Table Of ContentWHO OWNS DOMESTIC ABUSE?
The Local Politics of a Social Problem
With the knowledge and sensitivity of a teacher and counsellor, Ruth
M. Mann details a community effort to establish a shelter for abused
women in a small Ontario municipality. While other literature presents
the ostensibly cohesive views of particular interest groups on the issue
of domestic violence, Mann exposes the conflicts that actually occur,
and the ways these conflicts fuel unintended outcomes. In Who Owns
Domestic Abuse? The Local Politics of a Social Problem, the author ven-
tures bravely into the politically charged debate over the definition
of abuse, and demonstrates that 'owning' a problem does not ensure
viable solutions. Rather than promoting a particular response to such
problems, Mann uses personal accounts of abuse to make a space for
the diverse perspectives of abused women and abusive men. She urges
activists and intervenors to argue less and listen more.
RUTH M. MANN is a sociologist at Concordia University, and has
worked as a group facilitator in abuse intervention programs for
domestically assaultive men, and in a 'challenge of anger' program for
women. She is currently conducting research on interventions for vio-
lent girls.
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Who Owns Domestic Abuse?
The Local Politics
of a Social Problem
Ruth M. Mann
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2000
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-4248-1 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-8091-X (paper)
©
Printed on acid-free paper
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Mann, Ruth M. (Ruth Marie), 1947-
Who owns domestic abuse? : the local politics of a social problem
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-4248-1 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-8091-X (pbk.)
1. Women's shelters - Political aspects - Ontario - Case studies. 2. Women
- Abuse of - Ontario. 3. Abused women - Housing - Ontario. I. Title.
HV1448.C32O581999 362.82'9283 C99-931874-8
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
Canada
This book is dedicated to the women and men of the research commu-
nity who shared their personal, political, and professional struggles
and stories - especially to the individuals referred to in the text as Lisa,
Bob, Kathryn, Peter, Charles, Susan, Julia, Jim, and Jocelyn. These
core respondents were residents of the housing co-operative that
befriended and sheltered me, and that introduced me to the larger
community of domestic abuse activists, abuse intervention profession-
als, and residents.
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Contents
PREFACE IX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
ACRONYMS XV
1 Theoretical and Political Contexts 3
Introductory statement. Discussion of 'strict constructionist' and
'contextual constructionist' approaches to the study of social prob-
lems, feminist and non-feminist constructions of abuse, and post-
modern and modern approaches to research and writing. Discussion
of the relevance of these to the study.
2 The Study, the Community, and 'The Problem' 19
Overview of the research process. Identification of tensions between
community development and feminist approaches to abuse inter-
vention. Description of the community based on media images,
agency literature, and official statistics. Discussion of general resi-
dents' abuse-related experiences and attitudes, based on a random-
sample telephone survey.
3 Mobilization of Action: Struggles for Control 39
Description of the politics of the shelter development process, based
on participant observation and in-depth interviews with activists,
professionals, and survivors.
4 Implementation of a Plan of Action: Struggles with Control 67
Description of polarizations within the shelter during the first six
viii Contents
months of shelter operation, based on in-depth interviews. Discus-
sion of similar developments at the established Regional shelter, and
at shelters generally.
5 Counselling and Therapeutic Intervenors 89
Description of the practices and perspectives of pro-feminist and tra-
ditional therapeutic abuse counsellors involved in, or publicly sup-
portive of, the shelter initiative, based on in-depth interviews.
6 Enforcement, Legal, and Medical Intervenors 113
Description of the practices and perspectives of pro-feminist and
mainstream law enforcement, legal, and medical professionals
involved in or publicly supportive of the shelter initiative, based on
in-depth interviews.
7 Victims, Perpetrators, and Survivors 133
Description of the lived experience of abuse as glimpsed through the
accounts of women and men who identified themselves as current
or previous abuse intervention clients, based on in-depth interviews.
8 A Researcher's Construction of 'The Problem': Conclusion 197
A dialectical portrait of abuse as political process and lived experi-
ence, based on the research process. Discussion of the implications
of the study to theorizing on social problems processes, and social
policy.
APPENDICES: THE RESEARCH PROCESS 209
TABLES: SUMMARIES OF DEMOGRAPHIC AND SURVEY DATA 227
NOTES 263
BIBLIOGRAPHY 283
AUTHOR INDEX 305
SUBJECT INDEX 311
Preface
Who Owns Domestic Abuse? The Local Politics of a Social Problem is a case
study of community activism around domestic violence against
women and children in a small-town Southern Ontario municipality,
analysed from a sociology of social problems perspective that Joel Best
termed contextual constructionism (Best, 1989, 1993). My primary
focus is activities associated with attempts to assert, resist, and main-
tain ownership over the establishment and operation of a shelter for
women, and the unintended outcomes of these ownership struggles. I
address the lived reality of abuse as a contextual or background feature
of this public activity.
The study is relevant to social theory and social policy. On the level
of social theory, I address the subjective/objective dualism of defini-
tional processes and experiential realities. My approach is informed by
constructionist insights, especially by postmodern concerns with the
ways social power and social interests influence knowledge, and the
social production of knowledge. Nevertheless, it is grounded in what
is essentially a mainstream or 'modernist' approach to research and
analysis. As outlined by Herbert Blumer in Symbolic Interactionism, Per-
spective and Method (1969), this approach presupposes both the exist-
ence of an empirical social world that stands over and against the
observer, and the contingent validity of social scientific knowledge of
this world. Consequently, in contradistinction to 'strict' construction-
ists who regard investigations of conditions as irrelevant to the devel-
opment of theoretical knowledge of social problems processes, I argue
that an analysis of tensions between conditions and the politicized con-
structions of conditions promoted during social problems mobiliza-
tions informs theoretical understandings of the little-explored issue of
