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‘What Have I Become?’ The Social Construction of Motive-Vocabularies for Battering.
David Morrison
Master’s Thesis in Sociology, UCLA
4/6/98
Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between official designations of deviance and putative deviants’ self-appraisals by exploring the process of negotiating accounts for membership within court-mandated domestic violence treatment programs. Labeling occurs on two levels: structurally and interactionally. The structural process of labeling men as batterers sets up a subsequent interactional process between social workers, who press the men to internalize their formal identity, and program participants, who engage in varying degrees of role-distancing. Men distance themselves from their formal identity as batterers either through direct refutation of discrediting testimony, or by negotiating a ‘vocabulary of motives’ distinct from those promulgated by therapists. This paper explores presentational strategies by which men resist identifying themselves as batterers, interactional dynamics whereby some men’s resistance gives way to eventual transformations in their situationally enacted identities, and several discourses that manage the stigma of such transformations. Since the negotiation of accounts frames an underlying construction of identities, identity is treated here as a locally emergent process rather than a static psychological structure ‘within’ individuals.
Stephen: “And then I asked myself, ‘what have I become?’”
George: “And what answer did you have to that?”
Stephen: “[Pause] …I didn’t have one.”
George: “I’m not trying to suggest that the answer to that question is an easy one. Or that you would have an answer to it now. I’m just trying to say that its an important question. One you should work on.”
How do men evaluate their conviction for battering?
Labeling theorists have recognized the subjectively problematic meaning of deviance by redefining the deviant individual in practical terms as “one to whom that label has been successfully applied” (Becker, 1973:9). This perspective has spurred research into the official process by which individuals come to be designated as social deviants by police, probation officers, judges, and social workers. But what do we mean by the term ‘successful’? Does an official application of the label ‘batterer’ amount to its successful application? Official documentation reifies and reflects beliefs held by social control agents, and orients their response to putative batterers. But the official process of arrest, hearings, trial and sentencing to a treatment program for domestic violence need not result in concomitant transformations of identity among putative batterers.
Blumberg (1967) has discussed the various coercive mechanisms used by the court to illicit a guilty plea from defendants; both for the practical purpose of managing a large caseload and for ritually upholding subsequent sanctions. In spite of the fact that 90% of the cases he observed were resolved by a “negotiated, bargained-for plea of guilty” (Blumberg 18), only 95 of 724 defendants sampled identified themselves as guilty to researchers. Their willingness to identify themselves as guilty for official purposes thus emerged as a “temporary role adaptation” (Blumberg 32) in response to organizational coercion. Ironically, labeling theorists claiming that an official designation of deviance has been ‘successfully’ applied after a conviction are speaking from the perspective of social control agents - uncharacteristically reifying that position.
The process of coercing putative batterers to formally identify themselves as guilty in their dealings with court officials provides them with a subsequent means of distancing themselves from the identity their acquiescence has implied. While they are considered guilty by the social workers who are subsequently employed to extend the moral order of the courts into the minds of the structurally marginalized, many men convicted of battering continue to maintain their innocence based on the alleged capriciousness of the judicial process. The discordance between their official identification as batterers in need of treatment and their subsequent presentational strategies as victims of a biased judicial process sets the terms for a negotiation of identities between men accounting for the “real reasons” of their arrest in idiosyncratic terms, and a social worker who is ideologically influenced to bring men’s accounts in line with officially acceptable accounts.
Therapeutic negotiations center around constructing a narrative which contextualizes the relevant events leading to the men’s arrest, and accounts for the motives affecting their behavior. There are two major points of controversy between preferred and dispreferred (by whom?) accounts. The extent
Points of controversy in constructing narratives are: discrepancies between the official version of events and a participant’s description of his[1] or his partner’s actions, the scope of the context within which to place those actions, and the vocabulary of motives group participants or social workers use to account for the ‘real reasons’ men engaged in particular lines of action. Each of these features of constructing narratives is interpretive. Even a physical description of actions requires the use of descriptive terms that carry evaluative connotations.
