Violence in a 'Non-violent' Population: The Role of Narrative Interpretation

• In Event: Narrative Criminology I: What Stories Do and How They Do It

Abstract

In this study we investigate fights among conventional binge drinkers and explore how these acts of violence are interpreted by those involved. Fights often came as a response to insults and were considered as natural part of a night out on the town. They were one out of many transgressions that could occur when binge drinking and some considered it entertaining. Violence is usually studied in violence-prone populations and subcultures, and such reasons for fighting are well known from this literature. The 75 Norwegian binge-drinkers in this study were inexperienced fighters and did not identify with a subculture of violence. For them fights were highly contextualized to sessions of heavy drinking and partying. Fights were situational, temporary, and most participants stated they were stupid and should not have occurred. Humor was self-critically used to ridicule involvement in fights. These fighting stories effectively negated violence, and were used in boundary work where storytellers distanced themselves from real fighters. Narrative theory distinguishes between narrative as interpretation and constitutive of social life. We argue that these are closely intertwined and that binge drinkers narrative interpretation reduces violence and can help explain the relative absence of violence in this population.

Authors

• Sveinung Sandberg, University of Oslo

• Heith Copes, University of Alabama at Birmingham

• Willy Pedersen, University of Oslo