Journal of Sociology and Welfare, September 1997, vol. XXIV, no. 3
Date:
09/01/1997
Subject:
Victims - Women
Call Number:
310.10.04
Type:
Article (photocopy 6p.)
Abstract:
The claim is often voiced that wife abuse is a problem that "cuts across" all social and economic lines. Yet
there is considerable research evidence suggesting an inverse relationship between wife abuse and the
socioeconomic status of both victims and perpetrators. The question of the relevance of social class has
generally been construed as a factual one, in principle resolvable by collecting more and better data.
Doing a participant observation study of a treatment programme for men who batter, I was forced to bracket
the "objective," emperical question but freed to see how certain ideological practices worked to keep
class seen-but-unnoticed. The abstract terms and categories of the dominant discourse of abuse were deployed
in ways that subsumed and subdued the men's own experiences of themselves and their lives. In this way the
particular local setting was bound to the relations of ruling of patriarchal capitalism. The approaches
of "peacemaking criminology" and "restorative justice" offer possibilities for alternative, more effective
responses to men's violence against women.
