Introduction

We are very mindful that domestic abuse illustrates the perils and possibilities of the approach we are promoting in this book. For example, there are clear dangers in an overly social approach to men and their use of violence that situates each and every one as an instance of the general and a reductive cipher. This can be evident in the approaches taken by ‘perpetrators’ programmes that eschew any engagement with biography, culture and context in favour of universalist understandings. However, there are comparable dangers in promoting approaches that cannot see the contexts in which gendered inequalities intersect with other inequalities such as those of class and ‘race’ and are played out in identities and practices where shame and humiliation are ongoing possibilities.

In Re-imagining Child Protection we made a plea for humane practices with men and women and for seeking to understand from them why so often their lives were marred by abuse and violence. We asked that practitioners talk to individual men and women about their hopes and dreams, their expectations for, and from, each other. Crucially, we suggested there was a need to integrate gendered constructions of masculinities and femininities with biographical and interactional patterns in order to more fully understand and challenge abusive practices and to eschew a hegemonic focus on risk and rupture.

In this book we recognise that although some very welcome practice developments have emerged in recent years, practice stories of risk and rupture remain all too common and there continues to be inadequate attention paid to exploring with men and women what lies behind their experiences of harm and pain. We locate our project within a clearer understanding than is to be found in Re-imagining Child Protection of intersectional analyses and their contribution to engaging with the causes of, and consequences of, abusive behaviours.