Chapter 7 applies a more critical, comparative lens to the developments discussed in previous chapters. It outlines a series of debates and controversies emerging from practitioner work, which have been subject at times to tense academic engagement, including disputes over terminology; violence against women or gender-based violence as the defining feature of this phenomenon; differing typologies and classifications of specific forms of violence; views on targets and perpetrators of violence; the presence of intersecting forms of violence based on race, class, age, and other identities; and contextual factors and their role in shaping incidents of violence. The chapter stakes out the position of this book in relation to each of these debates, providing a short summary of the ideas subsequently elaborated at length in the next part of the book.
