Continuum Of Violence Research Articles

Adivasi Marginality and the Vicissitudes of Violence in Rejina Marandi’s Becoming Me

Considered the earliest known inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent region, the Adivasis have been marginalized at the fringes of society for centuries. Their secluded and unique lifestyle has been primarily characterized by geospatial isolation and religious-linguistic divisions. Moreover, the withdrawal of these indigenous people from modern paradigms and values made them stand out as the perennial “other” for both the colonial rulers and mainstream Indian society. The issues regarding Adivasi identity and existence are even more complicated and nuanced in Northeast India since the politics of identity and belonging are more intense and layered in this region because of its multi-ethnic structure. The politicization of ethnicity as a means of “resistance” by the ethnic communities has reinforced the “indigenous/outsider” binary in the region, often resulting in widespread and multifaceted violence. However, it is important to note that this violence extends beyond the physical or subjective forms, and includes more subtle and inconspicuous forms of coercion that perpetuate relations of domination and exploitation. In this context, Rejina Marandi’s Becoming Me becomes a significant literary endeavor. As the inaugural fictional work in English by an Adivasi from the Northeast, the novel attempts to ventriloquize the collective Adivasi concerns and experiences specifically in Assam, and Northeast in general. Drawing on various theoretical frameworks, this paper, therefore, intends to analyze the portrayal of Adivasi marginality in Marandi’s novel, and how it produces a continuum of violence, leading to the loss of their identity and dignity.

Women’s lived experience of intimate partner violence manifestations during the breastfeeding period: a lifeworld hermeneutic study

BackgroundOne in three women will experience Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Exposure during breastfeeding endangers women’s and children’s health and wellbeing, negatively affects breastfeeding, and violates human rights and global sustainability goals. Previous qualitative studies have demonstrated that existential aspects are crucial in the separate experience of both IPV and breastfeeding. However, there is a lack of studies examining the meaning of the concurrent experience of these phenomena. An enhanced understanding of the experience of IPV manifestations during the breastfeeding period may inform the provision of care and support for women exposed to IPV. Accordingly, the study aims to explain and understand women’s lived experience of IPV manifestations during the breastfeeding period.MethodsThe study adopts a lifeworld hermeneutic approach based on Reflective Lifeworld Research. Data collection was conducted between June 2022 and August 2023. Swedish women with experience of the phenomenon IPV manifestations during the breastfeeding period participated either through written lifeworld stories (forty-nine women) or lifeworld interviews (nine women). Data were analysed interpretatively. The main interpretation was inspired by Liz Kelly’s theory ‘The continuum of violence’.ResultsThe results show that women experience IPV manifestations during breastfeeding in terms of being accused, devalued, neglected, controlled, opposed, forced to adapt, and/or punished. The main interpretation suggests that the manifestations are intertwined within a multidimensional continuum where the most frequent IPV manifestations are less commonly recognised as violence. The main interpretation further illustrates that the continuum is dependent on both the subjective lifeworld of the woman and the patriarchal context in which it exists. In relation to the patriarchal context, the breastfeeding intimacy within the mother–child dyad is pivotal to explaining and understanding the phenomenon.ConclusionsThe breastfeeding intimacy within the mother–child dyad seems to change the intersubjective power balance in the partner relationship and provoke partners, making breastfeeding women especially vulnerable to IPV. Knowledge of breastfeeding women’s lived experience of exposure to IPV is central for carers to strengthen their ability to support women’s health and wellbeing.

Milícias in Rio de Janeiro: deconstructing the myth of a violent everyday peace through a feminist perspective

Milícias have proliferated across Brazil, engaging in criminal activities while maintaining close connections to the Brazilian state and politicians. They seek political validation by presenting themselves as combating drug traffickers and reducing violence, positioning peace and security as fundamental to their political appeal. Therefore, examining the role of peace within these criminal organizations through the lens of peace and conflict studies provides valuable insights into how Brazilian militias work. Through an analysis of the rhetoric used by politicians, the media, and residents in areas under milícias’ control, it becomes apparent that these criminal groups assert their role in establishing a form of “everyday peace.” However, this form of peace is inherently violent, resulting in a paradoxical concept of ‘violent everyday peace.’ Consequently, the feminist framework’s emphasis on the public/private distinction and the continuum of violence becomes crucial in addressing this paradox. By applying this feminist concept, it becomes evident that milícias generate a limited sense of peace in the public sphere while perpetuating violence in the private domain. Private violence, however, is often overlooked by those unaffected by milícia control, allowing these groups to garner political support. These findings enrich the study of criminal organizations in Brazil and the concept of everyday peace, which has not been previously explored in the context of Brazilian milícias.

