To Örebro University

The paper is one of five papers in the proposed session Violence Regimes: Analysing the Multiplicity of Gendered Violence(s). It theoretically explores and empirically tests the framework of violence regime to analyse the multiplicity of violence(s). Violence regime is a newly developed framework for analysing violence (Hearn et al. 2018; Strid et al. 2018). It 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 varying in both manifestation and understanding of violence, as well as for policy implications, thus 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 violence, e.g. homicide, femicide, death penalty;

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;

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.

To develop and test the framework, we first construct a composite measure of violence, a so-called Violence Regime Index (Strid et al. 2019), and then cluster countries in terms of the four the pillars of violence. This serves to examine if and how the production of violence in different states constitutes distinct regimes, and to enable further comparisons and contrasts specifically related to violence and the welfare state Finally, the paper analyses different theorisations, manifestations and measurements of violence and their implications, and develops violence regimes as a fruitful approach and means to deepen the analysis of gender relations, gender domination, and policy.