“Another way to approach the conception of violence is through the lens of nonviolence, since the latter involves the self-conscious renunciation of the former (Jackman, 2003).” I find this suggestion extremely helpful because I agree that it is important to gain some perspective by asking ourselves, “what does it feel like to be calm, at peace, and a have a clear mind?” In an interview, Johan Galtung, a leader in peace studies, eloquently stated, “To understand peace and violence we need to consider basic human needs--for survival, well-being, freedom and identity. Development aims to promote those needs: violence insults them: peace preserves them (1997).” This is another way of saying that violence attacks and harms a person’s sense of self; peace “preserves” one’s sense of self. Dr. Martin Luther King, in his “six principles of nonviolence,” declared, “once the spirit of nonviolence is internalized, goals like domination, conquest or retaliation no longerdrive behavior.” Instead, he added, “we cultivate virtues like love, truth, commitment, respect and courtesy, courage, self-discipline, hard work, honesty and social responsibility (The King Center, 2002).” Using these descriptions of nonviolence, we can declare what is violent to be the opposite of King’s stated virtues: hate rather than love, falsehood rather than truth, indifference rather than commitment or social responsibility, insolence rather than respect and courtesy, and deceit rather than honesty.

During the WVAE project, we often talked about violence as having “layers.” I began this research project thinking of violence in terms of “layers” of violence. Similar to an onion and its layers, I saw that there are the more obvious forms of violence like physical abuse. Such acts of physical abuse are war, domestic abuse, or those forms of violence that are more visual. However, until a few years ago I was unaware of the “hidden” forms of violence. Jenny Horsman identifies several “hidden forms,” such as emotional abuse, oppression, racism, poverty, illiteracy, sexism, ableism, and homophobia (2000). In her research with factory workers in Malaysia, Heng theorizes that much of the violence against women often remains hidden because “many of these violations are accepted as common social practice, especially in cultures where male domination is taken as the norm (2002).”