Methodological Assumptions for a Literature Review
The goal of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive review of theoretical and methodological approaches towards a culture of political violence. It establishes a text corpus of academic works released in the specialist books and journals which apply the category to scrutinize a social reality, and then it systematically and critically analyzes their theoretical frameworks by employing methodological assumptions. In doing so, it assesses to what extent the existing approaches are formally correct and how they contribute to our understanding of the nature, sources, and consequences of cultures of political violence.
The uniqueness of the approach consists in applying methodological premises to the process of reviewing the existing literature and then making use of the results in an empirical part of the research. The idea is to identify all the theoretical frameworks of a culture of political violence that function in scientific circulation, to discuss their correctness, and to test their empirical effectiveness by working with the case studies of post-2008 anti-austerity movements. It means that the research does not advantage any theoretical approach but takes care over the verification of every one. Anti-austerity movements are a qualitatively new phenomenon and as such they have to be analyzed with the observance of due methodological diligence. A quick overview of definitions of a culture of political violence shows that although they identify a symptomatic phenomenon, they fail to provide us with a comprehensive view of relevant and operationalizable features of the movement’s violent behavior. Also, it would be a tremendous research risk to apply an explanatory framework that is currently fashionable, just seems to be the most appropriate, or is the most cited. As this chapter argues, it is important to see how well the existing approaches work and compete on the field of explanation. It allows us to observe the results of an application of the variety of theoretical frameworks and assess their exploratory and explanatory potential.
First and foremost, the review establishes a text corpus to provide material for the literature review. Admittedly, there is no universally accepted system of ranking for book and journal publishers, but major academic databases and search engines contain papers that are the most influential, significant for the research subject, and contribute to the development of science (Krause 2001; McGinn et al. 2016). Hence, the review considers the works in social sciences and humanities indexed in the largest databases and search engines: Academic Search Complete, Anthropological Index Online, Anthropological Literature, APA PsycNET, ATLA Religion Database, AULIMP: Air University Library’s Index to Military Periodicals, BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine, Current Contents, EconBiz, EconLit, ERIC: Educational Resource Information Center, GENESIS, Google Scholar, IngentaConnect, International Directory of Philosophy, Isidore, JournalSeek, JSTOR: Journal Storage, Jurn, LexisNexis, Lingbuzz, Mendeley, Microsoft Academic Search, NBER: National Bureau of Economic Research, OAIster, OpenSIGLE, Philosophy Documentation Center eCollection, Philosophy Research Index, PhilPapers, POIESIS: Philosophy Online Serials, POPLINE, Project MUSE, PsycINFO, Pubget, PubPsych, Questia: Online Research Library, RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, SafetyLit, ScienceOpen, Scopus, Socol@r: Socolar, SSRN: Social Science Research Network, SpringerLink, VET-Bib, Web of Science, WorldCat, and WorldWideScience.
The review adopts two additional criteria for sources selection to minimize the likelihood of the omission of substantial works. The first one relates to books and makes use of Socio-Economic and Natural Sciences of the Environment Research School’s (SENSE 2009) broad-based list which embraces book publishers frequently placed by professionals in rankings. The list is divided into (1) refereed book publications published by (A) the world top of publishers, (B) the world’s semi-top of publishers, (C) other publishers and (2) non-refereed book publications published for (D) an academic public (professional publications) and (E) a non-academic general public. The studies published by the 2-category companies are of a relatively lower academic value and relevance than the 1-category because of not being refereed (Torraco 2016), so, they are beyond the text corpus. The B- and C-publishers are also excluded from the corpus on the grounds of their lower academic meaning and extent of influence on the development of disciplines. Additionally, the 1-category publishers which release studies falling outside the scope of social sciences and humanities are excluded from the corpus. Ultimately, the literature review includes studies in refereed books printed by the following A-publishers: Cambridge University Press, Columbia University Press, Harvard University Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, MIT Press, Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press, Stanford University Press, University of Chicago Press, and Yale University Press.
The second criterion concerns scholarly journals and takes advantage of International Scientific Institute’s (ISP 2016) top international publisher list formulated by a number of academic journals released by the most influential companies and led by experienced editorial boards of publishing houses. The quantitative indicator allowed us to rank them, but a position in the list did not have an impact on the papers under review. The literature review covers the first 20 publishers releasing journals devoted to social sciences and humanities. They are as follows: Elsevier, Springer-Verlag, Taylor and Francis, John Wiley and Sons, Sage Publications, Walter de Gruyter, Redalyc, Inderscience Publishers, Hindawi Publishing Corporation, Project MUSE, Cambridge Journals, Oxford Journals, Revues.org, Emerald, African Journals Online, Scientific Research Publishing, Sabinet Online Ltd, SpringerOpen, Brill Academic Publishers, and IGI Global.
