What Is the Work? and With Whom Are We Working? Relational Practices in the Intimate Partner Violence Field

Abstract

Feminist movements against domestic and intimate partner violence (DV and IPV) have long struggled with tensions around the professionalization of their work. This article uses qualitative interviews and content analysis to conceptualize the IPV movement’s field of action as an interstitial space. The movement against IPV draws together a multi-institutional audience that reflects the historical trajectory of the field. The IPV organizations in the Boston metropolitan area productively engage with and influence various institutional fields. The boundaries of this interstitial space are the multi-institutional bundles of relations drawn together by the DV movement. In the Boston metropolitan area, the institutional fields of action drawn most strongly into the liminal space of the intimate partner violence field are the wider feminist movement and the institutions of the medical/health sphere, carceral system, and education systems. The work of direct services, advocacy, and prevention defines itself in relation to neighboring institutions but remains grounded in its own interstitial space of the IPV movement through individual practices within organizations.