The problems of violence, with which the current European states have to deal, have made a renewed reflection about violence necessary. Scholars from a wide variety of disciplines and from different countries in Europe and North America have made an attempt to do this in this publication. The various contributions in this volume approach the questions and the area of the phenomenon of racist, xenophobic and nationalistic violence by means different methods (conceptual-theoretical, hermeneutic-historical, descriptive- empirical), and from varying national perspectives. The essays and studies place an emphasis on considering the concepts and metaphors of violence and attempt to differentiate between force and violence in terms of their relationship to power and to justice in order to make visible the continuities and discontinuities that express themselves in the thought of European societies and that have molded their historical identity. (DIPF/Orig.)