The diverse meanings of violence

Abstract

We live in turbulent times where violence intersects as a systemic phenomenon with its multiple actors, dynamics, motivations, and consequences. Anthropologically, violence originates in the ways in which we establish social relationships. They establish social hierarchies that make difference and human diversity a problem, a disadvantage that, through a set of mechanisms such as prejudice, stigma, discrimination, exclusion, indifference, among many others, are naturalized and reproduce asymmetries of power in areas such as family, work, education and institutional. For this reason, naming violence must be done in the plural, contemplating the historical moment and the particular sociocultural context, which refers us to an endless number of practices, emotions, beliefs and social and historical facts, hence its multiple meanings that are inscribed in the bodies, in life experiences and identities.