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A Typology of Domestic Violence
Intimate Terrorism, Violent Resistance, and Situational Couple Violence
Michael P. Johnson
Northeastern Series on Gender, Crime, and Law
Northeastern University Press
University Press of New England
2008 • 168 pp. 6 figs. 6 x 9"
Criminology / Sociology / Women's Studies
$22.95 Paper, 978-1-55553-694-7
$60.00 Cloth, 978-1-55553-693-0
(Cloth edition is un-jacketed.
Cover illustration is for paperback edition only)
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"This excellent book brings so much to the discourse on intimate partner violence and paves the way for more nuanced, theoretically-driven research, practice, and advocacy. The book is a must read for researchers in the field, and it also can serve as an essential guide for beginning scholars and graduate students on how to be critical consumers of domestic violence research. Overall, the book makes a significant contribution to the violence field." —Journal of Marriage and Family
Reassesses thirty years of domestic violence research and demonstrates three forms of partner violence, distinctive in their origins, effects, and treatments
Domestic violence, a serious and far-reaching social problem, has generated two key debates among researchers. The first debate is about gender and domestic violence. Some scholars argue that domestic violence is primarily male-perpetrated, others that women are as violent as men in intimate relationships. Johnson’s response to this debate—and the central theme of this book—is that there is more than one type of intimate partner violence. Some studies address the type of violence that is perpetrated primarily by men, while others are getting at the kind of violence that women areinvolved in as well. Because there has been no theoretical framework delineating types of domestic violence, researchers have easily misread one another’s studies.
The second major debate involves how many women are abused each year by their partners. Estimates range from two to six million. Johnson’s response once again comes from this book’s central theme. If there is more than one type of intimate partner violence, then the numbers depend on what type you’re talking about.
Johnson argues that domestic violence is not a unitary phenomenon. Instead, he delineates three major, dramatically different, forms of partner violence: intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence. He roots the conceptual distinctions among the forms of violence in an analysis of the role of power and control in relationship violence and shows that the failure to make these basic distinctions among types of partner violence has produced a research literature that is plagued by both overgeneralizations and ostensibly contradictory findings. This volume begins the work of theorizing forms of domestic violence, a crucial first step to a better understanding of these phenomena among scholars, social scientists, policy makers, and service providers.
Endorsements:
“Michael Johnson has written an astonishing volume on domestic violence. The theory is remarkably compelling, the research thorough, the application to advocacy directive. This book is the first to offer researchers and a broad array of practitioners a means to resolve a long-standing dispute that has baffled the field since its inception on the nature of domestic violence and its relation to gender. The book is essential reading and will undoubtedly set the research and policy agenda for the next decade.”—Robert M. Milardo, Editor, Journal of Family Theory and Review, and Professor of Family Relations, University of Maine
“Michael Johnson has added complexity to our understanding of intimate partner violence in a clear and compelling voice. His typology challenges most of the truisms we have accepted and shines a path for more valid research and effective social policy. Everyone who cares about ending intimate partner violence should read this book.”—Kathleen J. Ferraro, Northern Arizona University
Click here for TABLE OF CONTENTS
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MICHAEL P. JOHNSON is Associate Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Women’s Studies, and African and African American Studies at Pennsylvania State University.
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