ABSTRACT
Some of the most important and interesting questions that we can ask about ourselves involve ‘violence’. How violent are we as a society, and how do we compare with other countries? Is violent crime rising or falling? Is aggression against others innate – a natural emotion – or an effective and convenient means of communicating power and authority over others? Who can use legitimate violence – the police, the state? Does violence have ‘rules’, as some suggest? Why does the media concentrate on some forms of violence such as football hooliganism, but tend to downplay police violence or violence against minority ethnic groups? The list does not stop there, but this chapter will approach the broader questions to do with violence and its control in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
