What is Violence? Characterisations and Understandings of Violence

Abstract

This chapter explores a central theme of the Young People and Violence study, namely, how young people understand violence. The chapter focuses distinctively on young people’s own characterisations of violence, what they define as violent (or not) and the factors influencing their conceptualisations. The findings reveal that whilst young people name a range of behaviours as violent, they do not uniformly disapprove of, or reject, all of these. The chapter explores variations in young people’s characterisations of violence as problematic or not, and analyses the mediating factors in these narratives. The findings point to the primary influence of gender norms and expectations in shaping what young people regard as (problematic) violence.