Violence: the emergence of social secrets António Pedro Dores, The Behavioural and Cultural Foundations and Consequences of Violence Lisbon, ICS, 7-9 June 2010

Revelation of normally hidden SOCIAL SECRETS: Haiti ( disaster ) Torture ( scandal ) Sexual child abuse ( scandal ) 100 years old slavery revolt heritance Institutional perversity Human perversity

Violence emerges VIOLENCE IS NATURAL: As emotions, violence is always present and emerges from “(natural) necessity” till it exhausted itself, sooner or later. VIOLENCE IS TABOO: authority as the control of labeling events as violent or not CHANGING IS VIOLENT: social theory of change needs a better concept of violence

Social secrets are revealed Natural disasters, institutional manipula- tion, anthropological manipulation are acknowledge or not, depending on labeling processes Social theory, as opposed to criminology, international relations, political science, reinforce social secrets, namely modern structural social secrets (cf. Norbert Elias)

Examples of (natural) social secrets Holistic crisis: New Orleans´ Katrina, Haiti development and most “natural” disasters in the neglected world, as Lisbon 1967 Political crisis: Holocaust, prisoners of conscious as well as social prisoners Anthropological crisis: Women submissive social status, as well as domestic violence and children sexual abuse

Resilience to violence Against moral violence one can act; against physical violence one can stand; against total violence (from nature or institutions) what can one do? Societies must produce a set of social secrets in order to maximize social resilience to (human, social and environmental) violence. Societies really are not able to know about them.

Wrong doing of social theory It is not clear what is worse: environmental or social risks (they are both and together opportunities and threats to survival) Social theory specialization, out of natural staff and out of violent staff, reinforces social secrets in modern public life, lend them scientific legitimacy

Stop taboo by thinking Violence should not be presented as a anomic event (excess of violence is) Violence should not be presented as bottom up event (most of the time, in “normal” times, it is the reverse that occur) Violence should not be presented as an causal individual event (it is a step more on a long violent story for dignity and survival)

THE END