Shame: A repoliticised reframing to inform sexual violence primary prevention

A critical analysis argues that shame should be treated as more than an individual emotion when considering the primary prevention of sexual violence. The paper finds that many prevention approaches remain concentrated on individual and interpersonal levels, potentially obscuring the broader social, cultural, political and structural conditions that sustain violence. Its proposed alternative frames shame as a multidimensional concept embedded across individual, community, institutional and systemic levels.

The authors critically examine how shame is theorised across Western psychological, philosophical and sociological disciplines, as well as Confucian and Indigenous knowledge systems. These traditions variously portray shame as an internalised emotion, a relational moral force, or a mechanism through which violence and control operate within wider systems of power. Drawing on this range of scholarship, the paper argues that shame cannot be understood adequately through a single psychological or moral account.

Its meaning and effects depend on the relationships, institutions and structures in which it is produced and deployed. Building on feminist relational theory and feminist political economy, the authors offer what they call a repoliticised reframing of shame. This approach treats shame as socially constructed and structurally embedded rather than solely as a feeling located within an individual.

It shifts attention toward the conditions in which sexual violence is sustained, including intersecting social, cultural, political and structural influences. The analysis suggests that focusing only on changing individuals can reproduce depoliticised understandings of responsibility while leaving those wider conditions unexamined. The paper examines how shame has been applied across the sexual violence prevention spectrum and argues that existing strategies often individualise responsibility.

Their contribution is a theoretical synthesis intended to support more contextually grounded, systems-level approaches to primary prevention. This analysis has direct implications for how prevention is conceptualised. Instead, it argues that primary prevention should look beyond individual emotional management and consider how shame is structured through relationships, communities, institutions and systems of power.

By recognising shame as connected to those conditions, the framework seeks to move prevention away from explanations that focus only on individual blame and toward analysis of the structures in which sexual violence occurs.

Subject of Research: A repoliticised framework for understanding shame in sexual violence primary prevention.

Article Title: Shame: A repoliticised reframing to inform sexual violence primary prevention

Article References: Schloeffel, C., Ison, J., Bourne, A., & Hooker, L. (2026). Shame: A repoliticised reframing to inform sexual violence primary prevention. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-09373-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-026-09373-4

Keywords: sexual violence, primary prevention, shame, feminist relational theory, political economy, structural power, social inequality, systems-level prevention, repoliticised, reframing, inform, sexual