Violence | Space. Recent debates and their contribution towards spatialising the sociology of violence

This article discusses the relevance of space for the sociology of violence. The interest in the relation between violence and social spaces has been growing in recent years. But although being based on the conceptual and methodological innovations in violence sociology since the 1990 s, these discussions have taken place mainly in other disciplines. Employing notions such as spaces of violence (Gewaltraume) or ungoverned spaces history and human geography in particular have turned to the topic, which in the sociology of violence and conflict does not yet play a prominent role. The process of globalisation, however, leads to a multiplication of spatial references of (political) violence, raising the questions how these dynamics can be methodologically and theoretically captured. This contribution reviews researches analysing the relation between violence and space or place, identifying three main strands of discussion and reconstructing the different conceptualisations of (social) space within them. In a second step the implications and perspectives for violence sociology will be discussed. It will be argued that the latter would profit most by taking up works in which space is conceptualised not as a arrangement or order, but as an object of bodily and sensory experience.