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Spring/Summer 1998: Towards A New Paradigm Of Violence?
A New Paradigm of Violence? (PDF, 47 pages, 128 KB) , by Michel Wieviorka
Michel Wievorka demonstrates that we have been faced to a certain number of evolutions since the 1960s, justifying the exploration of the hypothesis of a new paradigm of violence. These evolutions express through transformations that affect both the violent practices and their perception. He thereby emphasises on the importance of the symbolic dimension of contemporary violence that refer to the latter's signification, perceptions and thoughts. Nor are the instrumental dimensions of classical wars or the expressive dimension of violence linked to a deficit of social integration the focus of the article. The author rather emphasises on the need to integrate the subjective dimensions of identities and individualism to the analysis of the violence expressions in a context of modernisation and globalisation crisis.
The Bassidji Model (PDF, 58 pages, 159 KB) , by Farhad Khosrokhavar
The author studies the coming and the avatars of the model of martyrdom in post-revolutionary Iran. The Bassidji martyr model as an avant-garde of the Islamic revolution was rooted in the Iranian society being destructured by the advent of a modernity that lower social classes could not access. In a context of the Shiites abandoning their usual quietude, the war in Iraq offered the occasion for a death-attracted youth to deploy an expressive violence in which martyrdom became an objective as much as it was the condition for their self-fulfilment in the beyond. The author shows how the Iran State instrumentalised this fascination for death and retraces the doctrinal and political origins of the radical Islam expressing through the juvenile martyrdom of the Bassidji model. He highlights the diversity of logics behind this phenomenon and replaces them in a more general context of a worried modernity.
Islamism and Violence: the Case of Palestine (PDF, 152 pages, 57 KB) , by Séverine Labat
Séverine Labat studies the suicidal violence of the Hamas movement since the start of the Oslo process, and shows how the dilemma the "Islamic resistance movement" has been confronted to allows approaching the suicidal attacks phenomenon. The movement is indeed divided between the political institutionalisation that the establishment of a Palestinian authority requires, and the social mobilisation through armed violence characterising the first intifada. The Hamas movement oscillates between a social and a political movement, between nationalism and Islamism, between radicalisation and pragmatism, and therefore between an instrumental and an expressive approach of violence through these attacks.
Peacekeeping and Peace-enforcement in Somalia (1992-1995) (PDF, 144 pages, 55 KB) , by Jean-Paul Brodeur
This article deals with the UNOSOM I, UNITAF and UNISOM II peace operations in Somalia through the practices of the Canadian contingents and highlights the transformation of the relation to violence this kind of missions supposes for militaries. Indeed, these kinds of missions question the traditional military socialisation mode based on the singular recourse to "all the necessary violence". Jean-Paul Brodeur shows the cleavages within the military world, generated by such missions, by comparing between peace missions and the traditional function of the police. This article tries to explain the disappointments of these missions in Somalia and pleads for a new paradigm for the study of peacekeeping operations. Such a paradigm could as a matter of fact remedy to the weak degree of doctrinal elaboration for the peace operations, and could also remedy to the ambiguity of mandates leading to the uncertainty of the peace keeping efficiency in Somalia.
Aum Shinrikyô: Sects and Violence (PDF, 59 pages, 161 KB) , by Sylvaine Trinh
This article retraces the story of the Aum Shirikyô sect that perpetrated a gas attack in the Tokyo underground March 20th 1995, by including it in a wider religious and social context. The author goes through the different possible explanations of the sect's transition to violence but concludes that the attack was mostly a spiritual imperative of renouncing to the social world by considering the world through a religious and millenarist vision. Thus, the author considers as secondary the ideological or political readings (that interpret this event as a prelude to a coup) on the one hand and the psychological readings (that insist on the phenomenon of collective craziness) on the other. Silvaine Trinh shows how the sect successively oscillated between strategies of strict spiritualism and an attempt to constitute a wider social and political movement. The failure of this latter strategy could have led to radicalise the first and eventually attack the Tokyo underground.
Quitting Violence in North Ireland (PDF, 16 pages, 53.4 KB) , by Karine Renon
Karin Renon retraces the history of the conflict in Northern Ireland since 1968 and analyses the mechanisms behind it. The historical perspective enables the author to highlight the 1990s peace process analysis. Renon indeed shows that the strategy of end to the Northern Irish conflict is part of a frame of long term social and political transformations, themselves at the centre of the conflict. Thus, if both the conflict and the emergence of nationalism in Ulster are historically linked to a transformation of the North-Irish society, these dynamics are at the centre of the peace process. The author concludes by considering that no purely political solution can resolve the stakes of the conflict. These are indeed partially determined by the transformation of social structures.
Russia: The Paradoxes of Violence (PDF, 59 pages, 156 KB) , by Anne Le Huerou
This article analyses the representations and practices of violence in post-soviet Russia. It shows the existence of various forms of violence (common law criminality, organised criminality, State violence, and war) and highlights the phenomenon being amplified in discourses. The author notably insists on the transformations and perceptions of violence since the soviet period. She also highlights how important it is to take into account the totalitarian episode to understand contemporary violence. Violence, according to Anne Le Huerou, develops in the social spaces from which the State retracted. In the same time, the State violence legitimacy has been largely contested in a context of a government, potentially.
Urban Violence, Democracy and Cultural Change: The Brazilian Experience (PDF, 78 pages, 195 KB) , by Angelina Peralva
Angelina Peralva analyses the scopes of the Brazilian urban violence. This violence notably intensifying since the 1970s has become a social topic, as well as an electoral stake for a large part of the Brazilian population. It has notably been accompanied by police violence, sometimes extreme, and to which only recent Human Rights activists seem opposed. The author analyses this endemic violence as the expression of a crisis of the State that would be linked to the democratisation process that followed the military dictatorship. But this violence could also be an effect of the Brazilian social structure democratisation. As a matter of fact, the irresolution of the individuals' social position, which gave way to traditional hierarchy, could have become an important source of violence amongst specific spheres of the population.