Where States Cannot Reach: The Conditions and Meaning of “Senseless” Violence
Introduction
The modern notion of violence is usually associated with unthinkable brutality for a civilized urban citizen. The most prevalent form of violence in the media is usually conducted by centralized authorities, states, governments, police, etc. As a matter of fact, it is due to the state’s monopolization of violence that humans evolved into the non-violent species today (Elias 1978). Our affect towards violence is the opposite of the people in the middle ages. The state is fairly responsible for this change, which made people consider unauthorized forms of violence as “anomalous, irrational, senseless and disruptive” (Blok 2001, 103). Various forms of violence carried important social meanings for people living in societies with weak institutional authority. On the borders of nations, in the mountains, by the ocean, in small agglomerated hill-top villages, or scattered by the outskirts of towns, people exercised violence frequently with consciously intended purposes that benefitted them in their social context.
This essay will examine the physical and social environment where public violence was common, focusing on the ecological setup, settlement pattern, and social relationships. Then I will explore the social meanings attached to non-state violence and explain how it relates to personal and collective identities.
Ecological Conditions and Settlement Patterns
For public violence to rise as a social norm, particular external setups must be in place. The agro-towns located in southern Italy and the Mediterranean, in general, present an interesting case to be examined.
Extensive grain agriculture and cattle breeding require a population to be sedentary and settle in agglomerations called “agro-towns.” This settlement pattern is widespread in southern Italy and many Mediterranean countries (Blok 2001,136). Agro-towns generally consisted of three subtypes: nucleated, dispersed, and linear. Among the three, nucleated settlements resemble most cities where it contains a town center with a market and a religious building and the residences spread around the center. I will focus on this type for its settlement pattern as it mirrors societies with a central authority and relatively concentrated population. Some geographical factors accounted for its formation: it is usually on plains with a scarcity of drinking water. Other than these, socio-economic factors mattered as well. Italian peasants were mainly impoverished. When combined with the scarcity of water, families would congregate in crowds for they lack the resources to dig wells individually (Blok 2001, 136). Despite the state's effort to disassemble these agglomerations into scattered residences, people remained in these hilltop villages. On the one hand, their gathering posed threats to the state as they were remotely located to be properly controlled; on the other hand, cattle rustling, theft of crops, and homicides were constant threats in peasant societies that lacked state control. Therefore, peasants stayed together for security reasons to be better armed against loose brigandage and bandits, a form of violence to be discussed later in the essay. In the central highlands of Sardinia, the villages are conceptually remembered as fortresses, which are “city-state-like nucleated settlements besieged by timeless hostility” and survived by powerful outsiders (Sorge 2015, 268). These agro-towns had always been on the radar of state control and were vulnerable to social banditry.
In the Mediterranean societies, agriculture in pastoral areas was deeply influenced by pastoralists who maintained flexibility in social organization due to seasonal changes brought by environmental constraints, remained fragmented politically and economically, and practiced raiding, banditry, or thefts alike to compete for the limited resources available. The agro-towns on hilltops, lacking effective administration from the states and surrounded by the poorest soils, were somewhat similar to pastoral communities. However, they were more organized than pastoral societies. The community was broken down into family units and lineages that lived together and had a local central authority, therefore politically more stable. Labor was also coordinated with families specializing in a particular corp. Even so, villagers, shepherds, and goatherds were constantly in fights over issues related to resource allocations and property rights, such as “abusive grazing, trespass and the allocation of water” (Schneider 1971, 14).
These particular geological and socio-economic conditions, such as poor environmental conditions, scarcity of resources, and lack of state surveillance, incubated a climate that accepted, encouraged, and thrived on violent behaviors.
“Kinship” Culture, Honor, and Self-Help Violence
In the Middle Ages and early Enlightenment, honor was fundamental to define people’s social worth, especially in small-scale communities. It was their “excellence recognized by society” and their “right to pride” (Pitt-Rivers 1977, and the ideology that forms the identity of a family or lineage that “defines social boundaries” and “legitimatizes limited aggression” against external encroachment of economic properties and social reputation (Schneider 1971, 17). Notably, lineage solidarities were shared across the Mediterranean, and dynamics among groups based on kin or kin-like ties contributed crucially to the violent culture.
