To Örebro University

How do we approach violence as an issue for scientific research and a problem for professional practices? This introduction explores this through engagements with the framework of violence regime. It analyses different manifestations and measurements of violence and their implications, and develops violence regimes as a fruitful approach and as means to deepen the analysis of gender relations, gender domination, and policy. It concerns the ontology of violence and conceptualizes violence as inequality in its own right and as autotelic (Schinkel 2010).  Violence regime is a relatively newly developed framework for analysing the multiplicity of violence(s) (Hearn et al 2018; Strid et al 2018). The framework concerns direct and indirect violence; across four pillars of comprehensiveness; across macro, meso and micro levels; often with increasing amount of time and space between act and impact; and vary in both manifestation and understanding of violence, extending the continuum of violence (Kelly 1988):

1. Deadly: manifestations of violence with potential to kill, usually direct and directed towards someone (has a ‘victim’ or ‘object’), as in deadly (or minimal) violence; e.g. homicide, femicide, death penalty, and militarism; to
2. Damaging: manifestations of violence/violations with potential to harm or injury, usually direct and directed towards someone (as ‘victim’ or ‘object’); e.g. recorded violent crime, violence against the person, IPV and stalking; and then  
3. Diffuse: underpinnings to manifestations of violence, usually less direct, and directed towards a group, usually with an identifiable ‘victim’ or ‘object’, including e.g. legitimizations and regulations of violence; and  
4. Dispersed: other manifestations not necessarily understood as violence, usually indirect, sometimes directed towards a group but with a less easily identifiable ‘victim’ or ‘object; manifestations not are not usually recognized as violence; e.g. environmental destruction. 

The first paper in the session sets out the violence regimes framework, as described above. The following four papers each engage empirically with a specific pillar and manifestation of violence regime. In combination, the five papers contribute to the development of methods and theory to better explore and explain difference sand similarities between multiple forms of violence, and their causes and consequences.