Psychological research and South Africa’s violence prevention responses

Abstract

South Africa’s unprecedented levels of violence, which trigger significant health, economic, and social consequences, are marked by pronounced gendered, age-related, and socio-economic features. Extensive poverty, prolonged unemployment and income inequality, gender inequality, patriarchal notions of masculinity, exposure to abuse in childhood and compromised parenting, access to firearms, pervasive alcohol misuse, and fragilities in law enforcement are among the many factors inherent to the social dynamics of violence. We briefly describe some of psychology’s recent contributions to violence prevention research and interventions. The review, by no means a comprehensive one, is intended to encourage reflections and conversations about how psychology may increase its influence as a critical and intervention-oriented discipline alongside other disciplines, such as public health, social work, criminology, anthropology, development studies, social medicine, and urban studies. We suggest that as much as it is important for psychology to provide a relevant research response, it is equally important for psychology to undertake critical work on the responses to violence, including the intellectual traditions that underlie such responses.