Search

In times of conflict, the meaning of words tends to fluctuate. For example, the word "violence" traditionally refers to physical force against people or property. However, some have expanded the term "violence" to include non-force (e.g., speech). Conversely, others have actively avoided the "violence" label to describe clear instances of force (e.g., property destruction). When the definitions of concepts expand and contract, semantic divergence – the degree of disagreement over the meaning of words – increases. Drawing on the work of Donald Black, we derive a partial explanation for the semantic divergence of "violence" labeling in cultural conflicts. First, at the macro-level, as social intimacy and inequality have declined over the past few hundred years, violence has become increasingly stigmatized, rendering an allegation of "violence" a potentially powerful weapon for deployment against cultural opponents. Second, at the case-level, social distance and partisanship, fostered by the internet, combine to produce social polarization – factions internally close but externally distant – of which a predictable result is the semantic divergence of "violence." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key issue in criminology is to account for variation in rates of violence across time and place. An important variable largely neglected in the literature is individualism. Building on theoretical ideas proposed by Durkheim, Black, and Baumgartner, we illustrate the role of increased individualism with a case study: the decline of homicide in England, 1250–1750. The qualitative historical materials we present reveal the growth of more individualized conflicts evident in less third-party partisan intervention and a reduced concern with honor. More individualized conflicts were, in turn, a product of a more individualized society, one characterized by increased social distance and mobility. As conflicts individualized they became less lethal, resulting in declining aggregate rates of homicide. Although the case study is historical, our argument has implications for understanding contemporary criminal violence. • The individualization of society helps to explain the steep decline in English homicide rates, 1250–1750. • A more individualized society tends to produce more individualized – and less violent – conflicts. • Individualized conflicts are characterized by fewer clashes between groups and fewer clashes about honor. • The degree to which conflicts are individualized can help to explain variation in contemporary rates of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early modern Europe, popular hostility toward criminals could be expressed through the use of the pillory (a device in which offenders were restrained and publicly displayed). Modern electronic communications have facilitated the emergence of contemporary versions of the pillory. One such example is , a Web site created by supporters of capital punishment that permits members to post comments about particular executions. Most such comments are markedly hostile toward the convicted offender. But is the hostility random or patterned? A new theory by Donald Black predicts that hostility will increase with changes in social space, or the movement of social time. Testing Black's theory, we find that the number of online comments hostile to the killer and supportive of the execution increases with the degree to which the murder was a movement of relational, vertical, and cultural time. Moving beyond the electronic pillory, we argue that Black's theory has much to offer to law and society scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violence is a dynamic event, not a static state. The cause of violence, therefore, cannot lie in static variables such as individual propensities (eg self-control) or aggregate properties (eg inequality). But what changes cause violence? A new theory developed by Donald Black traces violent acts to movements of social time. Social time moves when actors' statuses rise or fall (vertical time), when relationships increase or decrease in intimacy (relational time), and when cultural diversity expands or contracts (cultural time). The present paper applies the new theory to one particular type of violence -- that committed in the name of family honour. Typically perpetrated by men against their female relatives, family honour violence is triggered by several movements of social time, but particularly vertical time, in the form of challenges from below by women seeking to make independent lifestyle decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Occurring in a broad range of non-western and western countries, violence committed against women in the name of family honor has been viewed in several ways, including as a crime, as gendered violence, or as a violation of human rights. But from a purely explanatory point of view, family honor violence is most profitably viewed as a type of social control, specifically penal social control. As punishment, honor violence appears to obey the same principles as other forms of punishment. Drawing on the theoretical strategy of pure sociology, the present article highlights two such principles: punishment increases with the social distance and social inferiority of the offender. These twin principles help to explain a broad range of facts about when and where family honor violence will occur, and how severe – in particular, how lethal – it will be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apology is an increasingly prominent form of conflict management in many areas of social life. Yet there are few systematic studies of apology as a dependent variable. Analyzing the last statements of Texas death row prisoners, we find that the best predictor of apology is affiliation with God. Under traditional Western conceptions, God is an actor endowed with extraordinarily high status. Drawing on the theoretical paradigm known as pure sociology, we argue that death row prisoners who invoke God as a third party in their conflict thereby elevate their own status. Greater vertical closeness to the victim's side generates more social assertiveness and a greater willingness to apologize publicly. In addition, affiliation increases prisoners' relational closeness to God, enhancing their probability of adopting God's modern message of reconciliation. God's status has, however, declined somewhat over the past several centuries-a trend that helps to explain the modern religious emphasis on reconciliation over punishment, apology over defiance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing awareness of the limitations of group-level analyses in ethnic studies, research on ethnic conflict has paid virtually no systematic attention to variation at the individual or micro level. Addressing that gap, the present paper draws upon data from interviews conducted with members of two broadly-defined categories recently arrived in the Republic of Ireland, Muslims and Nigerians. Results indicate that while members of both immigrant categories experience a good deal of ethnic conflict or hostility, such conflict is rarely collective and invariably varies across individuals. The research data are consistent with Donald Black's theory of moralism. Black's theory, based on his theoretical system known as pure sociology, predicts that ethnic hostility increases with the social inferiority and cultural distance of the immigrant, and that higher status immigrants are more assertive in responding to hostility, though they experience less of it (the status paradox). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the problem of human aggression as addressed in the book "Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory," by Randall Collins, a noted sociologist. How Collins's book advances the scientific understanding of violent human behavior is questioned. The principal strengths of the book include a departure from a criminological perspective of violence, a consideration of violent acts from all structural levels of human behavior, and the formulation of an original theory of violence based on sociological perspective. The book's weak points are described as an unsatisfactory distinction between violence and non-violence in individual situations, a failure to discern predatory from moralistic violence, and the notion that violence is rare because it is "difficult."

