 physical, 250, 408, 569 public, 23, 204, 217 “safety imperative” of modern society, 261 school, 309, 346, 353 social, 325 Salomon, Ernst von, 369 Salvation and Suicide, 149 Salvation Army, 15 Scandalization, 187, 203–208, 437 Scheithauer/Bondü, 36, 185, 295–312, 597 Schleyer crisis, 385 Schleyer, Hans-Martin, 37 School discipline, 242, 252–253 School safety, 309, 346, 353 Schools, comprehensive, 236, 252 School shooting, loss of control action settings promoting violence, 277–279 close attention, 277 interaction processes, 278 sources of recognition, 277–278 adolescents under (status) pressure, 281–284 failure, impact of, 282 lack of moral recognition, 282–283 lower social hierarchy, 282 classification and exclusion, 262–263 category of violence, 263 worldwide school shootings, 264f

616 School shooting, loss of control (cont.) dynamics of escalation, 284–289 access to weapons, 288 addiction to recognition/superiority, 284 decay of recognition, 285 high vulnerability, 286 inadequate conflict management skills, 286 revenge, 284–285 triggering causes, events, 288–289 violent fantasies, 287 family, recognition in, 274–276 dynamics in perpetrators’ families, 275–276 frequency distribution over time, 263–265 indicators of institutional losses of control, 280–281 interaction of individual factors, deficits, 267–268 masculinity, media portrayals, 284 mental disorders in school shooters, 266–267 extreme narcissistic tendencies, 266 perpetrators, common features, 267 peer group, recognition in, 276–277 common features, 277 preference for undifferentiated pathologization, 265–266 “affliction,” 265–266 public and political evaluations, 265 social control strategies/losses of control, 289–291 cause for fear in society, 289–290 “killer games” and the illegal weapons/markets, 290 social disintegration theory (SDT), see Three-part composite theory theory of double loss of control, 261–262 School shootings, prevention control and prevention, 306–311 Berlin Leaking Project, 307–309 impact of Internet, 311 primary prevention, 306–307 secondary prevention, 306 threat assessment, 310 deficiencies of control, 304–306 Columbine effect, 305 control within media, 306 control within social environment/organizations, 305–306 organizational deviance, 305 personal control, 305

Subject Index explanatory models, 302–304 blaming media, 303 consumption of media violence, 303 depressive traits, 303 description of pathway towards shooting, 304f fascination, weapons/explosives/ death, 303 frequency of school shootings, 296–298 targeted school violence, 296 cases of severe targeted school violence in Germany, 297t school shootings/rampage/ massacre, 296 warning signs and risk factors fantasies/consumption of media violence, 298–301 humiliations in front of others, 301 internet, 300 leaking, 298–299 mental disorders, 301 motives, 301–302 peer rejection, 301 planning of offenses, 298–302 in social environment, 301 structural risk factors, 301–302 School violence and control in Germany and US historical analysis, 235–236 “labeling” certain behavior, 235 mid-1950s, debate of, 237–243 bans and legal restrictions, 242 exclusion and separation, 241 Halloween vandalism, 240 juvenile delinquency, 237 lesser forms of school violence, 241 “life adjustment” approach to education, 238–239 mass migration of African Americans and Puerto Ricans, 238 mental-health-based measures, 242–243 new peer-group youth culture, 238 peer pressure, 240 projects and group work without firm control, 242 riots of Halbstarken (adolescents), 238 Seattle schools, key strategies, 239–241 mid-1970s, US, 243–249 causes, 245–246 considerations, 245 disciplinarian and humanitarian approach, 247–248 strategies of control, 246

Subject Index Violent Schools, Safe Schools, 244 mid-1970s, West German alternative forms of living and teaching, 251 “anti-authoritarian” education, 252 attempts to control, 251 explaining delinquency, Coleman’s concept, 253 “Mut zur Erziehung” (courage to educate), 249 pranks in extreme forms, 234 pre-Columbine 1990s, 254–255 “public health” approach, 255 “social-ecological” approach, 255 violence of corporal punishment, 234 School violence, prevention, see School shootings, prevention Schumann, D., 35, 185–186, 233–256, 487, 519 Schutzbund, 520 Security Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), 396–400, 402–411 dispositives, 12 Human Security Centre report, 52 Islamism and security, 178 market, 586 measures, 240, 290, 427, 456 rebuilding failed states, 560 US National Security Strategy, 557 security dispositif (Foucault), 176 Social Security disability payments, 325 state security actors, 581 security agencies, 585 security forces, 578 security institutions, 573 security policy, 434 vigilantes as providers of social security, 580–581 Self-centeredness, 124 Self-commitment, 135–136 Self-control and management of violence assumptions, see Assumptions, self-control theory based on research evidence, 93–94 self-control theory, 92–93 caregivers of children with strong self-control, 92–93 six inclinations, 92 weak self-control, reflections of, 93 uncertainties, 94

