| A feminist ethnography of communities of battered women, this dissertation supports an epistemological approach to the anthropologist's experience in the field that accounts for the anthropologist emotions, sympathies and biases, and their role in the translation of fieldwork data into text. The thesis discusses the relationship between implementation of laws to protect women from violence, feminist writings on domestic violence, and the institutions created to defend women from this violence. The author's fieldwork experience provides her a unique institutional placement as researcher, administrator, and board advisor. Fieldwork data derives from participant observation and recorded life stories at two battered women's shelters and a counseling center for women in Puerto Rico.The dissertation contributes to scholarship on domestic violence and feminist theory as well as to legal and social service institutions that address this problem. |
