What is violence ? Through reflections on, amongst other things, the Bible, Muslim law, the situation in Colombia, the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and the genocide of the Rwandan Tutsi, Françoise Héritier and his fellow authors study how violence can be put in the service of religion, what is torture, what political gains can be made from cruelty, and also how a belief system encompassing hatred can end in the massacre of entire populations. The product of a seminar organised at the Collège de France by Françoise Héritier in 1995, this book benefits from a multi-disciplined approach in order to identify and understand a phenomenon which has occasionally plunged societies into a destructive frenzy.

Authors : Etienne Balibar.- Maurice Bloch.- Daniel Defert.- Baber Johansen.- Bernhard Lang.- Véronique Nahoum-Grappe.- Daniel Pécaut.- Jean-Pierre Peter.- Claudine Vidal.

Françoise Héritier is a professor at the Collège de France where she heads the Laboratory of Social Anthropology. She is the author of The Two Sisters and their Mother (1994), Incest (1994), and Masculine/Feminine (1996), all published by Odile Jacob.