Assembling traces of border violence. Counter-mapping as counter-archiving

This article develops the analytics of counter-mapping as counter-archiving in order to account for the continuum of violence that migrants experience during their journeys: building on administrative traces produced by states – such as expulsion orders, refusal of entry, identification papers – and combining these with migrants’ testimonies, it investigates how migrants’ geographies are affected, disrupted and rerouted by heterogenous paper trails. Focusing on migrants’ passages at the French-Italian Alpine border, both in the present and in the past, the article proceeds in three sections. It starts by introducing the analytics of counter-mapping as counter-archiving, and it takes into account migrants’ maps, showing how these rely on sort of counter-archiving processes. The second section draws on archival material and provides a historical insight into migration paper trails at the French-Italian border during the timeframe 1945–1966. The paper moves on dealing with the present context, retracing bio-geographies, drawing on heterogenous administrative traces. The article concludes by pointing to the need of re-articulating a critique of the border regime that centers on the continuum of violence experienced by migrants, which includes the impact of paper trails.

Gender and migration: A continuum of gender-based violence echoing across the Sinai Desert and into Israel

Gender-based violence (GBV) is widespread globally and is based on social roles. These social roles represent society’s expectations of men and women carrying out stereotyped functions and behaviours. These gendered social expectations vary across culture, space and time. Drawing from an empirical study in Israel and building on the previous literature on these issues, this qualitative and interdisciplinary article identifies various forms of GBV along Eritrean women’s journey from their home country into Israel. The empirical work helps to examine the findings of previous theoretical studies. This article establishes that there is a continuum of violence for women, especially refugees and asylum seekers, rooted in the standard system of oppression – patriarchy. This has triggered the flight and trafficking of refugees from Eritrea through the Sinai Desert and into Israel. The article argues that structural and cultural violence emanating from both the hosted community and the host community play significant roles in allowing the circumstances for GBV to thrive throughout the entire refugee cycle. What can be seen is the creation of multiple layers of vulnerabilities, particularly the specific social–legal–economic marginalization of segments of the population, including Eritrean asylum-seeking women. Reacting to this continuum of violence, many participants in the study argued that it was necessary to adopt strategies to create a continuum of resilience and resistance grounded on women’s sorority, support and agency.

Systematic review of child maltreatment screening tools used by different occupational groups: a study protocol

BackgroundChild maltreatment (CM) encompasses physical, emotional or sexual abuse, physical or emotional/psychological neglect or intimate partner (or domestic) violence and is associated with adverse cognitive, behavioural, physical and social outcomes...

Locating the stigmatisation of children born of wartime rape on a continuum of violence

ABSTRACT Children born of wartime sexual violence remain a marginalised group whose lives and needs have largely been overlooked. Over the past two decades, scholarship has emerged addressing some of the multiple issues they face. This research shows that stigmatisation is central in the children’s lives, but rarely provides a deeper definition of stigma that interrogates its structural and political dimension. Bridging feminist peace scholarship and new streams of stigma research, this article sets out to conceptualise stigmatisation as a complex form of violence that concurrently reflects and reproduces gendered power dynamics across the peace–war spectrum. Drawing on narratives by children born of war in the Central African Republic, Uganda, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, this article examines how stigmatisation materialises as different forms of ‘everyday violence’ that intersects at a personal, social, and structural level. By untangling their stories, the study shows how stigmatisation profoundly impacts the children’s experiences of peace and sustains the ‘conditions of war’ in the everyday space while perpetuating structural cycles of gender-based violence that persists in transitional and post-conflict environments. The article highlights the importance of placing the children’s perspectives at the centre when analysing stigmatisation and offers new insight on how stigma operates as violence.

Land dispossession as continuum of violence: women’s political agency in post-genocide Rwanda

ABSTRACT The article investigates how gender and class shape women’s political empowerment in post-genocide Rwanda, where access to land creates gendered networks for women to exercise their political agency in the community, market, and state. It argues, based on interviews with Rwandan women, that after the genocide elite women with access to land obtained opportunities to participate in collective political activities that were denied to landless women who were more preoccupied with their daily struggles to survive. It calls for an intersectional examination of class within the continuum of violence against women in the aftermath of conflicts.

