Introduction and overview Unlike other forms of conflict and direct, physical violence, slow violence is difficult to see and measure. If slow violence includes forms of harm and destruction that are invisible, intangible, indirect, and that unfold over time, how is it possible to investigate this kind of violence? More specifically, how do geographers study slow violence? What kinds of questions do geographers ask about slow violence, how do they inquire into the various workings and impacts

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... slow violence across a range of themes and theoretical frameworks? What kinds of contributions are these scholars making to our understanding of and response to slow violence? The objective of this volume is to explore how geographers are applying a range of specializations to study, analyze, and draw attention to forms of harm and violence that have not often been at the forefront of scholarly and public awareness. There is need for greater attention on forms of harm and violence that challenge immediately quantifiable measures of damage, and this attention requires us to consider alternative modes of seeing and interpretation. Geographers are, in many ways, well-suited to extend familiar modes of inquiry and methods to the study of slow violence. Through long-standing practices of mixed methods research, sensitivities to interactions between people and landscapes, recognition of ways in which simultaneous processes shape multiple spatial scales from the body to the state to the long reach of commodity chains, geographers have a diverse, analytical tool kit for making meaningful investigations into slow violence.