In the Mediterranean, women were the central focus that makes up the honor of a family, especially of its head, the husband. Men were protectors of women in terms of their reputation and virtue, treating them as his patrimony. Large families were preferred, which enlarged women’s roles as child bearers, making their social status equating to resources such as pastures and water. Heavy duties were placed on women to produce sons as male heirs and major labor forces of important economic positions. Christianity offered the role model of virgin Marry to women, who thus followed the religious honor codes to be tamed, virtuous, and sexually obedient. Conveying sexual interests to outsiders was scandalous and damaging to the family's reputation. In return, men guarded the virginity of unmarried daughters and their wife’s sexual conduct as assets that reflected their honor (Schneider 1971, 18-21). When this virtual property of a woman’s virtue was violated, men often sought violence to vindicate their honor.
Mediterranean peasants and pastoralists organized the communities around the nuclear family, the basic autonomous economic unit that favored male dominance. However, volatility rises when lineages grow and families break down with partible inheritances. Every family wants sons because they constitute military forces to protect the family’s properties and enhance their patrimony. Thereby, divisions had to occur to grant the sons their own land and herds as heads of their own nuclear families once they had children. This practice led to competitive tensions between fathers and sons and among the sons themselves. With the men’s main allegiance to their own nuclear families, patrilineal families experience internal conflicts in violent forms due to the fights to inherit more properties (Schneider 1971, 11-13). In southern Italian agro-towns, Male dominance was also reflected in their economic role as breadwinners, usually assisted by their unmarried sons. Women were confined to domestic activities and forbidden to work outside the household. If they were seen to be contributing to agrarian labor, the men’s honor would be jeopardized. Tight restrictions were also placed on women’s sexuality, which was to be controlled vigilantly by men of the households (Blok 2001, 149). Overall, men’s economic duty subjected them to a different honor code: to strive for and protect all resources, material and reputational, of the nuclear family.
Regarding kinship culture, the mafia in Sicily is interestingly relevant as it is a kind of self-help violence built on agnatic, affinal, and ritual kinship. Its members include family members of consanguineal ties and marriage, godparents, and even friends from blood brotherhood (Blok 2001, 88). When effective state control over the means of violence is absent, people seek protection from kin or quasi-kinsmen as they represent trust and alliance with a connotation of blood relationships. In Sicily, self-help violence such as “theft, extortion, ransom, arson, shooting, and homicide” was the norm, where “people sought to get their claims to honor and power ultimately recognized” (Blok 1974, 174). Through biological links from the same genes and blood types or through ritualized notions of fusing blood from marriage and other social constructions, mafioso connect as partners in solidarity that resist and take revenge against outside violation or harm to their boundaries and honor (Blok 2001, 101).
These examples of kinship culture shared a similar characteristic: solidarity with its group and pledging allegiance to the ruling of this closely knitted social unit of people who share the same economic interests. The links among members weren’t strictly bounded by biology but by social notions, whether the nuclear family or blood symbolism. These kinship or quasi-kinship ties form the center of any social antagonistic relationships that are militantly loyal to foreign forces. When the state was not the only legitimate authority to exercise violence or define law and justice, kins were the best options to form an armed alliance with and exercise self-help violence, no matter how particular social contexts defined kin.
Meaningful Violence and Social Identities
The earlier sections painted a picture of societies that escaped the control of the states regarding their ecological, social, and cultural environment, where violence was usually conducted with clear motives. As Blok suggested, violence is “a changing form of interaction and communication” and a “historically developed cultural form of meaningful action” (2001, 104). This section will survey various forms of violence common in Mediterranean societies and deconstruct their roles in forming individuals' and groups' social identities.
