Gendered discursive practices of the South African police service towards survivors of domestic violence

dc.contributor.authorSinclair, Ingrid Maralene
dc.contributor.co-supervisorVearey, Jo
dc.contributor.supervisorPalmary, Ingrid
dc.date.accessioned2025-04-10T13:07:48Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.descriptionA research report Submitted s submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, In the Faculty of Humanities , School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024
dc.description.abstractThis study explores the reproduction, maintenance and resistance of gendered subjectivities within the discursive practices employed in the policing of gender-based violence (GBV). It examines how historical and socio-political structures shaping asymmetric power relations in society are reproduced in the everyday interactions between police officers and survivors of GBV. The research adopts a socio-historical lens on gendered policing, using an African decolonial feminist intersectional perspective. This approach focuses on the analytical categories of gender, violence, power, and inequality. This approach allowed me to situate the problem of GBV within the legacy of colonial and apartheid violence, where entrenched harmful gendered power dynamics have persisted and are reproduced in contemporary policing through the coloniality of power. By examining how police officials construct gendered power relations and how survivors experience these dynamics, I endeavour to illuminate how the gendered power relations are reproduced, resisted, and maintained in everyday policing in ways that reflect unequal power relations at the interpersonal, institutional, community, and societal levels. This qualitative study uses a bricolage of theories and methodologies embedded in a transdisciplinary approach to design a mosaic of the experiences of police and survivors of the policing of GBV. Using an interpretive phenomenological approach, I conducted an ethnographic study that explored the experiences of survivors and victim advocates at a women’s shelter as well as visible police officials at four police stations in the West Rand, Gauteng. Data collection methods included narrative interviews, informal conversations, participant observation and the analysis of police documents. The data was analysed using a decolonial intersectional narrative analysis and a critical Foucauldian discourse analysis to understand how discursive practices shape gendered subjectivities and power relations. The narratives of participants revealed and/or obscured how gendered subjectivities and intersectional inequalities are constructed, reproduced, resisted and maintained by police officials, survivors, and victim advocates. This study contributes to the growing body of research on the policing of GBV by showing how inequitable gendered power relations are institutionalised and normalised in the police organisational culture and are reproduced through symbolic violence in the everyday discursive practices of the police. By grounding the analysis of policing GBV in an African feminist decolonial intersectional framework this study situates GBV within the context of v colonial/apartheid violence that normalised violence as a means of resolving disputes. A decolonial reading of the policing of GBV reveals how violence became deeply embedded in knowledge regimes that are perpetuated through racism, classism, sexism and other social markers of difference. Additionally, the study draws on the lived experiences of survivors to contribute empirically to the body of knowledge regarding the crafting of a gender-responsive, socially just, and humane policing of GBV.
dc.description.submitterMM2025
dc.facultyFaculty of Humanities
dc.identifier0000-0001-8943-0741
dc.identifier.citationSinclair, Ingrid Maralene . (2024). Gendered discursive practices of the South African police service towards survivors of domestic violence [PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. WIReDSpace.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/44695
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherUniversity of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
dc.rights© 2024 University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
dc.rights.holderUniversity of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
dc.schoolSchool of Social Sciences
dc.subjectUCTD
dc.subjectDiscursive practices
dc.subjectSouth African Police Service
dc.subjectgender-based violence
dc.subjectgendered power relations
dc.subjectdiscourse analysis
dc.subjectintersectional
dc.subjectdecolonial feminism
dc.subject.primarysdgSDG-5: Gender equality
dc.titleGendered discursive practices of the South African police service towards survivors of domestic violence
dc.typeDissertation

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