The Scrutiny of Violence in the Contemporary Period Through the Scar Test
The Scrutiny of Violence in the Contemporary Period Through the Scar Test

Author(s): Kadriye Bozkurt
Subject(s): Studies in violence and power
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: The Scrutiny of Violence; Contemporary Period Through; Scar Test;
Summary/Abstract: Violence is a very complex issue that covers threat, assault, battery, torture, sexual assault, domestic violence, murder, rape, kidnapping, terrorist attacks, racial or religious discrimination, verbal abuse, self-flagellation and many other violent and unpleasant acts directed against oneself or others. In dictionaries violence is defined as “a) actions or words that are intended to hurt people, b) extreme force, c) extremely forceful actions that are intended to hurt people or are likely to cause damage” (Cambridge dictionary, 2021). These definitions give general ideas about violence, but they do not define violence wholly. Clearly, violence appears in different ways in private and public life and especially in contemporary life the abundance of violence is strongly felt by people. Its different forms draw the researchers’ attention on the broader aspects of violence. Being a multifaceted phenomenon, violence is studied and investigated in different multidisciplinary fields from anthropology, history, sociology to literature and as Elizabeth A. Stanko stresses, “there is no set and agreed definition among the researchers of what violence is.” (2003. p. 3). There are many aspects of violence to inquire: the different forms of violence, the victims of violence, initiators of violence, the relation between violence and social, cultural, political, racial, and religious elements, or the motivation for violence, etc. In his book Violence and Nonviolence: Pathways to Understanding (2003), Gregg Barak investigates the issue of violence, and he divides the forms of violence into four categories. According to him, violence can basically be categorised as violence in perspective, interpersonal violence, institutional violence and structural violence (p. xv, 21). The diversity of violence can be observed in his categorisation since different forms of violence are gathered around these titled categorisations. These long listings and categorisations of violence by Barak show the diversity of violence and the broad effect of it on any person or group of people.

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