Co-Creating Ethical Understandings Through Outsider Witnessing

This research project seeks to examine ethical dilemmas faced by practitioners who work with men who have used intimate partner violence (IPV). The study is informed by a Foucauldian conception of power. The research explores how the workers’ reflections on power and ethics give them insight into the journeys towards accountability that their clients undertake. Methodologically, the study adopts narrative inquiry combined with outsider witnessing methods, which allow an audience of participants to listen to one participant be interviewed about an ethical dilemma, and explore what things resonated with them in the story; what accounted for this resonance within the life or practice of the witness; what these things indicate about the values, ethics, or politics of the storyteller; and where the witness has been transported as a result of hearing the story. Findings indicated that this process contributes to a relational understanding of ethics through soliciting shared experiences, feelings, and values; by causing participants to reflect on past experiences differently; and by descriptions of values, ethics, and power as active and relational processes. Insight into the clients’ pursuits of accountability arose through reflections on the experiences of clients, the process of change, and an understanding of shared navigations of power relations with clients. The study recommends that those working with men in IPV intervention consider building a regular practice connecting with others doing similar work in order to co-create shared ethics and mutual support around the pursuit of those ethics.