Gender,Work, and Intimate Violence: Men's Occupational Violence Spillover and Compensatory Violence

Researchers have rarely studied the effects of occupations on intimate violence, only occasionally distinguishing between blue‐collar and white‐collar work, and generally finding higher rates of reported abuse in the former group. This research incorporates ideas from feminist, work‐family, and power or resource theories to examine the potential effects of occupations on men's violence toward wives and cohabiting female partners. Data from the 1988 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) were analyzed using logistic regression techniques. Hypotheses related to occupational spillover and compensation were tested with results suggesting that men in physically violent, female‐dominated, professional specialty, and dangerous occupations are more likely to use violence against female partners, net of other commonly hypothesized predictors. The findings suggest that more detailed occupational data should be collected in future intimate violence research.     

Language,Violence, and Queer People

Summary

The lives of queer people are too frequently filled with violence—physical attacks, social discrimination, and hate-filled verbal assaults. Language serves multiple purposes in the violence that is directed at queers. While the words themselves become instruments of psychological harm, they, in turn, are used to rationalize or justify acts of physical violence and social discrimination (Pierce, 1990). To analyze the issues regarding queer people, social discourse, and violence, this essay addresses: communication rules about queers and a formula for change in the discourse; the history of changing labels and meaning; enforcers of the dominant discourse and its rules of communication; and the role social workers should play in challenging and shaping the discourse.     

Conflict,Power, and Violence in Families

Research on conflict, power, and violence in families in the 2000s developed a promising focus on the interconnections between types of violence and between the experience of violence and locations in larger structures of power and inequality. I examine research on poly‐victimization, typologies of violence, dyadic research, and links between violence and inequalities of gender, race, class, and sexual orientation. Additionally, this review evaluates research on the connections between violence in families and other arenas of family study, including teen pregnancy, marriage formation, cohabitation, and divorce. The review concludes with a discussion of studies showing declines in rates of abuse within families in the 2000s.     

Victimization and Violence: An Exploration of the Relationship Between Child Sexual Abuse,Violence, and Delinquency

Child sexual abuse (CSA) continues to be a major public health issue with significant short- and long-term consequences. However, little contemporary research has examined the relationship between CSA and delinquent and violent behavior in adolescence. Children who have been sexually abused experience a unique form of victimization compared to children who have endured other forms of maltreatment, as CSA can result in feelings of shame, powerlessness and boundary violations. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of CSA on delinquent and violent behavior in adolescence. We examined self-report data at the age 18 interview from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN) on measures of sexual abuse experience, and engagement in delinquent and violent behavior in the past year. All participants reported either a history of maltreatment or were identified at-risk based on demographic risk factors. Participants included 368 males and 445 females who self-reported experiences of CSA and delinquent and violent behavior (N = 813). Findings indicated that, when controlling for gender and race, the odds of engagement in delinquent and violent behavior for those who have experienced CSA are 1.7 times higher than for those who have not. Additionally, female victims of CSA were .52 times less likely to engage in violent and delinquent behavior compared to their male counterparts. Further efforts are needed to examine the effects of CSA on violent and delinquent behavior to better guide treatment efforts that prevent juvenile justice involvement.     

Violence,fear of crime,and Islam scepticism

Many authors have raised the question whether Islam scepticism is different from more general expressions of xenophobia. This paper argues that in order to give the thesis of a differentiation between these attitudes a fair chance (1) it should be tested among the more highly educated part of the population, and (2) the analysis should include controls for determinants that might be specific to Islam scepticism. Therefore this contribution researches the specificity of Islam scepticism among first-year university students. Five forms of prejudice are distinguished, alongside Islam scepticism. It is observed: (1) that Islam scepticism is empirically distinct from those forms of prejudice; (2) that there are nonetheless very strong relationships between the different forms of prejudice and Islam scepticism, and the latter is to a large extent determined by more general forms of prejudice; (3) yet, even when such influences are taken into account, the latter attitude is still additionally influenced by feelings of insecurity.     

