1I2t is to no purpose3 it is even against one4s best interest5 to turn away from the

Apuntes

[I]t is to no purpose, it is even against one’s best interest, to turn away from the consideration of the affair because the horror of its elements excites repugnance. Carl von Clausewitz, On War To understand the living ...I found it was necessary to begin with the dead. Salman Rushdie, The Jaguar Smile This chapter reviews existing accounts of violence and civil war and clarifies definitional and conceptual issues related to both civil war and violence. I make the case for the analytical autonomy of violence vis-a-vis conflict and introduce three ` important distinctions: between violence and violent conflict, between violence as an outcome and as a process, and between violence in peace and violence in war. 1.1. civil war Civil war has attracted considerable scholarly attention from various disciplines – though considerably less than interstate war. Important bodies of literature have explicitly or implicitly (as studies of revolution, rebellion, or ethnic conflict) focused on numerous aspects: onset (Fearon and Laitin 2003; Collier et al. 2003; Sambanis and Elbadawi 2002; Gurr 1980), resolution (B. Walter 1997), social bases (Wickham-Crowley 1992; Skocpol 1979), outcome (Leites...