Women’s Protection or Patriarchal Control by the State? Institutional Ethnographic Exploration of Domestic Violence Services in Taiwan
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12143166 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Pei-Ru Liao (0000-0001-6496-8852, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 454-470 |
| Publication date | 2025-02-12 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Affilia (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0886-1099 • E-ISSN: 1552-3020 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/08861099251315154 |
| OpenAlex | W4407413722 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 27 |
After implementing the Domestic Violence Prevention Act (DVPA) in 1998 in Taiwan, standardized protocols were implemented to provide social services to survivors of domestic violence (DV). This article examines how DV services have become institutionalized in Taiwan through a feminist method of inquiry, Institutional Ethnography (IE). Firstly, through interviews with social workers in the outsourcing organization, the IE journey leads to the way institutional texts coordinate social workers’ everyday work. Practices have shifted from empowerment (“women's work”) to risk management (“protection work”), which deprives survivors of their autonomy. Secondly, tools like the Taiwan Intimate Partner Violence Danger Assessment (TIPVDA) and digitized case monitoring systems now structure the case management process. Outcomes are oriented toward a bureaucratic risk-management agenda instead of clients’ needs. Thirdly, the expert-NGO-bureaucrat complex dominates policymaking, excluding survivors’ experiences and workers’ voices. The DV prevention network's ruling relations have strayed from feminist origins toward state control in a patriarchal way that excludes the participation of both survivors and frontline workers. Through the IE lens, this article demonstrates how depoliticised “protection work” embedded in the expert-NGO-bureaucrat complex can paradoxically disempower the survivors it aims to serve. The limitation of this research is its data collection from one outsourcing organization and cannot fully reflect the experiences of DV survivors
Criminology · Domestic violence · Ethnography · Medical emergency · Poison control · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Human Factors and Ergonomics · Intimate Partner and Family Violence · Medicine · Sex work and related issues
In an Abusive State
Navigating helping relationships amidst heavy workloads
Safety for battered women in a textually mediated legal system 1
Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex
Institutional Ethnography as Practice
Rethinking Gender and Violence
Social Policy for Social Work
Rendering Invisible Punishments Visible
Victim Narratives, Legal Representation, and Domestic Violence Civil Protection Orders
The Global Ruling of Local Crisis Intervention
Still a Movement After All These Years
Empowerment in a Bureaucracy? Survivors’ Perceptions of Domestic Violence Shelter Policies and Practices
Intersectionality as a Useful Tool
The Braid That Binds Us
The Conceptual Politics of Struggle
Technologies of evidence
Neoliberalism and violence
Challenging the Pursuit of Criminalisation in an Era of Mass Incarceration
Mapping the Margins
You trade in a man for the man
Paradoxes of Professionalization
The Paradox of Legibility
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |