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Groups and Violence: A Micro-sociological Research Programme

Objective

The Group Violence research programme aims to understand how group behaviour affects the likelihood and severity of violence in public space. While the prevailing social scientific focus remains on individual perpetrators and background factors, the empirical reality of public violence is one of multiple attackers, multiple victims and multiple bystanders. The research proposed here furthers the study of violence with a novel theory that identifies how group behaviour affects the outcome of antagonistic situations – and with comparative empirical studies to test the theory. The central question is how and to what extent 1) mutual alignment of attention and action, and 2) a sense of moral community enable group members to commit violence. Project 1 (PI and post-doc) considers mutual alignment down to the minutest detail, based on close-up qualitative and quantitative video analyses of sequences of bodily cues. Based on judicial case files, project 2 (PI and assistants) will quantitatively analyse mutual alignment in an extensive range of violent interactions. Four PhD projects compare the role of mutual alignment and moral community in antagonistic situations in groups that differ from each other in these respects: police teams (project 3), street youth (4), football hooligans (5), and bouncers (6). Relying on an innovative method to reconstruct antagonistic situations by repeated and comparative qualitative interviewing, projects 3-6 will also relate the meanings of violence and masculine identity to the moral community of the group. Project 7 (PI and post-doc) uses qualitative and statistical analyses of the interview data generated in projects 3-6 for an extensive comparison of group behaviour in antagonistic situations. The ambition is to produce exemplary understanding of the crucial role that groups play in violence. This proposal shows how: through detailed and extensive comparative empirical testing that will further develop the new theory.

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2015-CoG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 918 306,00
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 918 306,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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