Citation

Wood K, Lambert H, Jewkes R. Med. Anthropol. 2008; 27(1): 43-69.

Affiliation

Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, Woburn Square, London, U.K.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/01459740701831427

PMID

18266171

Abstract

South Africa's complex social and political history has produced conditions for interpersonal violence of multiple kinds to flourish. Violence experienced by girls and young women, including within their sexual relationships, has become an area of intense research and policy interest since the end of apartheid. Drawing on a long-term ethnographic study of young people in an urban township, this article explores how violent practices are variously construed, differentiated, and legitimated, in particular through the assignment of blame and the significance accorded to bodily marking. Pointing to the cultural embeddedness of disciplining techniques in this setting, the article examines local understandings of gender hierarchy and power, young men's vulnerabilities in relation to their partners' actions, and the links between disciplining action and notions of anger, love, and shame. Violence is shown to configure lives and subjectivities and to be productive of relationships, in particular playing a part in the organization of inequality within sexual relationships.

Language: en