Missing the Mark: Reflections on Greenberg's Comment

• NCJ Number: 204766
• Journal: Criminology Volume: 41 Issue: 4 Dated: November 2003 Pages: 1419-1426
• Author(s): Mark Cooney
• Editor(s): Robert J. Bursik Jr.
• Date Published: November 2003
• Length: 8 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Literature Review
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper provides a critical response to David Greenberg’s comments regarding Mark Cooney’s research (2003) on the privatization of violence.

Abstract

In 2003, Mark Cooney argued and examined the evidence for the evolutionary claim that violence has become more individualized and intimate, the “privatization of violence.” During this same time period, David Greenberg critically discussed both empirical and theoretical issues related to Cooney’s analysis of long-term trends in crimes of violence. This paper presents Cooney’s response to and review of Greenberg’s comments which Cooney felt missed both the substance and spirit of his original paper. Greenberg’s remarks were seen as addressing the overall quantity of violence, especially in history, where Cooney felt he had a different focus: the proportionately more individualized and intimate nature of violence; its privatization. In addition, Cooney felt Greenberg failed to relate the theoretical nature of the argument. Cooney's paper on privatization addresses patterns of violence in modern societies, premodern societies, and the transition between the two. It also extends the idea of the absence of unavailability of law in modern societies in order to explain the privatization of violence, arguing that where social ties are stronger and law weaker, more violence will involve groups and nonintimates. Where Cooney asserts that evidence is consistent and low-income, urban neighborhoods have more gangs, partisanship, and collective conflicts and violence between acquaintances and strangers, Greenberg asserts that social control is weak, not strong, in lower income communities. In conclusion, Cooney stresses that his paper offers a sketch of a theory rather than a completed theory, and it proposes that a few broad variables hold the key to explaining the privatization of violence. References