The Trap of Proximity Violence (eBook)

This book aims at shifting the emphasis from a general vision of gender-based violence to a more opaque, yet equally destructive one, that related to 'proximity violence'.

The first type of violence is exercised in multiple situations and in the generality of relationships experienced by people involving others who are both strangers to and intimate with each other. Proximity violence provides and includes a fiduciary kind of 'proximity', of 'dependent intimacy', where the trust that the victim places in the other (her tormentor) favours the exercise of violence itself, allowing it to take place, thus making it practically imperceptible when not actually normal, in extreme cases.

In turn, this confidence is comparable to 'a veil of Maja' which, in conditions of vulnerability typical of victims, attenuates the consequences of the violence undergone or the omens of what becomes violent action.

This book will be of particular interest and use to undergraduate and graduate students of sociology and gender studies

Ignazia Bartholini is Associate Professor of Sociology at Palermo University and an RC 32 (Women and Society) board member of ISA (International Sociological Association).

In the last decade she has acted as visiting professor to some European universities. Her research focuses on gender-based violence and social policies for women. In the context of the research reported here, she was principal investigator of the many international research projects involved as well as being the author of numerous essays on the topic of migration, poverty, education where theoretical reflection and the hard facts of empirical investigation are combined. The terminological meaning of 'proximity violence' as a particular form of violence against women is 'hers'. She focuses on the situational and cultural context correlations which migrants but also western women are victims