Vol. 16 No. 32 (2025): Communities and possible worlds. Community experiences and practices of resistance in neoliberal rationality
Articles

Anti-Violence Centres and Shelters in Italy: Between Resistance and Institutionalization

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  • Pietro Demurtas
Pietro Demurtas
Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies, National Research Council, Italy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/smp-16279

Published 2025-12-30

Keywords

  • Anti-Violence Centers,
  • situated knowled,
  • communities of resistance,
  • institutionalisation,
  • feminism

How to Cite

Demurtas, P. (2025). Anti-Violence Centres and Shelters in Italy: Between Resistance and Institutionalization. SocietàMutamentoPolitica, 16(32), 185–195. https://doi.org/10.36253/smp-16279

Copyright (c) 2025 Pietro Demurtas

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Anti-Violence Centres (AVCs) are conceptualised as feminist communities of resistance, capable of generating counter-hegemonic knowledge and relational practices oriented toward social transformation. However, this configuration is neither given nor homogeneous: it unfolds within a heterogeneous field shaped by growing processes of institutionalisation and bureaucratisation. Drawing on feminist epistemologies and Bourdieu’s field theory, and based on qualitative research – including 35 interviews with practitioners and two focus groups with representatives of feminist networks – this article examines how performance-oriented pressures and administrative standardisation threaten the epistemic and political autonomy of AVCs. The article highlights the strategies enacted by feminist grassroot centres to sustain transformative practices, assert alternative interpretive frameworks, and build alliances within territorial contexts increasingly shaped by institutional actors operating under divergent paradigms. It argues that the survival of AVCs as feminist communities of resistance depends not only on their capacity to counter marginalisation from decision-making processes, but also on their ability to build cross-sectoral solidarities grounded in an intersectional perspective.

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