Violence in rural Australia

With notable exceptions, research on violence (and crime generally) has privileged the urban as the ideal laboratory (as exemplified by the Chicago School), neglecting its study in rural contexts. Criminology emerged during the social and economic upheaval of the late 19th and early 20th centuries amidst anxieties about urbanisation, industrialisation, revolution and social disorder. This chapter challenges the myth that rural communities are -or have ever been- crime free. It aims to illustrate that violence is a problem for many (though by no means all) rural communities. Beyond issues of quantification, however, there are also important questions relating to the meanings and constructions of both violence and the rural. Most significantly violence in rural contexts intersects in distinctive ways with race, gender and socio-economic regional disadvantage. The reasons, which are complex and vary across different socio-spatial contexts, are explored below. First the contours of where and what is meant by rural Australia are considered, as these meanings are contested and they influence the construction of violence in rural settings