“It Was Kind of Like Everything Was Hitting Rock Bottom All at Once”: The Impacts of Gender-Based Violence on Undergraduate Student Academic Success

Gender-based violence (GBV) is a multilayered problem with well-established health and social consequences. Unique to undergraduate students are the impacts of GBV on their academics. Despite this reality, little is known about how students navigate their academic lives after experiencing GBV. The purpose of this cross-sectional, qualitative study was to explore how GBV impacted undergraduate students’ academics both immediately and over time. Seventeen undergraduate students were interviewed and identified both immediate (i.e., increased difficulty concentrating on schoolwork, avoidance of schoolwork/classes/campus, decreased academic achievement) and long-term (i.e., lower academic standing, crossroads and decisions, reclaiming academic careers) academic consequences of GBV. A timeline of academic impacts emerged providing insight into the trajectory and extent of the consequences that the continuum of violence has on students’ academics. As the crisis of GBV persists on university campuses, it is imperative that academic policies be revised to mitigate the consequences of violence on students’ academics.

Composting modernity

We have reached the logical end of modernity as it lays waste to the natural world, discards people, and reveals its inherent and thus continual violence. Withdrawing our energy from and breaking down the constellation of modern beliefs, we can repattern ourselves and our communities for a life-giving future. In its structure and content, this article demonstrates a relationality approach to sustainability and climate education that undertakes practices to emplace humans back within the living world. Indigenous philosophies of place as well as posthumanism offer relational notions of time, space, place, and land to consider. Pedagogy-rich, the article provides practices for: restoring the history of modernity as a decolonial counternarrative; composting the most problematic beliefs and practices of modernity; providing tracings of and for possible futures; deriving pedagogical entry points of relevance to learners; and nurturing ways of being that can build a rooted, more life-giving way of being.

The continuum of gender-based violence experienced by migrant and refugee women in Canada: perspectives from key informants.

Little research has been done on conceptualizing gender-based violence (GBV) against immigrant and refugee women as a continuum of violence. The objective of the larger study was to understand gender-based violence in migration and analyze the ways in which discriminations and inequalities interact to increase vulnerability and decrease access to supports and services for some women. Using (a) the concept of continuum of [sexual] violence and (b) intersectionality, we demonstrate the need to both document the range of violence in women's lives and the tactics of victimization among immigrant and refugee women and show how they are different than the cumulated literature showing victimization tactics against the Canadian-born population. Using semi-structured interviews via phone or video, we asked professionals (N = 43) who worked with migrant women across Canada about forms of GBV experienced in the immigrant and refugee populations they worked with. Participants reported that non-physical forms of violence are more normalized, but also more commonly experienced than physical forms of violence in Canada. Additionally, intersecting social identities impact both the distinct and amplified forms of GBV immigrant and refugee women experienced. Results contribute theoretically and empirically to the conceptualization of the GBV experiences by immigrant and refugee women in Canada.

Capital’s Genocide: A Conversation on Racial Capitalism, Settler Colonialism, and Possible Worlds after Gaza

Taking as a starting point the desire of many to locate the unfolding genocide in Gaza in the irrationality of its perpetrators — the Israeli state and/or its imperial backers — this article proposes instead to understand it as an extreme expression of the continuous violence necessary to maintain not only local settler colonial rule, but the global capitalist system as a whole. Building on the existing literature on settler colonialism and racial capitalism, and insisting on the ways that both should be understood not as discrete, self-contained objects of study, but as co-constitutive elements of the global order, this article attempts to illuminate the structural logics at play in Israel’s latest and most brutal assault on Palestinian life. In doing so, the article emphasises Zionism’s role in maintaining western imperialism at a crucial nodal point of the world economy and, in turn, the latter’s commitment to guaranteeing its stability and dominance. The article resists, however, the urge to move from explaining current structures of domination to declaring them as final or unshakable. It therefore ends by proposing possible different tomorrows, through an engagement with the Palestinian revolutionary tradition.

The transnational mental health burden of Haiti's alleged collapse: preliminary findings from The Haitian Well-Being Study.

