Despite its high prevalence and increasing popularity, the concept of violence remains ambiguous and contested in both everyday and academic discourse. This article focuses on interpersonal violence and aims to identify the key factors that influence what people will define as violence. Based on a systematic theoretical review of existing empirical research, this paper shows how people perceive and categorize violent acts depending on the characteristics of the evaluated conflict interaction. It is demonstrated that individual characteristics of assessors have less influence on lay evaluations than factors describing the situation being assessed. Among these situational factors, the perception of the intent of the violent agent plays a crucial role: intentional acts aimed at causing harm are more likely to be classified as violent compared to unintentional acts. Another important factor is the type of violence and the harm associated with it: physical violence is rated as more severe than psychological violence. In addition, the existence of justifying reasons and the moral evaluationof the act influence the perception of violence. In lay perceptions, normalization narratives surrounding an action tend to reduce how violent it is judged to be. Furthermore, the perceived violence of an action is closely linked to its lay moral evaluation. The study highlights the differences between lay and scientific conceptualizations of violence. It shows that lay conceptualizations of violence are as multifaceted as scientific conceptualizations, yet are more robust.

The article examines the phenomenon of surveillance through the prism of J. Galtung’s theory of structural violence and Garver’s theory of silent violence. The author traces the evolution of control models from the works of Bentham, Foucault, Deleuze and Rouvroy — from panoptic to algorithmic — and identifies surveillance techniques typical for these models. It is argued that each of these techniques generates specific structural asymmetries or, as Foucault calls them, states of domination, within which structural violence according to Galtung is possible. The vector of development of control models, reflected in the change in dominant surveillance techniques, is described as a transition from the architecture of behavior (management of the multitude through subjectivizing effects at the individual level) to the ecology of action (management of specific choices for the sake of statistical effects at the population level). The role of surveillance in the reproduction of structural violence is considered using the example of theories such as Lyon’s social sorting, Gandy’s panoptic sort, and Zuboff’s surveillance capitalism. Particular attention is paid to interfaces in algorithmic control, which are integrated with profiling observation into a single system manipulating a set of useraccessible affordances (Gibson, Norton). The asymmetry of affordances created by the techniques of algorithmic governmentality described by Rouvroy and leading to the loss of autonomy is conceptualized as silent violence according to Garver. In the context of the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and self-monitoring of health (mHealth), the prospects for further expansion of the interface between humans and algorithmic systems are considered. Unjustly neglected by theorists of violence, surveillance appears to be the main mechanism of structural violence in modern datafied society.

This article explores and critically examines the relationship between violence and sexuality through one of the most famous clinical cases in Freud’s psychoanalysis: the case of Little Hans. In this case, Freud explains the mechanism of a common disorder — such as fear of a certain kind of animal — through a child’s sexuality, which is being formed in the context of the nuclear family. Turning to the story of the boy who is afraid of horses, Freud analyzes zoophobia as an element of the Oedipal structure, a psychic configuration in which the child undergoes gender socialization in a complex triangle of love, imitation, jealousy, and fear in relation to their parents. According to Freud, the origin of mental disorder is the displaced energy of attraction. The article revises this thesis, bringing to the fore not sexuality, but animals, violence over them, and the role of the acceptance of such violence as a norm in the formation of the human personality. The author’s hypothesis is that, on the other side of sexuality (the basis of our mental life, according to Freud), lies a violent mechanism that produces what we consider to be the social norm. This mechanism is described as the “masculinity machine”. The study of how the machine works is complemented by an analysis of Rodion Raskolnikov’s dream about beating a horse and a comparison of two characters, real and fictional, who witnessed violence over horses in childhood — Freud’s Little Hans and Raskolnikov.

The paper presents a critical analysis of the concept of functional complementarity between violence and social control in studies on the evolution of morality. The author challenges the thesis of an inherent and inextricable link between violence and moral control, dominant in the works of scholars such as Boehm, Wrangham, Bowles and Gintis. In their works, violence is interpreted as an evolutionarily determined tool for maintaining intragroup cooperation (strong reciprocity) and intergroup competition (parochial altruism). The research methodology involves an interdisciplinary critique based on data from cultural anthropology, evolutionary game theory, and primatology. The aim is not to deny the functional relationship per se, but to demonstrate its overstated clarity and apparent evolutionary inevitability. A critical examination reveals methodological limitations and potential biases in the interpretation of empirical data supporting the complementarity hypothesis. The author argues that the role and forms of violence as tools of moral control are significantly socially and culturally conditioned, thereby weakening the thesis of their absolute immanence. Counterarguments draw on data concerning the cultural variability of violence practices, the capacity for intergroup cooperation, the plasticity of social control, as well as the concepts of “moral bubbles” (Magnani) and the “moral Dunning-Kruger effect,” which illustrate the dysfunctionality and irrationality of proactive violence. The central conclusion of the paper is that the connection between violence and social control, despite its evolutionary roots, is not rigidly deterministic but is mediated by cultural mechanisms and contextual factors. This opens up possibilities for socially overcoming the logic of violence through institutions and reflective practices. A prospective path for future research lies in analyzing the conditions under which violence loses its functionality and in seeking cultural alternatives that promote the development of inclusive forms of cooperation.

