How violence happens (or not): Situational conditions of violence and nonviolence in Bahrain, Tunisia, and Syria.

Abstract

Objective: Recent studies show that violence is difficult to accomplish and only occurs under particular situational circumstances-but does this also apply to protests in authoritarian regimes? This article investigates the microdynamics of violence during the antiregime protests in Tunisia, Syria, and Bahrain. Method: The argument is based on visual data analysis of video footage of violent and nonviolent interactions from the uprisings in Bahrain, Tunisia, and Syria, as well as human rights reports, interviews with participants of demonstrations, and observation of a demonstration. Results: The article shows how violence by the state and protesters occurred when the perpetrator attacked from afar/above, from behind, at night, or from a vehicle, or attacked the outnumbered. In a few situations, violence was avoided when protesters confronted the security forces face to face. Conclusions: The article supports Randall Collins's argument ( 2008) that situational conditions allowing the perpetrator to overcome barriers of tension and fear are necessary for violence to occur, even in authoritarian regimes. However, situational dynamics can explain how but not why violence occurs, and Collins's guidelines for activists of how to avoid police violence are no panacea in authoritarian regimes.

Analyzing 21st Century Video Data on Situational Dynamics—Issues and Challenges in Video Data Analysis

“…Nassauer and Legewie (2018) distilled the approach from related methodological fields (mainly visual studies, ethnography, psychological laboratory experiments, and multimodal interaction analysis), as well as existing studies that focus on situational dynamics with video data. Such studies have examined atrocities (Klusemann 2009), protest violence (Bramsen 2018;Nassauer 2012), drug selling (Sytsma and Piza 2018), or street fights (Levine et al 2011;Philpot and Levine 2016;Liebst et al 2018), emergency call centers (Fele 2008) robberies (Mosselman et al 2018;Nassauer 2018b), and learning (Derry et al 2010;Mehan 1979), among many other phenomena. While such VDA-related applications rely on very different theoretical underpinnings and may employ different types of quantitative or qualitative analysis, all share a focus on situational dynamics.…”

“…Often, the main goal of VDA is to determine whether there is a connection between situational factors and the outcome of interest. In some cases, this means to test a hypothesis or theory formulated beforehand; e.g., whether situational patterns are necessary for violence emergence (Bramsen 2018;Klusemann 2009). In other cases, the approach will be more inductive, analyzing data to explore whether situational dynamics may explain when and how a given outcome occurs, e.g., how far situational pathways are relevant to a successful crime (Nassauer 2018b).…”

“…Videos capture the sequential nature of interactions and, through their outstandingly detailed information, allow tracing the dynamics of such sequences in unprecedented detail. They enable meticulous analyses of how situational dynamics impact social outcomes and contribute substantially to our understanding of social phenomena (e.g., Bramsen 2018;Collins 2008;Klusemann 2009;Levine et al 2011;Nassauer 2018a).…”

“…The physical properties of a space in which a situation takes place can impact how that situation unfolds. For instance, in her VDA of protest violence in Tunisia and Bahrain, Bramsen (2018) shows how spatial proximity or distance, as well as elevation of the body (on a chair or building) can impact situational patterns of violence. It may also be of interest if a situation involves changes in the immediate space they unfold in, for instance, because participants move in the course of the situation.…”

Methodologische Entwicklungen in der Gewaltforschung.

“…Die Verwendung von Videodaten als Blickfenster in Gewaltsituationen hinein geschieht aktuell über viele Disziplinen hinweg mit dem Ziel, Gewalthandlungen auf ihre Entstehung und Ursachen hin zu untersuchen. Sie finden zunehmende Verwendung in der Soziologie (Collins 2008;Klusemann 2009Klusemann , 2012Nassauer 2019b), Psychologie (Levine et al 2011;Philpot et al 2019;Philpot und Levine 2016), Politikwissenschaft (Bramsen 2018) und Kriminologie (Lindegaard et al 2015;Mastrofski et al 2010;Mosselman et al 2018;Nassauer 2018a Aufgrund des relativ großen Aufwands der detaillierten Analyse von Videodaten nutzen die meisten VDA-Studien bislang kleine und mittlere Fallzahlen. Es ist daher wichtig zu betonen, dass VDA einen "agnostischen" Analyserahmen bietet, der sowohl für qualitative als auch für quantitative Analysen genutzt werden kann (z.…”