Theorizing About Violence

The director of the Economic and Social Research Council Violence Research Program (VRP) in the United Kingdom discusses and debates the impacts of the program in the context of contemporary ideas about violence and current U.K. policy and practice in the field. The projects in the program included 2 historical studies and 18 contemporary studies of violence in the home, schools, prisons, neighborhoods, leisure establishments, massage parlors, and on the street. For example, studies focusing on the nighttime economy in U.K. cities, on paramilitary punishment beatings in Northern Ireland, and on violence experienced and perpetrated by girls are discussed here. Five projects addressed gendered violence, and three addressed domestic violence specifically. Lessons from the VRP are drawn out in this article in a personal account. These lessons include the fact that violence is not hidden, that the meanings of violence are gendered, and that people's accounts of violence matter.