Essay on violence: recognition, suffering, and the limits of indifference
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62059/majxws48Keywords:
Violence, Suffering, Recognition, Structural violence, Symbolic violence, Dehumanization, Empathy, IntersectionalityAbstract
Violence is a social, political, and moral phenomenon with multiple expressions. Understanding it requires avoiding two reductions: treating violence as a homogeneous reality and establishing hierarchies of dignity among victims. This essay argues that every experience of violence deserves recognition, even though its frequency, causes, consequences, and social distribution may differ. This premise does not deny the need to identify risk patterns or to prioritize public interventions where prevalence or severity demand it; rather, it argues that measurement should not become a criterion for denying the suffering of those who appear less frequently in statistics. Drawing on public health, peace studies, sociology, and social psychology, the discussion addresses direct, structural, and symbolic violence, as well as dehumanization, moral disengagement, recognition, and intersectionality. Violence may be reproduced when victims are reduced to social categories and cease to be perceived as full subjects of dignity. The essay concludes by proposing an ethics of recognition that distinguishes empirical differences from moral equivalence: forms of violence are not identical, but no victim should be rendered irrelevant because of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, ideology, or socioeconomic position.
References
Arendt, H. (1970). On violence. Harcourt, Brace & World.
Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(3), 193–209. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327957PSPR0303_3
Batson, C. D. (2011). The empathy-altruism hypothesis: Issues and implications. En J. Decety (Ed.), Empathy: From bench to bedside (pp. 41–54). MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262016612.003.0003
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power (J. B. Thompson, Ed.; G. Raymond & M. Adamson, Trans.). Harvard University Press.
Crenshaw, K. W. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167.
Farmer, P. (2004). An anthropology of structural violence. Current Anthropology, 45(3), 305–325. https://doi.org/10.1086/382250
Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191. https://doi.org/10.1177/002234336900600301
Haslam, N. (2006). Dehumanization: An integrative review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(3), 252–264. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327957PSPR1003_4
Krug, E. G., Dahlberg, L. L., Mercy, J. A., Zwi, A. B., & Lozano, R. (Eds.). (2002). World report on violence and health. World Health Organization.
Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2002). Human aggression. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 27–51. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.53.100901.135231
Brewer, M. B. (1999). The psychology of prejudice: Ingroup love or outgroup hate? Journal of Social Issues, 55(3), 429–444. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00126
Christie, N. (1986). The ideal victim. In E. A. Fattah (Ed.), From crime policy to victim policy (pp. 17–30). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08305-3_2
Kelman, H. G. (1973). Violence without moral restraint: Reflections on the dehumanization of victims and victimizers. Journal of Social Issues, 29(4), 25–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1973.tb00102.x
Kteily, N. S., & Bruneau, E. (2017). Darker demons of our nature: The need to (re)focus attention on blatant forms of dehumanization. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6), 487–494. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417708230
Link, B. G., & Phelan, J. C. (2001). Conceptualizing stigma. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 363–385. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.363
Tropp, L. R., & Wright, S. C. (2001). Ingroup identification as the inclusion of ingroup in the self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(5), 585–600. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167201275007
Downloads
Downloads
Posted
Categories
Data Availability Statement
No hay uso de datos en el ensayo realizado.
License
Copyright (c) 2026 John Michael Riveros-Gavilanes (Autor/a)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This preprint contains the reported license and associated copyright. Once published in an associated journal or other publisher, the published version assumes the publisher's terms and conditions.
