TY  - JOUR
A1  - Mackert, Jürgen
T1  - In the name of the state the secret society of the torturers
JF  - Berliner Journal für Soziologie = Journal de sociologie de Berlin
N2  - Torture is an extreme act of collective violence that is secretly executed in the name of a state. In order to explain the reasons why people torture others, individualist approaches concentrate on individuals' motives or interests. Contrary to that, the article argues that torture should be understood as a social relation. Thus, it takes the social relations of the group of torturers as a starting point. Firstly, following Georg Simmel's analysis of the secret society the paper argues that the group of torturers can adequately be conceptualized as a secret society; secondly, against this background the article reconstructs the conditions which structure torturers' agency; finally, this article offers an outline of the processes and dynamics that allows for explaining the phenomenon of torture. The thesis of the article argues that a relational sociology helps better explain and understand the social phenomenon of torture.
KW  - Torture
KW  - Secret society of torturers
KW  - Georg Simmel
KW  - Relational sociology
KW  - Processes
KW  - Dynamics
KW  - Explanation
Y1  - 2011
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11609-011-0165-9
SN  - 0863-1808
VL  - 21
IS  - 3
SP  - 431
EP  - 459
PB  - Springer
CY  - Wiesbaden
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Mackert, Jürgen
T1  - Towards a sociological explanation of violence in conflicts of social orders
JF  - Berliner Journal für Soziologie = Journal de sociologie de Berlin
N2  - The article argues that the uprisings during the Arab Spring as well as the riots in either the banlieues of French cities or in London have to be considered as violent conflicts that pose a serious threat to the social orders in which they emerge. These different kinds of social resistance have in common that they communicate more or less developed alternative conceptions of social orders that challenge what has been considered legitimate so far. Until now, sociology has neither successfully explained such kinds of conflicts nor the way they are triggered. Therefore, the article discusses crucial problems of a sociology of violence, i.e. violence as term and concept, theoretical and methodological deficits and, finally, assumptions about the role of violence in conflict-ridden processes of modernization and civilization in general. The article argues that a sociology of violence should concentrate on the nexus of social order and violence in order to explain how and why violent conflicts emerge in specific social contexts. Thus, a sociology of violence should take an effort to reconstruct the crucial social mechanisms that underlie the dynamics of emerging violence in processes of production and reproduction of social order.
KW  - Social order
KW  - Conflicts of social orders
KW  - Conceptions of social orders
KW  - Legitimization
KW  - Social relations
KW  - Relational sociology
KW  - Collective violence
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11609-013-0210-y
SN  - 0863-1808
SN  - 1862-2593
VL  - 23
IS  - 1
SP  - 91
EP  - 113
PB  - Springer
CY  - Wiesbaden
ER  -