It is a bit of a knee jerk reaction after having been teaching for a few years where "violence" is almost the official mode of analysis of school social problems. In this context anything and everthing is labled as some kind of violence. It is almost as if once the label is attached to something then no more debate can be entered into as everyone is against violence. Hence when I see the term being used I tend to let loose and affairly so, in this case.
You touch on one aspect below which I will comment on, about gun control and how I have used the case on the US of violence = gunshots (at least to a degree). The reason for this is that when a deadly weapon is in use the effects are rather straightforward and devasting (in the biological sense). My response when any teacher claimed a student had been violent was to ask if ambulances had been sent for and how many people were wounded - it had the effect of getting things back into perspective (the kid had usually kicked over something in a fit of anger), I kind of fell back into the same refrain when answering you.
The core of my frustration with using a general descriptive is that as soon as it is introduced everything becomes equal. That is when we talk of violence in the abstract we make the equation gunshot = assualt = verbal = social = violence it is all the same thing. My point is that it is never the same thing, that is the concept means nothing by itself, are we talking about criminal violence, the violence of repression etc etc. each has its own problems each needs to be understood for what it is rather then a shared and common characteristic.
Violence is like a any number of other general descriptive words (bad, good, nice, passive, active, peaceful), they gain meaning only by being attached to something else. Would it make any sense to talk about love, the general opposite to violence. The problem with its opposite of course is that by association it just suggests nothing much, while violence seems to suggest all soughts of concrete examples - the fact is that it is an illusion a by product of its general descriptive power, just as "love" by itself does not mean anything tangible.
I suspect if the media and general culture referred to every and anything "nice and good" as "love" we would after awhile believe it to be a concrete thing as well. The habit of referring to all things bad as violent (a bunch of demonstrators pounced on police is routinely called a "violent demonstration" even when it is quite clear it is "violent police tactics" that are being recorded). In short, the use of violence as a concrete concept (that is something real that is being referred to) has transferred onto the word itself which has recently come to mean an aspect of reality (as if it were sufficient in itself).
For instance could we not substitute "anger" as a general descriptive instead of "violence" and get almost the same ideas. That's the problem, for we could also use "evil" or "bad" to the same effect. I mean who is favour of evil, or badness, or for that matter even anger. I mean this quite literally for it was not that long ago when the general descriptive used for all things disliked was "evil" and it was quite common to hear people label anything as being evil, and standing up against evil, and wanting to rid the world of evil. Evil was not too long ago treated as a definable thing that need not be contextualisied and could be found everywhere much the same way that violence is currently used.
Now the easiest way to test whether this proposition is true or not is to read back over the last emails and substitute "violence" with "evil". I suggest this will not hamper or change any aspect of anything discussed (making allowances for concrete examples which gramatically will have to changed), in fact everything will make as much sense as it did before. If violence was a real noun (referring to something concrete) this would not be possible.
Sorry for these lengthy replies Jean-Christophe, I am affraid that it is just a sore point with me and I tend to over-react. To tell the truth everytime I hear violence referred to as a thing, I turn a little violent myself.
Greg
--- Message Received --- From: jean-christophe helary <suzume at mx82.tiki.ne.jp> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 13:16:22 +0900 Subject: Re: TV & violence & studies
thank you greg for your long reply. well first of all i feel like a modern mr jourdain who is mobilising abstractions to frame a reply not actually being conscious of doing that. although unlike the bourgeois gentilhomme i don't really feel extatic about that. i feel like i don't understand a lot of what you say and i would like a few clarifications. if you don't mind. it is very possible that i totally missed your point so please correct me. i am not used to talk about violence and certainly not in an abstract way.
<Greg Schofield>-----
> One of the problems with dealing with violence in the abstraction is that violence = violence.
you mean when i say japanese kids seems pretty violent, this violence is not the same as american kids violence ? or that when i mention kids violence and yakuza violence i am actually talking about 2 different things ? of course there are different types of violent behavior that we need to classify to see what come from what etc. i suppose an american (or australian) worker who shoots himself after loosing his job etc is not feeling exactly the same as a japanese worker who will die of exhaustion after working like a slave for his company. still they both react to 'similar' pressions in ways that fit their own way of considering their position in the scale of things.
