Ethnicities and violence

A recent publication (Thiara, Condon and Schröttle 2011) presents and discusses questions concerning diverse forms of violence against women from ethnic minorities in Europe.

The issue raises unsolved questions of how to study these practices as well as how to understand the results of our studies. Some of the questions are concrete methodological questions, but are also connected to which uses studies are intended to be put.

Others are questions of a more conceptual nature such as: How do we conceptualise what we understand as violence and what meanings do we attribute to it? What meanings does gender and ethnicities have for diverse participants in violent relations? What are their societal consequences and how do we study these?

Central is also how we conceptualise and study questions concerning violence in minorised as well as against ethnic communities. On one hand our research should allow for conceptualising and studying specific practices in these communities. On the other hand - risking repeating and supporting dominant discourses of gendered violence as characteristic for them – we do not intend to represent them as static, over-specified and over-generalised. And last but not least how do we generate comparable results and then compare them?

In my presentation I want to concentrate mainly on the last questions concerning ethnicities.

I will not present any definite answers, but rather raise
issues concerning approaches/methodology so they may to be discussed and developed further in our forum. Such issues will touch upon the preceding ones and may contribute to inspire research on gendered violence in general.