Violence: a micro sociological theory/
Randall Collins.
- Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
- xi, 563 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
List of Illustrations List of Tables Acknowledgments Chapter 1. The Micro-sociology of Violent Confrontations Violent situations Micro-evidence: situational recordings, reconstructions, and observations Comparing situations across types of violence Fight myths Violent situations are shaped by an emotional field of tension and fear Alternative theoretical approaches Historical evolution of social techniques for controlling confrontational tension Sources Preview The Complementarity of Micro and Macro Theories Part I: The dirty secrets of violence Chapter 2. Confrontational Tension and Incompetent Violence Brave, Competent and Evenly Matched? The Central Reality: Confrontational Tension Tension/Fear and Non-performance in Military Combat Low Fighting Competence Friendly Fire and Bystander Hits Joy of Combat: Under What Conditions? The Continuum of Tension/Fear and Combat Performance Confrontational Tension in Policing and Non-military Fighting Fear of What? Chapter 3. Forward Panic Confrontational Tension and Release: Hot Rush, Piling On, Overkill Atrocities of War Caveat: the Multiple Causation of Atrocities Asymmetrical Entrainment of Forward Panic and Paralyzed Victims Forward Panics and One-sided Casualties in Decisive Battles Atrocities of Peace Crowd Violence Demonstrators and Crowd-control Forces The Crowd Multiplier Alternatives to Forward Panic Chapter 4. Attacking the Weak: I. Domestic Abuse The emotional definition of the situation Background and foreground explanations Abusing the exceptionally weak: time-patterns from normalcy to atrocity Three pathways: Normal limited conflict, severe forward panic, and terroristic torture regime Negotiating interactional techniques of violence and victimhood Chapter 5. Attacking the Weak: II. Bullying, Mugging, and Holdups The continuum of total institutions Mugging and holdups Battening on interactional weakness Part II: Cleaned-up and staged violence Chapter 6. Staging Fair Fights Hero versus hero Audience supports and limits on violence Fighting schools and fighting manners Displaying risk and manipulating danger in sword and pistol duels The decline of elite dueling and its replacement by the gun-fight Honor without fairness: vendettas as chains of unbalanced fights Ephemeral situational honor and leap-frog escalation into one-gun fights Behind the facade of honor and disrespect The cultural prestige of fair and unfair fights Chapter 7. Violence as Fun and Entertainment Moral holidays Looting and destruction as participation sustainers The wild party as elite potlatch Carousing zones and boundary exclusion violence End-resisting violence Frustrated carousing and stirring up effervescence Paradox: Why does most intoxication not lead to violence? The one-fight-per-venue limitation Fighting as action and fun Mock fights and mosh pits Chapter 8. Sports Violence Sports as dramatically contrived conflicts Game dynamics and player violence Winning by practical skills for producing emotional energy dominance The timing of player violence: loser-frustration fights and turning-point fights Spectators' game-dependent violence Off-site fans' violence: celebration and defeat riots Off-site violence as sophisticated technique: soccer hooligans The dramatic local construction of antagonistic identities Revolt of the audience in the era of entertainers' domination Part III: Dynamics and structure of violent situations Chapter 9. How Fights Start, or Not Normal Limited Acrimony: Griping, Whining, Arguing, Quarreling Boasting and Blustering The Code of the Street: Institutionalized Bluster and Threat Pathways into the Tunnel of Violence Chapter 10. The Violent Few Small numbers of the actively and competently violent Confrontation leaders and action-seekers: police Who wins? Military snipers: concealed and absorbed in technique Fighter pilot aces: aggressively imposing momentum In the zone versus the glaze of combat: micro-situational techniques of interactional dominance The 9/11 cockpit fight Chapter 11. Violence as Dominance in Emotional Attention Space What does the rest of the crowd do? Violence without audiences: professional killers and clandestine violence Confrontation-minimizing terrorist tactics Violent niches in confrontational attention space Epilogue: Practical Conclusions Notes References Index
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Violence -- United States. Violence -- United States -- Psychological aspects.