Violence and Civilisation

Dr Jonny Steinberg

The aim of the course is to explore how a major argument in European criminology travels to Africa. In his celebrated book, The Civilizing Process, the German sociologist Nobert Elias argues that contemporary Western societies are less violent, less cruel and more peaceful than at any other time in their history. As a result of the formation of large states, he argues, shame, repugnance and self-inhibition have come to shape human relationships in the West, turning what had always been endemically violent societies into largely peaceable ones.

Sub-Saharan Africa has not experienced state formation on the scale that Europe has. Does this mean that African societies are more prone to violence than Europe is? Or, alternatively, that civilising processes not imagined by Elias are at work? The course thus examines the foundations of violence and peace both in the West and in Africa, in course of asking how well theory travels from one historical context to another. Case studies will include examination of policing in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; inner-city violence in North America; Liberia’s civil war; and urban violence in twentieth-century South Africa.

The seminar topics are:

1. State Formation and the Civilising Process

2. Modern States and Violence

3. Hurricane Katrina and the Civilising Process in New Orleans

4. Violence and Civilisation in Sub-Saharan Africa

5. Urban Violence in Twentieth-Century South Africa (I)

6. The Rwandan Genocide

7. The Liberian Civil War                                                       

8. Urban Violence in Twentieth-Century South Africa (II)