Intergroup violence is routine institutional control, not uncontrolled hostility

Evidence

Far from being the uncontrolled eruption of extreme animosity, physical violence is a routine component of social inequality that finds form within the constraints and opportunities presented by key intergroup institutions. For example, in gender relations, the institution of the family provides a private niche in which individual males may indulge in moments of physical violence to reassert their dominance with little fear of outside sanction, despite strongly stated societal norms that forbid violence against women and a general lack of antipathy toward women ( Jackman, 1999, 2001). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 678

Discrimination and violence also adapt to structural constraints. For example, the system of labor use in American antebellum slavery led to a reliance on social distance mechanisms (a variant of what is found in gender relations today), but when Blacks were disgorged into the urban working class in twentieth-century America, race relations were gradually pushed into a system of discrimination based on pervasive spatial distance rules. Similarly, the forms of violence that are practiced within an intergroup relationship do not reflect the underlying degree of hostility but the strategic possibilities carved out by the institutional structure of the relationship. … For example, in the United States today, there is more interpersonal dominant-to-subordinate violence in gender relations than in race relations, and yet men display considerably less animosity toward women than do Whites toward Blacks. The key lies in the institutional structure of gender relations, which affords men the opportunity to indulge in interpersonal violence against the women they love in an intimate setting screened from the view of credible witnesses. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 682

The forms of violence that mark an intergroup relationship are also constrained by the overarching institutional structure. Far from being the uncontrolled eruption of extreme animosity, physical violence is a routine component of social inequality that finds form within the constraints and opportunities presented by key intergroup institutions. For example, in gender relations, the institution of the family provides a private niche in which individual males may indulge in moments of physical violence to reassert their dominance with little fear of outside sanction, despite strongly stated societal norms that forbid violence against women and a general lack of antipathy toward women ( Jackman, 1999, 2001). Similarly, paternalistic sanctions and incentives in gender relations drive self-interested women to compete with one another in the self-infliction of bodily injuries in order to avoid stigmatization and earn the social rewards that come from meeting or exceeding the beauty standards of their day. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 678

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Inverts the folk model that violence is animosity overflowing its bounds; the claim that the family is a violence niche protected from sanction despite stated norms is dense and re-read-worthy.
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone studying domestic violence or the sociology of the family — the observation that violence thrives precisely where societal norms forbid it because institutions provide cover is a sharp reframe.
• XREF: Connects to Goffman’s interaction-order sociology and to institutionalist theory from the Milgrom law-merchant pieces in the reader’s knowledge base; also echoes Foucault’s account of discipline shifting from bodily to spatial control.
• CANDY: The point that family provides a private niche for male violence regardless of stated norms is a compact, surprising observation for conversation.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 678; John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 682; , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 678