Violence | EPFL Graph Search

La violence est l’utilisation de force ou de pouvoir, physique ou psychique, pour contraindre, dominer, tuer, détruire ou endommager. Elle implique des coups, des blessures, de la souffrance, ou encore la destruction de biens humains ou d'éléments naturels. Selon l'OMS, la violence est l'utilisation intentionnelle de la force physique, de menaces à l'encontre des autres ou de soi-même, contre un groupe ou une communauté, qui entraîne ou risque fortement d'entraîner un traumatisme, des dommages psychologiques, des problèmes de développement ou un décès. La violence est observable chez les humains comme chez les animaux, ce qui indique sa signification évolutive et biologique. Le mot violence vient du latin vis, qui signifie la « force exercée contre quelqu'un ». Son pluriel vires désigne les moyens utilisés pour exercer la vis. Plusieurs types de violence sont distinguées. Leurs définitions - parfois contradictoires - varient selon les époques, les milieux, les lieux, les évolutions sociales, technologiques, etc. Comportements de domination ou asservissement employant la force, physique (coups, viol, torture...), verbale et psychologiques (injures, injonctions paradoxales, harcèlement, privation de droits ou liberté, abus de position dominante...) ; Ces comportements peuvent être conscients ou non. Cette catégorie inclut la violence entre partenaires ou de parent à enfant, et différentes formes d'embrigadement ; les violences externes sont celles qui sont commises dans le cadre du travail par des tiers extérieurs à l'organisation (clients, usagers, élèves...), En France, en 2013, 70 % des salariés déclarent travailler au contact d'un public selon la DARES. Au début des années 2000, environ 20 % des salariés en contact avec le public estiment subir cette violence. Les États pratiquent discrètement ou revendiquent selon la définition célèbre de Max Weber, un « monopole de la violence légitime », pour exécuter les décisions de justice, assurer l'ordre public, ou en cas de guerre ou risque de guerre (on tente alors de la légitimer par les doctrines de la « guerre juste »).

The Birth of the Workshop: Techno-Morals, Peace Experts and the Care of the Self in the Middle East

Nikolas Kosmatopoulos

In the article I examine through ethnography and contextual analysis one of the flagship techniques of peace expertise in the Middle East and elsewhere, the so-called conflict resolution workshop. For the transnational and hyper-mobile clan of peacemakers and peace experts, the workshop constitutes maybe the absolute travel device: it can be transported and deployed everywhere without the need for translation into local vernaculars; it can exemplify the moral ambition for peace in the world backed with technical arrangements of space, time and learning mostly imported from other disciplinary settings; it can address sustained needs for knowledge and hopes for personal betterment by introducing a unique style of pedagogy based on both academic credentials and moral superiority. I present ethnographic evidence that shows how assemblages of peacemaking, most of them centred around the technique of the conflict resolution workshop, had at least three, often unintended, effects in Lebanon and beyond: First, a massive trend towards what one might call the workshopping of peace, namely the idea that major issues of broad concern regarding past and future violence can be effectively addressed within secluded spaces of conflict resolution workshops. Second, the widespread acceptance and consequent proliferation of a particular version of what Michel Foucault has called ‘the care of the self’ (Foucault 1986) primarily premised on a new configuration of peacemaking that understood the individual as the primary target of expert intervention in a distinct moral and technical sense. Third, the (re-)production of a professionalized field of peace experts, whose degree of legitimacy and conditions of institutional existence crucially depended on the constant need to reiterate and reify the binary between an intrinsically ignorant and potentially uncivil society (that needs to be trained) and themselves (who need to train it).

2014

Violences, sécurités et territoires

Charlotte Boisteau

The phenomenon of urban violence and the resulting sense of insecurity are at the very heart of contemporary urban dynamics. In order to respond to the growing public demand for security, various public, private, and community measures contribute to the new urban policies of large cities. This new configuration that comprises security enforcement operates as a "meta-game", in which numerous global economic and civil society actors, such as private security companies and neighborhood communities, are called upon to participate. With regard to security, the principle of governance implies a loss of the State's monopoly of legitimate violence. We have therefore evolved from a regulatory mode, based on disciplinary institutions, to the political inclusion of actors, concepts and means of providing security that jeopardize governability: we no longer know who governs who and the physical and social urban landscapes have been modified. By focusing on urban development practices that aim to physically resolve insecurity problems and perceptions in cities, our objective is to analyze the extent to which the governance system of security has led to a radical and significant transformation of cities and the practices of its inhabitants, notably through the reinforcement of spatial and social fragmentations. Unequal participation is a reflection of unequal access to public space, and vice versa. The city is leaning towards a global and hegemonic model of public space, where the routine enforcement of order is imperative through the use of appropriate planning policies. We question the degree of publicity of public spaces and the democratic management of urban territories. The "generic" city seeks to eliminate or hide anomic behavior. However, violence adapts to specific forms of urban territories, with the form of the city determining their substance. Consequently, violence should be interpreted as a reaction triggered by the way in which society is organized. Instead of reducing urban violence, the use of security planning in urban areas often territorializes it. A geography of violence reflects the geography of security. With the transition from governmentality to governance in the security field, society has also evolved from fragmentation to greater segregation of urban areas. Efforts must be made by public authorities to reconfigure their structures in order to respond, by themselves, to the public demand for security. To avoid the transition from conflict to violence, the anomie in the city must be reconsidered and urban risks resolved within a framework of inter-sectorality.

EPFL2009