Then, the review applies a phrase searching technique to search for the studies containing the searching phrase “culture of political violence” rather than any other phrases comprising a set of keywords “culture,” “political,” “of,” and “violence” put in random order. Finally, the analysis counts the first 50 phrases out of all the search results arranged in order of relevance. For the sake of clarity, it means that 50 search results are analyzed in the case of each database, search engine, and publishing house extracted for the review. Rarely was a number of searched results higher than 50 because a culture of political violence is an understudied phenomenon.
The analysis deals with conceptual and, more broadly, theoretical dimensions of the category (Fawcett 2013, 285; Rak 2016). It collates the identified uses of the category according to a criterion of a function of a culture of political violence in a theoretical framework. Therefore, the review consists of four main parts from among each and concentrates on a different component of a theory in terms of a component’s function. They are a culture of political violence as a theoretical category, the category as a thing to be explained by other things, the category as a thing explaining other things, and the types of the category.
The first part gathers and analyzes those works which present the semantic fields of a culture of political violence by describing what it is and how researchers understand it. It exclusively focuses on definitions and distinctive features of this category. The following problems explore the semantic fields: what types of meanings are attached to a culture of political violence? By what criteria are these types distinguishable? To what extent are definitions of a culture of political violence correct? What is the extent of their applicability to empirical analyses as analytical tools? The review assesses whether definitions have the capability to work above and beyond the scope of concrete papers and how they contribute to an operationalizable definition and conceptual framework of the category. Every single conceptual construction of a culture of political violence undergoes a critical scrutiny according to the same set of criteria elaborated especially for this study.
The second part of the review takes into consideration the explanatory frameworks based on the assumption that an indicator or a set of indicators accounts for a culture of political violence. An explanatory framework is a description and explanation of why a being, phenomenon, process, configuration of those, or lack thereof is the way it is or how and why it works. It stands in for the full explanation of an issue in question unless the full and effective explanation exists. The following problems structure the scrutiny of this subject field: what types of explanatory frameworks are employed to explain sources of a culture of political violence? To what extent are explanatory frameworks correct? What is an extent of their applicability to empirical analyses?
The third part of the review pays close attention to the explanatory frameworks capturing unambiguously a culture of political violence presented as an explaining indicator of other things. The following problems address this subject field: what does a culture of political violence explain? To what extent are explanatory frameworks phrased correctly? What is an extent of their applicability to empirical analyses? Let us emphasize, the difference between the second and the third part consists in the role of the category in the analyses striving for providing an explanation. Whereas the second concerns possible sources of cultures of political violence, the third is about their likely consequences.
Finally, the fourth part approaches classification schemes of a culture of political violence. The following problems organize the analysis of this subject field: what types of classification schemes of a culture of political violence are in the literature? Under what rules do researchers outline them? To what extent are they correct? What is the extent of their applicability to empirical analyses?
Those works that just mention a culture of political violence but do not offer any references to its meaning (e.g., Knight and Narozhna 2005; Ncube and Okeke-Uzodike 2015) are beyond the analysis because they fail to formulate definitions or explanatory and classification frameworks for scrutiny.
Semantic Fields of Cultures of Political Violence
The first part of the analysis deals with the semantic fields of a culture of political violence expressed by definitions and distinctive features of the category. A definition is a specification of a meaning of the term that is neither true nor false (Opp 2009, 31). The review analyzes this subject field with the five problems head-on. The first one pertains to the senses given to the category in the literature, and it investigates what types of meanings are attached to a culture of political violence. To do so, it collects the definientia of “culture of political violence”. Each definition consists of the definiens (plural: definientia) and the definiendum (plural: definienda). The definiens is the word or words serving to define another word or expression. So, it is a defining part of a definition. The definiendum is a word or expression that is being defined. Each definiens constitutes a semantic field of the definiendum by stating the designata (singular: designatum) (Rodriguez-Priego et al. 2013). The designatum means a property contributing to the meaning of the category. The designata indicate the types of meanings attached to a culture of political violence.
The second problem addresses on the basis of what criteria those types are distinguishable. To solve this problem, the review puts the meanings in typological generality order and identifies the essential and distinctive features of the given meanings. If the meaning has mutated, it may be advisable to establish the chronological order of approaches towards the distinctive features of a culture of political violence to capture how they have evolved.
