Charting the Middle Ground: A Bourdieusian approach to violence perpetrated by women

• In Event: Towards a Bourdieusian Criminology: Theorising Inequality and Injustice

Abstract

Understandings of women and violence tend to draw upon an essentialist framework underpinned by fixed dualisms of feminine/masculine, victim/agent. Women who offend are depicted either as passive and helpless victims – a portrayal that denies women’s agency – or as mean and menacing ‘bad girls’, active agents freed from traditional ties of family and gender. In order to transcend these dichotomized representations, it is necessary to develop a more complex understanding of the dynamic between agency and victimization in women’s lives. Drawing on feminist re-readings of the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this paper proposes a new theoretical framework within which to locate violence perpetrated by women; one that makes visible both the constraints of social structures and the practices of agents.

Author

• Susan Batchelor, University of Glasgow