Social banditry has been a universal phenomenon in agricultural societies that lacked state authority. This violent-seeking activity endorsed the outlaws with a unique identity among the peasants, where their violent acts were often considered helpful and heroic in terms of their seemingly rebellious spirit against the social order that oppresses the peasants. But on the contrary, bandits never intended to start a genuine social upheaval. Instead, their violence was often secretly permitted by the elites due to its exploitative nature on the poor, which only enforced preexisting social hierarchies and further repressed the weak peasants (Blok 2001, 14-22). Social bandits, motivated by the European concept of honor to protect their resources and accumulate more from others, branded themselves through violence, establishing a moral image as heroes.
The Bokkeryders, a group of bandits who embodied how difficult banditry was for states to counteract, operated for 40 years in the hinterland of Maastricht before their demise (Blok 2001, 29). Other than kins and affinal-kins, this group mostly consisted of people in similar occupations such as artisans and merchants who were particularly stigmatized by societies due to their close contact with dirt and rough labour – their jobs entailed activities such as skinning animals, making shoes, or trading livestock. These people were excluded by peasants and usually lived on the outskirts of towns. Ritual meanings were defined culturally for any encounters with them to destigmatize their unwelcomed social positions. Because of social exclusion, the Bokkeryders directed their operations against the churches and farms, which were ideological and economic pillars of the peasant community. They raided churches with theft and arson and performed initiation rituals that were sacrilegious to the Catholic church, including spitting on the crucifix, throwing it on the ground, and stepping on it right after (Blok 2001, 36-38). This violence had a purpose: to denounce the social ostracization of the peasantry and Catholicism. The ritualized nature and the particularity of their action gave meaning to violence. Through specified scripts, they established their social identity as anti-hegemony outlaws.
In the central highlands of Sardinia, the village of Orgosolo stood at the nexus of history and locality of a violent past, shared by many as their social memory. Historically, it was never effectively governed by Rome and withstood various degrees of militant actions from Rome. The villagers of shepherds prided themselves on the title of “Barbagia” where they successfully fought off external forces to be free and fearless. People kept coins from Ancient Rome as trophies that symbolized their militant autonomy from Roman power and economic freedom in commodities exchanges with the Roman (Sorge 2015, 269). Later, when the Italian state impinged on local interests in the 20th century, Orgolesi carried on their legacy and fought continuously in confrontations with the military. The death of community members in riots was considered to be assaults committed by the state and vigilantes from nearby villages (Sorge 2015, 270-271). These acts were unforgivable, and these vigilantes were traitors to their highland spirit, their pastoral identity as dignified freedom fighters. Overall, violence was the ground where their collective will was built and the social fabric of the highland culture. Group identities were undoubtedly established through violent actions against external encroachment.
Conclusion
On the remote hills and mountains and by the edges of state borders, where a central authority cannot fully reach or control, people organized ways of their own social control. Kin and kin-like groups organized themselves into social units to increase their militant ability to practice self-help violence. In defending their property rights and reputation, men and women played their respective roles in protecting their honor, which was the end goal of any violent actions. These scripted means of coercion marked their places in society, branded images that were intentionally curated, and formed collective memories that defined their group identities. To sum up, before proper state control, means of coercion were universally practiced by people in small pastoral and agricultural communities located in relative remoteness, which carried essential cultural relevance to their self-esteem and social identities.
Works Cited
Blok, Anton. 1974. The mafia of a Sicilian village, 1860-1960: a study of violent peasant entrepreneurs. Oxford: Blackwell.
Blok, Anton. 2001. Honour and Violence. Cambridge: Polity.
Elias, Norbert. 1978. “On Transformations of Aggressiveness.” Theory and Society 5 (2): 229-242.
Pitt-Rivers, Julian. 1966. “Honour and Social Status.” In Honour and Shame. Reprinted in J. Pitt-Rivers, The Fate of Shechemor the Politics of Sex: Essays in the Anthropology of the Mediterranean. Pages 1–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Schneider, Jane. 1971. “Of Vigilance and Virgins: Shame and Access to Resources in Mediterranean Societies.” Ethnology 10 (1): 1-24.
Sorge, Antonio. 2015. “The Past Sits in Places: Locality, Violence, and Memory in Sardinia.” Critique of Anthropology 35 (3): 263-279.
