TY - JOUR
T1 - The language of violence
T2 - Exploring the contested relationship between violence against women and sex-work/prostitution
AU - Hewer, Rebecca M.F.
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, (grant number 1358300).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2022/11/28
Y1 - 2022/11/28
N2 - Definitions of violence are never merely descriptive. Rather, defining violence is an evaluative and normative project, struggles over which reflect a range of contexts, particularly relations of power. Given this, I argue that feminists should focus on what understandings of violence achieve, rather than striving to provide a conclusive definition. This requires a critical genealogical analysis of discourse. In this article, I undertake such an analysis: exploring how a selection of 21 Westminster policy-actors define violence vis-à-vis sex-work/prostitution, and situating those definitions in the socio-political conditions of their production. I demonstrate how policy-actors drew on a range of logics and technical knowledge to variously frame sex-work/prostitution as reducible to, (irrevocably) associated with, and severable from violence in ways which – I argue – variously served hegemonic and counter-hegemonic ends.
AB - Definitions of violence are never merely descriptive. Rather, defining violence is an evaluative and normative project, struggles over which reflect a range of contexts, particularly relations of power. Given this, I argue that feminists should focus on what understandings of violence achieve, rather than striving to provide a conclusive definition. This requires a critical genealogical analysis of discourse. In this article, I undertake such an analysis: exploring how a selection of 21 Westminster policy-actors define violence vis-à-vis sex-work/prostitution, and situating those definitions in the socio-political conditions of their production. I demonstrate how policy-actors drew on a range of logics and technical knowledge to variously frame sex-work/prostitution as reducible to, (irrevocably) associated with, and severable from violence in ways which – I argue – variously served hegemonic and counter-hegemonic ends.
KW - critical discourse analysis
KW - sex-work
KW - violence
KW - violence against women
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85143605161&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/09646639221140796
DO - 10.1177/09646639221140796
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85143605161
SN - 0964-6639
SP - 1
EP - 27
JO - Social and Legal Studies
JF - Social and Legal Studies
ER -