A key distinction between accounts which social workers accept at face value and accounts which are viewed as ‘denying’ or ‘minimizing’ is captured by Kenneth Burke’s conception of ‘circumference’. As Burke has said (1969:77) “the choice of circumference for the scene in terms of which a given act is to be located will have a corresponding effect upon the interpretation of the act itself”, and influences how the individual is defined.
I have to say a little more on circumference. Why is it relevant? In a sense when men choose a narrow frame, they are asserting that ‘anyone’ in that situation would act accordingly. They are backgrounding their own perspective – foregrounding instead the actions of their wives or girlfriends. By focusing scrutiny on her behavior their particular use of narrative circumference implies that analysis should proceed onto her as a way of accounting for their own ‘subsequently’ violent actions. They are including themselves within the moral community. Social workers emphasize a wider circumference to show how their thinking got lead astray.
A key difference between therapeutically aligned and non-aligned accounts is captured by Scott and Lyman’s (1968) distinction between excuses and justifications. By contextualizing their violence within a narrative of their partner’s abusiveness, men who deny their characterization as batterers are in effect upholding their actions as justified. They evade responsibility for battering by claiming that their actions were ‘understandable’ given features of the immediate context, such as their wives’ abusiveness. In so doing, they assert that their reactions were determined by that context, and that the immediate context itself was sufficient to warrant a violent response. This is where I could tentatively add the revised section on the difference between therapeutically aligned and non-aligned accounts. I seem to be dancing around what I really think about the difference by mentioning the Burke material and the therapeutic circumferencing response (next paragraph). S&L’s distinction is necessary, but not sufficient to warrant therapeutic alignment. Burke’s statements on circumferencing work much better. The key distinction is between accounts in which the narrative circumference is narrowly presented with reference to the domestic context (in non-aligned accounts) or more broadly constructed with reference to factors like the narrators own childhood upbringing, or, even more broadly with reference to male socialization or a culture of misogyny. Although the distinction is not strictly between accounts incorporating a particularistic of broad narrative circumference. Men who justify their use of violence, for example, sometimes point to cultural or religious values (refer to appropriate section, how deeply can I get into this stuff now, without having presented the data? Here is an argument for repetition if I ever saw one. I want them to have this distinction in their minds reading the text, and then I want to signal the discussion again in the conclusion, when they will have a better basis for understanding it.) Basically therapeutic alignment requires 2 things: (1) (most basically) that they be excusing their actions not justifying them. (2) that they select a narrative circumference at least broadly enough to encompass their identities as violent men. That is, broader than a narrative circumference frame solely with reference to events on surrounding the violence. Damn! It really does get complicated. Therapists also require that they go into their own putatively violent actions in detail. A non-aligned account with not have the specificity to identify violent actions, and not have the breadth to identify
1/12/99: okay here's the answer. Narrative circumference is also not quite enough either, although it takes us along. The last key to the puzzle is a requirement for a linkage between the narrow circumference of relating in detail individual actions, and connecting those actions to a much broader circumference. The arrow of causation begins with the wide circumference and moves in to the personal, basically skipping the interpersonal. Basically, we have to distinguish 3 levels of narrative circumference: societal, interpersonal, and personal. The requirement is to frame the personal in the context of the societal, while still giving close detail on the personal. Non-aligned accounts tend to remain at the interpersonal, discussing the arguments preceding self-reported violence with a heavy emphasis on their wives' actions. Where the personal is framed, its done so in reference to the wife.
We have to distinguish between physical descriptions of events and causal talk accounting for the causes of those events. Non-aligned accounts don't go into a detailed description of the man's physical actions (circumventing the narrow range of circumference), and also refrain from linking action talk to causal talk from within a wide enough narrative frame.
