From Honour to Subjectivity. Interpersonal Violence in Basel 1750-1868 and Berne 1861–1944

Cottier, Maurice; Raciti, Silvio (2013). From Honour to Subjectivity. Interpersonal Violence in Basel 1750-1868 and Berne 1861–1944. Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, 17(2), pp. 101-124. Librarie Droz 10.4000/chs.1431

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The article explores shifts in interpersonal violence in the Swiss cities of Basel and Berne from 1750 to 1944. It combines quantitative and qualitative perspectives and relies on the study of juridical interrogation records of cases of lethal and non-lethal violence. The article identifies two shifts in violent behaviour in Swiss cities. On the one hand, public male on male fighting fuelled by honour, conceptualized as sociable violence, was widespread in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Yet, it decreased in the twentieth century. The downturn in sociable violence was preceded by a loss of fighting rituals that led brawling to become more lethal in the second half of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, violence against intimates and family members persisted. However, it gained a new quality that differentiated it from more traditional forms of domestic violence. The concept of fatalistic violence captures this new type of violence that was linked to the troubled subjectivity of the perpetrators. Both changes in interpersonal violence were due to the spread of a middle class habitus that fostered the loss of the significance of honour and the increasing importance of notions of subjectivity.

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