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Abstract
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AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT:
In this dissertation, I provide an ethnographic account of dilemmas related to power and participation at 'SAFE,' an overtly feminist organization dedicated to assisting survivors of domestic violence. A general practical problem motivates my research: how to merge the practical demands of organizing with the goal of enabling empowering interaction, and specifically, how to translate feminist ideology into practice despite evident contradictions. In particular, I investigate 'ethical communication' (EC)--an explicit discourse of organizational communication through which SAFE manages the ideology-practice relationship. Through extensive analysis, I demonstrate how EC creates crucial situated dilemmas related to ideological diversity, intimate relationships, and leading and following. I contend that members manage these dilemmas in more or less effective ways, and I detail the strategies through which they do so. To evaluate the consequences of their coping tactics, I reconstruct the local ideals of organizing implied by member practice. My critique identifies precise ways in which feminist practice may be understood as empowering, disempowering, and both at once. To investigate the SAFE case, I establish a theoretical framework that answers current conceptual problems with a distinctively communicative approach. Specifically, I theorize feminist organizations as alternative discourse communities, and I adopt grounded practical theory as an analytic frame for examining contradiction and invention in local counterdiscourse. After reporting the methodology I used to conduct this study, I describe the SAFE community and its 'feminist ethic' of organizational communication. My analysis critically probes member assumptions about communication, power, formalization, relationships, and sexuality in organizational life. In the conclusion, I discuss multiple contributions of the SAFE case. I argue that feminist practice may appropriate and revise bureaucratic forms, including hierarchy of authority, formalized and 'universal' rules for behavior, and impersonal relationships. I also demonstrate how my work revises the theory-practice link in feminist and organizational communication scholarship. In addition, I delineate several implications for 'traditional' and 'alternative' conceptions of organizational power and contradiction. Speaking to contemporary workplaces, I conclude by sketching a feminist theory of organizational participation with its roots in communication practice. (Abstract Adapted from Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, 1998. Copyright © 1998 by Karen Lee Ashcraft; University Microfilms International)
Ethnographic Studies
Feminism
Domestic Violence Victim
Domestic Violence Treatment
Domestic Violence Intervention
Spouse Abuse Intervention
Spouse Abuse Treatment
Spouse Abuse Victim
Female Victim
Adult Female
Adult Victim
Violence Against Women
Partner Violence
Intervention Program
Treatment Program
06-06 |