Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This vitally important volume places the problem of wife beating in a broad cultural context in a search for strategies to reform societies, including our own, that are prone to this pernicious form of violence. Based on first hand ethnographic data on more than a dozen societies, including a number in Oceania, this collection explores the social and cultural factors that work either to inhibit or to promote domestic violence against women. The volume also includes a study of abuse among nonhuman primates and a cross-cultural analysis of the legal aspects of wife beating. By presenting counterexamples from other cultures, contributors challenge Western assumptions about the factors leading to wife beating. Through a close examination of societies where wife beating is infrequent or absent, To Have and To Hit identifies the factors--economic, social, political, and cultural--that must be explored and transformed in order to combat this violence and eventually eliminate it.
Table of Contents
Introduction : definitions, assumptions, themes, and issues / Judith K. Brown -- Wife abuse : does it have an evolutionary origin? / Karen Keljo Tracy and Charles B. Crawford -- Fight! fight! : men, women, and interpersonal aggression in an Australian aboriginal community / Victoria K. Burbank -- Room to maneuver : !Kung women cope with men / Patricia Draper -- All men do it : wife beating in Kaliai, Papua New Guinea / Dorothy Ayers Counts -- Household violence in a Yuat River village / Nancy McDowell -- Why Wape men don't beat their wives : constraints toward domestic tranquility in a New Guinea society / William E. Mitchell -- Factors relating to infrequent domestic violence among the Nagovisi / Jill Nash -- Nudging her harshly and killing him softly : displays of disfranchisement on Ujelang Atoll / Laurence Marshall Carucci -- Spare the rod and spoil the woman? : family violence in Abelam society / Richard Scaglion -- Preventing violence against women : a Central American case / Virginia Kerns -- Men's rights/women's wrongs : domestic violence in Ecuador / Lauris McKee -- Like teeth biting tongue : the proscription and practice of spouse abuse in Mayotte / Michael Lambek -- Wife beating in India : variations on a theme / Barbara Diane Miller -- Wife abuse among Indo-Fijians / Shirleen Lateef -- Wife abuse and the political system : a Middle Eastern case study / Mary Elaine Hegland -- Wife abuse in the context of development and change : a case from Taiwan / Rita S. Gallin -- Sanctions and sanctuary : wife battering within cultural contexts / Jacquelyn C. Campbell -- Women's rights are human rights : international law and the culture of domestic violence / Jean G. Zorn.