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Following the long debate about violence, I am struck by a question and I would like to know if anyone has any thoughts on this: has anyone else noticed how often we all (including me) fall back on *anecdotes* about responses to violence in different media/art forms? Sometimes the anecdotes are very good ones, really insightful, and pose challenges to a lot of standard thinking and assumptions - but the fact is that they remain anecdotes, and that can only get you so far. I know I do it myself from time to time, and it has worried me for quite a long time. It is as if we can't lift ourselves to a higher level of generality - or if we do, we seem quickly to become vulnerable to ways of categorising 'violence' that arise from traditions of research which we find problematic. What is it about this issue which makes *research* so difficult? I have my own views on this, but I am interested to hear other people's take on this. Martin Barker