> I mean by this that there is no such thing as quantum violence (something that can be wieghed and compared evenly - apple to apple, orange to orange). I only had a slight acquaintence with Japan, there is much to like about the country, but personally I could not live there as the constraints run against what I am accustomed to. The difference is not the level of violence per se (this is a silly proposition), Japan is just as capitalistic as the US, but socially it has quite a different history and culturally it is another thing again.
why is it a silly proposition ? because criminal violence and symbolic violence are supposed to be dealt with differently ? i suspect the 'constraints' you mention are in fact the flux of regulated violence that everybody experiences here. although 'regulated' is not the proper term. since i suppose all sorts of violences are regulated in a way or another. when i wrote 'verbal violence is a function imbeded in the language' (may not be 100% correct english but i suppose you understood) i really meant: symbolic violence is _more_ imbeded into japanese language than in any other language that i know and practice daily (only french and english to that point). and since reality is a function of language it seems natural to me to say that the level of violence per se is higher here.
as for japan being 'as capitalistic' as the us but being socially and culturally different i don't quite understand. it seems very unlikely that different societies/cultures produce similar economic systems. but then i am neither economist nor sociologist so i can't say more. do you mean that japan produces cars in similar conditions under the same iso standarts ? doesn't it look very much like the common assumption that since japanese eat hamburgers they are occidentalized ?or do you only mean that capital works technically the same way here and in the us (but then isn't true of pretty much all places on earth ?)
> The fact is that criminal violence is almost non-existent compared to the US. A specific social relation which adds considerable chaos to already chaotic relationships. The Japanese way of dealing with frustration and alientation cannot applied to the US (which deals with it in a hamfisted and judicial way after the act). Taken together both examples point to a level of social alienation which should be unexceptable to us but makes up our social context.
it depends on how you define criminal violence. i am pretty sure you'd find a lot that is going on in the schools here would be labeled criminal violence. ok you get less gun shooting, but here i suspect the correlation is more to the implementation of severe gun control. do you mean that because it is acceptable here it should not be compared to us kids' violence ? it seems to me that everything that is called 'criminal' is only a function of police activity and law implementation level. so in the end what is 'criminal violence' ? do we include harasment here ? or not, because it is not yet recognised as criminal ?
> No-one I think is raising Japan as an example to follow (how could it be when its present state is historically derived from a complex evolution hidden from clear understanding), rather Japan is posed as an example which refutes this particular study and its assumptions.
do we have a lot of countries that are not derived from complex evolution hidden from clear understanding or do you simply mean that the current state of japanese studies has not brought any decisive conclusion to what japan is ? i think it is not necessary to understand absolutely _all_ the hidden mysteries of japan to draw a few conclusions. plus using japan as an example to refute a scientific study when japan is the result of an unclear mysterious process (ie a not well defined concept) is itself quite contradictory.
> Even if the question is reduced to one of regulated violence and chaotic violence (which I think is silly abstraction as well) who would choose chaotic violence? But that is not even being posed, rather a much more simple point in regard to a particular field.
ok, silly abstractions to me too. cf higher. indeed what is considered 'violence' is the chaotic (non orderly) side of it. its regulated form being only a part of the social fabric. is that a better formulation ?
> Your point about collateral damage as against intended damage is a valid one, my point if we could actual choose between these two indexes, would be that an intentional, socially controlled form probably makes everyone very much more aware of what is going on (and hence in a better position to change conditions) then being subjected to the possiblities of becoming a victim to "collateral" damage. Moreover there is the simple body count involved (even when including suicides) human beings are taken out of the struggle in the US at a rate which suggests an ongoing civil war, while that in Japan appears much less severe.
the case with japan (that i do not pretend to understand very well) seems to prove that (no study to support that claim) the more intentional/socially controlled the 'violence' is the less is it considered necessary to change anything. instead of changing conditions, victims adapt to conditions that are to be expected. the pb with ijime for ex is that it is reproduced by the extremely vertical structure of society. since there is no way one is going to change the structure (in the short term) the only way to deal with ijime is to pretend it is bad. it makes the victim feel better until it's over. period. as i mention higher the body count index could be better balanced if the us had similar gun control as other advanced capitalist societies.
