Abstract

This chapter positions situated emotion that is coiled around women’s understandings and experiences of domestic violence and abuse. During earlier work, and this study my methodologies were informed by feminist standpoint epistemology (see Hartstock, 2004; Harding, 1987, 1991, 2004), embracing inter-subjectivity and reflexivity positioning the researcher, both physically and emotionally at the heart of the research process (Holmes, 2010). In this detailed study of domestic violence and abuse, a mixed method approach that included inter-subjective interviews produced heightened emotion for both the researcher and the researched. This produced a methodological challenge of how to capture, embrace and inform the research process. The research captures the negotiation of the broader context of domestic violence that is embroiled in the micro-management of women by men, and negotiated and managed through the love and emotion women invest in coupledom and the familial environment. Issues of power underpinning the micro-management of women disrupts the normative safe haven of the protection of the home. However firstly, it would be difficult to research domestic violence without recognising and understanding the disruption to normative understandings that has led to much societal change.