An Overview on the Interdisciplinary Research on Violence

3.1 Concept of Nonviolence and Overcoming Violence

3.2 The Term and Origin of Nonviolence 3.2.1 Principles of Nonviolence

3.2.2 Nonviolence Practices

3.2.3 Criticisms against Nonviolence Literal Bible Interpretation 3.3 Conscientious Objection

3.3.1 Motivation for Conscientious Objectors 3.3.2 Criticisms against Conscientious Objection 3.4 Term and Origin of Pacifism

3.4.1 Theoretical Arguments against Christian Pacifism 3.4.2 Pacifist Response to the Above Criticisms

3.5 The Just War Theory

3.5.1 Scriptural Basis of Just War 3.5.2 Arguments against Just War 3.6 The Just Armed Struggle 3.8 The Just Peace

3.8.1 The Term and Origin of the Concept of Just Peace 3.8.2 Just Peace Practices

3.9 Conclusion

3.0 An Overview on the Interdisciplinary Research on Violence

This chapter gives an overview of the state of the international and interdisciplinary research on violence. This will indeed be of tremendous help as the researcher theoretically and empirically looks at the concepts of nonviolence and overcoming violence.

But some questions would be asked, why give an overview on the interdisciplinary research on violence since the major concern is with nonviolence? What tremendous help would it give? For the first question, giving an overview on the interdisciplinary research on violence, it is critical and of course needed because without violence

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which is self evident, a daily phenomenon and threaten the existence of the world, there may be no need talking and exploring the relevance of nonviolence. In other words, failure to know what violence is and how it is interpreted, discussion on the importance of nonviolence would be wrongly placed. As such, it is very much in place to first start with the negative and coming to the positive. The help this approach would render is; it would help to better appreciate the subject under discussion.

The research is done in three layers. First from the definitive point of view and from the interdisciplinary perspectives what violence is. The second layer is to present various approaches in the research on violence and then thirdly state the interconnectivity between violence and religion. This third point is very relevant having direct impact on this research.

In the interdisciplinary research on violence, it has been noted that violence is the most enigmatic and most serious social phenomenon leading to different academic disciplines to have different explanations of violence. The research on violence has to be so nuanced as the phenomenon of violence is ambiguous which is further compounded by the way and manner people interpret it. This could be evidenced by the so many theories and concepts developed by people across the divides from all works of life and from different religious, confessional background, and ethnic to overcoming violence.

Violence is indeed a complex subject which makes dealing with it complex as well.

The violence phenomenon is multifaceted thereby rendering violence to be ambiguous. Heitmeyer and Hagan have this point,

Almost all relatively detailed studies make it clear that violence takes extremely varied forms and may posses many different qualities; not only is there a very substantial range of (current) definitions, but there are so many disagreements about the authority of what violence is, or is to be. Consequently, theories of violence not only vary in their validity and significance but also address different subjects and involve controversial assessments of the efficacy of possible struggles for addressing the problem.

Moreover, what seems the clear condemnation of violence is significantly challenged in many social and political situations, so

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that it is highly advisable to approach violence, and its different areas and contexts, on a basis of clear distinctions.¹⁴⁷

In dealing with violence, there is the interplay of many factors starting from what exactly should be classified or defined as violence due majorly to overstepping of boundaries as well as to the logic governing the outbreak of violence. No one knows when violence will break out and the victims of violence are random. This is further complicated by the fact that violence involves quite different types of victim. The diversity of social situations and political conflicts that are classified as violence make the description of the variations of violence an impossible and herculean task.

Then comes another challenge in the words of Girard, Heitmeyer and Hagan the problem of ambivalent consequences in relation to violence. The modern age is an age of ambivalence which is also reflected in the ambivalence of violence. Granted that the prevalent opinion among many people is that violence is always destructive based on devaluation of life and the exaltation of power. Yet, violence is an ambivalent phenomenon because the same acts can have different consequences in different social contexts and political systems. “Violence is negative when it involves the destruction of human beings and humanity; it may be positive where the focus is on the preservation or restoration of humanity. Both the destruction of order and the creation of order can involve violence.”¹⁴⁸ The question then is how to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate, lawful and unlawful violence. An example of the ambivalence of violence is when violence is used by a dictator would be negative, but when violence is used by the oppressed, marginalized and the disadvantaged as a means to destroy the power of the dictator can be positive. However, even at this, scholars like Heitmeyer and Hagan are of the view that demand is to be made on integrity and freedom from harm and safeguarding the right to human integrity.

The ambivalence of violence has a great consequence on the Historic Peace Churches and especially the Church of the Brethren understanding of violence and the concept and ethics of nonviolence. For the Historic Peace Churches as discussed

147 Wilhelm Heitmeyer and John Hagan, “Violence: The Difficulties of a Systematic International Review” in International Handbook of Violence Research, (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers), 2003:3-11:3-4.

148 Ibid., p.6.

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in the previous chapter, there is nothing good in violence for even the oppressed are not to use violence but only nonviolence in overcoming violence. The notion that violence defeats violence and the end justify the means is unacceptable to the Historic Peace Churches and specifically the Church of the Brethren.

What then is violence? There are no unanimous agreement as to the definition of violence and what is to be regarded as violence due to the ambiguity as well as the content of violence. However, a research of this nature must have a definition no matter how limited it may be. This would have an impact on the overall discussion because one’s understanding of violence affects his or her approach to the subject.

Imbusch having the same mind as the above statement did an extensive work on the

‘etymology and delineation: the origins and the concept of violence and changes in its meaning.’ He kick started his critical analysis from the root words of the Germanic and Roman legal systems where he saw that power and violence were at first restricted concrete terms for the authorities whose legitimacy were unquestioned.