The third problem concentrates on the correctness of definitions and tests to what extent are definitions of a culture of political violence correct? A definition is correct if it meets the following set of criteria: (1) it determines the designata which are necessary and sufficient to count the thing which is characterized by these designata among the meaning scope of a culture of political violence (Podsakoff et al. 2016, 11); (2) it is operationalizable, namely, it is feasible to translate a culture of political violence into measurable variables (Meter et al. 1987) because it has empirical content (Opp 2009, 13); (3) it is not contextual, i.e., the definiens is independent of time and space contexts; (4) the definiens is not replaced by examples but it has a precisely stated meaning; (5) the designata are not in contradiction with the reverse of a culture of political violence; (6) it is not value-laden; (7) it is not normative, i.e., it involves neither demand for making the world a better place in a particular way nor an answer to a question of how it should be (Ackermann 1964, 522); and (8) it is internally consistent. The higher the extent of the criteria fulfillment by a definition is, the higher the extent of its correctness is.
The fourth problem relates to the applicability of definitions to studies and focuses on to what extent definitions of a culture of political violence are applicable to empirical analyses as the analytical tools. Hence, on the grounds of the correctness of particular definitions, the review assesses whether and under what conditions they apply to obtain research results in an intersubjective and diligent way. When the conditions are under evaluation, a definition locates on a continuum set by the extreme points of generalness and contextuality. When a definition is contextual, the continuum serves as a scale to assess to what extent this feature is firmly attached to a semantic field of the category. The review also examines definitions in terms of properties of research fields and analytical levels they may explore. It enables us to determine a current range of exploratory of potential a culture of political violence.
Application of the methodological assumptions to a search process resulted in discovering five analytical attempts to formulate definitions of a culture of political violence and to construct its conceptual frameworks (An-na’im 2006; Ayele 2011; Kling 1963; Siniawer 2008, 2012; Taylor 1981). Each of them draws on the assumption that acceptance of the use of violence or political violence in the past, in the here and now, or acquiescence to it in the future followed by the deployment allows a researcher to verify the occurrence of a culture of political violence. It undermines, however, the validity of building the term of culture into the semantic field of the category because it rules out the possibility of the existence of the continuum of stances towards the use of violence. In the line of the authors, a culture of political violence occurs or not everywhere, and it is the same everywhere. Nevertheless, empirical research provides the evidence for the existence of the more or less violent societies representing different patterns of a culture of political violence (Karstedt 2012; Steenkamp 2014; 2009). We premise that, first, expressions of a culture of political violence differ in an extent of acceptance, and, second, non-acceptance of the employment of violence indicates a different culture of political violence than the one based on a full acceptance. The existing approaches (An-na’im 2006; Ayele 2011; Kling 1963; Siniawer 2008, 2012; Taylor 1981) miss the first part of the premise and close the door on comparing diversified phenomena. Indeed, the researchers who stand for the application of a culture of political violence to comparative studies might want to consider formulating some antinomic category, such as a culture of political non-violence. However, it is important to assume that these categories are of gradable nature when we aim at identifying similarities and dissimilarities between the expressions of the categories.
The definitions offer a relational understanding of public power. It means that political subjects of violent behavior – if introduced – are those functioning in the relation of public power: the ruling, the aiming at the ruling, and the ruled. The attitudes towards violence or political violence are the subject matter. They are, however, undefined in the existing theoretical approaches to a culture of political violence. Similarly, the subject matter of these attitudes, violence or political violence respectively, also remain puzzling. Overall, the crucial components of the definitions have unspecified semantic fields, which obscures how the category is understood. Their essential features should be determined to specify what criteria are sufficient and necessary to recognize something as an empirical expression of the category and to contribute to the operationalization of definitions. An exploratory potential of the approaches is considerably reduced because they omit a role of forms of aggressive behavior, the threat, abandonment of the use, and mental political violence. It hinders a researcher from seeing the paradigms of deploying violence comprehensively.
Let us take a closer look at the definitions by analyzing them with the already introduced problems. The first by Merle Kling describes a culture of political violence as political behavior which is manifestly violent and acceptance of violence as a legitimate means for the pursuit of power (Kling 1963, 121). Kling determines the subject matter semantic field of a culture of political violence with its three essential features. The designatum is in contradiction with the reverse of a culture of political violence. First, Kling identifies a culture of political violence with the political behavior which may be ex definitione one-time. Maintaining that the behavior is a culture is, therefore, unjustified in terms of the methodological and theoretical effectiveness of the approach. Furthermore, the location of a culture of political v...
