The Braid That Binds Us

Introduction

The American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare recently released its Grand Challenges for Social Work. “Ending gender-based violence” ¹ (also referenced as domestic violence [DV] or intimate partner violence) constitutes one of two streams for the Grand Challenge #3, Stop Family Violence (Edleson, Lindhorst, & Kanuha, 2015). The authors of the white paper for this challenge map some of the history and current landscape of gender-based violence (GBV) in the United States while also providing some insight into social work’s role in research, practice, and policy in addressing this important issue. We agree with the authors that ending GBV requires interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaborations. We also agree that, as a field, “social work has not gone far enough” (p. 7). Although Edleson, Lindhorst, and Kanuha’s (2015) working paper suggests hope that the United States “has the resources, tools, and knowledge to move more quickly toward not only healthier nonviolent relationships but also families, neighborhoods, and communities that value safety, empowerment and respect for girls and women” (p. 3), little attention is paid to the political and economic conditions that create and shape antiviolence work (research, practice, policy) and how these conditions impact efforts that social workers might/should/could enact to meet this Grand Challenge.

We hope to expand this conversation and inspire social work’s engagement and capacity for addressing domestic violence (DV) by calling attention to the ways neoliberalism, criminalization, and professionalization are braided together to shape the kind of work made im/possible when it comes to ending DV. In this editorial, we will argue “the braid” of these three forces significantly influences and constrains DV work and research in the United States as demonstrated by Edleson et al.’s (2015) paper. Although we support the need for social work to take a proactive and thoughtful position in addressing DV across our communities, the dominance of positivist paradigms for research and practice at present fails to address the structural and systemic issues we believe are most critical to ending DV. We would, in fact, argue that the analysis and approach mapped by Edleson et al.’s paper is shaped by and contributes to the braid’s ongoing hold on DV work.

To discuss each of these issues—neoliberalism, criminalization, and professionalization—in isolation creates a sense of discreteness and disconnectedness that we believe is inaccurate, as each strand relies on and reinforces the others to constitute the braid. That said, for the purposes of our discussion herein, we briefly highlight some key elements of each “strand” to orient the reader to prominent macro forces shaping the braid. We then move into our discussion, highlighting some of the key impacts of the braid on DV work and implications for future directions. Our reflections here are deeply informed by our diverse social identities, life experiences, and connection to DV research, practice, and activism over many decades. In addition, our ideas rest heavily upon the analyses and work of critical DV scholar Mimi Kim, and INCITE! women, gender nonconforming, and trans people against violence.

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism at its most basic is the ideology of “hyperliberalism” (Gruber, 2014) that among other things promotes the reduction of government spending toward market-based solutions to social issues. Neoliberal policies work to decrease the role of the government in providing social services and instead focus on individualization of problems and privatization of services with a heavy reliance on individual responsibility and accountability. In a key moment of the expansion of neoliberal ideology into social welfare, Reagan-era policy reduced funding for social safety net programs while increasing funding for criminal justice systems interventions. The impact of neoliberalism on social work in general has been documented by some to include a marginalization of macro practice, a professionalization of the workforce, and a greater emphasis on the individual rather than structural change (Reisch, 2013; Rothman, 2012).

The privileging of efficacy within the neoliberal agenda transformed the battered women’s movement from a social change movement rooted in feminisms to services focused on individualized treatment and efficiency through criminalization of DV and professionalization of the work (Bumiller, 2008). For many, the passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994 was an important catalyst for change and the chance to end DV in the United States. Through VAWA, DV is treated as an individual-level problem, with money provided for shelters, law enforcement, and targeted intervention services (Kandaswamy, 2010).

DV funding has increasingly become tied to the state through VAWA and other mechanism both impacting how DV is defined and understood and shaping the types of initiatives that receive funding. In a neoliberal climate, organizations seen as providing the most efficient intervention services receive the most public funding, resulting in small, grassroots-oriented programs being absorbed by the larger social service industrial complex. In addition, there has been little expansion in funding of primary prevention of DV outside of a recent push toward men’s engagement, which is also focused on the micro/individual level (e.g., Coaching Boys to Men).