617 weaknesses, see Weaknesses, self-control Self-control, concept of, 122–128 “analphabetism,” 127 analytic dimensions, perspective of human agency, 126f assumptions, 123 concept of conscience, 127–128 criminal behavior, definition, 124 deterrence via perceived external sanctions, 123 explanatory model, 125 expressive competence, 125–126 instrumental competence, 125 “moderators,” 122 moral competence, 126 morality, explanatory model, 125 in perspective of human agency, 126f trait and specific behavior, distinction between, 124 Self-control culture, 105 Self-control, structures/processes culture of self-control, 105 institutional infrastructures, 107–109 “capable guardians,” 109 community-designated surrogate parents, 108 economic necessity, 107 single parenthood or parental illness, 107 interlinkages, 109–110 “collective discipline,” 109–110 culture of reflective behavior, 109 social contexts, 109 mindful action, elements of, 105 self-control values, 106–107 “collective self-control consciousness,” 106 hedonism, Las Vegas, 106 self-discipline/self-restraint, Salt Lake City, 106 Self-control theory, 33–34, 91–96, 98–104, 111–114, 123, 125 Self-efficacy, 126 Self-empowerment, 171–175, 388, 531 Self-esteem/guilt/shame/aggression, 128–133 “existential shame,” 132 guilt anxiety, 131 “harm,” perception of, 132 shame, antisocial potential of, 129 shame–guilt cycle, 132 ‘solitary’ guilt, 130 structural anomie theory, 129 “transgression,” 131

618 Self-help, 20, 487–489, 504, 512, 576 Self-interest, 137–138, 270, 321 Self-regulation, 7–9, 12, 14–15, 21, 97, 103 Self-transcendence, 138 “Serbo-communism,” 401 Shame –guilt cycle, 132 See also Self-esteem/guilt/ shame/aggression Sheikh Sayyed Imam, 455, 470–473, 478–479, 482 Situation, definition of, 150–151, 160–161 Six-Day War in 1967, 151 Smith, Adam, 8 Social action, 145–161, 537–538 Social control concept of, 12–15 control-balance theory, 13–14 “secondary deviance,” 14 social control theories, 13 social control vs. control of violence, 12 social control vs. deviant behavior, 14 formal, 86 informal, 8, 33, 66, 85 theories, 13 Social Control in Nineteenth Century Britain, 15 Social environment, 129, 132–133, 171 Social problems, 129, 132–133, 171, 267, 277, 286–288, 301, 305–306, 340, 348–351, 354–356, 449, 451–453, 458, 462 Social recognition, 268–269, 283 Social support, 101, 108, 269, 302 Somalia, 52, 326, 433–434, 540–541, 543, 545, 559 anarchy in, 543 disastrous experience of, 52 2009 Failed States Index, 541 informal mechanisms of control, 543 success of Doctors Without Borders, 559 Spline regression modeling, technique of, 70–76 Stammheim prison, 386 State-Building, 536 Statehood, 26, 31, 40, 186, 432, 434, 440, 519, 531, 554, 563, 569–570, 574 dimensions of, 583 “fragile” statehood, 566 “hybrid statehood,” 19, 565, 586 limited, 26, 519, 531, 567, 577, 588 modern, 186, 432, 580 restoration of, 596

