Abstract
Vigilante violence tends to take place in areas or situations in which the state is unable or unwilling to provide for the safety of certain groups. Crime control vigilantism can be understood as an alternative means of controlling crime and providing security where the state does not. The violent punishment inherent in vigilante activity is generally with the ultimate goal of providing safety and security, and thus should theoretically “fit the crime” and not be excessive. However, in many acts of vigilante violence this is not the case, and vigilantism takes on an extraordinarily violent character. This article examines vigilante violence in three South African townships through the micro-sociological perspective of violence developed by Randall Collins (2008), “forward panic.” Forward panic is a process whereby the tension and fear marking most potentially violent conflict situations is suddenly released, bringing about extraordinary acts of violence. Based on data from eighteen interviews gathered from the Johannesburg townships of Diepsloot, Freedom Park, and Protea South, I analyze respondents’ accounts and experiences with vigilante violence using the framework of forward panic. The data confirm that many acts of vigilante violence in South Africa’s townships can be clearly categorized as episodes of forward panic and that although Collins’s conception of forward panic focuses on the individual, the conditions that create the emotional potential for forward panic in an individual can be structural and thus create the potential for forward panic in entire groups or parts of communities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abrahams, R. (1998). Vigilant Citizens: Vigilantism and the state. Malden: Polity Press.
Bandeira, M. & Higson-Smith, C. (2011). Responding to the smoke that calls: Principles of community-level interventions for the prevention of collective violence. Centre for the study of violence and reconciliation and the society, Work and Development Institute, University of the Witwatersrand.
Bearak, B. (2011). The murder of an innocent man. NY Times Magazine. June 2.
Buur, L. (2006). Reordering society: vigilantism and expressions of sovereignty in Port Elizabeth’s townships. Development and Change, 37(4), 735–757.
Buur, L. (2008). Fluctuating personhood: Vigilantism and citizenship in Port Elizabeth’s townships. In D. Pratten & A. Sen (Eds.), Global vigilantes. New York: Columbia University Press.
Buur, L. (2010). Domesticating sovereigns: The changing nature of vigilante groups in South Africa. In T. Kirsh & T. Gratz (Eds.), Domesticating vigilantism in Africa. Woodbridge: James Currey.
Chavez, L. (2008). The Latino threat: Constructing immigrants, citizens, and the nation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Collins, R. (2008). Violence: A micro-sociological theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Collins, R. (2009). Micro and macro causes of violence. International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 3(1), 9–22.
Collins, R. (2012). Entering and leaving the tunnel of violence: micro-sociological dynamics of emotional entrainment in violent interactions. Current Sociology, 61(2), 132–151.
“Countries Compared by Crime > Rape rate.” International Statistics at NationMaster.com. Retrieved May 28, 2016, from http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Rape-rate
Dixon, B., & Johns, L. M. (2001). Gangs, Pagad & the state: vigilantism and revenge violence in the Western Cape. Violence and Transition Series, 3.
Drakulich, K., & Crutchfield, R. (2013). The role of perceptions of the police in informal social control: implications for the racial stratification of crime and control. Social Problems, 60(3), 383–407.
Durkehim, E. ([1893] 2013). The division of labor in society. Reprint, New York: The Free Press.
Equal Justice Initiative. (2015). Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror–Report Summary.
Felson, R. (2009). Is violence natural, unnatural, or rational? The British Journal of Sociology, 60(3), 577–585.
Gastrow, P., & Shaw, M. (2001). In search of safety: police transformations and public responses in South Africa. Daedalus, 130(1), 259–275.
Godoy, A. (2004). When “justice” is criminal: lynchings in contemporary Latin America. Theory and Society, 33, 621–651.
Goldstone, J. (1991). Revolution and rebellion in the early modern world. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Grossman, D. (2004). On combat: The psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society. Boston: Little, Brown.
Guest, G., Bunce, A., & Johnson, L. (2006). How many interviews are enough?: an experiment with data saturation and variability. Field Methods, 18(1), 59–82.
Hansen, T. (2006). Performers of sovereignty: on the privatization of security in urban South Africa. Critique of Anthropology, 26(3).
Harris, B. (2001). ‘As for violent crime that’s our daily bread’: vigilante violence during South Africa’s period of transition. Violence and Transition Series, 1.
Jensen, S. (2008). Policing Nkomazi: Crime, masculinity and generational conflicts. In D. Pratten & A. Sen (Eds.), Global vigilantes. New York: Columbia University Press.
Johnston, L. (1996). What is vigilantism? British Journal of Criminology, 36(2), 220–236.
Kalyvas, S. (2006). The logic of violence in civil war. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kirsch, T., & Gatz, T. (Eds.) (2010). Domesticating vigilantism in Africa. Woodbridge: James Currey.
Kleck, G. (1988). Crime control through the private use of armed force. Social Problems, 35, 1–21.
Klusemann, S. (2010). Micro-situational antecedents of violent atrocity. Sociological Forum, 25(2), 272–295.
