Strangers in the Field: An Ethnographic Exploration of Men’s Accounts of Intimate Partner Violence in a Treatment Group

Abstract

Abstract Researchers have investigated violent men’s accounts of intimate partner violence and have, to various extent, emphasised self-presentation, external structures and lived experiences as understandings for these accounts. Through an ethnographic exploration of a treatment group for men who have been violent towards their female partners, I explore how we can understand the accounts of the violence. Similar to previous findings, this study initially lends support to a Goffmanian interpretation of the accounts as ‘remedial work’, highlighting how the members negotiate the moral meaning of offences by transferring culpability for violence to female partners. However, through an extended presence in the studied context, I discovered aspects of the therapeutic conversation which may challenge this interpretation. I use Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus and analyse the accounts as a product of embodied dispositions. As such, the accounts do not harmonise with the structures of the late modern field of gender relations, dominated by ideals of equal intimate relations. I interpret the accounts as habitual and restricted. Finally, I argue that different understandings of the accounts give rise to different treatment options for social work and that factors such as lived experiences may contribute insights into why men use violence towards female partners.