ABSTRACT
Interpersonal violence is a global social and health problem in higher-and lower-income countries alike (Collins, 2008; Hearn, 2013; Krug et al., 2002; McCue, 2008; McKie, 2005; Ray, 2011). It is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon that involves violation, suffering, trauma and loss. The concept of violence includes both the threat and the actual use of physical force or power, which may result in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation (Stockdale & Nadler, 2012). However, violence is an ineluctable part of social life and social structures. Interpersonal violence and armed conflicts seem to have existed in all known human societies (Malesevic, 2010). At the same time, violence often appears as exceptional and external (Ray, 2011; Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois, 2004), and its impact on people’s well-being has been underestimated and frequently rendered invisible in the human sciences, especially in the canon of social thought (Kilby, 2013; Stanko et al., 2002; Walby, 2009). The deployment and regulation of violence are social processes, and violence itself is socially patterned and embedded in inequalities in institutions and regimes (Walby, 2009, 2012). Hence, interpersonal violence seems to be socially, culturally and historically a phenomenon that in one way or another reflects social conditions, attitudes, conceptions and change, and that is manifested in human interaction. These social, historical and cultural dimensions of violence give interpersonal violence its meaning and power. Interpersonal violence has many names. Some of these, such as child abuse, refer to the age of the victim and perpetrator, some refer to behavioral criteria, that is, to specific acts such as rape, stalking or genital mutilation, whereas others reflect attempts to capture broad constructs, such as intimate partner violence and violence against women. Interpersonal violence has also been categorized into two specific forms: family/partner and community, where each is further classified by the type of target (Krug et al., 2002). The target of family/partner violence may be a child, partner or an elderly person. The target of community violence may be an acquaintance or a stranger. The former type of interpersonal violence is distinguished primarily by life stage and living arrangements (i.e., domestic violence, child abuse, and elder abuse) (Tyner, 2012). The different names and frames of violence are closely linked to questions of how interpersonal violence is defined and explained (Hearn, 2013). Interpersonal violence is thus a slippery
concept that permeates the unstable boundaries between public and private, legitimate and illegitimate, individual and collective. While there are important differences between the different forms of violence, there are also extensive connections between them. These interconnections extend across time, cultures, relationships and discourses (Hamby, 2011; Hamby & Grynch, 2013). For example, violence in the home is inextricably linked to violence in the community, school and workplace as well as to the violence that has occurred in the home for centuries and how violence is discussed, represented and explained (Galtung & Jacobssen, 2000). The necessity of recognizing and acknowledging experiences of violence not only concerns individuals, but also communities and societies suffering from violence and their need to deal with its effects. The sharing of experiences of violence is thus also a question of both communal and societal relationships and global political orders. Objectifying and oppressive attitudes related to interpersonal violence are also present in other social situations, ways of knowing and attempts to control and manage the world. They hinder the possibility to engage in relationships and inhabit spaces that are based on reciprocity, in which mutual recognition and acknowledgement can exist. At the same time, such attitudes uphold the existence of violence as a logical solution to problems – as a behavior or practice that is attributable to circumstances or on the characteristics of the target or victim. The anthropologist Mary Douglas (1966/1996) has criticized the attempt to explain social problems and the primitive aspects of society and culture by reference to individuals’ qualities, and so bypass the societal and cultural factors that affect people’s behavior. In relation to interpersonal violence, and especially gendered violence, this aim would appear to still be very much alive and well. For centuries, for example, violence against women in the home has been explained away as being the result of, amongst other things, female bickering, provocation and masochism, and male jealously, aggression and the use and abuse of alcohol. The lack of attention paid to the silent acceptance and tolerance of violence, and its social and cultural effects on both parties, have facilitated the repetition and reiteration of these explanatory models (Lidman, 2013). Even in countries where legal and social sanctions exist that challenge interpersonal violence, still the attitudes, practices and cultural conceptions prevail that enable the continuation of such violence. Research indicates, for example, that social and health care providers, educators and lawyers, as well as social theorists and human scientists often fail to initiate the appropriate interest, analysis and interventions due to their attitudes towards violence and unwillingness to acknowledge its existence (Besteman, 2002; Hearn, 2013, Husso et al., 2012; Laing & Humphreys, 2013; Lombard, 2013; Virkki et al., 2015). Furthermore, research also shows that the pivotal role of interpersonal violence in gender equality and structured power relations has commonly not been recognized (Hearn, 2013; Hearn & McKie, 2010; McKie, 2006). On the contrary, personal and societal attitudes, organizational practices, policy responses, and popular and scientific discussions have tended to overlook the
issue of interpersonal violence and its consequences. Social theory and history have been effective in analyzing societal and institutional conflicts and violence, but less so in addressing the specifics of interpersonal violence. The study of violence has been fragmented into specific clusters, and it has been generally absent from social theory as a topic of reflection (Ray, 2011). Violence in everyday and intimate practices, in particular, has not been a central concern in social theory or history. Despite the fact that interpersonal violence is unequivocally also a social problem, questions related to the topic have long been avoided in the human sciences. This neglect has affected both the understanding of violence and the means of approaching and the outlining of social and societal relationships. Hence, the failure to focus attention on interpersonal violence, and especially violence that occurs in close relationships, has led to the ignoring of, amongst other things, such factors as considerations based on gender construction and the social formation of interpersonal relationships (see Hearn, 1998, 2013). This limitation may reflect cultural attitudes and the resulting taken-for-grantedness of violence, and the hierarchical and gendered nature of different research fields and social theories, combined with the earlier marginalization of gender, ethnicity and age (Ray, 2000, 2011). Hence, analyses of interpersonal violence are illustrative of more general issues in social theory and history, and consequently theories in the human sciences can be informed by the analysis of interpersonal violence when approached from the standpoint of structured power and social relations.
