Youth as an artefact of governing violence: Violence to young people shapes violence by young people

Abstract

Spanish

French

Young people are routinely depicted as uniquely violent. Much work has been done, particularly within the sociology of youth, to dispel this misconception. However, these portrayals persist, as does the narrative of youth as a period of transition. This article argues that the transition in youth is a process of governing violence into sanctioned forms. To achieve adult status young people must conform to sanctioned forms of violence. Furthermore, the article argues that the physical, structural and symbolic violence done to young people, shapes the violence done by them. Youth is an intensely governed period. The young people in focus in this article are subject to additional governing by the state. They are hyper-governed. This article draws on labelling theory and the analytics of governmentality to analyse hyper-governed young people’s experiences of ubiquitous violence. Hyper-governed young people describe experiences of ‘neoliberal violence’ that produce docility and progressively increasing commitments to the norms of violence. The article concludes, therefore, that youth is an artefact of violence that governs, but also the product of governing young people’s violence. Youth as an artefact of governing violence describes violence done to young people shaping violence done by young people.

Keywords

Governing neoliberalism neoliberal violence transition violence youth

Introduction

The narrative of youth as a period of transition, of becoming, is hegemonic. Central to this narrative is the idea that young people shed their ‘animalistic and uncontrollable’ (Wyn and White, 1997: 19) violent attributes as they graduate into adulthood. The routinized association between young people/youth and gangs, risk taking, property damage, etc. has been challenged, particularly by academics within youth studies (Kumsa et al., 2013: 848; Sercombe, 2003: 26; White and Wyn, 2011: 52). Typically, this challenge entails arguing that there are comparatively low levels of violence within youth. This article will approach the association between youth and violence from a different angle. Rather than directly questioning the truths of research that positions young people as violent, it will argue that in modernity youth can be conceptualized as an artefact of governing forces that produce docility and conformity to social acceptable manifestations of violence. I contend that these governing forces are violent, and that the violence done to young people shapes the violence done by young people.

The dominant narrative of transition into adulthood is one of young people becoming less violent. In this article, I will argue that rather than a transition of becoming less violent, youth is an artefact of governing violence. Youth is social construction resulting from the governing of young people through violence, into the sanctioned violence of adulthood. Labelling theory and governmentality provide the analytics of power necessary to uncover this narrative. I develop this argument by drawing on reflections from hyper-governed young people in Australia on their experience of violence in modernity. As neoliberalism continues to dominate modern political discourse, the ‘merging of violence and governance’ (Giroux, 2014: 226) emerges as a pressing issue for these young people, and others around the globe.

The period of youth is intensely governed (Kelly and Kamp, 2014: 7–8). The young people in this study are further governed by the state, within this already highly governed period. These are young people within child protection and juvenile justice systems, as well as involved in youth-led political activism. These young people interact and clash with the state with greater frequency, and hence are subject to increased surveillance and regulation. They are, as I propose above, hyper-governed.

The article begins with the project’s methods, and then a survey of the association between young people, youth and violence. The main section unpacks hyper-governed young people’s experiences of violence as a governing force in modernity. These reflections demonstrate the ubiquitous nature of violence and the crushing strain this places on young people to conform. The subsequent section outlines the theory underpinning the process of governing young people into violence through violence drawing on Becker and Foucault. Finally, we turn to Giroux’s description of the ‘merging of violence and governance’ (Giroux, 2014: 226) in modernity resulting from ‘neoliberal violence’ (Giroux, 2014: 224). The power of the multiplicity and ubiquity of neoliberal violence, as described by hyper-governed young people, constrains and constructs docile and violent neoliberal young people. This process of construction renders youth an artefact of governing violence.

Methods

Twenty-eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with hyper-governed young people between the ages of 15 and 25 in Australia. Participants were invited to reflect on their experience and understanding of violence. Thirteen participants identified as female and 15 as male. Of the 28 young people interviewed 11 (16–22 years of age) of them spoke about their experience in the justice system. Eleven young people (15–22 years of age) spoke about their involvement in the child protection system. Finally, 10 young people (18–25 years of age) spoke about their participation in political protest.

Interviews were conducted one-to-one, except for on two occasions when two young people wanted to be interviewed together. To facilitate the participant’s involvement, the interviews took place in a location that was convenient for the participant. Interviews typically took place in a local youth/community centre or in the participant’s home. Interviews had a typical duration of one hour. They were audio recorded and transcribed. Thematic analysis identified motifs within the transcriptions using NVivo software. Participants were referred to the project through non-government youth services and through snowballing techniques. As a result, most of the young people were from South Australia, with a small number from other Australian states.

This project received ethics approval from the Social and Behavioural Research Ethics Committee at Flinders University. Voluntary participant consent was a primary concern within the ethics approval process. The following approach was developed to facilitate this consent. Incentives where not offered for participation. The lower age limit of 15 years was determined appropriate to give consent based on the principles of Justice (4.2.4) and Beneficence (4.2.5) (National Health Medical Research Council, 2007). The referral process from NGOs included a process through which the young person could decline participation without the knowledge of the referring agency. Finally, an accountability and risk management procedure was developed around the location and duration of the interviews. The researcher would check in-and-out of the interview with a supervisor who had access to information about the location and duration of the interview. Failure to do so triggered a risk management response.

