SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Intimate partner violence (IPV) has comprised one of the priority areas of public health research and practice, especially in relation to African development. However, this scholarship and practice has been dominated by gender-based violence (GBV) aetiologies that conceptualise IPV almost invariably in reference to hierarchical gender systems and relations. These aetiologies are recurrently transposed cross-culturally through a sociological methodology that is rarely informed by comprehensive ethnographic studies of IPV from specific societies. Consequently, such aetiologies have not integrated well local knowledge systems and worldviews, and especially religious epistemologies and vernacular experiences. On the other hand, studies based on more empirical or anthropological evidence do not eschew epistemological limitations by remaining situated in western metaphysics of gender and/or religion. This can hinder understanding the contextual and nuanced mechanisms that sustain or facilitate conjugal abuse or favourable attitudes about it in societies outside of Anglo-American epistemology, and especially those that are embedded in authoritative indigenous religious traditions. To demonstrate this I will draw from a year-long ethnographic study of conjugal abuse from an Orthodox society of Ethiopia that accounted for the religio-cultural cosmology of the research participants in analysing interactions between gender norms, individual attitudes and human behaviour related to conjugal abuse. To overcome the epistemological limitations of all ethnographic research and analysis, the methodology integrated ethnographic with participatory research approaches that prioritised the discourses of the local populations. The overall aim of this research has been to consolidate a model of development research and practice that is centred on local worldviews.