Yes. That it will have the circumferencial (?) specificity to identify violent actions, and the circumferencial (?) breadth to identify themselves as violent men; both elements being necessary to support the legitimacy of therapeutic intervention.
This is a lot denser than it was before, but I had described it so simplistically as to be misleading. Its frustrating though, how much theory is coming into this piece at this point. Again, I’m going to have to reiterate this in the conclusion. I do think I like it better in the conclusion and intro though. This is a feature that runs through all of the accounts and is not particularly associated with anyone of them. I also want to explain the sense in which there is a cycle here at which the most therapeutically unaligned and aligned accounts resemble each other. It is only when men are either categorically justifying or condemning the use of violence against wives that they turn to breadth in narrative circumference. It is more frequent for men to assert a particularistic focus. Acquiescing to the existence of batterers, and arguing that the category was wrongly applied to them for various particularistic reasons. This is why we need both Burke and S&L to understand the difference between, and possible transformation of, accounts.
Should I mention the Duluth view on DV more particularly and how it relates to the therapeutic premises? I do. Find this. It relates to this distinction, but I’m not sure how important it is to spell that out more directly. Mainly it relates to how similar justificatory (?) accounts are to therapeutically aligned accounts, perhaps I could signal this in the conclusion. The similarity is a somewhat poetic ending.
Therapists respond by questioning participants about other factors shaping their response, such as childhood socialization or alcoholism. Such reformulation may also function to deflect individual responsibility, accounting for participants’ violent behavior from within an equally deterministic framework of external conditions and circumstances. This exculpating ability of the therapeutic worldview may in fact be a significant feature of its eventual acceptability to some group participants. As therapists widen the narrative circumference from the immediate context to questions of the client’s personality or character, however, they communicate that the immediate context in itself is insufficient to account for a violent response. They attempt to shift the accounts from justifications that uphold violent actions to excuses based on a less immediate mitigation of responsibility.
In this context, partly due to the subtlety of therapeutic reformulation, acceptance is more often displayed through the lack of further scrutiny (the lack of a follow up question, or a ‘yeah, but’ clause) than through a direct statement of acceptance. An adequate description of events, being accepted at face value, is frequently listened to thoughtfully, but silently by therapists and other participants; after which conversation then moves on to another topic. This is in sharp contrast to accounts treated as inadequate, which generate more scrutiny and interaction as therapists or more therapeutically aligned members provide alternate retrospective depictions for violent actions and the motives behind them. Accounts framed with reference to the immediate context are treated as rationalizations, while an eventual incorporation of a wider narrative circumference, where it occurs, is accepted at face value.
It is in this type of situation, where “varying and competing vocabulary of motives operate coterminously” (Mills, 1940:911), that the distinction between ‘rationalization’ and ‘motivation’ is conceived. Social workers are likely to view much of the initial content of putative batterers’ narratives as both rationalization and evidence of ‘denial’. Rather than managing to frame their group participation in idiosyncratic terms, denial of the appropriateness of their official status often serves as further substantiation of that status by professionals. While such role-distancing attempts are thus self-defeating for the purposes of favorably managing their impression in the context of the diversion program, the incorporation of a therapeutically aligned narrative or vocabulary of motive is by no means inevitable. Many men persist in varying degrees of role distancing from their official statuses as batterers. Given the stigma associated with identifying oneself as a batterer such role distancing is by hardly surprising. This paper will consider therapeutic strategies for undermining the tenability of such disavowals, before examining various impression management strategies used by men to resist transformations of identity within the treatment context.
Alternatively, as participants gain sensitivity how their actions have been defined by others, and/or fluency in the local language of therapeutic interaction[2], they may begin to redefine their identities in therapeutically aligned ways. This involves increasing sensitivity to the changing exigencies of impression management in the therapeutic context. Such members may come to appreciate group relationships and the social support that is contingent on a non-adversarial stance. They may also be rhetorically persuaded by the group leader and come to appreciate their previous narrative as untenable in this context.