Criminalization

Prior to the 1970s, DV, often referred to as “wife abuse,” received minimal public attention. Due in large part to feminist efforts in the 1970s and 80s, criminal justice responses to DV have increased dramatically over the recent decades, resulting in all 50 states now recognizing DV as a crime (Fagan, 1996). The criminalization of DV in the United States occurred during a time of massive policy shifts toward criminalization as a means of dealing with social problems in general. Simultaneously, feminists and anti-DV movements were calling for greater public acknowledgment and social and institutional accountability for DV, resulting in the creation of rape crisis centers and DV shelters.

Although some have heralded the union of anti-DV movements and law enforcement for legitimating and expanding awareness of women’s experience of abuse, some feminists have argued against the criminalization of social problems all together (Bumiller, 2008; Simon, 2007). Coker and Macquaid (2015) argue that framing DV as a criminal issue rather than an human rights, civil rights, or public health issue limits the frameworks for understanding the depth, breadth, causes, and consequences of DV (p. 593). Others have argued that criminalization has not benefited all women (Mills, 2003; Presser & Gaarder, 2000). Chesney-Lind (2002), INCITE! (2001, 2006), Kim (2012), and Danis (2003) among others have noted that increased criminalization of DV has had a range of unintended consequences for a number of marginalized populations including women of color, undocumented immigrants, poor, transgender people, lesbians, women with disabilities, and sex workers.

Professionalization

In the 40+ years since the beginnings of organizational-based work in the United States, the DV field has dramatically grown and shifted. When the DV movement started, shelter and service-based programs were led by women from the community (often survivors) and emphasized collective and collaborative organizational structures, self-help, peer-to-peer counseling approaches, and consciousness-raising. All aspects of the work were designed to reflect feminist values, promote larger social change, and minimize hierarchy and the reproduction of power and control dynamics between advocates and survivors and within organizations (Ferraro, 1983; Reinelt, 1994). However, with the introduction and institutionalization of formalized funding sources, particularly from federal and state, DV entities have become increasingly professionalized and modeled after other social service agencies. Accountability to funders, for example, requires organizations to document and provide endless financial records, case notes, and program evaluation results (Markowitz & Tice, 2002). Anecdotally, providers consistently report that the documenting and tracking demands, for example, take time and resources away from actually providing support and services to survivors. In addition, financial records and program evaluations often shape and determine measureable goals and outcomes, rather than prioritizing survivors’ processes over time or desired outcomes for their own lives.

Professionalization of DV work as also led to many organizations to now require degrees and/or specific credentials for staff and clearly defined hierarchical organizational structures. Some advocates have expressed the view that being seen as “professional” legitimizes DV services as more credible, high quality, and deserving in the eyes of funders and other human service partners (Wies, 2008), while others bemoan the impact of these changes on the feminist foundations of DV services. More specifically, despite some perceptions that this institutionalization of DV work has been positive, many feminists and women of color have critiqued the professionalization of antiviolence efforts for its move away from its community-based, feminist, grassroots structures and analysis.

Impact of the Braid on DV Work

Over time, women of color have argued that the antiviolence movement’s reliance on the state (for funding, policy engagement, and criminal legal response) has foreclosed a radical vision of DV that incorporates an analysis and response to both individual and institutionalized violence (INCITE, 2006). Activists and scholars alike have pointed to the history of the DV movement as a white women’s movement, which led to narrow definitions and particular approaches that do not meet the needs of many marginalized communities (Koyama, 2006; Richie, 2000). Richie (2000) in her reflection on the antiviolence movement powerfully states that the failure to address issues of race and class has “seriously compromised the transgressive and transformative potential of the anti-violence movement’s potentially radical critique of various forms of social domination” (p. 1135). Similarly, Koyama (2006) asserts that the flawed assumptions and analysis of white feminists in the early days of the antiviolence movement are partly responsible for the DV field’s uncritical collusion with the state that has created and maintains the braid.