An overview of the association between young people, youth and violence

The study of young people and violence has received significant attention. Youth violence is described as an ‘everyday reality of many young people around the world’ (Kumsa et al., 2013: 848). In many places ‘youth’ is inevitably associated with ‘violence’ (Kumsa et al., 2013: 849). Developmental models of adolescence describe youth as a linear transition (White and Wyn, 2011: 9) to adulthood through which young people shed their ‘animalistic and uncontrollable’ (Wyn and White, 1997: 19) behaviours as they achieve ‘accreditation’ into adulthood (Sercombe, 2010: 20). ‘Transition’ is often attached to an ‘objective’ age-based measure (Wyn and White, 1997: 10) whereby supposedly common development tasks and processes are completed. An assumed connection is made between physical development, chronological age and identity development (Te Riele, 2006: 132). These are the ‘deficit models of adolescence’ (Sercombe, 2009: 31) where young people are understood as not-yet-adult. Kelly argues that ‘all constructions of youth defer to this narrative of becoming, of transition’ (Kelly, 2011: 50). As such young people and the period of ‘youth’ are associated with violence, and adulthood as the achievement of non-violence.

In spite of this popular conception, some within youth studies have endeavoured to demonstrate that young people are ‘not systematically law-breakers or particularly violent individuals’ (White and Wyn, 2011: 52). Though ‘youth gangs’ continue to attract the attention of media hype and moral panics, White and Wyn (2011) describe the tendency of government policy in Australia to obscure ethnic and class dynamics. These policies are often developed in response to the media portrayal of young people from ethnic minorities. In contrast to the popular discourse, the actual instances of violent street gangs in Australia are far fewer than presumed (White and Wyn, 2011). However, according to the World Health Organization (WHO): ‘Youth Violence is the 4th leading cause of death in young people worldwide’ (emphasis added) (World Health Organization, 2015: 1). Youth violence ‘peaks during late adolescence and early adulthood’ (World Health Organization, 2015: 2). These facts communicate the gravity of the issue of violence among young people, but also present them as a particularly violent cohort. However, facts are not neutral (Strega, 2005: 207). They are political and position the subject. This same statistic is communicated slightly differently by the UN’s Office of the Secretary-General’s Youth Envoy: ‘Homicide is the fourth leading cause of death in people aged 10-29 years’ (emphasis added) (2015), which accounts for ‘43% of the total number of homicides globally each year’ (Office for the Secretary-General’s Enoy on Youth, 2015). This presentation of the same facts implies young people are asymmetrically victims of violence, rather than perpetrators.

Sercombe (2003) describes the prevalent concern with youth violence in Australia in 1988, and the resulting formation of the Australian National Committee on Violence. The subsequent report (Australian National Committee on Violence, 1990) described violence in Australia as a diminishing phenomenon over the previous 100 years (Sercombe, 2003: 26). It found while Australians often feared youth violence, particularly in public spaces and on public transport, it rarely eventuated (Sercombe, 2003: 26). Yet popular youth-focused violence interventions such as restorative justice continue to explicitly target young people (15–25 years). Braithwaite’s theory of reintegrative shaming is a central pillar within restorative justice theory, and it justifies its focus on young people on the grounds of their apparent tendency towards violence and crime (1989: 101). In contrast to this generalization, the WHO’s 2014 Global Status Report on Violence Prevention demonstrated that ‘the patterns and consequences of violence are not evenly distributed among countries, regions, or by sex and age’ (World Health Organization, 2014: 8). According to this report, the group bearing the brunt of fatal violence are young men 15–29 years of age: 18.2 deaths per 100,000 people (World Health Organization, 2014: 9). However, ‘women and girls, children and elderly people disproportionately bear the burden of the non-fatal consequences of physical, sexual and psychological abuse, and neglect, worldwide’ (World Health Organization, 2014: 9). Furthermore, an estimated one in five girls have been sexually abused before reaching adulthood (some estimates are as high as one in three), and ‘nearly a quarter of adults (22.6%) worldwide suffered physical abuse as a child’ (World Health Organization, 2014: 10). In addition to being intolerable, these statistics paint a picture of violence and youth which defies simplistic generalizations.

Young people and youth continue to experience a strong association with violence. A diverse range of facts continue to be generated to build the respective arguments for or against this association. However, as identified by Kelly, the idea of youth as a period of transition persists in underpinning these narratives. As such the graduation out of violence into adulthood is reinforced. This article argues that hyper-governed young people experience this transition in reverse. That they are inducted into sanctioned forms of violence, through violence, as they enter adulthood. Violence by young people is shaped through violence to them. This reconception is possible by drawing on an expanded conceptualization of violence, an understanding of youth as a series of commitments to social norms, and the production of ‘docile bodies’ (Foucault, 1979: 136) through neoliberal violence.

It is important to note briefly that the argument here is not that there are no possibilities for resistance or alternative realities. Fortunately, as Fraser and Taylor argue, ‘people do not always do as they are told’ (2016: 35). In fact, participants in this study regularly described their experiments with resistance. However, these avenues of resistance are the focus of another article. Instead, this article is focused on the mechanisms and experiences that induct young people into neoliberal violence.

