Violence as fetish: Geography, Marxism, and dialectics

The study of violence has increasing academic purchase. However, the academic treatment of violence imparts an ontological status that masks violence from critical scrutiny. We argue for the social sciences to (re)theorize violence and to develop a dialectics of violence. Our purpose is to provide a space for dialogue, to open a broader debate within the social sciences on the theoretical determination of violence. We advocate for a new approach to violence that eschews the development of essentializing typologies or generalized explanations of violence as an epiphenomenon of society.