Everyday Violence Research Articles

Silent cities, silenced histories: subaltern experiences of everyday urban violence during COVID-19

The public health containment measures in response to COVID-19 have precipitated a significant epistemic and ontological shift in �bottom-up� and �action-oriented� approaches in development studies research. �Lockdown� necessitates physical and social distancing between research subject and researcher, raising legitimate concerns around the extent to which �distanced� action-research can be inclusive and address citizens� lack of agency. Top-down regimes to control urban spaces through lockdown in India have not stemmed the experience of violence in public spaces: some have dramatically intensified, while others have changed in unexpected ways. Drawing on our experiences of researching the silent histories of violence and memorialisation of past violence in urban India over the past three decades, we argue that the experience of subaltern groups during the pandemic is not an aberration from their sustained experiences of everyday violence predating the pandemic. Exceptionalising the experiences of violence during the pandemic silences past histories and disenfranchises long struggles for rights in the city. At the same time, we argue that research practices employed to interpret the experience of urban violence during lockdown in India need to engage the changing nature of infrastructural regimes, as they seek to control urban spaces, and as subaltern groups continue to mobilise and advocate, in new ways.

Dislipidemia y estrés en estudiantes universitarios: Un enemigo silencioso

This essay examines the relationship between the absolute victim and the victims of everyday violence. It explores the figure of the victim in the ethnological discourse, in the practice of tolerance and of humanitarian action, the politics against terror and the constant exposure to images of violence: Internet, newspapers and TV series. The author questions the consensus around the idea of a humanitarian crisis and the need of reparation as privileged frameworks in the analysis of violence. This essay offers new theoretical insights for our understanding of the victims and of contemporary violence.

The Fluctuating Visibility of Everyday Violence in Khmer Rouge Era Cambodia

This Article explores how the atrocities committed in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge period (1975-1979) have been narrated over time and how, through such narration, slow and attritive “everyday” forms of atrocity violence have been alternately rendered visible or invisible. It does so by looking at how Khmer Rouge era atrocities have been framed, while focusing on identifying what forms of violence and killing have been branded, legally and socially, as “atrocity crimes” and what forms of violence have been obscured, backgrounded or otherwise deemphasized. In doing so, the Article assesses the relationship between international, national, and local understandings of this complex history, expressing concern that dominant narratives developed by national and international elites may be influencing or even displacing localized notions of violence, atrocity, and justice. The Article concludes by calling for efforts to actively foreground everyday as well as spectacular manifestations of atrocity violence and experiences thereof.

Indefinite Detention: Chronotopes of Unfreedom in Mohamedou Ould Slahi's Guantánamo Diary

Former Guantanamo detainee Mohamedou Ould Salahi’s memoir, Guantanamo Diary (2015, Restored Edition 2017), has been well received as a document of the “emergency” violence in the war on terror, with explicit testimony to a range of grave rights violations. In this essay, we show how the book also reveals overlaps between these techniques of torture and abuse, on one hand, and both Guantanamo’s deep colonial roots as well its reliance on “ordinary” prison procedures marked by racist brutality, on the other. “Indefinite Detention and Targeted Harm” builds on the Bakhtinian chronotope as a theoretical frame to explore a set of simultaneously competing and complementary spatio-temporal frameworks that ground and emerge through the text. Analyzing the overlapping and often conflicting temporal registers of “national emergency” and “imperialist history,” our reading of the memoir accounts for the narrative’s production of a post-torture, but not post-carceral, subjectivity, reminding readers that the everyday violence of the war on terror persists into the reading present even though the most egregious violence the text depicts has largely ended.

“Love and Prayer Sustain Our Work” Building Collective Power, Health, and Healing as the Community Health Board Coalition

Over the course of the last few months, we have seen how structural racism has compounded the impact of COVID-19 on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in the United States, resulting in disparate rates of infection and death. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how the consequences of deeply entrenched inequities are fatal to BIPOC communities, whether death is a result of the novel coronavirus or the everyday violence of structural racism that manifests as poor health outcomes. We examine the formation of the Community Health Board Coalition (CHBC), a BIPOC-led organization in Washington state, to show how 15 communities have organized for health and healing amidst the collective trauma associated with COVID-19. We note that biopower—literally power over life, the unspeakable—and slow violence have been normalized and escalated in our communities. The use of an antiracist lens and decolonial practices have assisted us in our survivance (survival and resistance). We use autoethnography and testimonio as decolonial theory and method to give voice to individual and collective experiences that brought us to our roles as CHBC founding members and inaugural cochairs.