Kreager, D. A., Lyons, C., & Hays, Z. (2011). Urban revitalization and Seattle crime, 1982-2000. Social Problems, 58(4), 615–639.
Kreuzer, P. (2008). Violent social control: A framework for research. Paper presented at the annual convention of the international studies association, march 28, San Francisco, CA.
Laitin, D. (2008). Confronting violence face to face. Science, 320(April 4), 51–52.
Lemanski, C. (2004). A new Apartheid? The spatial implications of fear of crime in Cape Town, South Africa. Environment and Urbanization, 16(2).
Levine, M., Taylor, P., & Best, R. (2011). Third parties, violence, and conflict resolution: the role of group size and collective action in the microregulation of violence. Psychological Science, 22(3), 406–412.
Lofland, J., & Lofland, L. (1995). Analyzing social settings: A guide to qualitative observation and analysis. Belmont: Wadsworth.
Malesevic, S. (2010). The sociology of war and violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Masiloane, D. (2007). Proactive policing for the rich and reactive policing for the poor: hypocrisy in policing a stratified society. South African Journal of Criminal Justice, 20(3), 328–340.
Mazur, A. (2009). A hormonal interpretation of Collins’ s micro-sociological theory of violence. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 39(4), 434–447.
Monaghan, R. (2008). Community-based justice in Northern Ireland and South Africa. International Criminal Justice Review, 18(1), 83–105.
Morenoff, J., Sampson, R., & Raudenbush, S. (2001). Neighborhood inequality, collective efficacy and the spatial dynamics of urban violence. Criminology, 39, 517–559.
North, D., Wallis, J., & Weingast, B. (2009). Violence and social orders: A conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Oomen, B. (1999). Vigilante justice in perspective: the case study of Mapogo a Mathamaga. Acta Criminologica, 12, 45–53.
Oomen, B. (2004). Vigilantism or alternative citizenship? The rise of Mapogo a Mathamaga. African Studies, 63(2), 153–171.
Pillay, S. (2000). Problematizing the making of good and evil: Gangs and Pagad. Paper presented to the Third Crossroads in Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, 21–25 June.
Pillay, K. (2013). Thin blue line broken. Corruption Watch. http://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/content/thin-blue-line-broken. Acessed 27 Feb 2014.
Pinker, S. (2011). The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined. New York: Penguin Books.
Police blamed for vigilantism. News24. (2013). March 14. Retrieved September 23, 2015, from http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Police-blamed-for-vigilantism-20130314.
Pratten, D., & Sen, A. (Eds.) (2008). Global vigilantes. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rosenbaum, J., & Sederberg, P. (1974). Vigilantism: an analysis of establishment violence. Comparative Politics, 6(4), 541–570.
Sampson, R., Raudenbush, S., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime: a multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science, 277, 918–924.
Sekhonyane, M. & Louw, A. (2002). Violent justice, vigilantism, and the state’s response. Institute for Security Studies, Monograph 72.
Senechal de la Roche, R. (1996). Collective violence as social control. Sociological Forum, 11(1), 97–128.
Shaw, M. (2002). Crime and policing in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Transforming under fire. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
Shearing, C., & Stenning, P. (1983). Private security: implications for social control. Social Problems, 30(5), 493–506.
Silver, E., & Miller, L. (2004). Sources of informal social control in Chicago neighborhoods. Criminology, 42(3), 551–583.
Singh, D. (2005). Resorting to community justice when state policing fails: South Africa. Acta Criminologica, 18(3), 1–18.
Skocpol, T. (1979). States and social revolutions: A comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Steinberg, J. (2008). Thin blue: The unwritten rules of policing South Africa. Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2013). Intentional homicide count and rate per 100,000 population, by country/territory (2000-2012). Available from United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime website: http://www.unodc.org/gsh/en/data.html. Accessed 26 May 2015.
Viterna, J. (2006). Pulled, pushed, and persuaded: explaining women’s mobilization into the Salvadoran guerrilla Army. American Journal of Sociology, 112(1), 1–45.
Weber, M. (1919). Politics as a vocation.
Wilson, M., & Daly, M. (2008). A close look at conflict. Nature, 451(February).
Zimring, F. (2004). The contradictions of American capital punishment. New York: Oxford University Press.
Acknowledgments
First, the author wishes to thank the African Population Studies Research and Training Program at UC-Boulder and the Hewlett Foundation for their financial support of the research that went into this project. Additionally, the author would like to a number of people for guidance and feedback on earlier versions of this article. In particular, Randall Collins, whose guidance helped clarify the theoretical framework early on; Dana Fisher, for her help as I developed this article as part of one of her courses; Sangeetha Madhavan for her input and continuous direction throughout the writing and submission process; and Aviva Tevah for reading countless drafts and her ongoing support. Finally, I would like to thank Bongani Xezwi, whose assistance in navigating the townships where I conducted this research was invaluable.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gross, M. Vigilante violence and “forward panic” in Johannesburg’s townships. Theor Soc 45, 239–263 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-016-9271-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-016-9271-1