An intersectional view on violence-resilience of adolescents

The findings are based on a questionnaire study conducted in 2008 in Germany in the framework of an empirical project. 776 adolescents of 24 secondary school classes participated. By discriminant analysis we identify the predictors that characterize best the differences among the physical violent and non-violent adolescents. The study objective is to identify predictors which encourage a violence-free development at school even under difficult family socialisation conditions. Our results confirm first the assumption that violence socialization occurs at the cross section of family, school, peer relationships, and is of course combined with societal models of dominance. However, up to now little has been known about modeling the ‘rules of connection’ among the various aspects of violence socialization under intersectional view.

Our results demonstrate that the identified predictors of violence resilience are group- specific and depending on ethnicity, class and gender. Led by the extremely fruitful violence intersectionality debate we identify empirically the heterogeneity of the violence socialisation according to class, gender and ethnicity. The structures of dominance, and the structures of physical violence, as one of the main forms of dominance, are a complex net of interconnections. These results are meant to form the basis for specific support measures. lf we really like to take the adolescents out of the violence-net we have to do a lot and specific, not just being responsible for changing attitudes, or promoting zero tolerance of violence acts, because violence is not just an obscure phenomenon but a group specific maladaptive creation.