Domestic violence, coercive control and mental health in a pandemic: disenthralling the ecology of the domestic

ABSTRACT

Domestic and family violence is a social and public health issue typically positioned in policy frameworks as a consequence of gendered social and economic structures. In this paper, we deploy an approach that draws on Hörl’s neo-ecological thinking to propose that the home, as a site of domestic violence, can be usefully framed as an ecology of the domestic, a posthumanist hybrid matrix of bodies, spaces and objects in which various practices enact the smooth running of the domestic together with practices of domestic and family violence, including coercive control. Our interest is in coercive control and in the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on practices which enact this aspect of domestic violence. Our exploration of the practices that enact coercive control draws on the work of Law and others. We examine how practices, which are not compatible, or that do not cohere, are able to coexist in a domestic ecology and what occurs when there is a disruption as occurred with the pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Coercive control
• domestic and family violence
• mental health
• posthumanist
• domestic ecology
• COVID-19

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their deepest gratitude and thanks to their mentor Prof. Chris Bigum. His comments on our writing and theory development were invaluable.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The 2020 case of Brisbane woman Hannah Clark (and her children) murdered by estranged husband Rowan Baxter, who incinerated his whole family, before killing himself. This case has brought the phenomenon of coercive control to the forefront because it shows how coercively controlling practices including psychological, economic and emotional abuse enacted through intimidation, digital surveillance and stalking can spiral into extreme physical violence and/or death.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.