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Abstract
Analysis of field notes and interviews with 28 survivors at an empowerment-based domestic violence shelter revealed that life at “Harbor Safe House” is complicated by three tensions: the complementary dialectic of independence versus dependence, the paradox of narrative accuracy versus narrative efficacy, and the contradiction of sufficiency versus deficiency of the system. Both empowerment and disempowerment are located within each tension. Insight into the processes of identifying tensions and their navigation is among the theoretical implications. Calls for flexibility and balance among tensions, as well as between empowerment and case management approaches, are among the pragmatic suggestions for domestic violence organizations.
Notes
We utilize “domestic violence” (DV) to represent controlling behaviors that include physical, sexual, economic, and child abuse; isolation; coercion; and threats (DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Citation2011). We believe it is a more appropriate term for this project than “intimate partner violence” (which is gaining acceptance in many scholarly and popular circles) because the behaviors that women in our study endured were sometimes enacted by friends, bosses, or others besides intimate partners. Furthermore, the organization and shelter we investigated emphasized DV and did not make distinctions between intimate and nonintimate abusive situations.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Adrianne Kunkel
Adrianne Kunkel is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.
Jennifer A. Guthrie
Jennifer A. Guthrie is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. General Research Fund (GRF) Grant #2301572 from the University of Kansas supported data collection and transcription for this project.