The question of violence hangs over our understanding of our human world. But what is violence and why does it matter? Ordinarily used to mean physical attack or disruptive intervention by which one individual or group damages another’s person or property, the term and its negative valence carry over into the social sciences to have broader application, with meanings ramified into the political and the personal domains. Active and covert disruption of social institutions manifest in financial, legal and economic forms of violence; colonisation and capture of language and culture, and constraints on informal ways of living, represent forms of violence framed as symbolic, epistemic, or psychological. In such ways and more, violence permeates our lives and raises many questions about how to live them.
