Abstract
This paper critically interrogates the usefulness of the concept of violence regimes for social politics, social analysis, and social theory. In the first case, violence regimes address and inform politics and policy, that is, social politics, both around various forms of violence, such as gender-based violence, violence against women, anti-lesbian, gay and transgender violence, intimate partner violence, and more widely in terms of social and related policies and practices on violence and anti-violence. In the second case, violence regimes assist social analysis of the interconnections of different forms and aspects of violence, and relative autonomy from welfare regimes and gender regimes. Third, the violence regime concept engages a wider range of issues in social theory, including the exclusion of the knowledges of the violated, most obviously, but not only, when the voices and experiences of those killed are unheard. The concept directs attention to assumptions made in social theory as incorporating or neglecting violence. More specifically, it highlights the significance of: social effects beyond agency; autotelic ontology, that is, violence as a means and end in itself, and an inequality in itself; the relations of violence, sociality and social relations; violence and power, and the contested boundary between them; and materiality-discursivity in violence and what is to count as violence. These are key issues for both violence studies and social theory more generally.
Highlights
Violence, and gendered and intersectional forms of violence, are an extensive global problem connected to power, inequalities, health, economy, crime and security, impacting all societies (Krug et al, 2002)
This paper has addressed two research questions: How can the extent to which specific forms and aspects of violence co-vary and interconnect be usefully conceptualized in a more inclusive, more comprehensive way? And what difference would a more inclusive, more comprehensive conceptualization of violence make to social
Politics, empirical studies, and social theorizing on and against violence? In responding to these questions, we have presented the concept of violence regime – as both a way of examining interconnections of violence, and an open-ended conceptualization of recognitions/non-recognitions of different violences
Summary
Gendered and intersectional forms of violence, are an extensive global problem connected to power, inequalities, health, economy, crime and security, impacting all societies (Krug et al, 2002). Policy and conceptual work (Hearn et al, 2020; Humbert et al, 2021; Strid et al, 2021), the concept of violence regime forces consideration of different understandings of what is to count as violence, from direct killing to forms of violence often not recognized as violence at all, such as violence to non-humans, colonial violence, slow and environmental violence Following this introduction, we continue by examining how studies on violence are subject to disciplinary fragmentation, as a precursor to examining five inspirations and ways of moving towards a broadened, more inclusive conceptualization: violence regime. The concluding section discusses further implications of the conceptualization of violence regimes
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
