RUI: Violence and the Law

9320009梅里：合法和非法暴力之间的界限是由文化界定的，并在历史上不断变化。通过涉及家庭暴力的法庭案件，法律不仅界定了什么构成犯罪暴力，而且界定了什么构成亲密关系中男女的适当行为。为了研究法院在加强或挑战性别和暴力的文化意义方面所发挥的作用，本项目研究了140年来单一地方法院处理家庭暴力案件的方式变化。数据将通过详细研究法庭记录和观察法庭工作人员处理案件来收集。法庭记录表明，在这段时间内，受害者如何描述家庭暴力，施暴者如何为其辩护，法官如何决定是否接受家庭暴力。人种学研究将记录这些案件目前是如何处理的，以及法院官员、被告和受害者现在是如何思考和谈论殴打妻子的。研究的地点是夏威夷种植园区的一个小镇，这里经历了美国殖民主义，现在拥有一个多元文化的社区。

9320009 MERRY The boundary between legitimate and illegitimate violence is culturally defined and historically changing. Through court cases involving domestic violence, the law defines not only what constitutes criminal violence but also what constitutes appropriate behavior for men and women in intimate relationships. In order to examine the role courts play in reinforcing or challenging cultural meanings about gender and violence, this project studies the changing ways domestic violence cases are handled in a single local court over a period of 140 years. Data will collected through a detailed study of court records and observation of court officials as they process cases. Court records indicate how domestic violence is described by victims, justified by batterers, and determined to be acceptable or not by judges over this time period. The ethnographic research will document how these cases are currently being handled and how court officials, defendants, and victims now think and talk about wife battering. The location of the study, a small town in the plantation region of Hawai'i, is one which has experienced American colonialism and now has a culturally plural community.