Exploring Symbolic Violence in the Everyday: Misrecognition, Condescension, Consent and Complicity

Abstract

In this article, we draw on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of 'misrecognition', 'condescension' and 'consent and complicity' to demonstrate how domination and violence are reproduced in everyday interactions, social practices, institutional processes and dispositions. Importantly, this constitutes symbolic violence, which removes the victim's agency and voice. Indeed, we argue that as symbolic violence is impervious, insidious and invisible it also simultaneously legitimises and sustains other forms of violence as well. Understanding symbolic violence together with traditional discourses of violence is important because it provides a richer insight into the 'workings' of violence, provides new ways of conceptualising violence across a number of social fields and new strategies for intervention. Symbolic violence is a valuable tool for understanding contentious debates on the disclosure of violence, women leaving or staying in abusive relationships or returning to their abusers. Whilst we focus only on violence against women, we recognise that the gendered nature of violence produces its own sets of vulnerabilities against men and marginalised groups, such as LGBT. The paper draws on empirical research conducted in Sweden in 2003 by the second-author. Sweden is an interesting case study because despite its progressive gender equality policies, there has been no marked decrease in the violence towards women by men.

Multiple ontologies of Alzheimer’s disease in Still Alice and A Song for Martin: A feminist visual studies of technoscience perspective

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