LOV index

The study of violence has tended to focus on the political and economic condition under which it is generated, the suffering of victims and the psychology of its interpersonal dynamics. Such work has vastly improved our conceptualizations of violence but ignores the role of perpetrators, their motivations and the social conditions under which they are able to operate. In the context of post-colonial state-building, and more latterly collapse and implosion, community violence, state repression and the phenomena of judicial inquires and panels of reconciliation in the aftermath of civil conflict, foreground the need to better comprehend the role of those who actually do the work of violence - torturers, assassins and terrorists - as much as those who suffer its consequences.