In line with these critiques, we posit that the braid, over time, has eroded DV activism with detrimental effects on DV research, practice, and prevention. We also assert that the braid has disproportionate negative effects on communities of color and other marginalized groups. In the section that follows, we highlight some of the ways the braid has and continues to limit the liberatory potential of DV work.

Marginalizes Social and Structural Change

One of the biggest impacts of the braid is that it has depoliticized DV work. With the exception of INCITE! and a few other community-based organizations, there has been limited organizing and movement building focused on challenging the structural inequities that foster DV. Kivel (2006) asserts that the battered women’s movement that started as a feminist movement was co-opted by those in power to establish and maintain a social service employment sector and to control oppressed groups. Although the early battered women’s movement made progress in identifying DV as a social issue and in increasing services, he elucidates that systematic, large-scale efforts to mobilize communities and end violence are no longer at the center of DV work (Kivel, 2006).

Kanuha’s (1998) analysis of the professionalization of DV work connects the professionalization of DV to the common evolution of social movements. Specifically, she states that it is common that “unwieldy social goals” rooted in changing structural conditions are made manageable by creating services and systems to promote incremental change (p. 11). Consequently, the shift away from a structural analysis of DV toward a microlevel analysis corresponds with broader social and political impacts of neoliberalism and professionalization. A recent qualitative study conducted by Lehrner and Allen (2009) found that DV advocates had no knowledge of DV work as part of or emergent from a social movement at all and thus framed the goals of DV work exclusively in social service–oriented terms. Further, these participants saw DV as an important social problem, given its prevalence, but did not view DV as an issue fundamentally linked to patriarchy and/or structural inequity. The decentering of a structural change analysis and approach has been, in part, both a cause and consequence of the reliance on state funding to sustain DV work. Smith (2007) notes that the state’s reach through nonprofits results in increased surveillance and control of social justice movements, the diversion of public funds into individual pockets through foundations, the management and control of dissent to make the world safer for capitalism, and it redirects activist energies into career-based modes of organizing instead of mass-based organizing capable of actually transforming society (p. 3). Richie (2015) similarly argues that the DV movement’s reliance on state funding sources has backfired because of the attached requirements regarding who can and cannot be served. From an organizational perspective, challenging systems to enact structural change run the risk of funding cuts which directly impact agencies’ abilities to provide services and peoples’ livelihoods (Kivel, 2006). Individually focused direct social services are most often more “fundable” than movement-building efforts or other organizing initiatives that target root causes of injustice. In the research domain, the emphasis on evidence-based practice and “testable” interventions as dominant foci of knowledge production also forecloses research and practice approaches that address larger structural conditions and/or employ participatory, antioppressive methods. Whether through law enforcement, professionalized social services, state funding, knowledge production, or via the “shadow of the shadow state” (Gilmore’s (2007) reference to nongovernmental organizations), the braid stifles the DV movement’s ability to challenge the narrative regarding violence and massive social injustices, especially as it relates to mass incarceration and other social inequities.

Supports the Carceral State and Mass Incarceration

As part of the “tough on crime” laws passed in the 1990s, the passing of VAWA in 1994 (and it subsequent reauthorizations in 2000, 2005, and 2013) is widely recognized as solidifying the complicated relationship between anti-DV advocates and criminal justice systems. Despite recently added macro-focused provisions to VAWA (e.g., expansion of tribal court jurisdiction in DV cases, antidiscrimination provisions, attention to sexual assault in immigration detention facilities), it is notable that VAWA was, from the beginning, written as part of a crime bill. At present, VAWA funding is largely concerned with improving criminal justice responses, including increasing criminal penalties for perpetrators of DV. VAWA also encouraged states to adopt mandatory arrest policies allowing cases to move forward in prosecuting DV cases without the cooperation of survivors. At least 48 states authorize the police to make warrantless arrests in the case of misdemeanor, “probable cause” DV incidents (Ruttenberg, 1994).

