Representing Victims: Intimate Partner Violence Advocacy and Democratic Theory

• In Event: NGO’s in Politics: Mobilization, Inequality, and Inclusion

Abstract

In this project we interact with debate within contemporary democratic theory on the issue of democratic representation by using victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) as a means of understanding the dynamics of processes of deliberation, advocacy (Urbinati 2000, 2006), and procedural representation for the clients and leaders of advocacy groups associated with IPV. To our knowledge little work in democratic theory has focused on the way in which domestic violence victims are represented both in society and in the political arena, and this is unfortunate for a number of reasons. For one, the deliberative agency of domestic violence victims runs into an array of obstacles stemming from the popular media, political norms, and social stigma that pose difficulties for models of deliberative and direct democracy (Habermas, Plotke 1997, Young 2000). For another, the ongoing danger that IPV victims face have forced advocacy groups to prioritize individual remedies and protection in ways that has limited the salience of group identification relative to issues such as race, gender and class limiting the relevance of arguments emphasizing the need for minority group representation (Phillips 1995, Williams 1998). Finally, the procedural representation of IPV victims is extremely limited especially in the political arena, and there has a been a relative dearth of policy innovation concerning IPV issues. In short, we argue that such a case study offers three important insights in terms of democratic representation. First, it channels Urbinati's notion of advocacy into spheres of society wherein representation of IPV victims is least apparent (the legal and criminal system), and in doing so leaves advocacy potentially vulnerable to reifying problems of representation. Second, it forces us to think about expanding the idea of representation in ways that emphasize, promote, and project the collective voices of IPV victims while remaining cognizant of individual concerns and differences. In doing so we develop a notion of representation that allows space for processes of meaning creation and self-representation in ways that more fully integrate vulnerable groups into civil society while remaining committed to difference and intersectionality at the individual level.

Authors

• Philip Robert Olson, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey

• Sarah Michelle Nenadovic, Rutgers University