Violence Regimes: A Useful Concept for Social Politics, Social Analysis, and Social Theory

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.

The violently gender-equal Nordic welfare states

“…While heterotelic understandings of violence are useful, the argument here is that they are not enough and should be combined with autotelic understandings of violence. Violence can be viewed as autotelic when it is a goal in itself, an activity, process and institution that contains its own meaning or purpose (Schinkel, 2004(Schinkel, , 2010Hearn et al, 2020Hearn et al, , 2022. Autotelic violence means that violence is not merely a tool, it is also self-perpetuating and an end in itself, as can occur with, for example, organisation(al) violence (Hearn and Parkin, 2001), structural violence (Galtung, 1969), cultural violence (Galtung, 1990), and epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988).…”

“…Autotelic violence means that violence is not merely a tool, it is also self-perpetuating and an end in itself, as can occur with, for example, organisation(al) violence (Hearn and Parkin, 2001), structural violence (Galtung, 1969), cultural violence (Galtung, 1990), and epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988). The approach concerns the ontology of violence and questions whether violence is always to be explained by something else, for example, as social exclusion, economic marginalisation or individual pathology (Strid and Meier-Arendt, 2020;Hearn et al, 2020Hearn et al, , 2022.…”

Re-Imagining Sexual Harassment

“…While heterotelic understandings of violence are useful, the argument here is that they are not enough and should be combined with autotelic understandings of violence. Violence can be viewed as autotelic when it is a goal in itself, an activity, process and institution that contains its own meaning or purpose (Schinkel, 2004(Schinkel, , 2010Hearn et al, 2020Hearn et al, , 2022. Autotelic violence means that violence is not merely a tool, it is also self-perpetuating and an end in itself, as can occur with, for example, organisation(al) violence (Hearn and Parkin, 2001), structural violence (Galtung, 1969), cultural violence (Galtung, 1990), and epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988).…”

Teško ubojstvo ranije zlostavljane bliske osobe - izbor vrste i mjere kazne u sudskoj praksi

“…14 Namjerno lišenje života bilo je uzrokom smrti 116 žena u Italiji u 2020. godini, a pritom je njih 57,8 % bilo žrtvom sadašnjeg ili bivšeg partnera, a 25,9 % žrtvom člana obitelji. 15 Prema podacima Saveznog kriminalističkog ureda u istoj je godini obiteljsko nasilje kulminiralo nasilnom smrću 139 žena u Njemačkoj. 16 Svi navedeni podaci dio su jasne fenomenološke slike, koja pokazuje kako je u većini slučajeva ubijanje žena neraskidivo vezano uz čimbenik posebnog odnosa između počinitelja i žrtve, u kojem je ukorijenjeno nasilje.…”

“…7), str. 2 15. Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, Omicidi di Donne, https://www.istat.it/it/violenza-sulle-donne/il-fenomeno/omicidi-di-donne, 27.…”