Some Social Functions of Violence

Lewis A. Coser
Additional contact information
Lewis A. Coser: Department of Sociology of Brandeis University, University of Chicago and the University of California (Berkeley)

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1966, vol. 364, issue 1, 8-18

Abstract: American social science has traditionally been somewhat remiss in examining social conflict and social violence because of its excessive commitment to models of social har mony ; this has resulted in a tame view of social structures. This paper proposes to redress the balance somewhat by dis cussing three social functions of violence: violence as a form of achievement, violence as a danger signal, and violence as a catalyst. A plea is made that the study of social violence be given greater emphasis in further research.

Date: 1966
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000271626636400102 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:364:y:1966:i:1:p:8-18

DOI: 10.1177/000271626636400102

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().