How to explain the sustainability of violent forms of political action in our Western societies ? A collective work synthesizes the contributions of recent research on extremist, nationalist, rioting and state violence. Comparaist and transdisciplinary, the book favors the points of view of sociologists and political scientists, however.
The work led by Xavier Crettiez and Laurent Muchielli is at the heart of a strongly publicized violent news in its Islamist terrorist side since the September 11 attacks, as well as in its rioting slope following the events of autumn 2005 in France. He therefore responded to a strong social and institutional demand for analytical and critical understanding of such news, as evidenced by the publication of the book by La Découverte editions. Political violence in Europe. An inventory was in this sense a necessary work.
The ambition of the book, resulting from an international conference held in Nice in June 2008 as part of a European Crime and Delinquency Research Program (CRIMPERV), is double. This is one side of offering an overview of research on political violence and a review of the most recent publications, on the other to propose a thematic analysis of the types of violence considered. The typological structure of the work reflects this choice: four types of violence are approached successively, extremist, nationalist, rioting and state violence, from contemporary national examples borrowed mainly from Western Europe (France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain), a large place being made each time at the journal of existing literature on the question.
Extremist, nationalist, rioting and state violence
Among the cases studied, we will remember the original and pioneer of Isabelle Sommier on the threat of the ultra-left in France, which aroused intense popular emotion in 2008-2009 around the arrests of “ Tarnac group »While not paradoxically giving rise to a scientific study« likely to qualify the alarmist remarks of moral entrepreneurs (P. 52).
Nationalist violence is the subject of three stimulating articles on North Irish, Basque and Corsica conflicts. Élise Féron insists on the perceptible gap between a process of negotiation and settlement of the conflict which seems efficient at the institutional level and a social reality in which the gap between nationalists and unionists continues to widen. The zones of community and religious interface, places of focusing violence, testify in particular to a growing spatial, social and identity segregation which is the subject of more and more studies: the conflict is no longer perceived as A (para) military problem and the looks are now focused on what is “ post-conflict ». Xavier Crettiez, for his part, proposes an inverted interpretation of the Corsican conflict: the terrorist violence of the nationalists would not cause violence directed against the State but on the contrary, a means “ To be heard from the central power and obtain greater civic and state control (P. 130) On the island at the expense of traditional clans which have confiscated local power for decades.
Those who hope to obtain some elements of understanding the violence of rioters who agitate the working -class districts of large cities will be filled by the article by Laurent Muchielli, which convincingly synthesizes the various explanatory factors advanced. “” Basically, he concludes, the riots are in our eyes above all the product first of a socioeconomico-spatial process of ghettoization, secundo failures of state regulation and tertio of the lack of access to the inhabitants to other means of political contestation ». According to him, if the political significance of the riot is no doubt, the rioters are not part of an anti-system position but on the contrary express a need for recognition, a request for citizenship in the democratic framework. The use made of violence would even, in November 2005, were in reality very limited in relation to the representations that we have had. The author deduces, in reverse of the overlooked comments of the media, that “ The French urban riots are fully part of the general movement of pacification of forms of rebellion, in consensus on democratic values and in the disappearance of eschatological projects of transformation of the world (P. 163).
State violence is especially perceived from the police angle, in France and Italy (S. Palidda). Olivier Filleule offers a classic synthesis of French and Anglo-Saxon research on police control of manifestations and differentiated policies in the maintenance of order. Note interesting observations on new transnational transnational practices, in particular alterglobalists, which generate a standardization of the practices of maintaining order as well as an increase in obstacles to public freedoms and the rights of the demonstrators (increased surveillance, filing of individuals, limits laid down to the free movement of people, etc.). The study of identity papers by Pierre Piazza offers a suggestive reflection on the logics of distinction at work in what he interprets, in a very Bourdieusian vision of power relations, as the expression of the symbolic violence monopolized by the state.
A socio-political approach to violence
This rapid and not exhaustive panorama of the cases reported in the book suggests how essential it was to put into perspective of sometimes exploded studies to propose an overall interpretative scheme of political violence in Europe XXe century. This is the perilous attempt made by Xavier Crettiez in the introduction. This synthesizes and organizes the various explanatory schemes to which the social sciences use to try to understand the violent phenomena according to three macro, meso and microphone scales. The first level refers to structuralist, culturalist and institutionalist approaches (the latter notably questioning the concept of structures of political opportunities). The second rather takes up the contributions of interactionist sociology and includes situational, communication and organizational factors. The micro level finally uses psychological and cognitive factors.
Beyond this laudable attempt at the global modeling of an eminently complex and plural phenomenon, the work nevertheless follows a main epistemological line, mentioned by one of its initiators, Donatella della Porta: it is a question of integrating the ‘Study of radical violence, in particular terrorism, in that of social and political movements, in other words to reconcile two branches of social sciences, the sociology of collective action on the one hand and the political approach to political violence of political violence ‘elsewhere. It is the ambition of a whole school of research born in the 1980s and carried by Anglo-Saxon sociologists like Charles Tilly or Sidney Tarrow, whose work aims at “ normalize Violence by perceiving it as one resource among others of collective action.
In fact, almost all the authors of the book are sociologists or political scientists: although the introduction pleads for a multidisciplinary and multidimensional approach of violent phenomena, the work unfortunately does not make room for historical, anthropological, psycho-sociological looks And philosophical, however essential to understanding violence. Thus the gender dimension is only overwhelmed while it is crucial in the apprehension of the violence perpetrated by Islamist terrorists, young people from working -class neighborhoods or hooligans. Likewise, the question of the violent act is only posed through the evocation of approaches in terms of biographical trajectories, which highlight the learning and socialization processes without resolving the enigma of entry into violence. A historical look at the average duration would also have contributed to a better perspective of the French or British riots, historians putting for example today in front of the impact of the Algerian war on the genealogy of the riot in France .
More surprising is the lack of prior reflection on the political nature of violence: what makes an act of violence a political act ? Admittedly, the authors sometimes respond individually to the question and the structure of the work indirectly answers it, by listing the different types of violence encountered on the terrains studied. But precisely this typology can pose a number of problems. Does the distinction are based on the forms of violence (riots), on its actors (police, nationalists), on its displayed political objectives (ideological extremism) ? Is hooliganism rather the responsibility of the rioting violence, as the structure of the book suggests, or of ideological, xenophobic and extremist violence as the authors of the contribution suggest ?
We can also regret the few cases which is made of Islamist terrorism, however at the heart of the questions asked. This lack of lighting can be explained by the relative weakness of sociological studies and precise data on a moving object which cannot be easily approached, as AMEL BOUBEKEUR points out. We can also regret that Eastern Europe is only the object of a chapter which finds it difficult to find its place in the structure of the work, while it opens many lines of reflection: to think in a comparative way In periods of transition from one regime to another makes it possible to question the nature of political violence, its meaning and its historical effectiveness from a suggestive angle. Finally, if it turns out to be very useful for the academic or the enlightened reader to have an assessment of the scientific literature existing on each question, the result may seem redundant and harsh to reading, due to abundance References to the theoretical concepts and models which obscure, in the end, the global understanding of the phenomenon.
However, one cannot demand from a single work that he answers the infinite questions posed by the phenomenon so vast and complex of political violence. The high quality of it is to synthesize all the research avenues explored until then and to open others. For this reason, it imposes itself as a compulsory reading for any researcher working on political violence and as a recommended consultation for any reader who wonders about the sustainability of violent forms of political action in our Western societies.