The normalizing power of ubiquitous violence

Hyper-governed young people describe violence in modernity as manifesting in a multiplicity of forms. A narrow definition of violence, and its historical gendered and class associations, is insufficient to conceptualize their experiences of violence coupled with intimacy, economics, cultural capital and control. Violence in its many forms is a ubiquitous feature of modernity for these young people. Furthermore, they experience it as a crushing reality that creates docile bodies and conformity. Violence is merged with political systems and governance, and young people find themselves making increasing commitment to this norm. Neoliberal violence produces docility and resignation to complex and systemic violence.

Narrow and broad definitions of violence

In 2005 Bufacchi offered a review of the literature surrounding the definition of violence. He concluded that there were effectively two camps defending two conceptualizations of violence. The first position advocates a limited definition. As a generalization this group defended the necessity of physical force in the definition and pointed to the etymology of violence ‘from the Latin violentia, meaning “vehemence”, a passionate and uncontrolled force’ (Bufacchi, 2005: 194). This was reflected by the following young person who had spent most of their life in child protection. This idea was also foundational for many other participants’ understanding of violence:

M: Um, well obviously there is physical violence, so hitting and all that.

This foundational understanding of violence in terms of physical force was a consistent starting point for its conceptualization by hyper-governed young people. In contrast, the other group Bufacchi identified defended an expansive definition of violence. This group emphasizes the association between violence and the ‘Latin violare, meaning “infringement” ’ (Bufacchi, 2005: 194). In this case violence is associated with an experience of being violated. Bufacchi summarized this debate by suggesting that the two positions might be associated with the perspectives of the victim (violation) and the perpetrator (force). However, these categories are not always distinct. The following participant was reflecting on her time in child protection. In her reflection, the two categories overlap:

S: I did a lot of self-harm when I was in care. … When I wasn’t allowed to see my parents. … That really fucked me off. Yeah I heard about it and know a lot of people that did it. They said it was like a release. It is really. I don’t know. It’s just a, you feel calm. Once you have done it.

S’s experience of physical violence traverses the dual categories of subject and object. Her experience is of being both victim and perpetrator. She was both the target (violated) and agent (violator) of the violence. Violence as self-harm is both violation and vehemence. While transcending these boundaries, this manifestation of violence still conforms to the attachment to physical force. Furthermore, historically violence has been limited to physical means predominately employed by the poor (Hearn, 2013: 163; Walby, 2013: 96). As Sercombe puts it: ‘Poor people fight with their bodies. Rich people fight with their money, with lawsuits or hostile take overs’ (2003: 27). When defined in this way it is unsurprising that working-class young men are regularly identified as a violent population. Despite being a lower-class young man who has interacted with the justice system, the following young person understood crime and violence as part of a larger ‘loop’ or system of inequality:

M: Yeah. Cos like, there is the upper class of people who have everything they need. And then there is the people below who don’t have anything. And instead of climbing their way out of there it is easier to just take off the one above. … Cos you know, but that’s what happens with the loop of poverty. Cos if everybody had money then there wouldn’t really be crime, you know? Those crimes are all for money.

Denied financial means to fight through class, and emotional means through gendered social norms, young men use the available physical means. Labelling theory suggests that deviance lies not in the act itself, but rather in the reaction to the act by those who have the power to make the label stick (Becker, 1963: 187). Class and gendered power inequalities construct a knowledge of violence that labels the means available to marginalized and disempowered groups as violent. The violent label imposed on disempowered young men is reinforced by the ‘loop of poverty’. Physical violence is an illegitimate means. The ‘legitimate use of physical force’, as Weber (1946) understood it, is monopolized by the state. This was, however, questioned by participants. The following young person was motivated to participate in political protest because of their experiences with an international aid agency:

D: … our investment in war is essentially robbing the poor of what they deserve. So, coming out of my history with, um, doing some activism with World Vision I then kind of saw a bit of a connection between the incredible dollars that we are spending on war, and the incredible dollars we are not spending on the poor. And how these things seem to be really linked.

The right of a state to wage war is disputed by D considering the impact it can have on the poor. The social contract underpins the state’s legitimacy as the singular agent of violence. However, the effect of this violence in other sectors of society can undermine this legitimacy. War and other physical violence as a means available to the state is generally accepted by adults in society. At least, it is fair to say there is insufficient resistance by adults in modernity to prevent these solutions from being enacted. However, war is an adult solution and is unacceptable to D. Defining a legitimate use of violence is difficult. Moreover, it isn’t even always clear when physical force is (or isn’t) violence:

J: I think it’s like everyone has a different understanding to what extent violence is. And I think in different circumstance an action can be violent or not. So, like breaking into a car I would find violent. But breaking a window of Lockheed-Martin … I wouldn’t necessarily see as violent. Um, so I think context is key. Um, obviously physical violence is to another human or animal, um, or you know using a weapon I would just write off as violent no matter what the context.