(i browsed the japan times this morning after charles j. sent his post and found an interesting article about attempts at reducing the perceived hierarchy by having six graders do school chores with first-second graders)
i am sure you understand i do not litteraly mean 'collateral damage' the way powell like pentagon nerds uses the term. i am not talking body count here. i do include physical damage as well as psychological damage (result of harrasment for ex). obviously harrasment produces less collateral damage since it is directly intended to make a limited nb of individuals suffer (although it can be on a large scale: a company for ex).
> Perhaps conditions in the US could be described as ongoing low intensity social war <snip>
do you focus on gunshot wounds because this is a definition of criminal violence ?
> Another aspect is political maturity, in Japan considerable political consciousness rests on well developed (however much they might be criticised) working class parties, in the US the entire country seems split between two avowedly bourgeois parties and the political consciousness as a social expression is at very low levels even compared to Australia. I cannot discount that part of the reason for this rests in what I view as chaotic social relations which exist across the US which are no-where as profound as found in other advanced capitalist countries.
it is difficult for me to develop here because most of the people i see have indeed a high political consciousness (whatever that means) but i would not bet the average 20-40 japanese worker has more or less political conscious than its fellow american or french or australian worker. political consciousness is extremely related to (political) culture and thus to education. it is not obvious to me that promoting confucean values of obedience from an early age helps the creation of a politically conscious people. but it can definitely help explain the development of (working class) parties.
> None of this is meant to be taken too literally, but I think we must always take into account the pecularities of historical development and avoid abstract comparisons. In otherwords I think your point is true enough but in itself does not take us anywhere. Yes, Japan is no example to follow and sits on no pedestal, but as an example to think about and draw general conclusions and pointers for our thinking it has its purpose in this context.
if your conclusion is as much violent tv produces less violence in japan i think it is wrong. violence is expressed through different channels and is represented (and thus understood) through different filters. it does not mean it is not here. i think the change in behavior of my 6yrs old kid is not abstract at all and is very related to the crap that plays on tv, now how much of this behavior will evolve and how much will not depends a lot on his parents and on how his behavior is accepted in society as a whole.
> On Japanese mores there are multi-deminisions to them and I for one would not be jumping to conclusions as I have seen the formality used to do things which elsewhere would be nearly impossible (very junior people telling their superiors off in a way which is protected by custom). In Australia we have a different way of doing this (called telling the boss to "bugger-off"). My point is social custom is not easily dismmissed or categorised.
eventually the very junior japanese worker and the very junior australian worker will get what they want. my point is that even though the channels are different the message is conveyed. social customs may make some behaviors more acceptable but eventually the result is similar.
> My overwhelming problem is that concepts like violence have no meaning outside context, yet there is a tendency to use this as some absolute point of reference. My point here would be that violence describes nothing at all, it is a mere descriptive attached to something else to illustrate a single aspect dependant on whatever is being discussed.
you mean violence does not exist outside social relations ? and cannot be explained or understood without refering to them ? ok, i agree. indeed violence _is_ context.
> I am neither for violence or against it, any more then I am against, or for the colour red. There is violence in confronting a boss and violence in beating a child, even these cannot be taken out of context, beating a child may be reprehensible or may not, confronting a boss may be laudable or may not - it is what else is going on which makes the point of judgement.
there is _no_ intrinsic violence to confronting a boss. the violence is not in the space between the boss and the worker. the violence is a vector from the boss to the worker that has a measurable (social) intensity. what you seem to call violence is the resulting act, but violence is really the context, the worker only adapts to it. same for the kid. but what is socially acceptable (to a certain extent) : boss->worker violence, becomes criminal violence : boss<-worker reaction. the responsibility shift is interesting.
> <snip> The new moralism, knows no such constraints, it frames public debate around abstract absolutes and the end effect is to empower the powerful with even more arbitrary powers who only have to identify something as being "violent" or "inappropriate" (which is becoming my most hated word in the English language) to act in the most bureacratic and arbitrary fashion.
aggreed.
> Jean-Christophe, I am saying all this to point out what I consider an error in your reply, of moblising such an abastraction to frame your response. Because of the vital role of abstracted violence in your reply what you say is becomes a truism (true enough but also true in every circumstance). But I am not trying to have a go at you in this, rather I think this is a general problem and one which we all fall into to, too often.
sorry. i'll try to use less abstract concepts in the future. i am not goor at abstract things anyway :)
> Greg
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Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ Modular And Integrated Design - programing power for all
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