ABSTRACT
This introduction chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. The book provides an account of an ethnographic research project that explores the lives of men who use interpersonal violence against others. Over the course of the book a picture emerges of a group of men who have experienced and perpetrated serious violence throughout their lives. The book advances a critical psychosocial understanding of such violence by situating these masculine biographies within their immediate contexts of de-industrialisation, fracturing working-class community and culture, and broader shifts within the political economy of liberal capitalism. It incorporates and utilises some new theoretical directions to interpret the rich and highly complex data gathered from the ethnographic fieldwork. The book is aligned to an emergent body of perspectives that integrate sociological and psychological approaches to understanding gender, subjectivity and violence.
