Violence, the Body and the Spaces of Intimate War

This paper explores the relationship between domestic violence and rurality through the theoretical lens of intimate war. It argues for a geopolitical perspective that foregrounds issues of space and scale and emphasises the 'entwined geographies of corporality and violence'. Drawing on recent empirical research in the UK, I explore the ways in which the body is contained and controlled both physically and emotionally through intimate war. In doing so I focus on three key aspects of domestic violence: hidden geographies, tactics of entrapment and surveillance and the wounding of the body. The context of rurality provides a set of spatial and social characteristics that need to be taken into consideration in understandings of the experience of domestic violence and the responses by agencies and professionals.