| What is the relationship between law and violence? Most criminologists consider them antithetical forms of human behavior: where law represents order and reason; violence represents disorder and passion. But not all scholars aggrees. Dissatisfied with the traditional contrast, some anthropologists have emphasized continuities, arguing that violence, such as feuding, is the functional equivalent of law at least in societies that lack a legal system. In recent years, the emergence of a new social scientific field--the sociology of conflict management (Black, 1976; 1993)_--has yielded a sharper understanding of the similarities and the differences between law and violence. From a conflict management perspective, although the presence of neutral, authoritative third parties, often administering explicit rules, is distinctive to law, both law and violence are confrontational ways of handling conflict in which two sides seek victory rather than compromise and in which third-party supporters commonly play a crucial role. Moreover, law and violence flourish under similar, though not identical, social conditions. Law and violence are best thought of, then, not as siblings or as strangers but as cousins. |
Updated 05/20/2006