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British Journal of Criminology Advance Access originally published online on September 2, 2006
British Journal of Criminology 2007 47(2):196-213; doi:10.1093/bjc/azl064
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The British Journal of Criminology 47:196-213 (2007)
© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Resistance as Edgework in Violent Intimate Relationships of Drug -Involved Women

Valli Rajah*

* Department of Sociology, John Jay College, City University of New York, 899 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10019, USA; vrajah{at}jjay.cuny.edu.

Intimate relationships marked by partner violence are also characterized by sociological ambivalence—the incompatible and sometimes contradictory normative expectations and privileges granted to each partner in the relationship. This ethnographic interview study of poor, minority, drug-involved women in violent relationships examines one mode of response to this sociological ambivalence: edgework-resistance. ‘Edgework’ describes volitional risk-taking activities in which individuals court physical injury but deploy context-specific expertise to avoid it. As applied to situations of intimate partner violence (IPV), edgework-resistance gives oppressed women the opportunity to experience the embodied rewards of self-authorship. This paper explores how edgework may be differentiated across gender, class and race, and it refines the resistance concept by specifying both when resistance is likely to occur and what the specific rewards of resistance may be.


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