American International Journal of Social Science

The Communicative Co-Constitution of Gender-Based Violence through Functional Differentiation
Dr Corné Davis

Abstract
Until recently, gender-based violence (GBV) has been approached predominantly as a public health concern that has not received much attention in mainstream social science discourses. Most recent publications on GBV research implore the necessity for multidisciplinary collaboration and intervention. In spite of multiple global efforts, the elimination of GBV is not yet visible on the horizon. In this article I draw on Niklas Luhmann’s Social Systems Theory (SST) to describe GBV as a hyper-complex phenomenon that is communicatively co-constituted through functional differentiation. I argue that the binary code of each function system creates different symbolic abbreviations of GBV meanings that inadvertently exclude its victims and enable its incidences. The major objective of this article is to portray the complexity of GBV and to highlight the need for multidisciplinary social scientific interventions in an issue that poses a threat to the sustainability of world society

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