Violence and families: boundaries, memories and identities

This chapter takes a very different approach to issues relating to health and well-being through a focus on violence. The prevalence of domestic violence indicates that the family and home are not bounded safe havens; communal violence means that neither families nor communities are protective. The chapter draws on two case studies of inter-communal violence, in Bosnia and Northern Ireland. The relationship between families and communities can be reconstructed to create outsiders of former friends and neighbours. These new boundaries of inclusion and exclusion can perpetuate conflict both within and between families and communities. Boundary work here is portrayed as oppressive; physical boundaries, for example, create and perpetuate sectarianism and collective memories constructed to reinforce difference and hatred. Families stand at the interface of communal violence, reproducing boundaries of exclusion and inclusion.