Women Leaving Violent Men: Crossroads of Emotion, Cognition and Action

This thesis addresses battered women’s leaving processes. Leaving is conceptualised in a wider sense, i.e. as disentanglement from violent relationships beyond the physical break-up. The general aim of the thesis is to study how emotion and cognition are shaped around the act of leaving. Feminist theory on violence against women and the sociology of emotions are the main theoretical frameworks used to enhance understanding of women’s exiting from violence. The thesis is built on two sets of qualitative interview material with women who have left abusive heterosexual relationships. The material consists of a total of 49 interviews. In Paper I, Why Does She Leave? The Leaving Process(es) of Battered Women, three overlapping leaving processes are described: Breaking Up, Becoming Free and Understanding. Breaking Up covers action, i.e. the physical breakup. Becoming Free covers emotion and involves release from the strong emotional bond that battered women may develop to their batterers. Understanding covers cognition and is a process that entails women defining the relationships they have lived in as abusive and themselves as victimised. In Paper II, A Fool to Keep Staying” – Battered Women Labelling Themselves “Stupid” as an Expression of Gendered Shame, the informants labelling themselves “stupid” is investigated. Feeling stupid for staying in the abusive relationship and “allowing” oneself to be mistreated are the main themes. It is proposed that feeling – and labelling oneself – stupid is an expression of gendered shame and reflects unfinished Understanding processes. In Paper III, Leaving Jekyll and Hyde – Emotion Work in the Context of Intimate Partner Violence, battered women’s emotion work is investigated. The results suggest a process in which victims initially conceptualised abusers as good, but subjection to violence led to a cognitive-emotive dissonance responded to by emotion work. Over time, conceptualisations of abusers shifted from good to bad and efforts were made to change emotions from warm to cold. In Paper IV, Jekyll and Hyde or “Who is this Guy?” – Battered Women’s Interpretations of their Abusive Partners as a Mirror of Opposite Discourses, the informants’ interpretations of their abusers as “Jekyll and Hyde” are analysed against the background of two opposite discourses: the pathology/deviance discourse and the feminist/normality discourse. Complex mixes and combinations of understandings were found in the informants’ interpretations which were, however, dominated by the pathology/deviance discourse. During analysis of the material, a third image emerged, beyond Jekyll and Hyde, i.e. the abusers as “hurt boys”; it was argued this image might prolong the Becoming Free process and serve as a direct impediment to leaving. The results of the thesis indicate that emotion and cognition are interconnected and in process around the act of leaving

Axion minicluster power spectrum and mass function

When Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry breaking happens after inflation, the axion field takes random values in causally disconnected regions. This leads to fluctuations of order one in the axion energy density around the QCD epoch. These over-densities eventually decouple from the Hubble expansion and form so-called miniclusters. We present a semi-analytical method to calculate the average axion energy density, as well as the power spectrum, from the re-alignment mechanism in this scenario. Furthermore, we develop a modified Press & Schechter approach, suitable to describe the collapse of non-linear density fluctuations during radiation domination, which is relevant for the formation of axion miniclusters. It allows us to calculate the double differential distribution of gravitationally collapsed miniclusters as a function of their mass and size. For instance, assuming a PQ scale of $10^{11}$ GeV, minicluster masses range from about $5 \times 10^{-16}$ to $3 \times 10^{-13}$ solar masses and have sizes from about $4\times 10^4$ to $7\times 10^5$ km at the time they start to collapse.Comment: minor changes to the style of figs; corresponds to the version publ in JCAP; 25 pages, 7 figure

Evidences of lay people’s reasoning related to climate change: per country and cross country results

This deliverable is about lay citizens’ reasoning about sustainability, in particular environmental protection and climate change, in various consumption domains, and the relation of this reasoning to the day-to-day lives of the participants. It presents country and cross-country findings from all 18 STAVE trials conducted between May 2011 and February 2012 in all six PACHELBEL partner countries. Analyses demonstrate that participants in the STAVE trials predominantly display a clear awareness that citizen consumption as demonstrated in their everyday practices of energy use, mobility, waste etc. are strongly connected with issues of environmental sustainablility. The STAVE trials also demonstrated that to live sustainably is a daily challenge, and people are often not able to organize their everyday routines in an environmental-friendly manner. Frequently there is a gap between participants’ aspirations and their practical behaviours. Significantly, the group conversations enabled participants to become aware that the self-assessed soundness of their everyday lives in terms of sustainability was at variance from the actual impact of e.g. their energy use or or mobility practices

Guidance on Stimulus Materials

PACHELBEL WP4 “Stimulus Materials” uses findings from WP3 (Policy Assumptions) and from additional sources to prepare stimulus materials for the group-based process “STAVE” implemented in WP5. The output was material to inform and stimulate the group-based process. The material was of two types: a set of questionnaires common to all partners (EVOC/CAPA/SIMI questionnaires), and material that is issue-specific and individually produced for each country. EVOC/CAPA/SIMI short questionnaires serve as a comparative tool between countries, giving insight on the social construction of “sustainable consumption” across the PACHELBEL population. Partners asked participants to fill out the set individually at the first meeting of the STAVE group, results were then analyzed and data were fed back for discussion by group participants at their second meeting. A “re-test” was then conducted at the third of three group meetings. The present report details the representations revealed through this methodology – but moreover the impact of applying such a technique in STAVE groups in France, Germany, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the UK (where the methodology was slightly altered). The issue-and-country-specific material consists of an informative simulated newspaper article on the particular issue addressed in a given STAVE process, and/or other materials (for example, humorous drawings). The report details how this material was developed, and the experience of applying these stimulus materials in each country. On this basis, guidance for future STAVE processes is offered. Foremost among observations is that PACHELBEL stimulus materials serve a purpose that is distinct from that of “group exercises” as developed in WP5. The materials contributing to the formation of a group identity, a reflexive group norm, and a shared information basis. As such, stimulus materials prepare the group for a cooperative investigative process