Subject Index State(s) collapse, 549, 567–568 in crisis, 28, 31–33, 38–40, 485–598 failed/failiure, see Failed states fragile, 18, 31, 563–588 Structural adjustment programs, 536, 550, 557, 569 Structural anomie theory, 129 Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), 425 Subculture, 131, 139, 246–248, 254, 317, 327, 330, 332–334, 339–340, 350, 521, 524 Subject and violence, 47–51 classical approaches, 48–49 anti-semitism, 49 crisis behavior, 48 link between culture and violence, 48 rational, instrumental nature, 48 theory of relative frustration, 48 concept of Subject, 50 anti-subject, 50 floating subject, 50 hyper-subject, 50 non-subject, 50 survivor subject, 50–51 nihilism, 49 objectivity and subjectivity, 47–48 age of victims, 47–48 mobilization, 48 subject of violence, 49–51 Italian far left terrorism, 50 Subjectivity, 47–48, 50–51, 57 Subject policies, 60–63 anti-subject, 61 floating subject, 60 hyper-subject, 61 non-subject, 61 survivor subject, 62 Sudeten crisis in September 1938, 371 Suicide bombers, 173–174, 417–419, 424, 440–441, 455, 457 terrorism, 416, 419, 421 Symbolic Interactionism, 448 Sympathizers, 157, 336, 384–387, 431, 437, 439–441 T Technology and violence, 195, 197 Temptation, 92–93, 101–105, 107–108, 141, 168–171, 180, 546 Terrorism economy of, 441

Subject Index modes of self-justification, 437 new, 37, 415–416, 420, 422, 427, 596 opportunity structure, 436, 438 religious, 30, 446–448 and “soft targets,” 442 strategic role of sympathizers, 439–440 supporters, 386 Terrorism, conditions and limits of control conditions of success and residual risks, 440–442 chances of success, 440 economy of terror, 441 good reasons for terrorism, 441 operational conditions and likelihood of error, 434–435 counter-terrorism, 435 escalations, 435 “overreaction,” 434–435 persecution dilemma, 435 opportunities for intervention, 439–440 examples, 439–440 sympathizers, potential and actual, 439 provocation and reaction, 432–434 statehood terrorism, 434 state power, response, 432–433 reference group controls and opportunity structures, 431, 435–439 inhibitions of terrorist movements, 437–438 motivations to politicize, 437 “negative reference group,” 436, 438–439 opportunity structure, 436 reference group theory, 438 Terrorist groups, 30, 38, 62, 167, 376, 388, 401, 416–417, 421–422, 424, 427–428, 431, 440–441, 445, 467, 472, 595 disintegration of, 24, 463 isolation of, 381 leaders, 403, 422, 468 organization, 37, 328, 384, 395, 403–404, 406, 416, 419–422, 424, 472 support base, 468 threat, 416, 424–426, 434 Terror of control, see Control of terror Tezcan, L., 34, 165–181, 597 Theory control-balance theory, 13–14, 274, 276 criminological theory, 91, 139, 235 cultivation theory, 359 desensitization theory, 358 frontier theory, 573

619 General Theory of Crime, 122–125 integrated, 98, 112, 123 of Partisan, 380 rational choice theory, 537 reference group theory, 431, 438, 448–449 self-control theory, 33–34, 91–96, 98–104, 111–114, 123, 125 of social action, 150 social disintegration theory (SDT), 262, 268–269, 272 social learning theory, 109 social practice theory, 206 in sociology of deviant behavior, 13 structural anomie theory, 129 theory of civilization, 27 theory of double loss of control, 35, 261–262 three-part composite theory, 268 Theory of the Partisan, 380 Third World, 564 Thirty Year’s War, 7 Thome, H., 4, 26–27, 33–34, 66, 85, 121–141, 595, 597 Threat after 9/11, 416 assessment, 291, 310 to Muslims and Islam, 474 and response, control of terror, 424–427 antiterrorist provisions after 9/11, 426–427 media, role of, 424–425 terrorist, 416, 424–426, 434 Three-part composite theory control theory, aspect of, 273–274 dangers of negative recognition, 274 normality in modern society, 273 social disintegration theory, 268–274 apathy and resignation, 270 configurations of effects, 272 direct learning of violence, 271 emotional stress on parents, 270–271 institutional dimension, 269 moral recognition, lack of, 270 social processes, basic active principles, 270 social recognition, 269 social–structural dimension, 269 socio-emotional dimension, 269 upwardly mobile society, 273 youth theory facet, 272–273 Tittle, C. R., 14, 21, 33, 67, 69–70, 91–114, 121–123, 125, 261, 597

