The Rights of Violence

There are very few articles written forty years ago that continue to remain essential reading for undergraduate students. ‘The Rites of Violence’ is one of those select few. Its place in the historical canon is assured for five reasons. First, it was a major contribution to the assault on social science structuralism. Afterwards, religion or crowd behaviour could no longer be reduced to a set of social and economic variables. Secondly, Davis showed that patterns of ritual could be decoded to uncover the participants’ sense of a riot's significance and validity. 1 Ritual endowed violence with legitimacy and meaning: Protestant violence, Davis argued, targeted idols, in accordance with Mosaic Law; Catholics on the other hand drew on the ludic rites of folk culture to purge the community of polluting heretics. Thirdly, Davis restored the role of human agency. Her rioters were not a faceless crowd. Her crowd had a place for women and children too. Fourthly, her interest in anthropology led her to the conclusion that religious violence was a culture clash between opposing conceptions of the sacred. ‘The Rites of Violence’ marks an important caesura in historical writing. Culture, Davis suggests, is the driving force of historical change. 2 It marked a break with social history and points to the rise of the cultural turn. Finally, the article is indicative of the shifting centre of the historical discipline, as Europe lost its intellectual hegemony to the United States. Davis's expansion of the themes first raised in ‘The Rites of Violence’ in her subsequent work made her an iconic figure. She was the torchbearer for the New Cultural History, an inspiration to a generation of younger historians.

Criminology · Political science · Sociology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Torture, Ethics, and Law