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UBC Theses and Dissertations
Challenging victim discourse: re-membering the stories of women who have been battered Carter, Margaret
Abstract
This study problematizes the notion of victim in the context of women who have experienced battering in their intimate committed relationships. To this end I interviewed four women, using an in-depth semi-structured interview to obtain the women's narratives. I examined the women's narratives in order to analyze how they constructed and interpreted their experiences of victimization as well as how they perceived and defined themselves. The intent was to render visibility to the uniqueness, complexity, diversity, and commonalities of these women's stories. Women who have experienced battering are important to this study because the label "victim" is frequently applied to them regardless of whether these women define themselves or construct their experiences in terms of being victims or of being battered. Critiquing dominant perspectives, attending to broader cultural contexts, and exploring marginalized realities are indicative of a longstanding feminist agenda. Psychology and counselling psychology are constructed within dominant historical and sociocultural contexts. Mainstream and popular psychological texts, in their attempts to establish grand theories and prevailing norms, have tended to engage in oversimplified textual constructions presumed to reflect lived realities, yet ignoring both individual and broader contexts. In this thesis I attend both to contexts and to marginalized realities. The significance of this project lies in its potential to enhance current therapeutic and counselling practices. Additionally, it provides a challenge to the often presumed innocent employment of language without regard for its significant meanings and impact. It is critical that professionals working with women who are experiencing battering, understand the complexity of their experiences without imposing labels that limit these women's identities and are incongruent with their lived realities. This thesis problematizes dominant discourse regarding victims and victimization in an exploration of multiple, sometimes seemingly contradictory meanings, and diverse processes.
Item Metadata
Title |
Challenging victim discourse: re-membering the stories of women who have been battered
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Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
1997
|
Description |
This study problematizes the notion of victim in the context of women who have
experienced battering in their intimate committed relationships. To this end I interviewed four
women, using an in-depth semi-structured interview to obtain the women's narratives. I examined
the women's narratives in order to analyze how they constructed and interpreted their experiences
of victimization as well as how they perceived and defined themselves. The intent was to render
visibility to the uniqueness, complexity, diversity, and commonalities of these women's stories.
Women who have experienced battering are important to this study because the label "victim" is
frequently applied to them regardless of whether these women define themselves or construct their
experiences in terms of being victims or of being battered.
Critiquing dominant perspectives, attending to broader cultural contexts, and exploring
marginalized realities are indicative of a longstanding feminist agenda. Psychology and
counselling psychology are constructed within dominant historical and sociocultural contexts.
Mainstream and popular psychological texts, in their attempts to establish grand theories and
prevailing norms, have tended to engage in oversimplified textual constructions presumed to reflect
lived realities, yet ignoring both individual and broader contexts. In this thesis I attend both to
contexts and to marginalized realities.
The significance of this project lies in its potential to enhance current therapeutic and
counselling practices. Additionally, it provides a challenge to the often presumed innocent
employment of language without regard for its significant meanings and impact. It is critical that
professionals working with women who are experiencing battering, understand the complexity of
their experiences without imposing labels that limit these women's identities and are incongruent
with their lived realities. This thesis problematizes dominant discourse regarding victims and
victimization in an exploration of multiple, sometimes seemingly contradictory meanings, and
diverse processes.
|
Extent |
16404982 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2009-03-11
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0054022
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
1997-05
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.