620 Trait and specific behavior, distinction between, 124 Transformation, features of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s, 468, 476–479, 482 context of statehood, 31 control gap as time gap, 202–203 economy, 80 historical transformations, 492 objects of supervised, 11 of old practices, 199 of outside coercion into internalized self-coercion, 27 political, 368, 554 processes in groups and organizations, 573 socio-cultural, 66, 449, 462–463 structural transformation, Russian cities, 492, 497 technological development, features, 193 violent self-transformation, 367 Treaty of St. Germain, 522 “Trenchocracy,” 376 Trianon Treaty, 523 Triggering causes control measures as triggers/escalators of violence, 22–23 perceived appropriateness, 22 “wave phenomenon,” 23 pogroms, second wave in Imperial Russia, (1903–1906), 501–504 school shooting, loss of control, 288–289 U United Kingdom, 68, 77–79, 87, 185 United States of America American Academy of Religion, 149–150 American masculine identity, 318 American postcolonial adjustment, 555 defeat in Vietnam War, 322 “depopulation” of American homes, 80 hegemonic masculinity in, 317–319 American masculine identity, painful process, 318–319 definition, 317–319 homophobia, 318 influenced by existence and myth of frontier, 318 masculinity wars, see Masculinity wars mass migration of African Americans and Puerto Ricans, 238 mass suicide, North American Peoples Temple group, 148 violence in schools, see School violence and control in Germany and US

Subject Index V Vandalism, 240–241, 243–245, 248, 252–254 Victims’ perspective, end to violence acknowledgment in “global” world, 59–60 dealing with threefold destruction, 57–59 period of “mourning,” 58 three registers, 55–57 collective identity, 56 individual participation in modern life, 56 personal subjectivity, 57 Vietnam War, 51, 62, 243, 316, 320–322, 329, 376, 407 Vigilantes at frontiers of state, 578–579 “cultural frontiers,” 578 “polyvalent nature of concept of crime,” 578 as providers of social security, 580–581 Vigilantism in Nigeria alternate sources of power and legitimacy, 579–580 Bakassi Boys, 579 “jungle justice,” 580 oaths and magical initiation rites, 579 punishment ceremonies and public spectacles, 579 trials and punishments, 580 “complementary cooperation,” 565 controlling controllers, problem of, 584–585 International Youth Council (IYC), 584 Niger Delta vigilante groups, 584 forms of “fragmented” control, 564 fragile state, descriptions, 568–571 state-in-society approach, 571 symbol of collective identity, 570 historical precedents, 575–576 “campus cults,” phenomenon of, 575 Ijaw Youth Council, 575 Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Front (NDPVF), 575 Niger Delta Vigilante Group (NDVG), 575 precolonial times, groups in, 576 involvement in politico-economic networks, 581–582 closeness to politicians and businessmen, 582 official support for vigilantes, 581 mistrust of state controllers of violence, 576 authoritarian military regimes, 577

Subject Index lack of local police control, 577 notion of, 572–573 definitions, 572–573 ethnic militias/gangs/area boys, 573 oligopolies of violence, 565 between rejecting and strengthening state revolutionary anti-state message, 582 twilight institutions, 583 and statehood, 573–574 frontier theory, 573 policing, 573 vigilantes as providers of social security, 580–581 vigilantes at the “frontiers” of state, 578–579 cultural frontiers, 578 polyvalent nature of concept of crime, 578 Violence ambivalence of, 21–25 control of, see Control of violence culture of, 350, 356, 375–377, 389 cycle of, 159–160, 271 expressive, 348 management of, 91–114, 122 media, 300–301, 303–304, 351, 354 mimetic, 166 political, 37, 365, 388–389, 396, 404–405, 411–412, 518 See also Australia (1949–1973) in revolutions of 1830 and 1847–1848, 495–498 voluntarism of, 366, 380, 387–389 Violence and control, fields of relationship, 28–32 school shootings, 28–29 micro-level, 35–36 terrorism, 29–30 meso-level, 36–38 religious terrorism, 30 “war on terror,” 30 violence in states in crisis, 31–32, 38–40 fragile states, 31 macro-level, 38–40 “new” wars, 31 Violence and globalization, 51–55 cold war, end of, 51–53 armed conflicts, 52 communism, 54 Cuban Missile Crisis, 51 Darfur crisis, 52 economic power, 54 “ethnic cleansing,” 52

