Wife Battering, Injury, and Vietnamese Women in a Globalizing World
Principal Investigator: Lynn Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., Department of Anthropology
Institution: Colorado State University

Abstract
The goal of this study is to develop a more culturally specific understanding of Vietnamese women’s experiences associated with acquiring and treating injuries and other health problems derived from wife battering in Denver and Vietnam. The achievement of this goal can aid in developing improved health care and other services for battered Vietnamese women. This research project addresses the Colorado Injury Control Research Center’s (CICRC’s) priority topic area of violence, as it proposes to evaluate the health consequences of intimate partner violence, which may include sexual violence, and to learn about cultural ideologies and social norms that support intimate partner violence.

The broader goals of this project are to contribute to advancing our understanding of the injuries and health consequences of this form of interpersonal violence among members of an understudied population, preventing wife battering, reducing injuries resulting from wife battering, and improving the health and social services available to Vietnamese battered women. These goals build on the mission of the CICRC to, first, influence the reduction of injuries from wife battering through greater understanding and awareness of the violence and the severe health consequences of the battering, and second, alleviate the adverse consequences of injuries. In regard to the latter, the research will address ways that health and social services may be optimally accessed by injured Vietnamese battered women. The findings from this study will also be used to prepare grants to conduct long-term research focusing on prevention of wife battering and alleviation of injuries derived from wife battering among Vietnamese couples.

Outcomes
Presentations
Kwiatkowski, L., Battering and the Changing Dynamic of Health Care in Viet Nam, Connections, Colorado State University, February 12, 2008

Kwiatkowski, L., Transnationalism and Gender Violence: Locating Discourses of Domestic Violence in Viet Nam, International Conference: Modernities and Dynamics of Tradition in Vietnam: Anthropological Approaches, December 15-18, 2007

Kwiatkowski, L., Negotiating Global Discourses of Gender Violence: International Health and Wife Battering in Viet Nam, Anthropology Graduate Student Society, Colorado State University, September 28, 2007