Introduction: Is There a General Theory of Violence Possible?
Titel:
Introduction: Is There a General Theory of Violence Possible?
Auteur:
Susanne Karstedt Manuel Eisner
Verschenen in:
International journal of conflict and violence
Paginering:
Jaargang 3 (2009) nr. 1 pagina's 4-8
Jaar:
2009
Inhoud:
“There once was a man who aspired to be the author of the general theory of holes. When asked ‘What kind of hole—holes dug by children in the sand for amusement, holes dug by gardeners to plant lettuce seedlings, tank traps, holes made by road makers?’ he would reply indignantly that he wished for a general theory that would explain all of these. He rejected ab initio the—as he saw it—pathetically common-sense view that of the digging of different kinds of holes there are quite different kinds of explanations to be given; why then he would ask do we have the concept of a hole? Lacking the explanations to which he originally aspired, he then fell to discovering statistically significant correlations; he found for example that there is a correlation between the aggregate hole-digging achievement of a society as measured, or at least one day to be measured, by econometric techniques, and its degree of technological development. The United States surpasses both Paraguay and Upper Volta in hole-digging; there are more holes in Vietnam than there were. These observations, he would always insist, were neutral and value-free. This man’s achievement has passed totally unnoticed except by me. Had he however turned his talents to political science, had he concerned himself not with holes, but with modernization, urbanization or violence, I find it difficult to believe that he might not have achie-ved high office in the APSA.” (MacIntyre 1971, 260)The editors only stumbled upon this quote by the renowned political scientist Alasdair MacIntyre after having sent out the call for contributions to this special issue “Is a general theory of violence possible?”. In fact MacIntyre asked a very similar question in his 1971 article, “Is a science of comparative politics possible?”, and as we can imagine from the above quotation, he was not supportive of any such possibility. The response to our call from leading scholars in the fields of violence research and criminology assured us that even if the authors might have been as sceptical as MacIntyre with regard to the answer, they at least found our question sufficiently interesting.
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