J has been involved in non-violent anti-war protest. However, even as she actively opposes violence, it remains a difficult idea, it is ‘slippery, changing its shape and meaning, sustaining democracy and corroding it’ (von Holdt, 2013: 118). J believes the criminal act of breaking into a car would be violent. However, civil disobedience in the form of ‘breaking a window of Lockheed-Martin’ can be conceptualized as a non-violent expression of democratic participation. In contrast, Grinberg argues violence is ‘physical and concrete’ and distinct from the symbolic action of the political space (2013: 208). The political space ‘may be opened by recognition and closed by violence’ (2013: 208). Civil disobedience (i.e. breaking a window at Lockheed-Martin) would corrode the construction of democracy by countering the balanced power conditions required for political dialogue. Moreover, von Holt’s examination of union violence in South Africa explores the potential for revolutionary violence as a ‘cleansing force’ for democracy (von Holdt, 2013: 116). However, he discovers that violence exercised by the marginalized and disempowered proves to be counterproductive to their democratic cause. Despite this he maintains violence is a key tool to challenge unjust power structures. He does, however, discover that his participants readily put aside moral frameworks in the context of violent political change. Violence that was objectionable in a ‘normal’ circumstance, was acceptable in the context of revolution. Von Holdt (2013) argues that often inadequate attention is paid to the ‘dark side’ of violence. Violence is both useful and corrosive for democratization. A single act can be constructed as both violent or not. Violence is a label constructed to designate some actions by some social groups as unacceptable.

L: And I guess that being, because the system that rewards you for being upper middle class and white and educated. And if you are not that therefore we don’t know what to do with you. … you don’t have the same opportunities that someone who is rich, white and educated male might have.

L’s journey with non-violent political activism has revealed to him social structures that enact and perpetuate inequality. Hearn (2013: 153) argues that the founding fathers of sociology – i.e. Weber (1946) Marx and Engels (2014) and Durkheim (2005) – were not attuned to gendered experiences of violence described here by L. Hearn argues that collective violence is increasingly being understood in terms of it structural roots. Historically intimate and gendered forms of violence, such as domestic violence, were ‘less often understood as structural phenomena’ (Hearn, 2013: 154). Modern attempts to understand the complexities of domestic violence require an expansive definition of violence that contest ‘whether it necessarily includes physicality in either the action or its effect’ (Walby, 2013: 101). Eriksson points out that increasingly children’s subjection to emotional cruelty and indirect forms of violence in the home is being recognized as a form of (domestic) violence and child abuse (2013: 173). Physical or verbal abuse might be directed at a parent or sibling, and the child might not see or hear it. However, they are ‘exposed’ (Eriksson, 2013: 173) to violence because of their presence in the environment or witness to the consequences. The following young person, who was in child protection, reflected on the complexity of violence in the home:

H: I just get really angry and I unleash it when someone pisses me off. … Cos it’s easy, no one gets angry at you that way. … So, you take it out on other things and you don’t end up hurting anyone you care about. … But I somehow still do … I have screaming matches with my mum.

Within H’s reflections is an understanding of domestic violence that is more complex than simplistic physical and verbal categories. Despite attempts to avoid it, there is a relationship between violence and intimacy: ‘I have screaming matches with my mum’. The coexistence of violence and intimacy might appear contradictory. However, Hearn’s study of domestic violence suggests that the presence of love and affection reinforces the use of violence. Furthermore, Hearn suggests that paradoxically intimacy is vital in the conceptualization of domestic violence (2013: 156). Hearn is not suggesting intimate domestic violence is a private affair, rather the emotional intimacy of love and affection reinforce the use of violence. One participant in Hearn’s study described violence as a way of ‘keeping her, by you know, keeping her in check’ (2013: 156). Here, as in H’s experience, violence is a medium of control.

In H’s reflection violence also appears to have an uncontrollable dimension. This is not to excuse the actions of perpetrators of (domestic) violence. Feminist theory rightly affirms the responsibility of individuals (particularly men) for violence. However, it also refutes liberal individualistic discourses that promote the idea of autonomous rational agents operating outside of structural and discursive forces (Hearn, 2013: 160). Domestic violence that young people experience can be intimate, but also the result of the interaction between personal agency and social structures. A problematization of violence that is limited to physical force is unable to conceptualize structural dimensions, or the complexity of hyper-governed young people’s experience of violence.

Symbolic, structural and systemic violence

M’s earlier reflection identifies violence as not only a product of economic inequality but rather the inequality itself is a form of violence. The ‘loop of poverty’ is a violation of his human rights as ‘the people below don’t have anything’. Likewise, other participants described the economic inequality perpetuated by capitalist systems as violence:

L: Yeah I would see them as violent. Um, because you know, the things that we consume and wear and, you know, if you look at where they have come from, you know, there is probably a lot of violence involved in the process.

L is aware of the violence of capitalist consumption and its conforming structural influence. Galtung describes violating inequality that is outside of a clear subject–object relationship as ‘structural violence’ (Galtung, 1969: 171). Likewise, Giroux describes the pursuit of human dignity and security in modernity as being inexorably tied to ‘the structural violence of predatory capitalism’ (Giroux, 2014: 227). Through L’s reflection it is possible to witness the avenues through which these young people understand and are subjected to the violence embedded in capitalism.