This article examines the genesis of a foundational concept in the sociology of trauma — Kai Erikson's theory of collective trauma — which emerged in the context of the post-war American sociology of disaster. This field presented a curious paradox: rather than observing social collapse, scholars frequently documented a surge of community solidarity and altruism in the wake of disaster, phenomena they interpreted through a Durkheimian lens. Erikson’s seminal study of the 1972 Buffalo Creek flood revealed a profound unraveling of the social fabric — a condition he theorized as collective trauma. This distinction between disaster and trauma was achieved through two maneuvers. The first was the importation of a subject of violence from the psychological conceptualization of trauma — a framework that, as the article demonstrates, was itself deeply influenced by socio-economic factors concerning victim compensation. In the case of the Buffalo Creek dam collapse, this agent of violence was the coal mining company responsible for the dam’s maintenance. The second maneuver was the resuscitation of Durkheim’s original notion of violence as anomie — a pathological dissolution of norms and morality that unfolds during a collapse of the social order. While other disaster sociologists had moved away from this understanding of violence — which evokes a Hobbesian state of nature — Erikson used this Durkheimian lens to conceptually articulate the aftermath of a disaster marked by an unusually high number of casualties for its time, which resulted not in solidarity but in the total disintegration of the community.

Thispaperinterrogatesthe conceptual entanglementof ‘violence’ and ‘trauma’ as so-called weak concepts. Rarely is it evident what acts designated as ‘violent’ have in common, nor how they differ in a principled way from related behaviors. Violence is intimately linked to another ‘problematic’ concept: trauma. The latter is constructed metaphorically, historically deriving from a medical notion of trauma as an injury — the application of force upon the body with destructive effects — and thus remains tethered to an idea of violence through figurative association. In a manner akin to violence, the boundaries of the concept of trauma are themselves elusive: it is frequently unclear what differentiates trauma from other events that might trigger a neurotic symptom or provoke decompensation in a psychotic patient, and why only trauma has been granted a distinct conceptual identity. Drawing on Hjelmslev’s glossematics, it is argued that both ‘trauma’ and ‘violence’ function as recursive semiotic systems in which compounding layers of recursion and weakened inter-element connections diminish analytic precision and raise systemic entropy. Through a return to classical psychoanalytic psychopathology and a critical analysis of recent empirical data, the study re-articulates trauma: its core lies not in the effects of some form of violence, but in the weakening of ego functions — most notably, temporalization. The article demonstrates that by reducing these recursive entanglements — particularly the metaphorical conflation with violence — trauma may be rendered a stronger, more operationally robust concept. Accordingly, the text serves a dual demonstrative purpose: first, it offers a glossematic illustration — using ‘violence’ and ‘trauma’ as paradigmatic examples — of how weak and strong concepts are structured; and second, it shows how glossematics may be employed not only as an analytic resource but also as a creative instrument for the production of concepts capable of operationalization in research and practice.

The article examines the problem of interconnection between strategic, political, and technical aspects of organized violence in Thucydides’ “History of Peloponnesian War” in its most complex and effective form — maneuver naval combat. According to Thucydides, it is the ability to conduct prolonged naval and land campaigns — with an ability to concentrate force and resources and to pose decisive long-term goals — that distinguishes modernity from antiquity, civilization from barbarism and thus marks the first major conflict between coalitions of Greek polices as a most significant event in human history. Our research proposes a new approach to Thucydides’ work, which views his description of struggle between Athens and Corinth for the control of Naupactus in 429–413 BC as a pivotal moment of the whole conflict. A small port controlling the entrance to the Corinthian Gulf decides whether Athens can confine its naval power to the Peloponnesian League — or whether the maritime struggle becomes uncontrollable and presents a mutual threat to communication lines. This confrontation is the most complete and clear demonstration of the technical features and capabilities of the main instrument of this form of violence — the rowing fleet of triremes — as well as social, ethical and strategic aspects of the society which was capable of creating it. The history of struggle in a specific theatre of a specific war develops into a universal statement about the disclosure of human nature by means of organized violence, which influenced postThucydidean tradition of political thought.

Existing data on elite splits suggest their significance for revolutionary success, as well as the significance of the defection of primarily security elites to the side of the revolutionary opposition for the success of a revolutionary uprising. The authors, relying on modern political science concepts and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), tested the corresponding hypotheses. The following variables were used: diversity of protesters by socio-demographic characteristics; diversity of protesters by political characteristics; diversity of protesters by ethnoreligious characteristics; external support for the regime; external support for protesters; splits in civilian elites; splits in security elites; the number of participants in the revolutionary episode at the peak of the event. The cases selected were revolutionary episodes that occurred between 2000 and 2013 for which there is sufficient information for analysis. The QCA results show that simultaneous splits in both types of elites is a significant predictor of success for the majority of unarmed revolutionary episodes included in the sample; however, this is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for revolutionary success. Moreover, if only one type of elite is split, then an unarmed revolutionary uprising can only succeed if there is a diversity of protesters along political lines (which is an indicator of the presence of a broad revolutionary coalition). Overall, a broad revolutionary coalition has proven to be a very powerful factor in the success of an unarmed revolutionary uprising, similar in strength to the factor of elite splits. Another significant predictor of revolutionary success turns out to be the combination of external support for the participants in the unarmed revolutionary uprising and the absence of external support for the regime.

This article presents the results of a study of ethnic categories used in everyday categorizations. The study was conducted at the intersection of classical and innovative cognitive science-inspired methods, including video elicitation and the walk-along method. During the study, 41 interviews were conducted. Informants differed based on a variety of characteristics, including migration history/length of residence in Moscow, their ethnic category of identification, gender, age, etc. The study showed that categorization in everyday Moscow occurs on the basis of two classifications: the official classification by nationality, the roots of which go back to Soviet national policy, and the vernacular classification that includes two or three categories: “Slav” and “Southerner”, while the latter category includes “Caucasus” and “Asia”. The classification by nationalities is both too detailed for its “users” and lacks practical meaning — the used in everyday life. The binary/ternary classification, in turn — while being based on meaningful categories — is too informal and does not have its own imaginaries to displace a classification by nationalities. As a result, each classificatory act is essentially a compromise between these two classifications and uses them both, prioritizing binary and ternary classification.