Transnational drug trafficking, political unrest, gang violence, and paramilitarism, which are pervasive in Haiti, have resulted in a mental health crisis for the broader Haitian community. This study explores the mental well-being of Haitians in Haiti and the United States by identifying barriers and facilitators to mental health through the lived experiences of men and women. Four Focus group discussions conducted in April and November 2023 engaged 28 participants (20 women and eight men) aged between 23 and 60 years from locations in Haiti (Port-au-Prince, Cite Soleil, Cayes, Cap-Haitien, Saint-Marc) and the United States. Discussions revolved around the definition of mental health, stressors, coping mechanisms, risk and protective factors, and barriers to mental health care. Six principal themes emerged: 1- Chronic Traumatic Stress: continued violence, political instability, unemployment, lack of social support, adverse childhood experiences, family separation, and forced displacement were significant sources of stress. 2- Increased Health Burden: Participants reported experiencing chronic physical and psychological symptoms [i.e., hypertension, anxiety, depression, sleep issues, substance abuse, suicidal ideations, characteristics of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)], which were attributed to Haiti's social, political, and infrastructure collapse. 3- Risk Factors: limited access to mental health services, pervasive hopelessness, scarcity of opportunities, and stigma were identified as significant risks. 4- Future Uncertainty: widespread concerns regarding the future predominated. 5- Multigenerational Concerns: Significant anxiety concerning the mental health and development of children, as well as the functionality of mental health practitioners, was noted. 6- Coping and Protective Factors: Effective coping strategies include mental stimulation, peer support, managing digital consumption, engaging in leisurely activities, such as listening to music, and faith/spirituality. The study's findings underscore the sociopolitical and economic crisis in Haiti, which has resulted in violence and a dismantle of political, educational, financial, and health infrastructures. These factors were identified as the primary source of chronic distress, contributing to widespread mental health issues, adverse physical symptoms, and disruption in daily life. The implications for practice, healing, research & policy are discussed.

The Continuum of Violence and Interstices in the Journeys and Bodies of Women on the Move From West Africa.

On the migration route from Western and Central Africa to Europe, aggression toward women's bodies has played a prominent role. In this study, we analyze this route as a continuum of violence and also study the interstices to confront it. Using a biographical narrative methodology, we analyze the narratives of 52 migrant women, through life stories or creative narrative workshops carried out in Mali, Morocco, and Spain. The results allow us to systematize the continuum of violence that the women report, understood as a pedagogy of cruelty but also the possible spaces to build a safe landscape.

The Transnational Mental Health Burden of Haiti's Alleged Collapse: Preliminary Findings from the Haitian Well-Being Study.

Transnational drug trafficking, political unrest, gang violence, and paramilitarism, which are pervasive in Haiti, have resulted in a mental health crisis for the broader Haitian community. This study explores the mental well-being of Haitians in Haiti and the United States by identifying barriers and facilitators to mental health through the lived experiences of men and women. Four Focus group discussions conducted in April and November 2023 engaged 28 participants (20 women and eight men) aged between 23 and 60 years from locations in Haiti (Port-au-Prince, Cite Soleil, Cayes, Cap-Haitien, Saint-Marc) and the United States. Discussions revolved around the definition of mental health, stressors, coping mechanisms, risk and protective factors, and barriers to mental health care. Six principal themes emerged: 1- Chronic Traumatic Stress: continued violence, political instability, unemployment, lack of social support, adverse childhood experiences, family separation, and forced displacement were significant sources of stress. 2- Increased Health Burden: Participants reported experiencing chronic physical and psychological symptoms (i.e., hypertension, anxiety, depression, sleep issues, substance abuse, suicidal ideations, characteristics of post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]), which were attributed to Haiti's social, political, and infrastructure collapse. 3- Risk Factors: limited access to mental health services, pervasive hopelessness, scarcity of opportunities, and stigma were identified as significant risks. 4- Future Uncertainty: widespread concerns regarding the future predominated. 5- Multigenerational Concerns: Significant anxiety concerning the mental health and development of children, as well as the functionality of mental health practitioners, was noted. 6- Coping and Protective Factors: Effective coping strategies include mental stimulation, peer support, managing digital consumption, engaging in leisurely activities, such as listening to music, and faith/spirituality. The study's findings underscore the sociopolitical and economic crisis in Haiti, which has resulted in violence and a collapse of political, educational, financial, and health infrastructures. These factors were identified as the primary source of chronic distress, contributing to widespread mental health issues, adverse physical symptoms, and disruption in daily life. The implications for practice, healing, research & policy are discussed.

