Theorising Violence and Society

Political economy rarely gives prominence to violence in its theory. Feminist and postcolonial theories often give more prominence to violence and less to political economy. This paper will review this tension and seek to resolve it for social theory. Political economy often marginalises violence in its theory of society, with detrimental consequences for theorising coloniality and gender inequality. Even when violence is noted, there are two types of problems. One is that violence is merely described empirically as if it has little causal impact (Wallerstein, Harvey). A second is that the term is over-extended into symbolic or other forms of harm (Bourdieu) thereby losing its specificity as a form of power (for example, I will argue that sanctions are not violence). There are exceptions, where coercion and consent are distinguished as part of a theory of crisis (Gramsci). Postcolonial (DuBois, Go, Williams) and feminist (Kelly, MacKinnon) theories show the importance of including violence at a theoretical level for the analysis of empire, slavery, decolonisation, domestic subordination, and trafficking. Violence is connected to political economy since reducing inequality and increasing the depth of democracy reduce violence. Including violence in theory improves the analysis of the intersection of class, coloniality and gender inequalities. Further, this is essential to understanding the authoritarian turn. Debates within feminism about whether some calls to mobilise the state to address violence against women are carceral and authoritarian rather than progressive, are often shaped by differences towards the relationship between political economy and violence (Davies, Fraser, Bernstein, Crenshaw). In conclusion, I argue that violence should be theorised as an institutional domain, alongside economy, polity, and civil society in a theory of society to enable better analysis of the intersection of capitalism, coloniality and gender, and of projects for societal change and transformation.