Participants had more to say about the ubiquitous nature of violence in modernity. Some participants labelled the gendered and class-based inequality they witnessed ‘systemic violence’. In 1990 Galtung added to his earlier analysis of structural violence and described the symbolic legitimization of structural violence through gendered or class norms as ‘cultural violence’ (p. 292). Participants’ understanding of systemic violence wasn’t limited to gender and class. For example, D included effects on ‘the climate’ and ‘animal life as well’. Hyper-governed young people also associated systemic violence with democratic decision making in modern political systems. The following participant reflected on her experience of decision making in a group of non-violent anti-war activists. This experience facilitated an awareness of the docility created under dominant forms of democracy:

J: Yeah, I have really loved how this group makes decisions and it is mostly based on consensus. Otherwise democratic voting. And I think it has been a key part because it has given everybody a voice. Um, and even though it can seem like a really small thing, but in other circles often most voices are left unheard and that can in a way be seen as violent because people are dominating and often, um, you know, in some settings there is often male dominance just because that is how we have kind of grown up in our society.

J is concerned by the inability of competitive democracy to provide equal ‘voice’ to all members of society. J identified that this inadequacy is an accepted norm if you have ‘grown up in our society’. Minority voices are overlooked as a result of the subtle forces of normative power. Bourdieu describes the imperceptible domination of social groups through ‘symbolic channels of communication and cognition (more precisely misrecognition), recognition, or even feeling’ as ‘symbolic violence’ (Bourdieu, 2001: 1). Grinberg built on Bourdieu’s work to develop his ‘dynamic theory of political space’ (2013: 208). Grinberg expands the binary between politics and violence by including a conceptualization of political space as a social construction. This constructed space can be closed by the presence of symbolic violence. Symbolic violence counters the conditions required for democratic dialogue. Through an experience of consensus decision making J identifies symbolic violence (in the form of male dominance) present in ‘other circles’. Symbolic violence is deeply embedded within society and underpins the domination of social groups across a range of strata: class, age, gender, etc. Symbolic violence inducts young people into dominant forms of cognition and communication. As a discursive force, symbolic violence is also perceptible through culturally accepted understandings of violence. The following reflection is offered by a young person who might easily (and perhaps inaccurately) be labelled a working-class young man:

C: Well I’m polite. I am nice. I am not really violent. I basically get all sorts of things handed to me on a silver platter … say walk into Centrelink [government welfare agency]. I have missed an appointment and they have suspended my pay. And some other bogan has missed an appointment and been to Centrelink and been like ‘Right, I am going to fucken yell at you and scream at you and fucken abuse your all cunts and I didn’t get my fucken money.’ I’ll walk in there and be like: ‘um, I don’t know what has happened. I have missed an appointment can someone please tell me what is going on?’ Not only will I get seen first. I will get given my money, where as they will get sat down for like an hour or two. Only making them angrier. And then they don’t get seen, they don’t get helped that day because of how arrogant and rude they are and disrespectful to the workers who are giving them money.

C is describing how language and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 2008: 282) provide individuals with access to bureaucracies, or alternatively an ability to navigate or manipulate them. Furthermore, he is describing the normative action of government institutions. The ‘other bogan’ will only be served if he conforms to social standards. C’s ability to traverse the system through ‘not really violent’ means demonstrates again the association between violence and particular socio-cultural groups, namely working-class young men (Sercombe, 2003: 27). C draws on his cultural capital to manipulate the system to achieve his own ends. His knowledge of the Centrelink system enables him to transcend gender and class barriers. C is performing the sanctioned patterns of communication and cognition required to access bureaucracies and the adult world.

Arendt described the ever increasing role bureaucracies play in modern nation-states as the ‘rule of nobody’ (Arendt, 1972: 137). The intricacies of bureaucratic accountability mean those without the cultural capital to navigate these systems (and perhaps even those who do), ultimately find no-one is held responsible. In this context, Arendt (1972) argues violence is a rational human response. It can be argued therefore that the violence done to young people through the rule of nobody, provokes a rational violent response by them. Violence for Arendt is a manifestation of power, a ‘means by which man rules over man; they are held to be synonyms because they have the same function’ (1972: 142). The conflation of violence and power resonates in part with the argument that youth is a product of governing forces, which impose the rules of violence. Likewise, the following hyper-governed young person, who had been involved in political activism, identified synergies between violence and power:

B: … you can think of violence as like a power imbalance … whether that is physically coercing someone to do something through physical violence or, you know, blackmailing, you know, or other means more subtle. Making decisions that affect someone else, um, is a power imbalance.

The dynamics of the relationship between violence and power are central to the analysis of violence developed by Walby (2013), von Holdt (2013), Bourdieu (2001), Grinberg (2013), Hearn (2013), Arendt (1972) and Weber (1946). However, Walby points out that the result of the reduction of violence to a form of power is the marginalization of violence in social theory (2013: 104). If violence is reduced to simply another manifestation of power, then so too is its value as a focus of study and a conceptual tool. While B describes violence as ‘like a power imbalance’, violence disappears from the discussion if it is equated with power. As such, Walby argues it is important to not reduce the diversity of violence to a form of power, but rather to examine the relationship between them (2013: 104).

