Introduction

Attempts to theorise interpersonal violence inevitably lead scholars to speculate about the causes or explanations for a presumed universal phenomenon: ‘violence’. Text after text follows this approach, almost to the level of orthodoxy. In general, theorising about violence coalesces around individual violent offenders. Explanations are grouped by discipline, with each ‘cause’ critiqued by author after author, who demonstrates the (small) proportion of interpersonal violence in so-called advanced, civilised societies that these theories might explain (and by implication that proportion of violence which cannot be explained):

• Biological explanations lead to research into the causes of violence that inquires, for instance, into the genetic make-up, chemical levels in the brain or the hormone levels of identified violent males or females.