Research suggests that mandatory arrest policies disproportionately affect low-income women and women of color (Bureau of Criminal Information and Analysis, 1999; Chesney-Lind, 2002; INCITE!, 2001; Richie, 2012) by both increasing arrest and incarceration rates (Crenshaw, 1991; INCITE!, 2006; Mogul, Ritchie, & Whitlock, 2011; Richie, 2006; Wacquant, 2009), and also by increasing the likelihood the survivor will be killed by an abuser. Sherman and Harris (2015) found that among African American women in Milwaukee, arrest increased mortality by 98% compared to 9% among arrested white women. Mandatory arrest also places people of color, particularly African Americans, at greater risk of violence and death at the hands of the police, and certainly places undocumented survivors and their families at greater risk for deportation and violence (Jang, Len, & Pendelton, 1997; Raj & Silverman, 2002; Woo, 2011).

Many have argued that VAWA contributes to the increased policing and incarceration of men of color and women. Coker and Macquoid (2015), for example, recently detailed the collateral consequences of prison violence, mental health, destructive masculinities as well as the harms to families and communities resulting from “hyperincarceration.” Given the growing body of literature that suggests that the criminal justice system functions as the new Jim Crow in many communities of color (Alexander, 2012; Mauer & Chesney-Lind, 2002), those concerned about violence at all levels (individual and state) should be troubled by the heightened criminalization of DV and its impact on already oppressed and marginalized communities. The policy and practice emphasis on the criminalization of DV has had negative effects on many communities while simultaneously stifling the antiviolence movement’s ability to critically challenge macro issues such as mass incarceration (Gottschalk, 2006).

Fetishizes Physical Safety

Kim (2013) argues that the increased criminalization of DV within the context of neoliberalism and depoliticization of antiviolence work has led to the “fetishization of safety” defined as “the perversion of legitimate concerns of safety and the presumption that safety is the inarguable priority of violence intervention” (p. 1282). She argues that this overprivileging of safety typically translates to interventions aimed at separating the “victim” from the “perpetrator,” as it relies on a law and order framework rooted in a binary that merits troubling. This notion of safety widely adopted by DV services has focused largely on the criminal legal system’s definition(s) and carries the implicit expectation of police involvement as the primary mode of intervention (Kim, 2013). Consequently, the dominant view of achieving safety for survivors entails engaging with the police and legal system (i.e., prosecuting the abuser), physical separation from the abusive partner, and seeking individualized DV services. DV advocates and programs have operationalized this focus through safety planning, calling the police, and encouraging survivors to leave relationship (which also generally entails leaving one’s home and community). As such, this focus on leaving can violate survivors’ rights to self-determination and lends itself to assumptions that anything short of separation is either a failure of the system and/or a lack of motivation or readiness of the survivor (Kim referencing Mills, 1999). This fetishization of safety forecloses the possibilities of other remedies (Bumiller, 2008) as well as the differential prioritization of safety to include safety from institutional violence, furthering the neoliberal perspectives of individual responsibility and accountability for violence (Kim, 2013).

Although many advocates understand that DV includes physical, sexual, emotional, verbal, and economic abuse, eligibility for services and programs often utilizes a legal definition of DV that centers physical abuse and imminent physical danger. Relatedly, safe shelters have become the dominant mode of DV service provision, reinforcing the view that safety can only be achieved if/when survivors (and their children) leave their residence and community. Furthermore, the assumption that people are safer when they are separated from their abusive partner does not take into account the very real and complex experiences of oppression and violence that many survivors, particularly those from marginalized communities, experience. The fetishization of safety within DV work and discourse can inadvertently assume that violence within intimate relationships is the worst or primary violence that people experience and that services and systems are safe(r) places for survivors. For many communities that have varied and even violent experiences (historically and at present) with the police, systems, and social services, the violence experienced within intimate relationships may be more predictable and manageable than the risks of institutional violence. This is not to minimize the importance of shelters or the realities of physical violence but rather to highlight the dominant framing of DV as physical and safety defined as separation from one’s home and community. This is especially ironic since home and community are often the location sought by people of color from institutional violence that can occur by the dominant community and legal institutions. These understandings and related interventions promote the fetishization of safety as well as limit and obscure diverse experiences and possible responses to DV.

