Measuring Violence In Turbulent Times

In current turbulent times, are we moving towards “Harsh World” characterized by “the war of all against all” as described by Thomas Hobbes and away from a “Gentle World”, where all people communicate nonviolently? It seems that our world gets harsher every year. But is this impression backed up by data? There is some evidence that a move towards a gentle world has occurred. For example, in the West homicide rates fell dramatically and quite continuously from the late Middle Ages through the middle of the twentieth century. According to Steven Pinker, we may be living in the least violent era our species has seen. However, investigating changes in the rate of violence is methodologically challenging. E.g., the repeat nature of domestic violence makes it hard to measure, especially the experiences of those relatively few people who suffer large numbers of repeat offences. There are also other challenges in the methodology and measurement of violence and its’ change in our societies. Each source of data, including survey and administrative data, has its’ own pros and cons. This session calls for papers addressing the challenges and/or offering opportunities to measure the rate of violence in our societies to be better able to answer to the question “how harsh or gentle our world is and to which world are we trending towards?”