When and how will third parties intervene in the conflicts of others? When will third parties further violence, and when will they foster peace? These are questions addressed by Black's theory of the third party. The authors conducted the first systematic test of the theory, drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 100 men imprisoned for assault or homicide. Specifically, they tested Cooney's elaboration of Black's theory, which argues (1) that the social location of a third party, based on ties to the principals, predicts whether he or she will act as a partisan or settlement agent or remain uninvolved, and (2) that the third-parry structure ofa conflict, based on the general configuration of all the third parties present, predicts whether the conflict will escalate to violence. The study results confirm most of the theoretical predictions regarding both third-party behavior and violence. The discussion also extends the theoretical model, offering new concepts and suggesting how the theory can be applied to a range of subjects, such as international war and the long-term historical decline of interpersonal violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greenberg's (2003) Comment fails to address the substance or spirit of "The Privatization of Violence." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Norbert Elias's (1939) work on "the civilizing process" highlighted the long-term decline in violence within Western societies. A substantial amount of more recent anthropological and historical evidence suggests that violence has evolved not just quantitatively but qualitatively as well. In particular, the social characteristics of the parties to violence have changed over time. Drawing on Donald Black's (1976, 1993a) theoretical ideas on conflict management, the present paper proposes that as intimate social ties weakened and the state strengthened, collective and nonintimate forms of (nonpolitical) violence declined significantly. Consequently, violence increasingly became less public, more private. Pockets of residual public violence can, however, still be found within modern state societies. Privatization varies, then, across time and social space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the social origins of evidence. Applying Black's theory of partisan behavior to a variety of empirical materials indicates that the ability to attract supporting evidence is differentially distributed across social life. Thus, the amount of investigative effort legal officials put into a case, the willingness of people to testify, and the supportiveness of witness testimony all increase with the social status of the principal parties and the number of intimate ties they have. In addition, the quality, or credibility, of the evidence parties attract varies directly with their social status and the number of distant ties they have. Far from creating a factual component divorced from the social dimension of the case as is often believed, the evidentiary process helps to transform the attributes of high status and social ties into successful legal claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a chemical study which focuses on the cycloproparene series. Information on the alkenes formed; Reference to the performance of the theoretical studies; Indications of the results.

Criminological research consistently shows that interpersonal homicide is largely confined to low-status people. Yet, anthropological and historical materials reveal that in earlier and simpler societies homicide was found throughout the status hierarchy. Using theory developed by Donald Black, I argue that a critical factor in the decline of lethal conflict among social elites is the increased availability of legal means of handling conflict. An implication is that since a focus on modern societies and their developed legal systems yields a limited and even distorted empirical picture of lethal violence, criminologists should strive to formulate theories that are cross-cultural and historical in scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Hobbes, many social theorists have claimed that the state reduces the amount of violence in human societies. Are they right? I review the cross-cultural and cross-national evidence on the impact of the state on the most common form of extreme violence--lethal conflict (i.e., war, rebellion, homicide, and execution). Drawing on the sociology of conflict management (Black 1993), I argue that the relationship between the state and lethal conflict is not negative as Hobbesian theory predicts. Rather, it appears to be U-shaped. A combination of materials from anthropology, criminology, and political science suggests that rates of lethal conflict tend to be high when state authority is absent and also when it is extremely strong or centralized. Between these extremes, in less centralized states, lethal conflict typically declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthesizes the permealated and perspirocyclopropanated cyclotetradeca-1,3,6,9,12-pentaynes. Compression of the internal C-C-C bond angles at the saturated carbon atoms flanking the diyne enhances the through-space pi-orbital interactions and causes a bathochromic shift in the long wavelength UV absorption maximum relative to that of reference compounds.

Studies the spectral characterization and rearrangement of an oxaspiropentene.