Abstract
Previous studies on violence among students have tended to assume that continuing violence is brought on only by perpetratorsʼ total control over victims. However, this paper explores the process through which the victimsʼ affirmative acceptance of violence contributes to the continuity of violence. For this purpose, this paper introduces a new concept, “violence as rite of passage,” and examines a case of violence in a delinquent multiage group at a junior high school that was obtained through a retrospective semi-structured interview with a man in his twenties.
In this case, the informant belonged to a delinquent multiage group which had a certain level of control over public order at school. Though he suffered constant violence by senior boys in the group, he took their abusive behavior as essential to keeping public order and accepted it positively. The main reason was that suffering violence made him feel a strengthening of his sense of self-esteem, as follows. Firstly, he was beaten by senior boys in public as a representative of students in the same grade as himself, and this fact assured them that he was their leader. Secondly, he withstood violence by keeping his legs and never crying at anytime; his courageous behavior evoked much admiration among the group members.
By examining this case from a perspective of violence as rite of passage, it is found that victims accepted violence positively and contributed to the maintenance of a violent culture at the school because the suffering of violence committed by the perpetrators led to benefits for the victims. The finding in this paper advances our understanding of how violence among students continues.