A black man is a cornered man: migration, precarity and masculinities in Johannesburg

Facing an ever-changing political-economic landscape marked by inequality, joblessness, and xenophobia, migrants in inner city Johannesburg are pushed towards the economic margins, or the ‘corner’ of life. In this precarious place, structural and everyday violence shape the daily lives and practices of men from various parts of Africa. This article examines how such men work to live up to self and societal expectations of masculinities while attempting to adjust to the socio-economic realities they face. Departing from the crisis in masculinity narrative, we highlight the multiple, creative ways that men navigate precarity. Our arguments are based on an ethnographic study of masculinities and violence, conducted from June 2017 to February 2018 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Drawing on the stories of two migrant men and more broadly from observations undertaken at Uncle Kofi’s Corner, a street corner hangout and our main ethnographic site, we show how participants mapped urban space to produce enclaved masculinities. In these enclaves, specific scripts on how to be a man were (re)constructed resulting in multiple and unstable masculinities in a perpetual state of becoming.

Contesting everyday violence: Resilience pathways of gay and transgender youth in Peru

ABSTRACT Within Peru, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer/questioning (LGBTIQ) groups experience significant levels of violence, particularly LGBTIQ youth. This study explored youth responses to violence in two cities: Lima and Ayacucho. We sought to formulate key factors facilitating LGBTIQ youth resilience to inform local practice and policy. Focus groups were conducted with youth that self-identified as gay and transgender. We used thematic analysis to identify both inductive and deductive themes. Deductive themes were driven from resilience and structural violence theories. Structural and direct violence was reported by all youth with differences regarding the role of self, place and people in their resilience pathways. Despite experiencing everyday violence, LGBTIQ youth participants displayed remarkable resilience, though the resilience strategies and experiences of violence were distinctive for each group. Transgender youth relied more on their collective rather than individual resilience. In contrast, gay youth revealed a high level of individual resilience. Overall, the participants exhibited a fluidity of resilient and resistant behaviours toward violence. The use of place theory and a social resistance framework is suggested for interventions that effectively honour and foster the courageous resilience of LGBTIQ youth and effectively equalize their opportunities.

“That’s what I’m supposed to do at work”: gendered labor, self-care, and overdose risk among women who use drugs in Vancouver, Canada

ABSTRACT Through rapid ethnography undertaken in Vancouver, Canada’s Downtown Eastside – one of Canada’s overdose epicenters – this article examines how gendered expectations of labor shape overdose risk for structurally vulnerable women and gender diverse people who use drugs. Drawing on two participant narratives, we explore how structural, symbolic, and everyday violence frame the lives of women and gender diverse people who use drugs in ways that drive their overdose risk as they balance self-care with caretaking, paid work, and basic survival. This article underscores the need for structural reform of peer overdose response work and funding for gender-attentive harm reduction and ancillary supports to better mitigate overdose risk for these populations.

Women and politics in Mexico and Brazil

Despite advances in recognition of women’s rights, they are still victims of everyday violence. National and international regulations on gender equality and the promotion of female political participation had a low impact on the underrepresentation of this minority. Law produced without a share of citizenship lacks democratic legitimacy. Mexico and Brazil have a similar history of excluding women from the public sphere, but they currently have different strategies to overcome this democratic deficit. The article, with a descriptive methodology, presents the history and the present situation in both countries. We conclude that there are different ways to increase the representation of women in politics, but parity is a demand for justice.

Shyamoli and the unknown male: the city’s violent margins

ABSTRACT This article explores the spectrum of violence inflicted and endured by marginalized young people in Kolkata. An unknown youth (possibly a male acquaintance encountered in the first research site in the bustees, or slum communities of Kolkata) and a young girl Shyamoli (the central character in the fictional piece set in a small town or moforshol on the outskirts of Kolkata) present a picture of the ordinary and everyday gendered and class violence experienced by girls and young women in a rapidly changing Kolkata. Collectively the two papers remind us of the aspirational politics, practices, and affective states that lead to violent outcomes in patriarchal and increasingly middle-class nationalist spaces. As fieldworkers we advocate for reflexive sensitivity and nuanced commitment to embracing contradictions and ambiguity wholeheartedly as we think through the aspirations, practices, and experiences of our interlocutors in Kolkata’s shadow zones.

The Role of Sexually Transmitted Infections in Police as Clients Among Street-Based Female Sex Workers in Baltimore City.

