About the group
Often, violence serves as a marker of difference across time and space. For instance, we speak of modern warfare and thus set it apart from both previous historical eras and non-Western experiences. In our research group, we want to break through these dichotomous and Euro-centric perspectives.
Violence is very often relegated to the peripheries of social order, constituting a break with it, unless performed by a legitimate actor, e.g. the state. However, historically the right to use violence has been much more widely distributed, and it has not only served to disrupt sociopolitical order, but equally to maintain and even strengthen it. We want to discuss the use, role and legitimacy of various kinds of violence and its relationship to social ordering.
In particular we will challenge the notion of the nation-state as the central agent of war. Instead we will focus on forms of violence that have commonly been described as “irregular,” that is collective violence exercised by non-state actors in asymmetrical combat situations, from antiquity to today, and from a more global perspective. Seen from that perspective, the traditional war in which clearly distinguishable combatants fought each other along clear front lines were more an exception than a rule in the history of collective violence.
Another central area of exploration is symbolic violence: violence as presented in text (political propaganda) and symbols. We also wish to explore how violence is presented and legitimized in contemporary social media.
Projects
The group is working on an anthology of co-written articles on violence across time periods and disciplines.
Studies
Current courses
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HIS2320: Coming to Terms with a Nightmare: World War II, Axis Occupation, and Historians after 1945
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HIS2910: Violence in History (taught in Autumn 2022 on the Bachelor's level)
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HIS4223: Vold gjennom historien (from Spring 2023 as a course on Master's level)
Collaborators
Selected publications by the group members
- Hans Jacob Orning, “Violence and Order in Medieval Norway,” Global Intellectual History, special issue edited by Warren Brown et al. (forthcoming).
- Max Naderer, “Religious Rites and Integrated Warfare in Civil Era Norway (1130–1240)” Religious Rites of War beyond the Medieval West: Vol. 1 Northern Europe and the Baltic, ed. by Radoslaw Kotecki, Jacek Maciejewski and Gregory Leighton. Leiden; Boston: Brill 2023, pp. 117–152.
- Elisabetta Cassina Wolff, Nasjonalisme og høyreradikalisme i Europas historie 1789-2019. Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk 2022.
- Caitlin Ellis, "Remembering the Vikings: Violence, Institutional Memory, and the Instruments of History", History Compass 19.1 (2021), pp. 1–14.
- Elisabetta Cassina Wolff, “CasaPound Italia: Vold som symbolsk uttrykk” in Politisk Vold: Former og årsaker, edited by Øystein Sørensen, Bernt Hagtvet and Nik. Brandal. Oslo: Dreyer Forlag 2021, pp. 151–176.
- Knut Ivar Austvoll, Seaways to Complexity. A Study of Sociopolitical Organisation Along the Coast of Northwestern Scandinavia in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Sheffield: Equinox. 2021.
- Hans Jacob Orning og Øyvind Østerud, Krig uten stat: Hva har de nye krigene og middelalderkrigene felles? Dreyers Forlag: Oslo 2020.
- Knut Ivar Austvoll, “The Emergence of Coercive Societies in Northwestern Scandinavia During the Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age” Open Archaeology 6(1) (2020), pp. 19-37.
- Elisabetta Cassina Wolff, “CasaPound Italia: ‘Back to believing. The struggle continues“ Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies 8(1) (2019), pp. 61–88.