The Price of the Ticket

Abstract

This article takes a critical look at the current trend toward applying trauma theory to the understanding of women's experiences of violence and abuse. Multicultural feminist theories and the author's standpoint as a survivor are used to deconstruct pathologizing and exclusionary assumptions implicit in much trauma work. Elements of a survivor-centered approach are articulated and offered as legitimate ways of knowing. This epistemological shift is intended to give researchers and practitioners a more socially contextualized, culturally inclusive, and strengths-oriented understanding of the social distribution of traumatic injury.