Violence,Networks, and International Migration from Colombia

Although Colombia is a major country of emigration, little is known about its citizens' motivations for migration. Social and economic conditions have been studied as determinants of migration, but violence has received less attention. We examine how social networks and violence function to promote emigration from Colombia by linking event‐history data from the Latin American Migration Project to external data on violence and economic conditions. We show that emigration is more likely to be initiated by those with higher education, those with network connections to migrants, and during periods of greater violence and increased police presence. Although violence acts powerfully to determine when people migrate, the geographic distribution of social capital determines where they go. Not surprisingly, migrants go to locations where people in their social networks are currently living or have been earlier.     

Abjection and Organization: Men, Violence, and Management

This paper explores case material to show theextent to which non-organizational experiences ofviolence can shape subsequent behavior withinorganizations. These connections are not commonlyconsidered either in the study of organizational behavioror of managerial practice, because behaviors from otherarenas, adaptations, and responses, can be reproducedmany years away from the source of anxiety. These behaviors are widespread, patterned, cyclical,and carry an inevitability about them that cannot bemodified simply by changing behavior alone. The paperconcentrates on examples where the extent ofpathological behavior is easilyseen, but the processes whichsurface are common mechanisms of ordinary human behaviorand more attenuated experiences of violence withinorganizations operate similarly. These processes are discussed through the work of objectrelations theorists, Julia Kristeva, and recenttheorists of masculinity, arguing that bureaucraciesseek to deny the emotional dimension of their behaviorand decision-making which creates emotion as an abject phenomenon,denied but present, ever potentially resurgent, neveraddressed as reality. Men are caught up in this web ofsocietal and organizational denial because of their traditional dominance in formalorganizations and the historical association ofmasculinity and rationality, compounded by the dynamicsof male psychology. However traditional symbolicassociations between men and physical violence introduce aproblematic contradiction, and societal, cultural, andorganizational arrangements tend to support andfacilitate the psychodynamics of denial which deals with this contradiction by producing narcissisticand addictive responses. This is illustrated by adiscussion of film, novel, and biographical data. Thepaper finally argues that men in organizations need to come to terms with the unacceptable inthemselves and their experience in order to break thiscycle of reproduction of dysfunctionalbehavior.     

Neighborhood Norms,Disadvantage, and Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration

Most theoretical treatments of intimate partner violence (IPV) focus on individual‐level processes. More recently, scholars have begun to examine the role of macrolevel factors. Results of that research indicate that social ties facilitate the diffusion of cultural norms—including tolerance of deviance/violence—across neighborhoods. Yet the influence of the neighborhood normative climate extends beyond norms regarding the use of violence, shaping cultural understanding about dating and the opposite sex. Using data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS), the current investigation examines the multilevel association between dating norms and IPV perpetration among a large, diverse sample of adolescents and young adults. Results indicate that individuals’ liberal dating attitudes are associated with IPV perpetration. Furthermore, this effect varies across levels of neighborhood disadvantage.     

Domestic Violence

Summary

Domestic violence in same-sex relationships is still a rarely spoken about phenomenon that occurs far too often. This article explores this heinous behavior as a gross violation of human rights and explores how and why domestic violence may happen. Strategies for professional social work intervention for both the victim and the perpetrator are explored, and myths about same-sex domestic violence are exploded.     

Domestic Violence

ABSTRACT

As our communities and families are faced with the growing problem of violence, more information is needed as to what women in abusive relationships see as challenges that prevent or delay leaving. To address the issue in the brief therapeutic environment, 14 women in counseling for abuse agreed to participate in three task groups and were asked to identify and rank-order the challenges they faced that could prevent them from leaving. Group one included women who had a desire to leave but were not sure they could. Group two consisted of women working on a case plan but who still had concerns; and, the third group contained women who had left the relationship and were expecting not to return. Overall, when analyzing and comparing these groups, all women (regardless of the stage of leaving) expressed similar challenges and concerns. Major themes presented in all groups included: limited resources (e.g., money, shelter, day-care and medical expenses), fears (e.g., fear of being killed, retaliation, being alone, making the wrong choices, the unknown), commitment to the relationship, concern for children, love for the abuser and other emotional issues. These challenges are discussed and specific applications to facilitate practice are made.     

