The causes of public violence : situational "versus" other factors in drinking related assaults

![CDATA[The research literature on violence gives very different accounts of the etiology of such behaviour. Some accounts place a stress upon the broader structural origins of violence, regarding it as the outcome of some general feature of our society and culture, such as inequalities of power or material well being (for example, Braithwaite 1979). Others emphasise the more immediate correlates of violence, often seeking individual or group explanations at the micro-social level (for example, Olweus 1988; Toch 1984). Whereas wider structuralist accounts are in danger of descending into a determinism which denies volition in human behaviour, microsocial accounts may move towards a narrow empiricism. The latter can take the directly observable features of a situation or incident to be the most important or plausible factors of cause and explanation. Single and multi-causal accounts of violence may both fall into such pitfalls of structural determinism or narrow empiricism. This can lead researchers onto a tightrope walk between reductionist perspectives which cannot address the real complexity and variation in human behaviour as lived experience, and a viewpoint that is incapable of distinguishing between the most and least important causes of a phenomenon. Researchers who endeavour to unearth what they believe are the localised "situational variables" relating to some problematic behaviour, may then confer an analytical privilege on them, dismissing other less apparent variables and factors as irrelevant. However, it is argued here that empirical research that explores some social phenomenon by direct observation at the local level, need not necessarily fall into this sociologically narrow position. A reflexive position can consider the effects of the observable and also the broader forces that may less obviously impinge upon the phenomenon studied. The situational factors that appear to be tied to the occurrence of violence in our society cannot stand by themselves in grand isolation, and do not have a separate existence unrelated to broader social forces. We illustrate this point by reporting here on the early results of our current research--an observational study of violent public drinking locations in Sydney.]]