Among historians, especially those investigating violence, Norbert Elias ' theory of civilization has received divergent appreciations recently. In the Anglo-Saxon world, notably in North America, it has obtained increasing recognition over the last ten years or so. In particular, many authors agree that he offers the only theoretical framework which easily accomodates the empirical evidence on the long-term decline of homicide. Conversely, in Continental Europe during the 1990s, a number of historians, notably German historians of crime, have criticized Elias' work. In this discussion, too, the subject of violence looms large. This discussion article confronts the criticism levelled at the theory of civilization, in so far as it pertains to violence. It deals with four broad clusters of problems : (1) the reliability and validity of the evidence for the longterm trend of declining violence; (2) the character of violence, in particular its function as an indicator for the level of behavioral control; (3) the interdependence of long-term change in the field of aggression and human emotions on the one hand and the overall development of society on the other; (4) the new wave of interpersonal violence in the Western world in the late twentieth century. It will be concluded that research on the long-term development of homicide over the last twenty years has yielded impressive new evidence for the theory of civilization, which some historians nevertheless tend to ignore or attempt to explain away. The only objection to the theory not based on a misinterpretation refers to the historical study of honor and ritual. None of the data generated by this research, however, are incompatible with the processes first observed by Elias. Contrary to what his critics assume, the theory of civilization invites creative elaboration, which should be the aim of future research. Parmi les historiens, en particulier ceux qui s'intéressent à la violence, la théorie de la civilisation des moeurs de Norbert Elias a récemment fait l'objet d'appréciations divergentes. Dans le monde anglo-saxon, et en particulier en 1 Pieter Spierenburg is affiliated with the history department of Erasmus University, Rotterdam and the Posthumus Institute (a Dutch research school). In 2001 he was a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. His main interests are the history of violence from a comparative and theoretical perspective and European socio-cultural history. His publications include : The Spectacle of Suffering. Executions and the Evolution of Repression : from a Preindustrial Metropolis to the
How violent were women? Court cases in Amsterdam, 1650-1810 1 Pieter Spierenburg I n his «Black Register of a Thousand Sins» of 1679, Jacobus Hondius, minister at Hoorn, indeed discusses exactly 1000 sins. Many are committed by specific categories of people. Sin nr. 970 involves «such women, who are members [of the Reformed Church] and nevertheless do not refrain from fighting and flinging publicly and to tear the cap from the head». This behavior is a disgrace upon the community: «as men are not allowed to be fighters,... much less are women» 2 . The first of the quoted sentences sounds a little awkward, but it has been translated literally on purpose: Hondius' formulation can refer to women who attack persons of either sex, but it is clear, especially from the reference to removing someone's cap, that he primarily thinks of inter-female fights 3 . No doubt, he shared the judgment, that it was especially unbecoming for women to fight, with many of his contemporaries. Did Hondius find female violence also uncommon? We cannot infer this from the fact that it is one of the last sins he discusses; that is merely a consequence of the alphabetical order of his book. But we may take the harmlessness of the one concrete act he cites to mean that he considered serious female violence uncommon.Like Hondius, historians have found female aggression to be uncommon. When the title of a publication has the words «women» and «violence» in it, the focus is often on women as victims rather than as perpetrators. Historians as well as criminologists have paid ample attention to male-on-female crime. Alternatively, typically female offenses have been studied, such as, for the period under discussion here, infanticide. These two perspectives are frequently combined. For example, in an overview article entitled «Women and Violence in Early Modern Europe» two third of the text is devoted to a discussion of infanticide, wife-beating and rape 4 . This emphasis on victimization and special offenses is understandable, since the subject of women and violence leaves few other choices. Every quantitative study available tells us that among prosecutions for homicide and assault women constitute a tiny minority.
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