Anthropology of violence: origin, causes and reality of hybrid violence

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the forms and kinds of violence, following the classifications made from the perspective of Peace research, and thus, provide a bridge to Anthropology. In this paper, we set out a summary of reasons, origins, forms, results, ambiguity of the word violence, but above all, the factors that condition the violent behavior of human beings. Following Johan Galtung, we attempt to clarify the types of violence: direct (verbal, psychological and physical); structural (poverty, repression, pollution, alignment, etc.); cultural (from the ideas, norms, values, tradition, etc.); and / or symbolic (demonstrations by acts or rituals that give recognition to direct and structural violence). We recover the concept of Pierre Bourdieu, symbolic violence (manifestations through acts or rituals that give recognition to structural and direct violence); and we present the concept of hybrid violence of Jiménez Bautista that constitutes the sum of the four forms of violence mentioned above. We present a change of a peaceful paradigm from «knowing to understand» to «knowing to transform» and subsequently to «knowing to neutralize». Finally, the central thesis of this paper is that «the human being is conflictive by nature, but is violent due to its education and culture». This thesis is argued by defining three aspects: a) the meaning of violence (‘typically human phenomenon, free biologically, but psychologically voluntary); b) the manifestations of violence, and c) its possible taxonomy.