Decontrolled by solidarity: Understanding recreational violence in moral holidays

Abstract

This paper seeks to develop an understanding of ‘recreational’ youth violence against strangers in ‘moral holidays’. These are enclaves in which youth seek to enjoy disorder and disruption. Drawing on Eliasian theory and Collins’s micro-sociology of violence, it is argued that violent moral holidays share features of decivilization. First, youth positively sensitize one another towards violence. Second, absorbed in the group action, they become ‘decontrolled by solidarity’: their behaviour is guided much more by the group (social constraint) rather than by internal monitoring (self-restraint). Third, a process of desidentification was identified, in which the identity of the victims was seen as merely futile, rather than bad or evil.