{"id":17731,"date":"2015-05-15T08:45:48","date_gmt":"2015-05-15T13:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=17731"},"modified":"2017-09-17T18:52:01","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T23:52:01","slug":"webers-monopoly-on-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/05\/15\/webers-monopoly-on-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Dividing Legitimate from Illegitimate Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Sociologist Max Weber argued that the nation-state can be defined by its monopoly on violence. For most of us, most of the time, violence exercised by the state is assumed to be legitimate (unless shown otherwise). For example, police walk around with guns and can shoot you <em>legally<\/em>. Soldiers kill as part of their jobs. This is simply &#8220;keeping the peace&#8221; or &#8220;following orders.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But violence exercised by individuals and other entities is (unless shown otherwise) illegitimate. In fact, when individuals or other entities do violence, it is often called &#8220;criminality&#8221; or &#8220;terrorism.&#8221; A powerful cartoon by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cagle.com\/2012\/08\/terrorism-vs-militarism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Andy Singer<\/a>\u00a0illustrates the phenomenon well.<\/p>\n<p>Words are powerful. Calling something &#8220;terrorism&#8221; is a way to make it seem illegitimate. \u00a0And, often, what makes violence illegitimate is not something inherent in the violence itself, but your perspective on it.<\/p>\n<p><em>Thanks to Perry H.for the submission. Originally posted in 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flashback Friday. Sociologist Max Weber argued that the nation-state can be defined by its monopoly on violence. For most of us, most of the time, violence exercised by the state is assumed to be legitimate (unless shown otherwise). For example, police walk around with guns and can shoot you legally. Soldiers kill as part of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":66403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,23384,304,133,302],"class_list":["post-17731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-the-state","tag-violence","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2009\/12\/4.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17731"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71737,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17731\/revisions\/71737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}