`Remedial Work': Men's Strategic Responses to their Violence against Intimate Female Partners

Abstract

Based on interviews with 122 men who had used violence against their partner, and employing Goffman's (1971) concept of `remedial work', this paper interrogates violent men's perceptions, constructions and understandings of domestic violence and their responses to its use. Accounts of women partners are also examined. `Remedial work' involves the perpetrator of an act of untoward behaviour in various forms of `damage limitation' intended to change the meaning of the offensive act into one that is deemed acceptable. Goffman's three related devices of remedial work - `accounts, apologies, and requests' - are used to explore men's narratives of violent events, their definitions of the event, rationales and perceptions of consequences. Revealed are the exculpatory and expiatory discourses which dominate men's narratives and which expose the purposeful yet paradoxical nature of their responses to violence, directed at mitigating and obfuscating culpability while at the same time seeking forgiveness and absolution. We suggest that through these devices men seek to impose their own definitions upon their woman partner and thereby neutralise or eradicate her experience of abuse and control the ways in which she interprets and responds to it. These findings strongly support Goffman's theoretical conception. In addition, they highlight the need for further investigation of how men's and women's accounts, definitions and responses to violence are interactionally connected through men's attempts to define the violence in exculpatory and expiatory terms and in women's resistance to such definitions and their implications.

Shadow values, shadow figures: real violence

“…With regards to domestic violence the five techniques have an immediate resonance as does the regular evocation of a state of mind that claims to be generally law abiding outside of the 'incident(s)'. Within the domestic violence literature this approach links to the work of such scholars as Dobash (1998), Hearn (1998), Ptacek (1998), Anderson andUmberson (2001), andCavanagh et al (2001).…”

‘I’m not gonna hit a lady’: Conversation analysis, membership categorization and men’s denials of violence towards women

“…This takes us to the paper's second aim, which is to encourage the study of men's accounts of violence based in the naturally-occurring institutional settings in which they are produced, and away from the collection and analysis of experiential narratives elicited research interviews. The majority of research reviewed above involves researchers interviewing men who have admitted the violent or sexual assault of a woman, often their partner (e.g., Adams, Towns & Gavey, 1995;Anderson & Umberson, 2001;Boonzaier, 2008;Bostock, Plumpton & Pratt, 2009;Cavanagh, Dobash, Dobash et al, 2001;Eisikovits, Goldblatt, & Winstok, 1999;McKenedy, 2006;Pogrebin, Stretesky, Unnithan et al, 2006;Wood, 2004). While participants are often drawn from the prison population, or domestic violence programmes, very few analyse, say, the encounters between men and the professionals that deal with them (notable exceptions include Auburn & Lea, 2003;Auburn, Drake & Willig, 1995;Schrock & Padavic, 2007).…”

“…The most commonly reported accounts include blaming the victim, minimizing the violence, claiming a lack of control, and remorse (e.g., Adams, Towns & Gavey, 1995;Cavanagh, Dobash, Dobash et al, 2001;Chan, 2009;Eisikovits, Goldblatt, & Winstok, 1999;Pogrebin, Stretesky, Unnithan et al, 2006;Wood, 2004). Analysis of grammar, rhetoric and other linguistic features that comprise such accounts often focus on the way perpetrators and others (e.g., judges, lawyers) evade responsibility for, and remove agency from, their acts (e.g., Coates, Bavelas & Gibson, 1994;Coates & Wade, 2004;Ehrlich, 2001;Frazer & Miller, 2009;Wallach & Sela, 2008).…”

Dialogical Views on Partner Abuser Treatment: Balancing Confrontation and Support

“…Qualitative studies on abusers' talk have been conducted since the 1980s (see Cavanagh et al 2001;Hearn 1998;Mullaney 2007;Wetherell and Potter 1989). The issues examined include abusers' ways of legitimizing and explaining their violent behavior (Adams et al 1995;Auburn et al 1995), their denial of the use of violence (Stamp and Sabourin 1995), and their willingness to shift the responsibility for violence onto the victim (Goodrum et al 2001).…”