The Kaleidoscope of Violence

Abstract

Violence is not new—it has been a part of the human experience forever—but conceptualizing all that could be considered “violent” remains problematic. Defining violence almost always lends itself to dispute, confusion, and debate. Not only is violence challenging to define in legal and academic terms, but sometimes it can even be hard to articulate in the most casual conversations. Scholars have dedicated years of research and inquiries to understand violence and examine its intricate dynamics. Although most of these studies have offered solid theoretical frames on which modern social scientists have based their scholarship, many of these theoretical frameworks mainly focused on conceptualizing the why(s) and the how(s) a violent encounter or action happens—while few have focused on how individuals perceive, process, and distinguish acts of violence. In this article, I focus on the individual experience. I argue that our understanding of what constitutes violence is largely informed by our position in the society rather than traditional knowledge structures (such as laws, social traditions, etc.). I explore the contours to violence and explain that an individual's ability to classify an act as violent depends largely on their position in the society in a given time (e.g., a violent act as defined by law of the land may be different from a violent act as defined by our social context, gender roles, racial profile, etc.) This concept is much like a kaleidoscope—slight variations in our positioning change what we see.