Causes and cures V: The sociology and anthropology of violence

Abstract

Abstract The past two years have been a landmark moment for violence prevention, with the publication of The Global Status Report on Violence Prevention 2014 ; a historic resolution on violence by the 67th World Health Assembly; and the release of multiple documents on violence by international and United Nations entities, with a corresponding building of momentum in scholarship. Most notably, in September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development , addressing the need for violence prevention at an unprecedented scale. In this context, more than ever, violence studies have become a field of its own right. Still, a systematic approach of the topic has been lacking, and no textbook yet synthesizes the knowledge of multiple disciplines toward a cogent understanding. This article is the fourth of a series of fifteen articles that will cover, as an example, an outline of the Global Health Studies course entitled, “Violence: Causes and Cures,” reviewing the major bio-psycho-social and structural-environmental perspectives on violence. Based on the tenet that individual violence does not occur in isolation from social and cultural forces, it reviews the contributions of sociology and anthropology. Although much of sociology has shied away from the topic of violence other than through its study of deviance and crime, and much of anthropology's ethnographic methods have made research difficult in contexts of violent conflict, both bring new potentials. Concepts such as social belonging and cultural symbols can bring important insight into the nature of violence.