ABSTRACT
The papers presented in this volume raise a number of issues: does violence enter into the cultural construction of personhood in distinctive ways for women and men, and if so, how; is violence between the sexes instrumental in converting gender difference into gender hierarchy; are we to understand violence as a universal feature of male/female relations or should we be looking instead to the culturally specific forms which violence takes; is sexuality itself something which is inherently violent? When it comes to considering these and other related issues, we need to examine, of course, the theoretical and methodological tools available to us. The sociological, psychological and criminological theories about the origins and causes of interpersonal violence have been summarized elsewhere, and I do not have the space to review all these theories here, nor am I qualified to do so. Instead, I wish to work from two starting points. One is that in spite of a great mass of writing, research, and speculation, the concept of violence in the social sciences still seems remarkably undertheorized. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that the causes of violence are clearly multiple and cannot be explained using a single set of determinants. From an anthropological perspective, there is an obvious need to integrate the sociological and psychological theories of interpersonal violence with theories about meaning, representation and symbolism.
