Institutional and Affective Practices of Domestic Violence Interventions in Social Work: Malignant Positioning of Victims

This chapter investigates the institutional and affective practices of domestic violence (DV) interventions in Finnish social work. It examines the expression of social workers’ emotions related to intervening in DV and how these expressions result in the positioning of clients. Encountering and intervening in DV is often challenging; ideological presumptions, conceptions, gender-neutral discussions and misrecognition of violence affect institutional arrangements and practices, and the ways in which professionals feel about and respond to violence. We utilise positioning theory to analyse social workers’ focus group interview data (n = 20). We consider (1) how emotions expressed by social workers assign positions and moral assumptions to social workers’ and victims’ rights and duties and (2) how the display of emotions is connected to the social workers’ positioning of the victims. Our findings suggest that gender neutrality, as an ideological and institutional practice, can be used to rationalise and justify professional inactivity in addressing DV. Hence, changing institutional and affective practices that enable the malignant positioning of DV victims requires changing gender-neutral rhetoric in the conceptualisation of DV, as well as ideological practices related to ignorance and the rejection of violence.