Constrains Who Can Do DV Work

As professionalization of antiviolence work has led to requiring credentials and specific educational degrees (e.g., Master of Social Work) for those working in DV organizations, the value of lived experience is marginalized, and those deemed as “fit to do the work” in DV is narrowed by excluding those without higher education. Relatedly, the increase in credentialing requirements for DV agency staff has led to an increase in therapeutic modalities such as clinical practice and therapy for survivors. Ferraro (1983) and Dewey and St. Germain (2014) posit that the rise of therapeutic approaches in DV work has contributed to an emphasis on providers as experts (rather than survivors as experts on their own lives), transforming the relationships between (highly educated professional) staff and service users into a more hierarchical dynamic. This shift is in direct contrast to the roots of the movement, which focused on women helping other women and survivors providing services regardless of education or credentials. In their discussion of the professionalization of women’s organizations in the United States and Latin America, Markowitz and Tice (2002) highlight that this emphasis on credentialing can result in middle-class women leading and working in organizations while working-class women are more likely to be receiving services.

Increasingly, funders are also expecting DV advocates to hold degrees or credentials to prove their expertise to effectively do the work. The growth of the scope of DV work has also led to professionalizing other aspects of the work such as growing a research industry focused on understanding the issue and outcomes; countless national, local, and regional trainings and workshops on DV; and the proliferation of many different types of organizations addressing intimate violence. Access to government funding, policy changes, increased availability of services for survivors, and interagency collaboration have frequently been seen as indicators of movement success and yet, ironically, they are also the very forces that have pushed DV work toward professionalization, collusion with the state, entanglement with neoliberalism, and away from broader social change.

Recommendations

Our discussion is an invitation to established academic researchers, activist-scholars, students, practitioners, community activists, and survivors to attend to a structural analysis of DV as well as the conditions of the braid that constrain and shape the work. Even as we write about the chokehold of the braid limiting the advancement of social change, we are caught in it. Collectively, we are challenged around how to bring a critique of the braid into our own research without simultaneously harming the services that do exist and/or feeding neoliberal and conservative agendas that already devalue this work. As we look for transformative and innovative approaches to ending DV, we must challenge the notion that the solutions reside solely in the state or the science. Instead, we need to step back and critically examine how the braid constrains and shapes the work, disproportionately negatively affects oppressed groups, and continues to reinforce the entities that benefit the most from maintaining the status quo.

As Edleson et al. (2015) importantly state in the Grand Challenges, “the field of social work must test fresh approaches and develop new … tools” (p. 9) to address DV and create healthy communities. We agree with this assertion and invite our colleagues to consider, expand, and reimagine analyses and practices around issues of DV. We also acknowledge that there are and always have been activists and scholars arguing for what we’ve presented in this editorial, and that those voices have been marginalized within the dominant discourse. To build on this work, without co-opting it, we offer the following thoughts and ideas for consideration and action toward our Grand Challenge to end DV:

Build coalitions across issues, social movements, and communities to contribute to broad-based social change

Although early efforts to address DV were much more grounded in an analysis of structural inequality and social change, the braid has contributed to DV work focusing on individual-level social service provision with considerably decreased efforts to promote social justice work at a macro-level. Understanding the ways that DV is inextricably linked to other forms of violence (including state violence) means that in order to contribute to social change, DV advocates need to build more complex analyses of interlocking systems of oppression and join forces with other social justice movements.

