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Violence as Social Phenomenon

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to present violence as a social phenomenon by reviewing various sources from different disciplines (such as history, psychology, sociology etc.). As a phenomenon of extremely different duration, violence is extremely important not only in human evolution and history, but also in modern action. In the first part, special attention is paid to defining the concept of violence, and then its typology in the social context is presented. Violence has multiple causes. There are already problems in the definition, since some authors emphasize the physical character, while others believe that in addition to physical force, there are also emotional and spiritual factors of violence. On the one hand, scientists believe that it is conditioned by biological factors (primarily genetic and endocrinological). On the other hand, scientists, primarily from the social sciences, point out that this phenomenon is related not only to biological but also to social factors (poverty, culture, gender roles, etc.). There are different types of violence in societies. In addition to many forms of crime and domestic violence, a very important aspect is political violence perpetrated by state institutions and parastatal organizations (criminal, fundamentalist and terrorist groups). The paper also raises the question of whether violence declines over time due to various factors. Based on other papers, it was noticed that there are two schools of thought. According to a group of authors (such as Norbert Elias and Stephen Pinker), with the process of technological development and the spread of ideas, there is an undoubted decline in violence and today we live in the safest of all times. On the contrary, their critics point out that violence has not only not disappeared but has taken on new forms.

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