About HARM

HARM, the Journal of Hostility, Anger, Repression and Malice, is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary, open access journal, supported by the Hans Kilian and Lotte Köhler Center (KKC) for Cultural Psychology and Historical Anthropology at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany.

The inception of HARM owes much to the collaboration of Pradeep Chakkarath and Christian Gudehus, and thus to the fruitful synthesis of cultural psychological and social psychological perspectives with approaches from broader violence research.

Being both a concept and a journal HARM aims to broaden the narrow focus of current violence research on obvious violence such as murder, torture, rape, war, genocides, etc. and thus contribute to a more fine-grained view of how violence also becomes effective and analysable in the form of contempt, humiliation, insult, disenfranchisement, disempowerment, malice, recklessness, etc. We, the editors, are interested in contributions that deal with how harm is inflicted, suffered, witnessed, documented, commented upon, and analysed. For example, how people experience natural disasters, wars, accidents, illness, loss and various forms of harm as indicated above. Moreover, we are interested in probably universal patterns as well as culture specific particularities of practices of doing harm. In the same vein, we want to explore how experiences of these actions are represented—in pedagogy, science, art, religion, media, and popular culture.

The journal publishes classic formats, such as double-blind peer-reviewed articles and book reviews, as well as essays and literary formats. HARM also wants to make disciplinary boundaries more permeable and is open to relevant theoretical and empirical contributions from all scientific fields, for example, anthropology, history, religious studies, media studies, biology, psychology, neuroscience, and psychoanalysis; in addition, the journal aims to promote dialogue between the sciences and the fine and visual arts, such as literature, photography, and film.

We accept submissions all year-round. Authors are encouraged to read the Submission Guidelines and Author Policies as well as to familiarize themselves with the Publication Process prior to making a submission.