But from the twentieth century the concept got broadened and the meaning of the term exhibiting so varied components. Pahl’s definition seems to me comprehensive enough and relevant for our studies. He gave what he calls two approaches scholars generally distinguish in defining what violence is. The two approaches are what he referred to as the ‘Minimalists’ and the ‘Maximalists.’ In his words,

Minimalists choose to limit the term ‘violence’ to organized aggression or physical force, as in war, riots, or crime. Some minimalists further prefer to limit the term to illegitimate, or criminal, physical aggression. Maximalists, by contrast, prefer to extend the term ‘violence’ to include overt or covert forms of cultural coercion, including both physical and symbolic action. Some maximalists describe particular language patterns (for instance hate speech) as violent, even though no overt physical aggression may accompany any given speech (or writing) act.¹⁴⁹

The approach in this research work is from the maximalists point of view putting Imbusch’s macroviolence and microviolence concepts together as this is the understanding of the Church of the Brethren. The maximalists approach to the

149 Jon Pahl, “Violence from Religious Groups” in International Handbook of Violence Research, (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers), 2003:323-338:324.

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definition of violence is shared by McAfee in which he defines violence as “any violation of personhood with or without physical force.”¹⁵⁰

It is clear due to the foregoing, there is every need in dealing with the phenomenon of violence to go with the suggestion of Heitmeyer and Hagan among others that, to approach violence research, it has to be approached from both psychological and sociostructural approaches. However, they warned against what they call thematization traps because violence emotionalizes, it creates fear and can be politically exploited. “Risky approaches to violence become apparent when the attitude adopted to one’s own or others’ points of view and spoken or unspoken assumptions is not sufficiently self-reflexive. There is the danger of falling into the

‘thematization traps’ of the violence discussion, to six which particular attention must be drawn.”¹⁵¹There is the re-interpretation trap when violence is personalized, pathologized and biologized, then the scandalization trap using vocabulary dominated by social media, the inflation trap making it look as violence is everywhere, the moralization trap having good and bad, normality trap attaching violence to particular group of persons and then reduction trap where no consideration is given to the complexity of the phenomenon of violence and to attribute violence to the personal characteristics of individuals. As such, the theoretical approach to violence research is to be multidimensional.

Another approach worthy of mention here is the “Evolutionary and Social Biological Approaches” proposed by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson. This approach has to do with the quest to understand and predict who is likely to use violence against whom, and under what circumstances.

“Such an approach requires a dispassionate perspective in the sense that we cannot prejudge the violence in which we are interested as pathology. It may often be so, in which case an appropriate remedial response might be therapeutic, but violence may often be understood as the adaptive output of a healthy psyche functioning normally,

150 Robert McAfee Brown, Religion and Violence: A Primer for White Americans, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press), 1987:29.

151 Heitmeyer and Hagan, p. 8

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in which case an appropriate remedial response must address the social and material circumstances conducive to the violence.”¹⁵²

There had been a time in world history when readiness to resort to violence has regularly been interpreted as primitive or immature. Yes, there was a time indeed with civilization, some scholars were predicting a non-violent world. More especially by the collapse of the communist socialist regime, the hope was kindled that with such human advancement in technology bringing about globalization, the world would be violent free. However some theoreticians hold to the position that violence is inevitable. Heitmeyer and Hagan both said is nonsensical conjectures that violence is inevitable in the biological sense but addressed the expectation of a nonviolent society as utopian. This was against the earlier held positions and predictions by many theoreticians of culture and civilization that since the human race is involved in permanent civilizing process, it will culminate into a nonviolent modern age. The believe that human race is getting better and better and in turn making the world better and better, the end result would be a violent free society. This from empirical evidences has proven to be just but an illusion. There are on the other hand those who see the civilizing modern age as barbaric which is a one sided view. Attempt has however been made by authors who adopt a more anthropological line of argument by saying there is no relationship between modern civilization and violence.

Another approach in the international and interdisciplinary research on violence has to do with the relationship between violence and religions. Prior to the religious revivals witnessed in this century, there were even the widely held assumptions among historians and other scholars that religion will loose its grip on people and may have no impact in the political and social life of the modern globalized people.

However, that was proven to be false as the current activities of religious and cultural resurgence in modern times are so evident. Juergensmeyer, Heitmeyer and Hagan, Girard, McTernan, Fernando, and Haar to mention some few all agreed to having a religious approach. Rene Girard who had meticulously proposed the

“mimetic desires” accepted the reality of violence in human beings and looked at the

152 Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, “Evolutionary Psychology of Lethal Interpersonal Violence,” in International Handbook of Violence Research, (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers), 2003:569-588:569.

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roles of sacrifice in societies and religions and came up with redirecting violence into another channel. This could be done through the scapegoat sacrifice.

Juergensmeyer proposes “religious nationalism” which sometimes become violent because it rejects secular ideas but not necessarily secular politics. Juergensmeyer though appreciative of Girard’s thesis of “mimetic desires” when he gave social and psychological reasons for the virtual universality of violence in religion, however, most real acts of religious violence do not easily fit the Girardian scheme. “The reason, is that most acts of religious violence are less like sacrifice than they are like war. One can think of religious warfare as a blend of sacrifice and martyrdom:

sacrificing members of the enemy’s side and offering up martyrs on one’s own. But behind the gruesome litany is an idea that encompasses both sacrifice and martyrdom and much more: the dichotomy between the sacred and profane. This great encounter between cosmic forces- an ultimate good and evil, a divine truth and falsehood-is a war that worldly struggles mimic.” ¹⁵³

Having given an overview on the interdisciplinary research on violence and the various approaches, the concept of nonviolence and overcoming violence is discussed.