B: Hmm, (Sigh). I think the more I think about this, the more I confusing it gets. … I mean simply I guess violence is anything that does, does damage to yourself and others. But I feel like within that sentence there is so much to unpack. What … is damage and what is the connection between myself and the other? And, um, if I, if I look at humanity not as autonomous beings but as sort of a system of complex relationships, and then I think violence is anything that, I guess, causes a rift in those relationships. And that rift can be externalized. Through a war and physical violence and it can be internalized through prejudice, and stigma and all those sort of things.

Violence is complex, nuance and multifaceted. What one hyper-governed young person experiences as violence, is different for another. For hyper-governed young people society is infused by personal, symbolic, structural and cultural violence. Society has either produced the conditions for violence, as J describes having ‘grown up in’ a culture of ‘male dominance’, or inequalities in society are a form of violence in themselves. Male dominance in political systems is described as a form of violence, but so too are the inequalities that produce this reality. Violence manifesting in physical, verbal, emotional, economic, political, class, gendered, systemic and self-focused forms are accepted norms. Giroux asserts that modern political systems which produce the growing economic, racial, gendered and educational inequality is a form of violence in itself: ‘neoliberal violence’ (Giroux, 2014: 224). He argues that as the welfare state has been ‘hollowed out’ and individual responsibilities have been championed above civic responsibility, ‘a culture of compassion is replaced by a culture of violence, cruelty, and disposability’ (Giroux, 2014: 226). Violence, in this view, is a fundamental component of modernity. I argue that ‘youth’ is the product of young people being rendered docile by the normative power of this ubiquitous violence. Youth, therefore, can be understood as an artefact of this process of governing by and conforming to violence.

Youth: Increasing commitments to docility through violence

Hyper-governed young people describe neoliberal violence as a social norm. The conforming and governing effect of social norms have been theorized by Becker and Foucault. In Becker’s seminal work Outsiders he recasts the question of deviance from why people ‘do things that are disapproved of’, to why people ‘do not follow through on the deviant impulses they have’ (Becker, 1963: 27). This reconfiguration facilitates the development of labelling theory which identifies deviance not as a quality of an act in itself, but rather as a result of the social reaction to the act (Becker, 1963: 11). Societies construct social norms around deviance, rather than deviance being an inherent component of an individual. Instead of bad people doing bad things, society constructs boundaries around appropriate behaviour and strain is placed on individuals to behave according to these norms. As such the question about violence can be reconfigured from: ‘why are some people violent?’ To: ‘what are the accepted forms of violence that people conform to?’ The reconfiguration inverts the image of the subject (in this case young people) as inherently violent, to a subject who learns about violence.

Becker points out that these norms are always constructed by the groups in society with power for those without. For example: men construct norms for women, upper-classes for lower-classes, and adults for young people (Becker, 1963: 17). To avoid the deviant label people make a ‘series of progressively increasing commitments to conventional norms and institutions’ (Becker, 1963: 27). Youth can be understood as the achievement of socially constructed standards that indicate a successfully accredited adult (White and Wyn, 2011: 9). As such, young people make commitments to social norms including: (1) completing education to access employment; (2) avoiding drug misuse to maintain respectable social connections; (3) consuming certain products (house, car, clothes) to demonstrate financial stability. These commitments can be constructed as disincentives for violent behaviours that transgress the social norm. However, this rests on the assumption that these social norms are violence free. Hyper-governed young people describe many of these social norms in modern society as being infused with personal, systemic and structural violence. Hence, committing to these norms is a process of conforming to sanctioned violence.

This pressure to commit to social norms was particularly clear in one young person’s story. After spending many years campaigning for climate justice she could no longer sustain the emotional and financial cost. She was disconnected from friends and family. She was exhausted. She had to leave activism (for a time) to find employment and reconnect with her social networks. Ironically, she found herself working for a large corporation not dissimilar to those she was previously trying to dissuade from investing in environmentally destructive initiatives. She was conscious of the irony of her position. She had conformed to the very social norms that were underpinning the climate issues she had previously opposed.

While the hierarchal power dynamics within labelling theory describe the reinforcement of violent norms in society, so too do disseminated constructions of power. Modern societies guarantee civil peace, according to Foucault, through the ‘ever-threatening sword’ of the army (Foucault, 1979: 168). Hyper-governed young people where often resigned and docile to the physical violence they encountered. For example, violence from workers in child protection or juvenile justice systems:

P: … I don’t know the whole restraining kids. I don’t really like it. But at the end of the day that is what they were told to do.

This docility is achieved not simply by the state’s potential to impose force, but also because technologies of surveillance have been extended across society (Foucault, 1979: 168). Foucault described this as the production of ‘docile bodies’ (p. 136). Surveillance is explicitly inbuilt into modern societies in the form of CCTV cameras and data retention strategies. It is also subtly present in the architecture of offices, hospitals, jails and schools. These institutions instil ‘disciplines’ (Foucault, 1979: 201) as the subject must assume they are always being observed, and knowledge is developed about the subject as they are observed. Furthermore, docility to violence was understood by some participants as resulting from a range of social forces:

L: … acknowledging the violence of our systems and structures of our society that we participate in those. … So even in that, even in just existing, it’s like a violent existence.

