Respecting Boundaries: The Symbolic and Material Concerns of Drug-Involved Women Employing Violence Against Male Partners

• NCJ Number: 215749
• Journal: British Journal of Criminology Volume: 46 Issue: 5 Dated: September 2006 Pages: 837-858
• Author(s): Valli Rajah
• Date Published: September 2006
• Length: 22 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This paper uses theory and research on symbolic boundaries and resistance to explore the meanings that poor, drug-using, African-American and Puerto Rican women with habitually violent male intimate partners attach to their own use of intimate partner violence (IPV).

Abstract

This paper shows how multiple, intersectional systems of oppression, matrices of domination, constrain not only women’s responses to male violence, but also the way in which they understand their responses. Women remake boundaries around gender-appropriate behavior by pointing to cultural narratives concerning appropriate practices within a given gender, class, and racial position. Violence is not simply appropriate or inappropriate behavior for women; its appropriateness may vary between African-American women in different class groups or between African-American and Puerto Rican women in the same class group, who differ from one another based on other characteristics such as their history of addiction or place of residence. This paper also adds to existing research on resistance; resistance is defined as a conscious effort to subvert or counter-command patriarchal control and the symbolic meanings that generally support it. However, not every act of violence by a woman in a violent intimate relationship is a form of resistance. The paper hopes to add to existing scholarship on resistance in the context of violent relationships by recognizing that an actor’s material and symbolic resistance are situated within and limited by the multiple forms of oppression he/she faces, by a medium of domination. With the need for conceptual frameworks in the analysis of women’s use of intimate partner violence (IPV), this ethnographic interview study of poor, minority, drug-involved women sought to fill a research gap on partner violence by examining the meaning women attached to their own use of violence in their intimate relationship. References