Approaching anthropological research on violence means to approach a field of questions rather than of answers. It offers manifold perspectives on competing interpretations: comparative perspectives on a multitude of articulations between war and peace in small societies; on physiological and bodily practices of violence; on cultural, symbolic and cognitive patterns of violence; systemic channels and alternatives for violence derived from conflicts of interests; structural patterns with a perspective on relations between local violence; intermediate processes of inclusion/exclusion and over-arching political-economic relations. A strong current in recent research relates to the transposition of phenomena of violence formerly observed outside the sphere of “the state” to post-Cold War phenomena now observed under the simultaneous conditions of globalisation and fragmentation of statehood.