Violence: a micro-sociological theory

Content: 1. The micro-sociology of violent confrontations --
Violent situations --
Micro-evidence : situational recordings, reconstructions, and observations --
Comparing situations across types of violence --
Fight myths --
Violent situations are shaped by an emotional field of tension and fear --
Alternative theoretical approaches --
Historical evolution of social techniques for controlling confrontational tension --
Sources --
Preview --
The complementarity of micro and macro theories. pt. 1. The dirty secrets of violence --
2. Confrontational tension and incompetent violence --
Brave, competent and evenly matched? --
The central reality : confrontational tension --
Tension/fear and non-performance in military combat --
Low fighting competence --
Friendly fire and bystander hits --
Joy of combat : under what conditions? --
The continuum of tension/fear and combat performance --
Confrontational tension in policing and non-military fighting --
Fear of what? --
3. Forward panic --
Confrontational tension and release : hot rush, piling on, overkill --
Atrocities of war --
Caveat : the multiple causation of atrocities --
Asymmetrical entrainment of forward panic and paralyzed victims --
Forward panics and one-sided casualties in decisive battles --
Atrocities of peace --
Crowd violence --
Demonstrators and crowd-control forces --
The crowd multiplier --
Alternatives to forward panic --
4. Attacking the weak : I. Domestic abuse --
The emotional definition of the situation --
Background and foreground explanations --
Abusing the exceptionally weak : time-patterns from normalcy to atrocity --
Three pathways : normal limited conflict, severe forward panic, and terroristic torture regime --
Negotiating interactional techniques of violence and victimhood --
5. Attacking the weak : II. Bullying, mugging, and holdups --
The continuum of total institutions --
Mugging and holdups --
Battening on interactional weakness. pt. 2. Cleaned-up and staged violence --
6. Staging fair fights --
Hero versus hero --
Audience supports and limits on violence --
Fighting schools and fighting manners --
Displaying risk and manipulating danger in sword and pistol duels --
The decline of elite dueling and its replacement by the gunfight --
Honor without fairness : vendettas as chains of unbalanced fights --
Ephemeral situational honor and leap-frog escalation into one-gun fights --
Behind the facade of honor and disrespect --
The cultural prestige of fair and unfair fights --
7. Violence as fun and entertainment --
Moral holidays --
Looting and destruction as participation sustainers --
The wild party as elite potlatch --
Carousing zones and boundary exclusion violence --
End-resisting violence --
Frustrated carousing and stirring up effervescence --
Paradox : why does most intoxication not lead to violence? --
The one-fight-per-venue limitation --
Fighting as action and fun --
Mock fights and mosh pits --
8. Sports violence --
Sports as dramatically contrived conflicts --
Game dynamics and player violence --
Winning by practical skills for producing emotional energy dominance --
The timing of player violence : loser-frustration fights and turning-point fights --
Spectators\' game-dependent violence --
Offsite fans\' violence : celebration and defeat riots --
Offsite violence as sophisticated technique : soccer hooligans --
The dramatic local construction of antagonistic identities --
Revolt of the audience in the era of entertainers\' domination. pt. 3. Dynamics and structure of violent situations --
9. How fights start, or not --
Normal limited acrimony : griping, whining, arguing, quarreling --
Boasting and blustering --
The code of the street : institutionalized bluster and threat --
Pathways into the tunnel of violence --
10. The violent few --
Small numbers of the actively and competently violent --
Confrontation leaders and action-seekers : police --
Who wins? --
Military snipers : concealed and absorbed in technique --
Fighter pilot aces : aggressively imposing momentum --
In the zone versus the glaze of combat : micro-situational techniques of interactional dominance --
The 9/11 cockpit fight --
11. Violence as dominance in emotional attention space --
What does the rest of the crowd do? --
Violence without audiences : professional killers and clandestine violence --
Confrontation-minimizing terrorist tactics --
Violent niches in confrontational attention space --
Epilogue : practical conclusions.