Ideological Practices and the Management of Emotions: The Case of "Wife Abusers"

Abstract

Drawing on the work of Dorothy Smith, the author identifies the ideological practices he discovered during participant observation of a treatment program for men who batter their wives. The struggles between the counsellor and the men took place within a discourse that drew heavily on feminism, but which, ironically, often seemed to end up reinforcing rather than challenging sexist attitudes and behavior. To understand how this happened, the author begins an institutional ethnography, exploring the complex processes of social organization through which the particular site was entered into the relations of ruling of patriarchal capitalism.

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