| The proposed study draws on the social ontology and methodology of institutional ethnography (IE) and feminist critiques of biomedicine and medicalization to explore how woman-abuse is transformed and rendered institutionally actionable according to textually mediated practices of hospital staff. Specifically, the research will: (1) determine and map how clinical practice is governed by policies and related texts; (2) investigate how practitioners invoke and modify these texts in practice; and, (3) explicate the ways and degree to which these text-based-practices organize and give medically and legally sanctioned meaning to woman abuse. Accordingly, and drawing on theory and techniques associated with EE, open-ended interviews with professionals working with a hospital's domestic violence programme will be carried out, as well as group interviews with relevant hospital committees, and a chart audit. Findings will be mapped, contrasted with findings from an earlier study, and considered in relation to sociological literature on medicalization and woman-abuse. |