The docile body is one which is ‘subjected, used, transformed and improved’ (Foucault, 1979: 136). These young people are subjected to physical, structural and symbolic violence and are transformed into citizens who ‘even in just existing’ consent to the violence of modern life, even if they ‘don’t really like it’. Transformed by the knowledge that violence is an inevitable part of society, hyper-governed young people conform to a violent existence.

Knowledge about violence and youth is generated through a diverse array of governmental programmes (Kelly, 2010: 302) including: education, juvenile justice, child protection, accommodation services, etc. Kelly argues this knowledge is developed for the ‘regulation of populations of young people’ (Kelly, 2010: 302). As such ‘youth’ has been described as an ‘artefact of government’ (Tait, 1993a: 4) or an ‘artefact of expertise’ (Kelly, 2010: 312). As an ‘artefact of government’, Tait (1993b) describes youth as ‘the doing of specific types of work on the self’ (p. 52). Tait is describing the identify formation that is associated with youth as a governmental process of knowledge generation (p. 42). Young people draw on the available discourses to develop a sense of self (Strega, 2005: 217). If violence is the only discourse available to young people, then it will be caught up in their developing sense of self.

The crushing ubiquity of neoliberal violence

Giroux describes the marketization of all spheres of social being as the ‘merging of violence and governance’ (Giroux, 2014: 226). The production of knowledge and docile bodies for the purpose of an efficient workforce is ‘an indispensable element in the development of capitalism’ (Foucault, 2008: 141). Hyper-governed young people describe this governing violence embedded in political, economic and social systems. Foucault described modernization as a process of discarding violence for more efficient forms of power and control. In contrast, these young people and Giroux describe it as containing increasingly complex and systemic forms of violence.

Hyper-governed young people expressed resignation and docility to these complex and systemic forms of violence. Most participants accepted the necessity of violence to protect their family from an unreasonable attacker. If confronted by a violent personal attack they conceded they had no other idea of how to intervene, and would probably resort to violence. Others pointed out the pressure structural and symbolic violence exerted on their lives. Some identified the pressure to conform to violating gendered norms, political exclusion, or the pressure to participate in violating capitalist systems. These responses are consistent with Becker’s (1963) theory of deviance. The ‘normal’ person, in Becker’s model, is originally unbound by the pressures of social norms. However, they find increasing reason to suppress their deviant acts as they make commitments to ‘conventional institutions and behaviours’ (Becker, 1963: 27). These commitments come in the form of a job, education, or relationships. These connections and commitments place strain on young people to conform to sanctioned violence.

The governing of violence and youth constructs youth as a period characterized by violence. Young people are positioned as both perpetrators and victims of violence. A young person may be subjected to violence in a direct victim/perpetrator sense, but also outside of a clear object–subject relationship (Galtung, 1969: 171). Hence, young people are known in terms of the violence done to them, but also the violence done by them. Furthermore, young people are subject to the normative action of structural and discursive power and violence inducting them into the violence of modernity. Young people are disciplined into adulthood, internalizing social expectations. Moreover, the available discourses are the means through which to speak reality and identity into existence (Strega, 2005: 217). Hence young people construct their reality and identity within the discourses that associate youth with violence. Therefore, ‘youth’ as an artefact of governing violence describes the power–knowledge dynamics through which young people are shaped by society to conform to sanctioned violence.

Hyper-governed young people experience violence as a ubiquitous reality resulting from the ‘merging of violence and governance’ (Giroux, 2014: 226). These young people describe their experience of modernity as being infused with personal, systemic, structural and symbolic violence. This is violence done to young people. Young people are inducted and disciplined into the socially constructed norms that result from this ubiquitous violence. Deviance from these norms is suppressed through increasing commitments to the social norm, the production of docile bodies and the restrictions of available discourses. This is the shaping of violence done by young people into acceptable forms. Hence violence to young people, shapes violence by young people.

Conclusions

Young people and the period of youth are consistently associated with violence in popular discourses and often in research. This association has been challenged through the reinterpretation of statistics and production of alternative data. However, in this article I have taken an alternative position. Rather than violence being an attribute of youth that must be shed before adulthood, I have argued violence is a norm that must be accepted to graduate from youth.

According to hyper-governed young people, violence holds a normative position in neoliberal operations of modern society. They encounter gendered, economic, class and political inequalities that are both intimate and impersonal, that are visible through an expanded definition of violence. These systemic, structural, cultural and symbolic manifestations result in experiences of being violated that aren’t simplistically attached to physicality and vehemence.

Hyper-governed young people witness themselves making increasing commitments to these violent norms. They discover it is increasingly difficult to resist docility and resignation to complex and systemic violence. Their bodies are rendered docile by the hollowed-out knowledge of adulthood constructed by neoliberal violence. As young people strive in the face of their precarious reality to secure employment and social connection they commit to the norms of adult society. The ubiquity of neoliberal violence crushes young people into compliance. This is violence done to young people. Diverse governmental programmes continue to develop knowledge and expertise about young people and discipline them into docility. They conform to sanctioned forms of violence. This is the shaping of violence done by young people.

