Violence is a serious public health and human rights challenge with global psychosocial
impacts across the human lifespan. As a middle-income country (MIC), South Africa
experiences high levels of interpersonal, self-directed and collective violence, taking
physical, sexual and/or psychological forms. Careful epidemiological research has
consistently shown that complex causal pathways bind the social fabric of structural
inequality, socio-cultural tolerance of violence, militarized masculinity, disrupted
community and family life, and erosion of social capital, to individual-level biological,
developmental and personality-related risk factors to produce this polymorphic profile
of violence in the country. Engaging with a concern that violence studies may have
reached something of a theoretical impasse, 'second wave' violence scholars have argued
that the future of violence research may not lie primarily in merely amassing more
data on risk but rather in better theorizing the mechanisms that translate risk into
enactment, and that mobilize individual and collective aspects of subjectivity within
these enactments. With reference to several illustrative forms of violence in South
Africa, in this article we suggest revisiting two conceptual orientations to violence,
arguing that this may be useful in developing thinking in line with this new global
agenda. Firstly, the definition of our object of enquiry requires revisiting to fully
capture its complexity. Secondly, we advocate for the utility of specific incident
analyses/case studies of violent encounters to explore the mechanisms of translation
and mobilization of multiple interactive factors in enactments of violence. We argue
that addressing some of the moral and methodological challenges highlighted in revisiting
these orientations requires integrating critical social science theory with insights
derived from epidemiology and, that combining these approaches may take us further
in understanding and addressing the recalcitrant range of forms and manifestations
of violence.