“God, strengthen my heart”
Creators: name: Bloom, Allison
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2018

description: This dissertation explicates how domestic violence became layered with other forms of violence in the lives of immigrant women from Latin America at a domestic violence crisis center in Connecticut from 2015 to 2016. Through ethnographic research methods including participant observation in support groups, provider interviews, and client life histories, this research illuminates the dynamic and temporal dimensions of experiences with violence, and why recognizing those dimensions is useful for both scholars and practitioners alike. While domestic violence advocacy has evolved from grass-roots activism to more robust, professionalized service provision, the services at this crisis center reflected tensions between neoliberal ties to government and social service funders and the movement’s original feminist roots. These tensions then played out within the ways that the crisis center attempted to provide “culturally competent” services that went beyond these problematic neoliberal demands in the hopes of breaking down barriers for immigrant clients. Yet the embodied needs of immigrant Latina women at this crisis center still went beyond such “culturally competent” considerations. These clients identified how the physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of domestic violence were inextricable from other violent experiences throughout their lives, and how this experience of layered violence was more debilitating with age. At the same time, evangelical Christian clients were able to make sense of their experiences with violence through a spiritual narrative while using these secular services in combination with spiritual practices, ultimately transforming the services they were offered. This integration of resources allowed them to build resilience against the hardships of life and its embodied effects in the long-term. These findings expand understandings of Christianity by highlighting how evangelical beliefs go beyond typical framings of health and wealth, and the power of the dyadic companionship of God in comparison to the individuality of neoliberalism. These findings also indicate that since embodied experiences and embodied relationships to the world accumulate and evolve with age, health ideologies and practices also evolve over time. The research intervenes into studies of structural and gender-based violence by framing domestic violence in terms of aging, disability, and temporality. Thus, this project argues for a “life course competency” perspective, or more ethnographic investigation and practitioner understanding of the debilitating processes by which these forms of violence accumulate on the body, the evolving experience of violence across all stages of life, and the changing strategies through which people find resiliency. By using domestic violence as an entry point into interactions between the body, health, spirituality, violence, gender, and time, these insights offer useful tools for future studies in anthropology as well as insights for practitioners looking to provide better services to immigrant, disabled, and aging survivors of domestic violence.