Young People’s Perspectives on Violence

Abstract

Chapter 2 went some way to map and categorise the frequency and impact of different forms of peer violence, as well as their interrelationship. Conceptualising violence in this way is helpful in enabling an analysis which can capture the diversity of young people’s own accounts and experiences, particularly given the multifaceted and complex status of ‘Violent’ behaviours. By adapting Kelly’s (1987) concept of violence as a continuum, and using our categorisations of physical contact violence, physical non-contact violence, verbal attacks and sexual violence, and grounding our conceptualisation in young people’s own accounts, certain patterns and relationships could be identified. These applied particularly to the meanings, definitions, evaluations and justifications of various forms of violence. Chapter 2 identified the following themes:

• Normalisation of violence: Findings suggest that the same type of violence (e.g. verbal insult) could impact upon young people in qualitatively different ways depending upon their previous experiences, the culture of violence in the home and their gender, age or peer group status. Participants’ own concepts of violence varied considerably.

• Peer group dynamics: Much of young people’s accounts of high impact violence was embedded in wider peer group dynamics and power relations.

• Gendered nature of violence: Particular types of violence were gender-specific. High-level verbal attacks for boys took the form of mother-cussing, and for girls derogatory sexualised attacks. Property attacks were reported to have a greater impact for girls. Sexual violence was experienced mainly as a female phenomenon and physical violence was more severe for boys.

• Justification: According to young people, all forms of violence usually had some form of justification and rationale.