Katherine Christoffel Reducing Violence Summary

Dr Katherine Christoffel, in her editorial "Reducing Violence—How Do We Proceed?” called violence an aspect of injury "in which human agency is most critical” In this way social science has begun to redefine violence from the language of disease to behavior. The assumption behind this reasoning being the desire to avoid "blaming the victim," and seeing human beings as not always the products of circumstance. by reducing people to the biopsychosocial factors interacting in complex metabolic pathways not only relieves people of responsibility for their behavior, it also minimizes the role of human agency, an aspect of injury Christoffel starts out saying is critical.
Casting people in the role of mere victims of uncontrollable circumstances