Theory of Violence

2010 AGCC&COBAWU, Afghanistan Report, 2010

2010 Executive Summary AGCC is an international and interdisciplinary group around Andrés Ginestet, attempting to help reduce violence in the world. Many other groups of most serious peoples - governmental or non-governmental, public and/or private, etc. are active in that field, which, in turn, is being studied inside many connected fields/disciplines in academia. Systematic programmatic recommendations are being analyzed, set up and followed; and the outcomes are being monitored and evaluated. True progress seems to be marginal at best. The difference AGCC thinks, it can make, comes from its four-prong approach: First, there is recognition of the systemic nature of violence (and historically strong auto-regressivity) reproducing similar behavioral patterns inside humankind. This leads to our understanding that global solutions are required. Second, there is recognition of the need for very broad inter-, trans-, and crossdisciplinary approaches in addressing the problem of violence. This comes combined with the strong belief we share that such an approach may yield access to better knowledge about, and to a more thorough understanding of the multitude of factors affecting systemic reproduction of violent behaviors worldwide."

2010 AGCC&COBAWU, Afghanistan Report, 2010

2010 Executive Summary AGCC is an international and interdisciplinary group around Andrés Ginestet, attempting to help reduce violence in the world. Many other groups of most serious peoples - governmental or non-governmental, public and/or private, etc. are active in that field, which, in turn, is being studied inside many connected fields/disciplines in academia. Systematic programmatic recommendations are being analyzed, set up and followed; and the outcomes are being monitored and evaluated. True progress seems to be marginal at best. The difference AGCC thinks, it can make, comes from its four-prong approach: First, there is recognition of the systemic nature of violence (and historically strong auto-regressivity) reproducing similar behavioral patterns inside humankind. This leads to our understanding that global solutions are required. Second, there is recognition of the need for very broad inter-, trans-, and crossdisciplinary approaches in addressing the problem of violence...

Executive Summary AGCC is an international and interdisciplinary group around Andrés Ginestet, attempting to help reduce violence in the world. Many other groups of most serious peoples-governmental or non-governmental, public and/or private, etc. are active in that field, which, in turn, is being studied inside many connected fields/disciplines in academia. Systematic programmatic recommendations are being analyzed, set up and followed; and the outcomes are being monitored and evaluated. True progress seems to be marginal at ...

Basel Peace Academy Report, 2010

30th October 2010 The Action Group for Complexity-driven Change is an international inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary group with seven core members and a considerably larger group of collaborating colleagues. It attempts to help reduce violence by means of systemic analysis and growing understanding of violence. One specific feature of complex adaptive systems is the importance of behavior. This is a determining factor within ADCC’s initiatives of reducing violence via complexity reduction. For years, the group was more or less a loose network of researchers with common interests, till, in February 2010, and thanks to the initiative of Andrés Ginestet, Karolin Kappler, Ph.D., Piroska Gavallér-Rothe, Peter Metter, Ph.D., Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D), and Moshe Szyf, Ph.D. officially established AGCC at a meeting in Basel (see list of c.v. abb. in the annex).

Basel Peace Academy Report, 2010

12th Mai 2010 In a meeting in Basel Switzerland held mid February 2010, an interdisciplinary group of people crystallized around Andres Ginestet has met and addressed potential new ways to attempt at reducing violence in the world with a clear deadline. Many similar such measures are undertaken with much seriousness of purpose by quite a wide range of several world-reaching organizations—governmental or non-governmental, public and/or private--, and are being studied inside many connected fields/disciplines in academia. Systematic programmatic recommendations are being analyzed, set up, followed, and outcomes are being monitored and evaluated for years if not decades now. Nonetheless, true progress seems to be in fact marginal at best. Under these conditions, the difference this small group of professionals thinks it can make comes from a four-prong approach. First, there is a recognition of the systemic (and historically much auto-regressive) nature of violence reproducing behaviors inside humankind. This leads also to an understanding that a global solution is required. Second, there is recognition of the need for very broad inter-, trans-, and cross-disciplinary approaches in addressing the problem of violence. This comes combined with the strong belief we share that such an approach may yield access to better knowledge about, and to a more thorough understanding of the multitude of factors affecting systemic reproduction of violent behaviors worldwide. Third, a recognition of the importance of the behaviors of complex adaptive systems and the influence such behavior could make in amplifying potential rate of success of the violence-reducing initiatives the group proposes. Intrinsic in this approach is the belief that a self-replicating System of Violence can most probably only be turned-around using response resources proportionality and/or (over-) dis-proportionality. This means that at least a balance has to be stricken between the sizes of resources driving auto-regressive self-replication of a System of Violence and the resources dedicated (and to be dedicated) in response to those, targeting a halt of the self-replication and a rever-sal of the trend. Here, we assume that humankind as a system is possibly faced with at least two contradictory and competing internal forces. First, an internal (Darwin’s evolutionary theory driven) systemic violence drive (SVD). Second, an internal “humanizing” drive to overcome this violence, and to self-impose an orderly set of human values, that are non-violent in nature. (Humanizing Systemic Non-Violent Drive—HSN-VD). Complex adaptive systems behaviors may thus be used (harnessed) to effectively and successfully “oppose” the latter to the former, in a manner that would be over time reducing the influence of the former in favor of the latter. Fourth, the pragmatic applied nature of the work of this group stems from the critical finding that current action—whether in theory building or applying available knowledge in practice—continues to seem limited in eliciting progress at the systemic level. All too often rhetoric asserts the contrary, yet at a thorough analysis the System of Violence continues to self-replicate (and amplify) auto-regressively. The response the group proposes is therefore considering the use of critical pragmatic applied methodologies for assessment and for devising potentially influential systemic interventions. Combining the four specific elements above results in more creative and potentially more efficient and effective approaches to pragmatically addressing the problem of systemic violence. An inherent reduction of barriers to knowledge and newly to be produced actionable knowledge is one of the goals of the approach.

Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 2012

Addressing political violence and terrorism from multiple analytical disciplinespsychology, anthropology, psychobiology, neurosciences, criminology, sociology, law, economics to name a few-has allowed us to broaden the horizons of knowledge about a phenomena of greatest impact on society today. In Colombia especially, an immense need has arisen to overcome reductionism in the interpretation of this problem, so that we can build real and novel pathways for peaceful solutions to the violence and war in Colombia. The 4th Annual CICA/STR International Conference was held in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, November 18 through November 20, 2010. Colombia is a country mired in one of the most bloodcurdling phenomena of violence the world has seen in recent times. This conference will be an event of great relevance and meaning for Colombian researchers and organizations that are interested in the study of aggression and violence, and that want to generate peaceful solutions to the armed conflict within their nation. Under the management of IEPSIV (Colombia's Institute of Studies on Psychobiology and Intervention against Violence), and the leadership of Miguel Bettin, the conference left behind an important academic and strategic legacy which will help Colombia address its national problem of violence and war. Previous conferences held in Miraflores (Spain), Zakopane (Poland) and Belfast (Northern Ireland) generated advances in the understanding of aggression and violence through interchanges of experience among well-recognized researchers in the field from many countries.

Global Crime, 2009

Violence: An international Journal #1, 2020

What drives some people to "perpetrate violence"? Why do others, by contrast, not perpetrate violence, even under the same conditions? Do all violent acts involve a radicalization or a dehumanization and degradation of civil relations between subjects, sometimes even between neighbors or even within the same family or community, be it ethnic or national? This special theme gathers contributions from many different geographical areas (mainly Morocco, Syria, Germany, and Rwanda) and from several disciplines (literature, political science, sociology, history) in order to offer keys to understanding the factors that trigger or accelerate the perpetration of violence, but also those that curb or limit it. The reader will also find exhaustive states of the art and case studies on different types of violence (riot, political, paramilitary, genocidal), leading to transversal theorizations that go well beyond dichotomies and old debates. For example, the authors discuss the "old" opposition between a situational and a procedural approach, embodied-not without artifice-by Browning and Goldhagen, or the necessary dehumanization of the enemy generally associated with the study of genocides. Another methodological choice with a strong epistemological implication consisted in not contrasting the recent theories on radicalization with those on extreme violence, and rejecting any obvious determinism between both moments, in order to avoid explaining the perpetration of violence in too facile a way. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2633002420924963 https://doi.org/10.1177/2633002420924963

International Conference at The Shirley and Leslie Porter School of Cultural Studies, Tel Aviv University, June 18-19, 2023 One witnesses and experiences violence everywhere one turns – in the physical, material, spatial, temporal, structural, psychological, symbolic, and epistemic domains. In Gore Capitalism, Valencia Sayak claims that “[v]iolence and its spectacularization now cut across all fields of knowledge and action; it has become the preeminent model for the analysis of contemporary reality.” Hence, the renewed academic interest in violence that has been burgeoning in recent decades in various disciplines is not surprising. However, the theory and critical study of violence remain lacking in many fields. Even when violence is discussed and analyzed, it tends to be isolated by academic barriers preventing us from comprehending this phenomenon or comparing it across different fields. Aims & Objectives We thus plan a two-day interdisciplinary conference at Tel Aviv University dedicated to rethinking violence. This conference is conducted in response to the current (glocal) state of affairs while also following the humanist traditions of thought, critique, and resistance regarding violence. The conference has three key objectives: providing an interdisciplinary venue for multiple perspectives, articulations and manifestations of violence; exchanging thoughtful feedback for the participants’ research; and developing new understandings of violence. We see the three objectives as interrelated and imminent for each other's success. The deadline for all applications is on February 10, 2023. Please include a short narrative CV (250 words), and submit all the required materials via this online registration form. We will evaluate the submissions and notify all applicants by March 01, 2023. For further information, please visit our website