SILENT VIOLENCE: STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE IN THE SOCIAL MANAGEMENT OF REPRODUCTION

Abstract

We vindicate the centrality of the management of reproduction in Hunter-fi sher-gatherer societies and how this crucial management could generate a social organization in which women were subject to a structural violence. Our attempts to identify these forms of violence will involve us in the discussion of the objectives and possibilities of archaeological science. We propose a redefi ned ethnoarchaeological approach as a way for searching archaeological indicators.

Being able to demonstrate or disprove the existence of structural violence against women in the “first” prehistoric human societies would provide us with a solid basis for a debate on the naturalisation of current behaviours and expectations according to a person’s sex. We could then move beyond the essentialist ideas, which have done so much to establish “immutable” roles for the sexes inside society.