Stigma as Social Control: Gender-Based Violence Stigma, Life Chances, and Moral Order in Kenya
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The stigma associated with gender-based violence (GBV) exacerbates its physical and mental health impacts, as well as the chances of experiencing additional violence. We extend understanding of this stigma and its effects by demonstrating how stigma operates as a mechanism of social control at both interactional and structural levels to preserve the moral order. We also further general stigma theory by clarifying the conceptualization of power that befits understanding stigma as a mechanism of social control that has cognitive, interpersonal, structural, and moral components. Analysis of data from 6 focus groups with women survivors of intimate partner violence and 19 interviews with close others and key informants in Kenya shows that the moral order, or what matters most, is maintenance of the marital unit, to a great degree because it is the institution that maintains the economic survival of women and children. The cultural belief that a woman experiencing spousal abuse has violated normative gender and spousal expectations and is therefore a threat to the moral order of the community demands that both husbands and community members act to protect the moral order. Protection of the moral order is accomplished through discrimination against survivors that is institutionalized through custom, law, and the family. Thus stigma acts as a, albeit contested, community process of social control that (re)produces gendered power geographies. El estigma asociado con la violencia de género agrava sus efectos físicos y de salud mental, así como las posibilidades de sufrir violencia adicional. Prolongamos la comprensión de este estigma y sus efectos demostrando cómo el estigma opera como un mecanismo de control social, tanto al nivel de interacción y estructural para preservar el orden moral. También se profundiza la teoría general de estigma aclarando la conceptualización del poder que conviene entender el estigma como mecanismo de control social que tiene componentes cognitivos, interpersonales, estructurales y morales. El análisis de los datos de seis grupos de enfoque con mujeres sobrevivientes de la violencia en pareja y 19 entrevistas con otras personas cercanas e informantes clave en Kenia muestra que el orden moral, o lo que más importa, es el mantenimiento de la unidad conyugal, en gran medida debido a que es la institución que mantiene la supervivencia económica de las mujeres y los niños. La creencia cultural de que una mujer que experimenta el abuso conyugal ha violado las expectativas de género y conyugales normativas y es por lo tanto una amenaza para el orden moral que la comunidad exige que ambos esposos y miembros de la comunidad actúen para proteger el orden moral. La protección del orden moral se logra a través de la discriminación contra los sobrevivientes que se institucionalizan a través de las costumbres, la ley y la familia. Por lo tanto el estigma actúa como, aunque impugnada, proceso comunitario de control social que (re)produce geografías de poder de género.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".