Rethinking Gender and Violence: Agency,Heterogeneity, and Intersectionality

This paper is a consideration of the increasing diversity of images of gender violence and its victims, as both the grassroots antiviolence activists, and the scholars of the movements and the violence that inspires the activism, engage with cultural codes and feeling rules that tend to narrow the criteria for what constitutes gender violence and victimization. We are coming to better understand that social location, including but not limited to positions within patriarchal systems of stratification, shapes violence and victimization in many different ways. Since the inception of the women’s movement, the discourse of victimization has grappled with the implications of constructing ‘pure victims’, and despite the tremendous progress in the resources available to survivors of gender violence, we find the tensions between victimization and agency, and between simplicity and complexity, reemerging repeatedly in the stories victims, activists, and scholars tell about this social problem. Below, we review the sociological research and activism, in conjunction with the collective narratives in the social movements against gender violence, to show how the issues of perceptions of women who are framed as victims began and remain central to feminist research in this area. We also explore the newest visions of gender violence, that broaden theorizing and activism to include multiple dimensions of inequality and their intersections. Taken together, these debates reveal multifaceted layers of complexity that inform the contexts and lived experience of violence, and that continue to enter into our storytelling.     

Perceptions of Intimate Partner Violence,Age, and Self-Enhancement Bias

Educational programs in human service professions such as social work, criminal justice, psychology, and public administration stress the importance of recognizing domestic/intimate partner violence as well as elder abuse. Students' abilities to recognize domestic violence in older couples have not been well-investigated. In this study, three vignettes were developed (Pat and Lee at age 75, Pat and Lee at age 30, Imagine yourself with Lee at age 75) in which intimate partner violence was perpetrated by the character Lee. Twenty-five items followed each vignette. When the variables of educational standing (graduate/undergraduate), ethnicity, and academic major were controlled, there were significant differences between the vignettes in 14 of 25 items (General Linear Model, F = 1.552, df = 50, p = .012). More than three out of four respondents for each vignette identified this as domestic violence and believed there was potential for serious harm. However, respondents were less likely to believe that a 75-year-old partner would know when to terminate a relationship in which there was intimate partner violence. Respondents who were asked to imagine themselves with Lee at 75 were likely to perceive Lee as more dangerous than respondents for the other vignettes. Implications are considered for educators.     

Community Context,Social Integration Into Family,and Youth Violence

The purpose of this study is to analyze the extent to which neighborhood‐level family structure and feelings of family integration are associated with acts of violence among 16,910 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The results from our hierarchical linear models indicate that adolescents who live in neighborhoods with lower proportions of single‐parent families and who report higher levels of family integration commit less violence. We also find that neighborhood‐level family structure shapes the extent to which social integration into family matters: In neighborhoods that are considered higher risk environments (i.e., contain greater proportions of single‐parent families), family integration is often less effective in deterring youth violence than it is in lower risk environments.     

Motherhood,Myth and Gendered Agency in Political Violence

By building on theoretical insights from poststructuralist feminism and Roland Barthes' mythology framework, this article is offering a nuanced understanding of female agency in political violence by engaging with the visual and the cultural, by using a broader definition of agency in political violence and by analysing what gendered representations of war mean at the domestic level. In the first part of the article, the Myth of Motherhood is conceptualized as a meta-discourse disciplining representations of female agency in political violence. The article then focuses on two specific discourses within the meta-discourse, the Vacant Womb and the Deviant Womb, that inform understandings of gender, agency and political violence in one particular cultural artefact: the British television drama, Britz. The main argument is that motherhood is ‘everywhere’ in representations of female agency in political violence and that it is useful to think about motherhood as a myth. Only this way can we confront underlying norms, values and ideas believed to be common sense and think differently about gender, agency and political violence.