‘Youth’ can be conceptualized as a product of governing violence, which conforms young people to the social norms of neoliberal violence. These norms must be internalized for a young person to enter into adult society. This multiplicity, ubiquity and systemic nature of neoliberal violence is a violating experience. This crushing reality constructs docile and violent neoliberal young people. The violence done to young people shapes the violence done by them. Thus, youth can be cast as an artefact of governing violence.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Nik Taylor and Cassandra Star for their support and critical feedback on this article. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

Funding

This research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

Author biography

Ben Lohmeyer is a critical youth sociologist and youth worker. He is a PhD candidate at Flinders University and the Programme Coordinator of the Bachelor of Applied Social Sciences (Youth Work) at Tabor College of Higher Education. Ben’s research interests include: youth, governance, violence (personal, structural and neoliberal), participatory methods and youth work practice.

References

Arendt

(1972) Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution. New York: New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Australian National Committee on Violence (1990) Violence: Directions for Australia. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology/Australian Government.

Becker

(1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. London: Free Press of Glencoe.

Bourdieu

(2001) Masculine Domination. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Bourdieu

(2008) The forms of capital. In: Biggart

(ed.) Readings in Economic Sociology. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 280–291.

Braithwaite

(1989) Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge and Sydney: Cambridge University Press.

Bufacchi

(2005) Two concepts of violence. Political Studies Review 3: 193–204.

Durkheim

(2005) Suicide: A Study in Sociology. London: Taylor & Francis.

Eriksson

(2013) Tackling violence in intimacy: Interacting power relations and policy change. Current Sociology 61(2): 171–189.

10.

Foucault

(1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

11.

Foucault

(2008) The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge. Melbourne: Penguin.

12.

Fraser

Taylor

(2016) Neoliberalisation, Universities and the Public Intellectual. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian.

13.

Galtung

(1969) Violence, peace and peace research. Journal of Peace Research 6: 167–191.

14.

Galtung

(1990) Cultural violence. Journal of Peace Research 27: 291–305.

15.

Giroux

(2014) Resisting youth and the crushing state violence of neoliberalism. In: Kamp

Kelly

(eds) A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century. Boston: Brill, pp. 223–239.

16.

Grinberg

(2013) Resistance, politics and violence: The catch of the Palestinian struggle. Current Sociology 61(2): 206–225.

17.

Hearn

(2013) The sociological significance of domestic violence: Tensions, paradoxes and implications. Current Sociology 61(2): 152–170.

18.

Kelly

(2010) Youth as an artefact of expertise: Problematizing the practice of youth studies in an age of uncertainty. Journal of Youth Studies 3: 301–315.

19.

Kelly

(2011) An untimely future for youth studies? Youth Studies Australia 30: 47–53.

20.

Kelly

Kamp

(2014) A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century. Leiden: Brill.

21.

Kumsa

Chambon

, et al. (2013) Rethinking youth violence and healing. Journal of Youth Studies 16: 847–863.

22.

Marx

Engels

(2014) The Manifesto of the Communist Party. Adelaide, South Australia: ebook@Adelaide.

23.

National Health Medical Research Council (2007) National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. Canberra: Australian Government Canberra.

24.

Office for the Secretary-General’s Enoy on Youth. (2015) Youth violence is a global public health problem – WHO. Available at: www.un.org/youthenvoy/2015/12/youth-violence-is-a-global-public-health-problem-who/

25.

Sercombe

(2003) Reflections on youth violence. Youth Studies Australia 22: 25–30.

26.

Sercombe

(2009) The gift and the trap: Working the ‘teen brain’ into our concept of youth. Journal of Adolescent Research 25: 31–47.

27.

Sercombe

(2010) Youth Work Ethics. London: Sage.

28.

Strega

(2005) The view from the poststructural margins. In: Brown

Strega

(eds) Research as Resistance. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, pp. 199–235.

29.

Tait

(1993a) Re-assessing street kids: A critique of subculture theory. In: White

(ed.) Youth Subcultures: Theory, History and the Australian Experience. Hobart: National Clearinghouse for Youth Studies.

30.

Tait

(1993b) Youth, personhood and ‘practices of the self’: Some new directions for youth research. Journal of Sociology 29: 40–54.

31.

Te Riele

(2006) Youth ‘at risk’: Further marginalizing the marginalized? Journal of Education Policy 21: 129–145.

32.

Von Holdt

(2013) The violence of order, orders of violence: Between Fanon and Bourdieu. Current Sociology 61(2): 112–131.

33.

Walby

(2013) Violence and society: Introduction to an emerging field of sociology. Current Sociology 61(2): 95–111.

34.

Weber

(1946) Politics as vocation. In: Mills

Gerth

(eds) Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 77–128.

35.

White

Wyn

(2011) Youth and Society: Exploring the Social Dynamics of Youth Experience. South Melbourne, Victoria: Oxford University Press.

36.

World Health Organization (2014) Global Status Report on Violence Prevention. Luxembourg: WHO.

37.

World Health Organization (2015) Youth violence. Available at: www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/youth-violence-infographic-2015.pdf?ua=1

38.

Wyn

White

(1997) Rethinking Youth. London: Sage.