For today, I chose to explore an article titled “Understanding Violence Sociologically” (http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2014/10/understanding-violence-sociologically.html). This article went on to discuss how violence is perceived as a basic concept which features a definitive “right” and “wrong”. While it may appear this way, it is actually far from that. The author of the post explained how sometimes violence is seen as good and sometimes it is seen as wrong. The reasons for all of this, as he describes, is the contradictions, context, and construction of violence. The contradictions of violence are mainly that in some instances a violent act may be construed as excessive, while in another scenario it may be considered perfectly acceptable. The context of violence describes how its not just the violent act that is important, but also the context (motivation for attack, who did what, etc.). The last point was the construction of the violence. As the author pointed out, humans are affected by a social construction explains our violence as “natural” and “genetic”, and that if we truly believe that we are naturally violent, we’re falsely explain our violence away as such instead of linking it to the real causes of our violence.
Upon reading this article, I felt as if my perspective had changed quite significantly. I had never thought about violence in this way, and I feel that it is a good explanation of the complexity of violence in our society. Violence is a sort of confusing topic, as most people would say they know what is right or wrong in terms of violence, but if they were asked to explain it they really wouldn’t be able to. In his explanation, I think the author hit the nail on the head when using his “3 C’s of violence”. He effectively described how the complicated topic of violence is extremely dependent on what society deems is acceptable and what were the circumstances of the violent act.
I think this explanation of violence is very helpful, and it can be used to better society on a personal level. I think the most important facet was how societal constructs of violence can affect a person’s behavior, and as such I will focus on that. In the world we live in, violence is portrayed often in media, from songs to movies, and is critiqued often. We often have people who claim that the violence is portrayed as the cool thing to do thanks to violent video games and bloody movies. One could quickly fall back on this social construct and use it to explain away all the violence in the world. I believe this is the fault of society, since I believe that blaming it all on the media is the easy way out. Like the author pointed out, looking at the social construct of violence can mislead people about the real causes of violence. I think this is important because we need to find the real reason for violence in our nation. If we think about the violence sociologically, we can start to find the real reasons and find actual solutions. For instance, someone may be quick to point out that a young kid is violent because he plays violent video games, yet they didn’t spend the time to delve deeper and find out that he is taking out his anger on others because of trouble at home. This is critical to sociologists because they need to look deeper than what appears to be the obvious answer. Both humans and violence are extremely complicated topics, and trying to link a cause and effect is often difficult when there are so many causes and so many effects which are often intertwined.
So in summary, it is up to sociologists, along with anyone else, to unearth the true causes of a phenomenon (not just violence) and not just look at the seemingly obvious answer, since it is often much more complicated than what we originally believe. This, if we can apply it to our daily lives, will help us to look for the true causes of events, which will help us to react in a better way.
Sociology 