Rethinking Violence against Women

by Rebecca Emerson Dobash; Russell P. Dobash

• ISBN13: 9780761911869
• ISBN10: 0761911863
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-09-11
• Publisher: Sage Publications

Summary

This cutting-edge volume advances theories, methodologies and policy analyses relating to various forms of violence against women. Topics covered include: the nature, importance and variety of cultural contexts in which violence occurs, is reproduced and may be challenged or changed; the nature and variety of sexualized violence; and a range of theoretical perspectives on perpetrators of violence.Taking an interdisciplinary focus on issues that affect community and state responses, the book includes individual accounts, and incorporates themes related to authority, sexual proprietariness, asymmetry of violence, socialization, patterns and deviations of victims and offenders, and social and cultural contexts.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
1. Cross-Border Encounters: Challenges and Opportunities	1	(22)
Rebecca Emerson Dobash
Russell P. Dobash
Violence(s), Concepts, and Definitions	4	(2)
Working Across Disciplines	6	(2)
Methods of Study	8	(1)
The Importance of Context	9	(1)
The Extent of Violence Against Women	10	(1)
Physical and Sexual Attacks on the Body: Definitions of "What Counts," "Marking" the Body, and "Making" the Person	11	(3)
Intimate Violence in the Context of Violence in the Wider Society	14	(1)
The Violent Event, Masculinity, and the Context of Male Culture	15	(1)
Constructing Gender Through Violence, Enacting Gender Through Violence	16	(7)
2. Rethinking Survey Research on Violence Against Women	23	(30)
Holly Johnson
Traditional Crime-Victim Surveys	25	(1)
The Conflict Tactics Approach	26	(3)
The Violence Against Women Survey	29	(5)
Constructing Definitions of Violence	34	(3)
The Prevalence of Violence Against Women	37	(4)
Test of a Theory of Assaults on Wives	41	(9)
Summary	50	(3)
3. Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls: An Approach to an International Overview	53	(24)
Liz Kelly
Jill Radford
Emergence and Development of Issues	54	(2)
Definitions	56	(7)
Power and Male Domination	63	(1)
Offenders and Male Sexual Aggression	64	(3)
Impacts and Consequences	67	(3)
Institutional and Social Responses	70	(3)
Normalization and Resistance	73	(4)
4. Violence Embodied? Circumcision, Gender Politics, and Cultural Aesthetics	77	(34)
Janice Boddy
Practices and the Literature	81	(12)
Marriageability and Identity: Toward a Concept of Embodiment	93	(4)
On the Politics of Aesthetics	97	(11)
Conclusion	108	(3)
5. Violence Against Women in Societies Under Stress	111	(30)
Monica McWilliams
What Constitutes Violence Against Women in Conflictual Societies?	112	(2)
Violence Against Women in Conflict Situations	114	(5)
Violence Against Women in the Family	119	(10)
Political Conflict and Domestic Violence: The Example of Northern Ireland	129	(8)
Conclusion	137	(4)
6. Violent Men and Violent Contexts	141	(28)
Rebecca Emerson Dobash
Russell P. Dobash
Violent Acts and Violent Actors	143	(12)
The Constellation of Violence: Violence, Injuries, and Controlling Behaviors	155	(9)
Men, Masculine Identity, and Violence	164	(5)
7. The Hand That Strikes and Comforts: Gender Construction and the Tension Between Body and Symbol	169	(30)
Eva Lundgren
The Symbols of Violence or the Aesthetics of the Gender Battle? A Symbolic Field Based on Bodily Movement and Contact	171	(7)
The Masculine Symbolic Trinity: The Hand, the Strap, and the Phallus	178	(2)
Women's Sexual Morphology of Touch as a Symbolic Basis	180	(3)
Striking and Comforting--or the Hand as a Constitutive Category	183	(2)
A Violent Sex Life: Regulative Flexibility and Basic Constitutive Patterns	185	(3)
"The Stone" and "The Sea": "Different" or "The Same"?	188	(1)
"Different" Contents--"The Same" Function?	189	(2)
The Division Between the Bodily and the Symbolic "Self"--The Strategy of the Abused Woman	191	(3)
The Body as a Category for Change?	194	(2)
Conclusion: A More Open Approach to Gender Theory?	196	(3)
8. Lethal and Nonlethal Violence Against Wives and the Evolutionary Psychology of Male Sexual Proprietariness	199	(32)
Margo Wilson
Martin Daly
Psychological Links Between Sexual Proprietariness and Violence	202	(5)
An Evolutionary Psychological Framework for Understanding Links Between Male Sexual Proprietariness and Violence Against Wives	207	(7)
Hypotheses About Patterned Variations in Male Sexual Proprietariness and Violence	214	(10)
Violence Against Wives and Children	224	(4)
Concluding Remarks	228	(3)
References	231	(20)
Index	251	(20)
About the Editors	271	(2)
About the Contributors	273