Logo image
Back
"NOTHING BUT A SHITSTORM": CYCLES OF VIOLENCE, CARCERAL HARM, AND SURVIVAL IN RURAL LIVES
Thesis   Open access

"NOTHING BUT A SHITSTORM": CYCLES OF VIOLENCE, CARCERAL HARM, AND SURVIVAL IN RURAL LIVES

Sydney Silva
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
12/2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000008308
pdf
Silva, Sydney Thesis489.87 kBDownloadView
Open Access CC BY-ND V4.0

Abstract

Incarceration Jail Poverty Rural Stigma Domestic Violence Law Enforcement
This article examines how structural, interpersonal, and spatial forms of violence intersect in the lives of rural, system-involved individuals. Drawing on a secondary analysis of 60 life-history interviews collected in six rural counties throughout eastern and central Washington State, this study employs a feminist methodological framework and Constructivist Grounded Theory to explore how participants move across roles of victim, perpetrator, and survivor over time. Findings reveal that the boundaries between interpersonal and structural violence are porous: incarceration, poverty, and stigma continually reproduce the conditions that generate harm, dynamics that are both intensified by and underexamined within rural contexts. First, the criminal legal system operates as a producer of vulnerability, embedding risk within systems meant to ensure safety. Second, victimization and perpetration often coexist within the same lives, reflecting the enduring imprint of trauma and structural neglect. Third, incarceration functions as a site of re-traumatization that replicates earlier experiences of control, exposure, and abandonment. Finally, rurality shapes these processes through heightened social visibility and limited opportunities for reintegration. Taken together, these findings illustrate how carceral systems and rural social dynamics converge to sustain cycles of violence and marginality, calling for approaches that prioritize care, repair, and attention to lived experience over punishment and surveillance.

Metrics

7 File views/ downloads
11 Record Views

Details

Logo image