Family violence in Chile: Political and legal dimensions in a period of democratic transition

Family violence has different cross-cultural and historical meanings. The meanings of family violence in Chile became the focus of public discourse among professionals and policy makers during the transition from a military dictatorship to a democratically elected government. This study analyzes how social scientists and clinical practitioners understood family violence in Chile during this historical period. This review includes exploratory, empirical, and qualitative research studies, as well as transcripts from the family violence legislation that was finally put into place in 1995. The author concurrently interviewed interdisciplinary teams of practitioners to uncover extant and changing family violence discourses. These in-depth interviews explored practitioners' personal, professional, and political ideas about family violence. This study contributes to the field with a contextual and historical analysis of domestic violence interventions in Chile and "decenters" the idea that one context-free method or epistemology can be used to intervene in domestic violence.