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Violence is embedded in our everyday. We encounter not only its overt, raw, and brutal nature but also the deeply buried invisible and insidious forms that normalize violence in the collective conscience, making it less noticeable and more tolerable.

This volume opens out the field of violence studies with a focus on its myriad habitations and experiences in India. It interrogates the numerous ways in which omnipresent violence is interpreted and represented, and delves into the interconnections between the identifiable normative axes of power and the engendering of violence. Bringing together fresh methodological and conceptual perspectives on the way violence is understood and analysed, the contributors to this volume investigate its occurrence across sitesalaw, family, state, gender, labour, caste, sexuality, communalism, and so onato explore the normal as well as the exceptional.

The case studies in this book are all drawn from the Indian experience. This volume aims towards a coherent and more nuanced understanding of violence that moves beyond the episodic to the systemic, structural levels of society and consciousness.