Entrapment of Victims of Spousal Abuse in Ghana: A Discursive Analysis of Family Identity and Agency of Battered Women
Entrapment of Victims of Spousal Abuse in Ghana: A Discursive Analysis of Family Identity and Agency of Battered Women
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Date
2017
Authors
Adjei, S Baffour
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Publisher
SAGE
Abstract
Drawing on discursive psychology and positioning theory, this study explores
the influence of cultural and familial value orientations on battered women’s
identity, agency, and decision to leave or stay in abusive conjugal relationship
in Ghana. Two semi-structured focus group discussions and four in-depth
personal interviews were conducted with 16 victims of husband-to-wife
abuse from rural and urban Ghana. The findings indicate that entrapment
of victims of spousal abuse in Ghana reflects their social embeddedness and
that battered women’s identities and agency are expressed in the context
of familial and cultural value orientations. The primacy of family identity and
victims’ apparent implicit moral obligation to preserve the social image of
their extended family influence their entrapment. Participants’ discursive
accounts further suggest that stay or leave decisions of battered women
in Ghana reflect a joint product of negotiated agency between victims and
their extended family. It is thus argued that the agency of battered women
in Ghana is not constituted by individual psychological states or motives, but
instead, viewed as a property of victims who exercise it in a given relational
context, and partly constituted by familial relationships and identities. the
study suggests that intervention initiatives in Ghana should focus on the
phenomenon of conjugal violence beyond immediate victims to include
families and the larger communities in which victims are embedded
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Citation
Adjei, S. B. (2017). Entrapment of victims of spousal abuse in Ghana: A discursive analysis of family identity and agency of battered women. Journal of interpersonal violence, 32(5), 730-754.