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What does intersectional peer violence prevention mean ? |
In this handbook we use a concept of Violence prevention that not only includes individual physical and verbal attacks among young people. Also, social living conditions and structural hierarchies are seen as a base on which young people are forced to behave violently. Gender relations, social Class and racism are the main categories we focus on regarding Youth Violence.
Violence is quite obviously connected to gender. Empirically, it has been shown that young men are more likely than young women, both to behave violently and to become victims of violence. The effort to interpret this gender bias needs an analysis of social expectations and power structures in a gender dichotomy structure. Certain forms of violent behaviour seem to be more commonly related to male than to female people.
Social class produces differences regarding individual violent behaviour, and it is an important factor that young people in bad social living conditions are highly affected by violence.
The social category of Ethnicity is important for us in order to work on the issue of racist motivated violence, everyday racism and on social processes of focussing conflicts under an ethnic angle.
For a violence prevention approach this always means a double perspective on violence:
To understand that masculinity and femininity are constructed in a gender dichotomy and in a certain relation to violence. That means, for example that an individual physical violent behaviour seems to be more adequate to men than to women. To work on the fact that men are more violent is necessary but not to make the simple division of (solely) perpetrators and (solely) victims.
To perceive individual violent behaviour as a more common and real fact of everyday life under certain social conditions, but to also see all the resources of the people to behave in a non-violent manner under that condition.
To perceive certain (cultural) norms and values that generate violence (for example, masculinity norms that legitimise violence) but never explain individual behaviour because of a certain culture or ethnicity.
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MANUAL