Locating violence: the spatial production and construction of physical aggression

ly. Instead, it is associated with specific incidents (whether experienced, witnessed or imagined) which take place due to particular causes and in particular places. The reverse is also true: certain spaces (such as neighbourhoods) may be associated with danger or violence. In thinking about our geographical environments, real spaces are overlaid with imagined maps expressing various assumptions and fears. On the one hand, this process takes place on an informal, private level, affecting countless individuals’ perceptions. On the other hand, space is more formally associated with violence, as police departments create computer maps colour-coded according to the risk of violent crime; so-called ‘hot spots’ are identified in which there is a higher risk of conflict or crime, and policing resources are distributed accordingly. Recently, criminological approaches focusing on the importance of ‘micro crime places’ in producing crime have become an increasing area of interest. There is an enduring connection between space and the interpretation of violence. For instance, the label ‘violence’ is itself connected to the issue of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of physical force (acceptable force is rarely described as violence), and legitimacy is often reliant upon—or at least in some way affected by—space. Some uses of physical force are seen as legitimate within particular kinds of spaces. In other cases, their legitimacy is tied to the ways that space is used. Furthermore, as the spatial organisation of social interaction is affected by civilizing trends, changes in the production of violence have important effects on the ways that violence is understood, the role it plays in culture and individual psychology. As noted, one of the most important spatial distinctions with regard to violence is that between ‘public’ and ‘private’. These notions, of course, are not simply mental constructions: they are connected to material structures which arrange, reveal or conceal activity in particular ways. Nonetheless, spatial imagination is not limited to a mere description of built spaces; instead, it reflects cultural values which affect the perception and understanding of material spaces and what happens within them. For example, Catherine Hall and Leonore Davidoff have emphasized the way that ‘home’ could be ‘as much a social construct and state of mind as a reality of bricks and mortar’. As has been pointed out, ‘the home has both physical and social “dimensions”’: The home, in short, is a ‘locale’ where the physical form of the dwelling, its external and internal design and contents both reflect social interactions and social forces and also condition and compose them, blending the ‘spatial’ and the ‘social’ into an indivisible whole.