Conceptos (muy) generales sobre el pensamiento multimodal: En las discusiones anteriores ha quedado claro que la solución de los

In Scheff’s academic work, but also discernible in most commonsense everyday

understandings, secure bonds between individuals are considered a sign of a healthy and functional society. To illustrate, consider for a moment the widespread public concern in recent years linking rising divorce rates, falling marriage rates, same sex relationships and so on with a range of negative social indicators, including crime, poverty and general moral decline. While the solidity of such links is questionable, public concern with both the form and functioning of social bonds is clearly evident (Coltrane & Adams, 2003; Catlett & Artis, 2004).

Within a local context, this conservative unease is well illustrated by an article in a recent edition of ‘Real Issues’ (14th Dec. 2006). This publication, newsletter of the Maxim Institute – a conservative social research organisation – notes the value of social connection, measuring this by reference to official marriage rates. The article suggests “marriage is a strong protector against poverty and homelessness and is important for social connection. Young people raised with two parents have better outcomes”. Similarly a brief internet search using search words ‘family values’ yields a wealth of comments putting forward similar arguments. Take, for instance, these words from a recent web posting by Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ (another conservative political lobbying organisation – www.familyfirst.org.nz), where the author argues that marriage is “good for a nation….[it] lowers the risk of alcohol and substance abuse, domestic violence and child abuse” (sourced 28.02.07).

Of course on one level such concerns, and suggested solutions, can be read as merely commonsense. These phenomena do seem to coincide. However, as has been repeatedly noted by those researching this area, an appeal for a return to traditional family forms and values is simplistic and ignores the complex realities of life in a modern industrialized society. Many feminists would add to this by noting also that traditional marriage constitutes an extremely dangerous environment for women and children (Pagelow, 1981; Pizzey, 1974; Martin, 1976), some going so far as to describe the marriage license as a license to hit (Dobash & Dobash, 1979; Gelles, 1974). Thus, while we may

tentatively accept that some form of intimate bonding, whether based on traditional family formations or not, is healthy, even necessary, as McCloskie argues, I would also suggest that that this acceptance must be paralleled by attention to my earlier query. That is, are ‘secure’ social bonds, presumably such as those exemplified by marriage, healthy and functional for everyone? Does gender matter in terms of how such bonds are formed, operate and are experienced? Or, put another way, when explored against the backdrop of a patriarchally organized society, exactly what work do secure social bonds do for/to women? One could expect perhaps that answers to these questions would

depend heavily upon a clear understanding of which party held the ability/capability to exercise some form of power over/upon the other within specific relationships. One could also expect that such an analysis would be incomplete without exploration of how – through what social practices - this exercise of power manifests, with what consequences, and for whom.

Taking this line of questioning a little further to encompass issues both inside and outside of the abusive dyad, one could also ask whether it is possible to see dominating and battering one’s wife/partner as an acceptable and/or ‘law-abiding’ practice and, if so, when and under what circumstances? Is or can such a practice be permissible in a legal sense? Is such ‘permission’ historically, culturally or socially contingent? These are all questions answered, in the affirmative, by an extensive range of feminist research noting historical legal and social protections of a husband’s right to physically ‘discipline’ his wife (e.g. Lents, 1999; Kelly & Radford, 1996; Schneider, 2000) and differing cultural contexts and responses to domestic violence (e.g. Hand et al, 2002; Yoshioka, et al 2003; Mama, 2000). As these accounts indicate, men’s violence against women has been and, for many women, still is, at the very least, permissible. The effort to eradicate violence against women remains the overriding focus for a great many feminist activists, writers and researchers, demonstrating that we may still have some way to go before these questions can receive uniformly negative answers.

Despite the pessimistic note of the previous comment, what is most important in the context of this particular discussion is the way in which all of these questions, individual and/or collective, link implicitly to the practices of relations of social power between individuals and groups. All are also interwoven with, and inseparable from, further questions concerned with identity, in particular the social practices governing the construction of individual subjectivities. Adopting a feminist stance towards these questions requires the addition of a close emphasis upon the ways in which these

identities/subjectivities are not only constituted, but also how they are experienced – the every-day embodied and emotionally infused experience of social power relations at work. Such a perspective, I believe, must be explicitly grounded in several broad but

distinctly feminist theoretical and political judgments. The first entails an acceptance of gender as a central ordering principal of our society, the second an acknowledgement that this ordering is one based upon characteristically asymmetrical and inequitable power relationships between men and women, while the third is an insistence upon women’s experience as a valid and legitimate source of knowledge. It is acceptance of these that enables a feminist analysis of abuse within intimate relationships as an unmistakably gendered social phenomenon.