Abstract
This chapter narrates the history of the social changes that underlay the development of research and policies on interpersonal violence in contemporary North America. The current status of interpersonal violence as a public issue is the product of moral transformations and political actions. Social movements and victims’ advocates played a great role in redefining as morally intolerable some kinds of violence that were previously tolerated, as much as in making public what was considered a private matter. The chapter describes these processes and the actors engaged in this social justice movement, focusing especially on research and professional projects that supported the recognition of interpersonal violence as a public issue requiring political action. The production of data and studies on the prevalence of violence and its effects on the lives of concerned individuals contributed to raising awareness on this pervasive issue, as well as also framing it as a public health issue. The institutionalization of this scientific and professional activity will be described with a focus on what connects its subfields: a concern for victims and their trauma. This historical perspective shows how raising public concern about interpersonal violence included not only identifying violence and justifying action against it but also reframing it in the languages of social justice and public health. Professionals and researchers have engaged in preventing and disarming interpersonal violence with an expertise grounded in a quest for justice. This chapter teases out these entanglements in the contemporary history of interpersonal violence.
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Pache, S. (2020). A History of Interpersonal Violence: Raising Public Concern. In: Geffner, R., White, J.W., Hamberger, L.K., Rosenbaum, A., Vaughan-Eden, V., Vieth, V.I. (eds) Handbook of Interpersonal Violence and Abuse Across the Lifespan. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62122-7_284-1
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