Research among street-based female sex workers (FSWs) has documented many harms caused by police. One harm that has received little attention is that of police as clients. We examined this interaction in a 12-month longitudinal cohort study of street-based FSWs in Baltimore, MD. We explored longitudinal bivariate and multivariate associations between having police clients and independent variables that focused on sexually transmitted infections (STIs), as well as demographic, structural, substance use, police interaction, and violence-related factors. Mean participant age was 35.8 years, 65.9% were White, and more than half (53.3%) had less than a high school education. Most (70.3%) used heroin daily, and 24.8% reported having police as clients over the study period. In a multivariate model, factors independently associated with recent police clients were recent arrest (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 1.76; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.03-2.99; P = 0.037), coerced or forced sex by police (aOR, 4.47; 95% CI, 1.79-11.12; P = 0.001), higher number of egregious police practices experienced (aOR, 1.77; 95% CI, 1.38-2.29; P < 0.001), and prevalent STI infection (aOR, 2.43; 95% CI, 1.46-4.04; P = 0.001). The study uniquely documents both the frequency with which street-based FSWs take police as clients and the role of egregious police practices and prevalent STIs in association with police as clients. Results indicate the police-as-client association as a form of "everyday violence," which both normalizes and legitimizes police power and structural violence. Alongside the urgent need for decriminalization of sex work and STI prevention programs tailored for this complex population, prompt investigation and harsher penalties for police officers who engage in sex with FSW could help shift police culture away from abuse.

Mapping the body, voicing the margins: Using body maps to understand children’s embodied experiences of violence in Kingston, Jamaica

AbstractThe study explores how children in an inner‐city community of Jamaica deal with everyday violence. Using an art‐based method called body mapping, we explored the ways children made sense of issues related to power, vulnerability, risk and resilience. The findings show how children's narratives and memories of their bodies merged with broader social and cultural structures governing their lives. Expressing their embodied experiences through the body mapping exercise, the children challenged and resisted normative sociocultural schemes of how they should be in the world by creating, re‐envisioning and re‐contextualising their bodies via a method that engaged with affective modes of knowledge.

The Precariousness of Protection: Civilian Defense Groups Countering Boko Haram in Northeastern Nigeria

AbstractFor all the academic and policy interest in Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgency, the coping strategies of civilians who survive amid everyday violence have received relatively little attention. Focusing on the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), a pro-government militia fighting Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria, Agbiboa explores how and why the group emerged, the nature of its relationship with the state and local communities, and how counterinsurgent vigilantism affects the prospects for peace. A focus on vigilantes and civil militias vis-à-vis the state points to the vital role of civil-military cooperation for effective counterinsurgency campaigns and for reducing state violence against civilians. At the same time, it underscores the precariousness of protection both in terms of increasing the targeting of civilians by vengeful insurgents as well as the tendency for civilian defense groups to “turn bad” and become threats to the communities they were expected to protect.

Normalised pain and severe health care delay among people who inject drugs in London: Adapting cultural safety principles to promote care.

In the United Kingdom, increases in premature mortality among the intersecting populations of people made homeless and people who inject drugs map onto the implementation and solidification of fiscal austerity policies over the past decade, rather than drug market fluctuations and trends as in North America. In this context, it is crucial to explore how poverty, multi-morbidity and care delay interplay in exacerbating vulnerability to mortality among an aging population of people who use illicit drugs. The mixed methods Care & Prevent study generated survey data with 455 PWID and in-depth qualitative interviews with a subsample (n = 36). Participants were recruited though drug treatment services and homeless hostels in London from October 2017–June 2019. This paper focuses on qualitative findings, analysed thematically and contextualised in relation to the broader survey sample. Survey participants report an extensive history of rough sleeping (78%); injecting-related bacterial infections (65%) and related hospitalisation (30%). Qualitative accounts emphasise engagement with the medical system as a ‘last resort’, with admission to hospital in a critical or a “near death” condition common. For many severe physical pain and debility were normalised, incorporated into the day to day. In a context of everyday violence and marginalisation, avoidance of medical care can have a protective impetus. Translation of cultural safety principles to care for people who inject drugs in hospital settings offers transformative potential to reduce serious health harms among this population.

Women’s everyday resistance to intimate partner violence

Aotearoa/New Zealand’s rate of reported intimate partner violence (IPV) is among the highest in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In this article, we step behind the statistical trends to document the ways in which violence manifests in women’s everyday lives and the subtle, imperfect ways in which they respond through the development of various resistive tactics. We explore how these women navigate their daily lives with violence, paying particular attention to moments of adaptation, agency and resistance. With the help of Te Whakakruruhau (Māori Women’s Refuge), we conducted semi-structured discussions with eight women (four staff members and four former clients) who revealed how deeply enmeshed IPV can become within the conduct of everyday life. This necessitates their development of tactics for surviving the danger associated with mundane practices, such as grocery shopping, sleeping and doing the dishes. In responding to everyday violence, the women in our study create moments of routine and radical freedom in the midst of the chaos that comes with IPV.

