Violence

The second sentence is the substance of the entry and the parallel it draws is the point. Violence serves the same seven social purposes as laughter, which are experience of euphoria, self affirmation, self destruction, social affirmation, social exclusion, endogroup domination and endogroup submission. Setting the two side by side identifies what both are for, since a taxonomy that fits laughter and violence equally well is a taxonomy of social function rather than of harm. Marsh's example is hazing, where other rituals ensure endogroup loyalties on occasions they might be weakened and violence is as much a part of such hazing as humour, so the two appear together doing one job. Violence is also used for individual destruction and social exclusion, which are two more entries in the same list. The first sentence keeps the definition narrow, since forceful violation of bodily autonomy specifies force and specifies the body, which distinguishes violence from violation generally, an attack on an animus that need not be physical. What the framework refuses is the treatment of violence as a breakdown of social order, since cruelty and unconcern for the wellbeing of those outside an endogroup is a feature rather than a bug, and endogroups are created in hostile environments where outsiders are perceived as an existential threat. Her point about the healthy response applies here, since anger is widely equated to violence and is not the same, being the strongest tool of resistance.

Violence research divides by type, with instrumental and expressive violence, direct and structural violence following Galtung, and the public health approach treating it as a preventable epidemiological problem. Randall Collins argued from video and situational evidence that violence is difficult and rare rather than easy, which cuts against accounts treating it as a default. Ritual violence and hazing are studied in anthropology as bonding mechanisms. Marsh's contribution is the shared taxonomy with laughter, which is unusual enough to be startling and does real analytic work, since it predicts that violence and humour will appear in the same settings performing the same functions.