Beyond conflict-related sexual violence: the continuum of violence in Iraq’s Women, Peace and Security action plans

Women’s experiences of conflict and their roles in its prevention have become an increasingly large focus for feminist scholars, particularly since the adoption of the Women, Peace and Security agenda in 2000. Iraq has been at the forefront of engagement with the Women, Peace and Security agenda, being the first Middle East state to adopt a national action plan. This article analyses Iraq’s Women, Peace and Security action plans, largely drafted by women’s civil society organisations, using the concept of the ‘continuum of violence’. In doing so, the article shows how a fuller breadth of violence is used by Iraqi women writing and working on Women, Peace and Security inside Iraq than what appears in Women, Peace and Security resolutions. The article therefore contributes to critical engagements with the Women, Peace and Security agenda by addressing two themes: the agenda’s limited capture of gendered violence in conflict; and the agenda’s top-down nature when it comes to reconceptualising the agenda, its limits and its opportunities.

Gender-based Cyberviolence: A Socio-legal Approach to a Continuum of Violence Against Women in Morocco

This article proposes to apprehend, according to a socio-legal approach, gender-based cyberviolence in terms of conceptualization in the eyes of sociologists, jurists and UN organizations, and then to describe the way in which digital technology reproduces relations of domination between the sexes by inserting cyberviolence into a continuum of traditional violence.

‘Everything is Obstetric Violence Now’: Identifying the Violence in ‘Obstetric Violence’ to Strengthen Socio-legal Reform Efforts

Abstract Since its global uptake, ‘obstetric violence’ is increasingly used to capture any/all violations during reproductive healthcare, with few conceptual limits. Consequently, it runs the risk of becoming an overgeneralised concept, making it difficult to operationalise in socio-legal reform efforts. This article draws on the Latin American origins of the concept and aims to provide a theoretical framework to support a focused and coherent socio-legal reform agenda. It offers a universal definition of violence, being the violation of physical or psychological integrity, and localises this definition using the ‘view from everywhere’. The article proposes that violence will qualify as ‘obstetric violence’ if the violation of integrity occurs in the context of antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal care. Further, the subject of the violence is the birthing woman, trans or non-binary person. Thinking in terms of a ‘continuum of violence’ in reproductive healthcare ensures that different forms of obstetric violence are recognised and helps envisage overlaps with other violences.

Queering the humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality: Implications for humanitarian action, IHL effectiveness and gender justice

Abstract Institutions are often reluctant to openly engage on controversies around the patriarchal underpinnings of the humanitarian sector, or the hard questions around implementing rights-based approaches in spaces where the dominant social norms run counter to an enabling environment for principled humanitarian and development assistance. A reluctance to engage on these issues can lead to unintended suppression of gender justice efforts under the urgency and scale of needs-based humanitarian response. Pre-crisis unequal power relations can be visible or invisible, difficult to measure and even more difficult to address through humanitarian action. Engaging on root causes and drivers of human suffering is often viewed as “political” in contexts of closing civic space and restricted humanitarian access. This article will explore tensions and synergies between the humanitarian principles and the gender justice agenda with a view to helping humanitarian actors contribute to long-term goals of transforming social norms. The article applies a critical feminist lens to the humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality, with a focus on the wider development agenda, the nature of the State in a State-centric global order, and the continuum of violence. Drawing on critical feminist theory and decolonization discourses, and building on gender analyses of international humanitarian law, this article looks to queer the humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality within the context of the shifting aid system in which they are applied. The objective is help address some of the gaps in literature, identify ways in which aid actors can reduce unintended harm to the gender justice agenda, and help contribute to the more transformative agendas of gender justice.

Locating Abortion and Contraception on the Obstetric Violence Continuum

This article builds on existing feminist literature on obstetric violence in the context of childbirth to argue that there is a continuum of obstetric violence that also includes that perpetuated in relation to pregnancy prevention and termination, as well as antenatal healthcare and birth. This structural violence is highlighted in relation to conscientious objection, the reporting of people suspected of illegal abortions by their healthcare providers, and contraceptive coercion. Recognizing the limitations of criminal and human rights approaches to obstetric violence, this article takes Martha Fineman’s vulnerability theory as the foundation for the transformative structural change of healthcare institutions.