621 Great Lakes genocide in Africa, 52 Human Security Centre report, 52 labor movement, decline of, 55 nuclear weapons, 52 “proxy” wars, 53 “sponsorship” of states, 53 Yalta agreement, 51 industrial age, end of, 53–55 “global” financial capitalism, 53 “maquiladora” factories, 53 Violent fantasies, 36, 267, 274, 278, 286–288, 300–301, 303–305, 356, 523, 525 Violent Schools, Safe Schools, 244 Virginia Tech, 333 massacre, 350–351 Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, 47 Volkswehr, 520 W Waco, 148–150, 326, 328 Wahhabism, 180 Walther Rathenau, assassination of, 367–376 anti-Weimar sentiment, 371 assassins, 374 Bavarian Right, 369 “decisionism,” 370 elimination and destruction, 370 emergency decree, 374 furious exchanges in the Reichstag, 368 German National People’s Party (DNVP), 372 German–Russian treaty of Rapallo, 368 Landvolk movement, 371 Leipzig trials, 373 “licensed illegality,” 368 murder organization/murderous demagogy, 372 “national shame” of Versailles, 368 National Socialist campaign, 375 November criminal, 368 public interactions, 372 “Rathenau-removers,” 375 sympathy with perpetrators, 375 Troeltsch’s interpretation, 368 War making, 47, 539–541, 543, 547, 549 Warning sign, 36, 285, 291, 298–302, 305, 307, 309, 311 War of the Trench in AD 627, 157 War of the Triple Alliance, 555 Weaknesses, self-control, 95–110 causal mechanism, 101–102 low self-control, 101

622 Weaknesses, self-control (cont.) “needing” gratification, 102 “risky thrill syndrome,” 102 contingencies, neglect of, 96–97 criminal opportunities, 97 cross-national variation, 97 exercise of self-control, 97 opportunity, 96–97 overuse of self-control, 97 incomplete/mistaken sources, 98–101 child-rearing regimen, 100 genetic and biological forces, 100 individualistic orientation aggregated self-control of individuals, 104–105 “collective discipline,” 104 collective efficacy/social disorganization, 103 structures and processes, 105–110 limited hegemony, 97–98 morality, predictor of criminal behavior, 98 peer influence, 98 self-control with other variables, 97 social bonds, 98 See also Self-control, structures/processes Weapon Germany, cultural embedding of weapons, 198 Lax enforcement of weapons laws, 338–339 nuclear weapons, 52 school access to weapons, 288 fascination, weapons/explosives/death, 303 “killer games” and the illegal weapons/markets, 290 Weaponry, 518, 579 Weber, Max, 9, 47, 137, 160, 366, 537–538 Weimar Republic, 35, 215–216, 218, 220–221, 366, 368, 375, 387–388 Weisbrod, B., 37, 302, 365–389, 594 Western imperialism, phases of, 551t West Germany, policing of collective protests in 1960s police service in 1950/1960s, 214–219

Subject Index civil war model of protest policing, 215 Nazi police system, abolition of, 214 paternalism, 217 professional police ethos, 216 radio patrol car service, 217 ranks of Prussian police during Weimar Republic, 218 riot police, 215–216 Weimar traditions/masculinity/crisis of authority, 214–216 protest policing, 219–225 channels of communication, 223–224 confrontational way of policing, 222–225 contemporary counter-model, 224–225 Hamburg police measures, 219 music riots, 219–225 police intervention tactics, 221–222 political protests, 221 reform-oriented politicians, 222–223 soft-line police tactics, 219 student protests, 219–225 tough policing, 220–221 Wilding, 349 The Wild One, 237 Women’s movement and gender politics consciousness-raising groups, 321 rights of lesbians/gay rights movement, 321 women’s liberation movement/feminism, 320–321 World Bank, 70, 536, 553, 557 Y Yalta agreement, 51 Youth violence, 168, 237, 241, 243, 254–255 Youthwars, 329–332 AIDS treatment, 330 bullying, 332 “jocks” and “burnouts,” 330 school bullying, public awareness on, 330 “Spur Posse,” 331 youth activism, consequence of, 331 Yugoslavia, 52, 59, 395, 399–403, 405–408, 523 Z Zionism, 151