One thing I have noticed is that there is a lot of literature that talks about the cultural influences on domestic violence: class, ethnicity, values, and the like. But there is very little talk about the culture within domestic violence. And this is what I want to address. There are cultural variables working within the abusive situation, learned behaviors that guide the actions of abuser and abused. True, these learned behaviors have a past. But I want to look at how they operate inside the abusive situation.
To do some of this, I look at the Power Wheel developed in Duluth, MN by the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project. This wheel describes a number of tactics, learned behaviors, that an abuser uses in an abusive situation. Unfortunately, there is no Power Wheel for the abused in the situation, perhaps because it is viewed that she is powerless. I don't think she is powerless overall, I think she uses power to survive the situation. It may seem like powerlessness, but in actuality the woman is using her culture to survive. For the abuser the aim is to control. For the abused the aim is to survive.
I could go on in circles about this, but I think there needs to be a cultural theory of the internal workings of domestic violence. This is what I will try to do in my contribution to the Introduction to the book.
An anthology. An anthology of women's stories of abuse and survival. An anthology that will serve to highlight an important issue in our American lives, unedited, with resource information. I have started writing the Preface to These Are Our Stories, and am outlining information for the Introduction. The Preface is highly personal, and the Introduction will be more technical, with contributions, I hope, from staff at the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Life Management of Northwest Florida.
As I wrote on 4/29, I'm still waiting to hear from foundations so I can continue the fieldwork needed for this project. I hope I will hear from someone soon, as I am getting impatient. Well, patience is not one of my strong points, so I guess I will need to learn how to sit on my hands with greater ease.
But I am excited about this, and will try to post drafts of the Preface, provided I can figure out how to do it.
Finished B's transcription and now it is time to take another break. I hope in June to start doing more fieldwork, starting with Pat who has written poems about her experiences. I think I may have written this before, but I'll rish repeating myself.
I am now reading about the Dewey School and am finding the whole learning by doing philosophy dynamic and wide reaching. For folklore and education there is a fit here, but not quite, because folklorists in education still need to teach about what a tradition is and how it works in our culture.
I've been working on a particularly detailed transcription. The informant, B, is a very animated teller, relating experiences of four marriages, all of which ended with violence. I have been struggling with how to deal with the transcription, and have decided to keep to standard convention in the text, but have been very liberal with punctuation. A lot of commas, exclamation points, and of course, quotation marks. I think this arrangement will work.
Still no word from foundations. I do not want to call them to see what is going on lest I come across too pushy.
As of Thursday, HER will enter into a volunteer venture: hospice. I will be volunteering with Big Bend Hospice, possibly as a volunteer chaplain. I am looking forward to this new development, which I have been thinking about for some time. I hope that something paying will come of it, but first things first, and that means working as a volunteer.
