Exploring symbolic violence in the everyday : misrecognition, condescension, consent and complicity

The empirical material for the article was collected during a project funded by FAS (now FORTE), the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare.In this paper, we draw on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of 'misrecognition', 'condescension' and 'consent and complicity' to demonstrate how domination and violence are reproduced in everyday interactions, social practices, institutional processes and dispositions. Importantly, this constitutes symbolic violence, which removes the victim's agency and voice. Indeed, we argue that as symbolic violence is impervious, insidious and invisible, it also simultaneously legitimises and sustains other forms of violence as well. Understanding symbolic violence together with traditional discourses of violence is important because it provides a richer insight into the 'workings' of violence, and provides new ways of conceptualising violence across a number of social fields and new strategies for intervention. Symbolic violence is a valuable tool for understanding contentious debates on the disclosure of violence, women leaving or staying in abusive relationships or returning to their abusers. While we focus only on violence against women, we recognise that the gendered nature of violence produces its own sets of vulnerabilities against men and marginalised groups, such as LGBT. The paper draws on empirical research conducted in Sweden in 2003. Sweden is an interesting case study because despite its progressive gender equality policies, there has been no marked decrease in violence towards women by men.PostprintPeer reviewe

Child labour in India:globalization, power, and the politics of international children's rights

India has the largest number of child labourers in the world, and has been the subject of intense media and political campaigns in the North aimed at addressing the abuse of children’s rights. This book explores children’s rights as a site of power and reveals how the rights discourse has been used by international actors, national elites, and local NGOs in the child labour debate in India. While discussing the children’s rights in the contemporary world, the author analyses human rights and power along with insights from postcolonial theorists. He provides empirical accounts of how three Indian NGOs—Bonded Labour Liberation Front, Butterflies, and South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude—are using the discourse of children’s rights to challenge child labour practices. Combining global and local perspectives to arrive at a comprehensive picture, the book locates the struggle for child rights on two fronts: critiquing neo-liberal globalization and challenging rights violations in India

Building social capital and education: The experiences of Pakistani Muslims in the UK

By critically engaging with relevant debates on social capital, socio-economic mobility and educational aspirations amongst minority ethnic groups, the focus of this paper is to examine the processes and mechanisms in the accumulation of social capital, to demonstrate how, in particular, two sets of interpersonal relationships (between siblings and between co-ethnic peers) facilitate educational aspirations amongst an ethnic group that has traditionally been perceived to be underachieving. It highlights the complex interplay within the home and between the home and the community, and the potential implications that these have for shaping the educational aspirations of young Pakistani Muslim men and women. This paper draws on empirical research conducted with the Pakistani Muslim ‘community’ in inner-city Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK; a northern-English city that has experienced large scale public disturbances in 1995 and 2001