The Act of Listening to “Battered” Women: An Ethnographic Comparison of Police and Emergency Responses in São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

In the context of increasing prosecution by victims of domestic violence, this article compares professionals' responses to specific cases in two different institutional settings in São Paulo, women's police stations and hospital emergency services. The article focuses on the first encounter of victims with policewomen and health care popular legal advocates. We take "interpretive relativism" (Geertz 1983) as a fundamental framework for comparing, ethnographically, two contrasting cognitive methods for adjudicating truth to the events narrated by the victims: the skeletonization of facts, typical of police officials, and the schematization of social action, typical of human rights practitioners. We conclude that while policewomen are ambivalent regarding women's capacity to decide for themselves how to use the legal resources offered to them, popular legal advocates, in contrast, seek to empower women by improving their capacity to make well-informed decisions.No contexto de judicialização crescente por parte das vítimas de violência doméstica, este artigo compara as respostas dadas por profissionais a casos específicos em dois contextos institucionais diferentes, delegacias de defesa da mulher e serviços de emergência hospitalar, ambos situados em São Paulo. O artigo tem como foco o primeiro encontro das vítimas com policiais e promotoras legais populares. Toma-se o "relativismo interpretativo" (Geertz 1983) como abordagem teórica fundamental para comparar, etnograficamente, dois métodos cognitivos diferentes de estabelecer a verdade aos eventos narrados pelas vítimas: a simplificação dos fatos, típica da prática policial, e a esquematização da ação social, típica dos defensores dos direitos humanos. Concluímos que, se bem, as policiais são ambivalentes a respeito da capacidade das vítimas de decidir por si mesmas como utilizar os recursos legais a elas oferecidos; as promotoras legais populares buscam empoderar as vítimas melhorando a capacidade delas para tomar decisões bem informadas.Police stations and hospital emergency units are the places to which people turn in situations of extreme vulnerability. However, making use of these services may have different implications. From the victim's point of view, it entails recognizing the legitimacy of one or both institutions for conflict resolution, once other means have been attempted or dismissed as possible immediate responses. From the institution's perspective, offering these services means to give political status to police and health care, once domestic violence has been recognized as a public policy issue requiring special treatment.We discuss the nuances implied in the immediate responses to female victims of violence made by two different kinds of female public officers: policewomen and popular legal advocates (promotoras legais populares or PLPs). We focus our analysis on the performance of these practitioners in two different institutional settings: three women's police stations (delegacias de defesa da mulher or DDMs), one located in downtown São Paul...