Return and expand to a structural analyses of DV (vs. individual behavior/problem).

Address intersecting systems of oppression.

Build meaningful and reciprocal collaborations between organizations doing DV work and other social justice movements (i.e., prison abolition, economic justice, reproductive justice, etc.).

Center the most marginalized within our communities in the work

DV research and practice has largely been developed by and centered around white (cisgender) women’s experiences of violence, thus informing many of the existing prevention and intervention responses. These efforts have not served marginalized communities well and have often failed to capture the voices, efforts, and needs of oppressed groups such as people of color; indigenous communities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people; and people with disabilities. As has been wisely noted by long-time DV movement leader, Beckie Masaki, developing programs that meet the needs of those who are most oppressed within our communities will strengthen the work we do for all survivors.

Recognize the importance of “trickle up” social justice (Spade, 2009). Start with addressing the needs of those most marginalized within communities as a means to meet the needs of everyone in our communities.

Empower and support people most affected by DV to assert their own needs and definitions of safety.

Promote and fund community-based research, including participatory and culturally relevant approaches, to ensure knowledge development reflects the needs and realities of oppressed groups.

Create spaces to amplify fresh voices and new thinking about DV research and practice, particularly work happening by and for marginalized communities.

Expand definitions of safety, particularly in practice and research

The primary focus of intervention and prevention has centered the physical safety of victims limiting opportunities for innovation in research and practice in all domains of DV, including support services, primary prevention, and systemic change. This discourse of safety has also rendered invisible the experiences of many survivors and communities whose needs are not met by current approaches to DV work.

Deconstruct the concept of physical violence as always primary to the experience of survivors.

Ensure interventions, prevention efforts, funding, and research employ a broad and comprehensive understanding of multiple forms of violence, not solely physical abuse.

Grow our support systems for survivors who stay with abusive partners and/or within their own home communities.

Develop and implement comprehensive safety assessments and planning that include attention to larger systems of oppression and people’s self-definitions/self-determination of safety.

Develop and implement alternatives to policing, criminalization, and incarceration

An overreliance on the criminal justice system as a response to DV has resulted in unintended consequences, disproportionate harm to oppressed communities, and diminished the capacity to develop different responses to DV.

Continue to create and implement alternative, community-based responses to violence that do not rely on the police or punishment-based frameworks (e.g., Mimi Kim’s creative interventions model: www.creative-interventions.org).

Understand the complexity of DV and its impacts on individuals, families, and communities that disrupt the survivor–perpetrator binary while still remaining survivor centered and focused on safety and accountability.

Develop new and varied responses beyond batterer intervention and incarceration for those who perpetrate violence.

Reimagine funding approaches and criterion

Research and practice are inextricably connected to funding constraints that generally prefer service-based programs and positivist research outcomes, thus discouraging exploration, innovation, and/or initiatives focused on social change. Furthermore, DV work has become increasingly dependent on state-based funding, which also significantly affects the type of work that will be funded.

Advocate with funders to expand the types of work and organizations that receive funding including the aforementioned efforts.

Consider the potential of building creative and mutually beneficial funding collaborations between DV groups and groups doing other types of movement work (e.g., DV groups and immigrant rights groups, etc.).

Organize community-based funding collectives that engage community members to support projects related to DV (e.g., giving circles, crowdsourcing, etc.).

Fund small, grassroots, culturally-specific initiatives, and/or groups without attention to 501(c)3 status.

Promote funding for research beyond evidence-based practice or individual level programming that instead explores and addresses the social and structural determinants of DV.

In order to end DV, we call upon our colleagues and communities to continue this conversation and move toward intentional action. Although we cannot fully escape the forces of criminalization, professionalization, and neoliberalism, it is our hope that the field will continue to explore, develop, and share creative and generative means for resisting and subverting the impact of the braid on DV research, teaching, practice, service provision, and advocacy.