There are good reasons to look at violence from new perspectives. In its endless manifestations violence is part and parcel of human existence, and is a constituting element of human society. And yet violent action -- warfare, penalties, insults, feuding, assault, murder, rape, suicide, and sports -- remains in all its complexity one of the least understood fields of human social life. The book's contributors identify the symbolic and ritualized aspects of violence, and suggest ways of reading violence as it occurs in the world, whether as violent dueling and age-group violence in Southern Ethiopia, bullfighting in Iberia, cattle rustling in Kenya, guerrilla and militia wars in Colombia, or public executions in China. These case studies suggest that violence as not a simple, universal urge, but is contingent and context-dependent, shaped by social relations of power, force and dominance.