Meanings and Significance of Justice and Peace in Systems of Violence-based Social Control

The tension between a guarantee of societal peace and order by way of either the Leviathan or legitimate self-help of individuals or small groups is a constituent feature of all modern societies.

According to the ideology of the nation-state, social control based on violence should be exclusive to the state and actors legitimated by the state. Social and political reality, however, tells us that this is seldom the case. Violence aimed at upholding a specific social order is quite often employed by members of social groups that claim the right to define behavioral norms for their constituencies or even society at large, to monitor compliance, and, if needed, to resort to the use of violence for enforcement.

Drawing on examples from several regions in Indonesia and the Philippines, this project analyzed such hybrid systems of violence-based social control, their paths of development, the normative orders ascribed to them, and the relations of domination and power informing them. With an interregional comparison, we specifically investigated which actors resort to violence, which forms of deviance are inhibited or punished through violence-based social control, which forms of violence are applied in this context, to what extent they are deemed socially appropriate in the affected societies, and how these factors change over time.

The project was supported by the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders” at the Goethe University Frankfurt from July to December 2008. It received further funding from the German Research Foundation from 2009 to 2012.