Novel Violence

ABSTRACT The novel coronavirus pandemic is throwing into relief traditional notions and rhetorics of witness, visibility, recognition, and violence in human rights discourse. This essay articulates the ways in which the current pandemic is being framed rhetorically as a spectacular war, using rhetoric that obfuscates the structural violations that leads to the virus disproportionately impacting the precarious. It argues for a reframing of traditional paradigms of representation, recognition, and resistance toward a notion of everyday violence that accounts for the accumulation of structural and material conditions of precarity as a human rights violation.

GHETTOIZATION AND THE HOLOCAUST IN TRANSCARPATHIA IN TESTIMONIES OF VICTIMS AND WITNESSES (ON THE MATERIAL OF THE REGIONAL EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION)

The article examines the ghettoization process in Transcarpathia during the Holocaust based on testimonies of victims and witnesses collected by the regional commission to investigate and determine crimes and losses committed by Hungarian-German fascist invaders in the spring of 1946. This source is examined within the methodological approach of the political scientist and Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg. He coined a typology of social roles' triad in the period genocide, based on behavior and sequence of actions: perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. I analyze the testimonies referring to these three conceptual categories. Thus, I examine the testimonies of perpetrators and their perceptions by victims. They were middle- and lower-level authorities, ghetto scribes, and midwives who performed violent searches of Jewish women. Mostly, they were all ethnic Hungarians and SS members, but there are references in testimonies to local ethnic Germans, Rusyns, and Roma. This category of persons utilized self-censorship in their testimonies to avoid possible criminal prosecution. In this article, I also investigate the testimonies of Jewish victims of the Holocaust and their traumatic experiences. The main focus of their testimonies was on the process of ghettoization: the confiscation of values, concentration to ghettos, and living there, and deportation to Auschwitz. Victims focused on the experience of their everyday violence in ghettos: humiliating, beating, torture, and rape. Moreover, they mentioned numerous perpetrators, including from the local population. Also, the testimonies contained information about the mass and individual killings of Jews, as well as exhumation processes conducted by the Extraordinary Commission investigators. Finally, I examine the aspects related to the category of bystanders, based on an investigation of their testimonies and their perception by victims. People have mentioned some cases of assisting by local inhabitants to Jews imprisoned in ghettos, and about non-Jews, who witnessed the violence living in ghettos. In addition, many bystanders testified that they did not know anything about violence against Jews. Notwithstanding the deficiencies of this source, also analyzed in the article, it remains crucial for further academic research within the examination of the Holocaust in Transcarpathia.

The Politics of Crime and Militarised Policing in Brazil

This article queries the effects of international police assistance in the Global South, focusing specifically on Brazil. Utilising recently declassified documents accessed in Washington, DC, this article shows how United States officials sought to intervene in Latin American politics through international police assistance to Brazil during the 1960s–1980s. The article considers the geopolitical motivations behind these programs and highlights the connections between international police assistance, weak democratic institutions in Latin America and legacies of authoritarian policing in the region. The academic objectives are twofold: to foreground debates that emphasise the need for Southern Criminological research perspectives and to explore the broader effects of international police assistance programs in the Global South. By drawing attention to these issues, the article contributes to studies of policing, politics and public security in contexts like Brazil, where extreme levels of everyday violence are a threat to democracy and human rights.

Everyday gendered violence: women’s experiences of and discourses on street sexual harassment in Morocco

ABSTRACT According to statistics and media coverage, street sexual harassment is a prevalent form of gendered violence in Morocco. Yet, research about sexual harassment in the public space is underestimated and understudied, and its reasons and consequences remain apparently imperceptible to the daily interactions of men and women. The article seeks to explore the social meaning of women’s experiences of street harassment through qualitative interviews with individuals and focus groups. Women’s narratives are analysed, from a feminist and critical perspective, in order to represent and interpret emerging discourses about harassment. The objective of this research is to highlight the responsibility of religious, political and economic institutions, as well as the role of the family and mothers in particular, in legitimating gender inequalities and fostering violent behaviours and practices towards girls and women. The results of investigations reveal the cultural normalisation of sexual harassment, the sexual objectification of the female body and the negotiation of concepts of culpability and apology within gendered norms. That said, the study confirms that street harassment is indeed a manifestation of power relationships, a device of social control and a symbol of gender discrimination.

Overcoming “everyday violence” and exclusion: Realizing the rights of women and girls in development and humanitarian practice

Overcoming “everyday violence” and exclusion: Realizing the rights of women and girls in development and humanitarian practice