This paper reviews the literature providing reasons for why battered women “stay” in abusive relationships and examines the emergence of images of battered women as “survivors” in early and contemporary activists’ discourses, drawing on ideas from social constructionist approaches to social problems, identity, and deviance to explore this phenomenon. Most of the early representations of battered women I analyze emphasize their emotionality and their victimization, while the more recent constructions of this collective identity discussed here emphasize their rationality and their agency. Both “victim” and “survivor” typifications provide accounts for why battered women stay in violent relationships, thus providing a vocabulary of motive for this oft‐imputed “deviance.” Constructing battered women as survivors, however, may also remediate some of the stigma that can attach to victimization more generally. After situating victim and survivor discourses and considering how the image of a survivor may meet normative expectations that a victim image perhaps violates, I briefly discuss some implications of these alternate collective identities.

This article explores identity work and emotion management in felony domestic violence stalking cases, using data collected in a domestic violence unit in a large metropolitan district attorney's office. Victim narratives in crime reports, intensive interviews of stalking victims, and participant observation in a stalking survivors' support group show how women become “victims” in the criminal justice system. Sometimes women's continued interaction with both stalkers and law enforcement actors affects their ability to create and sustain credible victim identities. Almost any action a victim takes or presentation she makes has the potential for inducing negative identity attributions. Thus identity dilemmas seemingly inhere in the stalking situation.

I draw poni tlrc sociology of social problcnrs. social moocmcnts. and emotions to consider thc articulation of cultural rrsonancc and frcling rulrs in thc fiatiring of uictinrs by social niouenient actiuists. I thcorizc that ''political cnrpathy." cxprcsscd in policy and thratigh collcctive identification. is rdated to social eva~uations. attribirtions of agency, nornlatiuc emotional responses, and frame resonancc. Franrcs appealing to broad audicnccs arid inspiring collcctive idmtification nray depmd on uictini typifications that negotiate widely shared ualucs and sornetinics conflicting enrotional standards. I n same cases. this negotiation can be acconrplishcd through refranring, or shifting nrouenient represcntatians of uictinriratiorr. To illrrstratc. I briefly discuss the increasing popularity of 'suroiuor" huger?. in scholarly chararterizations of and discoursc on battered women. concluding with suggcstions for further theorizing and research.

This paper reviews research and theory on the social construction of victims and victimization. There are four areas of inquiry: victims' self-processes, the collaborative accomplishment of victimization, social problems claims-making, and social movement framing. Scholars in each area take a symbolic interactionist perspective. Because victimization is potentially stigmatizing, much of this research and analysis draws on the literature on vocabularies of motive, aligning activities, and accounts. Literature on self-processes examines how victims come to see themselves as victims and their situations as deviant. Often, when they try to establish their victim identities with others, they can be discredited or blamed if they do not meet expectations of typical victims. When people want to show that a social problem exists, they use images of victims to evoke sympathy and other emotions. Sometimes, collective identities may not be sympathetic, and also need to be managed, through the framing work of activists.1602 Accounting for Victimization

location intertwine, compete, and collide. Following Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock (1996), we argue that "subcultural" or collective identity work that brings new meanings into dominant cultural narratives may offer the greatest hope, but in the interim all coping strategies are costly.