"Social Divisions and a Lack of Social Recognition Lead to Violence."
"So much hatred just isn't possible," said neighbours recently when an 18-year-old in the south of Germany dismembered another boy, supposedly out of jealousy, and buried the remains in concrete. Professor Heitmeyer, is there a rising propensity to violence in the age group of 12–18-year-olds?
The trend of statistics on teenagers suspected of committing violent crimes shows steady growth from 1993 to 2005, for example. What is disputed is whether this is attributable to a heightened sensibility in the population or a real change. But for the victims that is a superfluous debate anyway.
Other countries, other customs: does that also go for violence as a means of conflict resolution? Is more violence than usual coming to Germany with the immigrant families?
According to findings in so-called "dark field" research, which focuses on self-reported violence, there is in fact a higher rate of violence there, which is regarded as a consequence of their own experience of violence.
Is the propensity to violence among immigrants also an expression of insufficient integration in their new country?
In our theory of Social Disintegration, violence is always the result of damage to social recognition, in other words to the right to freedom from harm.
Some renowned geneticists say that "excessive behaviour", a marked propensity to violence, is linked to a protein deficiency in the brain. How, and how early, can parents determine whether their children might have a problem of this kind?
We should be cautious about drawing direct inferences about problems with violent behaviour from changes in metabolism. I'm sceptical. There's still too much that remains to be cleared up.
Based on your experience, are schoolteachers nowadays adequately prepared to handle violence as a matter of predisposition, among other things?
Not so much predisposition, but recurrent "experiences of success" after violent behaviour, for example, lead to habitual reinforcement. Violence pays, it's successful. What more could one ask!
Do violent media on the computer, on the other hand, lead to depravity? Do computer games provide "drills" in disturbed social conduct?
The depravity theory is quite popular. First of all: hundreds of thousands of people watch killer games, for instance, without anything happening that's conspicuous to us. We don't perceive what is concealed. That's really a problem. But when kids run amok in schools, that can hardly be ascribed to media consumption. At most, it supplies instructions on how to proceed, but not the motives for acts of violence. The motives lie in injured recognition, in my opinion, which is existential and therefore dangerous.
Schools can have an impact. My core theory always centres on recognition. That can indeed happen in collectivities that provide various correctives to excessive reactions.
Apart from subject-specific instruction, are schools in Germany really doing their job of educating children, or is that – and will that always be – the parents' job?
Schools absolutely must change the underlying paradigm: that of searching for weaknesses, rather than looking for strengths. This motto has to be turned back right-side up. But who wants that?
Neurobiologists say our brain learns chiefly from mistakes with their unpleasant consequences. Shouldn't German schools crack down harder on threats and acts of violence against peers and teachers?
There is a great deal of discussion about repressive measures. They are important in protecting victims. But that doesn't work mechanically, for repression also breeds innovation. In other words, the perpetrators learn from it and come up with new violent behaviours. It's not that simple.
Are social failures more prone to violence than others, that is to say the less intelligent with lower incomes and worse living conditions in "social flashpoints"?
Aggravated social inequality is in fact an often empirically corroborated predictor of violence. That is why the rifts in society, which are not widely discussed, are anything but socially acceptable.
Does our dog-eat-dog society itself with its ultimate goal of social differentiation produce a potential for violence among the socially marginalized, the "losers"?
The answer's simple: yes.
| Wilhelm Heitmeyer is professor of Socialization at the University of Bielefeld. His main field of research for more than a quarter century has been the social problems of violence and xenophobia. Since 1996 he has served as the director of his university's "Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence". Heitmeyer is also chief editor of the International Journal of Conflict and Violence. He is the man behind the "Bielefeld Disintegration Theory", which posits that peaceful group coexistence is jeopardized to the extent that social institutions (from the family to the government) no longer safeguard economic livelihood, social recognition and individual freedom from harm. Conversely, school can become a place of training for mutual social recognition, the basis of coexistence. |
a freelance journalist based in Bonn.
Translated by Eric Rosencrantz
Copyright: Goethe-Institut e.V., Online-Redaktion
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October 2007
