Overview

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.

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9781555536947

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Reviews

Johnson's compelling distinction between intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence has been the most influential of the typologies proposed in the past two decades. In this volume, Johnson lays the case for his thesis that the past forty years of domestic violence research have generated misleading and contradictory findings because researchers have failed to recognize distinctions between these types. The clarity and brevity of his argument and the liveliness of his style make this book an excellent choice for students and researchers who want to understand domestic violence typologies. Contemporary Sociology

This book makes several valuable contributions to the literature on domestic violence. . . . Johnson's book is well written and engaging. It is highly recommended reading for undergraduates, graduate students, academics, and policy makers interested in creating prevention and intervention services for domestic violence. -- Gender and Society Johnson's compelling distinction between intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence has been the most influential of the typologies proposed in the past two decades. In this volume, Johnson lays the case for his thesis that the past forty years of domestic violence research have generated misleading and contradictory findings because researchers have failed to recognize distinctions between these types. The clarity and brevity of his argument and the liveliness of his style make this book an excellent choice for students and researchers who want to understand domestic violence typologies. -- Contemporary Sociology 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 Michael Johnson presents a thought-provoking argument for why existing research on intimate partner violence conflates several different phenomena, thus failing to adequately understand the issue. By separating types of intimate partner violence into the three categories, intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence, Johnson argues that existing tensions in the research can be reconciled. -- Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law, and Justice

""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 ""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 ""This book makes several valuable contributions to the literature on domestic violence. . . . Johnson's book is well written and engaging. It is highly recommended reading for undergraduates, graduate students, academics, and policy makers interested in creating prevention and intervention services for domestic violence.""--Gender and Society ""Michael Johnson presents a thought-provoking argument for why existing research on intimate partner violence conflates several different phenomena, thus failing to adequately understand the issue. By separating types of intimate partner violence into the three categories, intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence, Johnson argues that existing tensions in the research can be reconciled.""--Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law, and Justice ""Johnson's compelling distinction between intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence has been the most influential of the typologies proposed in the past two decades. In this volume, Johnson lays the case for his thesis that the past forty years of domestic violence research have generated misleading and contradictory findings because researchers have failed to recognize distinctions between these types. The clarity and brevity of his argument and the liveliness of his style make this book an excellent choice for students and researchers who want to understand domestic violence typologies.""--Contemporary Sociology ""[Johnson's] writing style is clear, and those with baccalaureate degrees can understand the work. Adequately referenced and indexed. For libraries supporting programs with an interest in feminism. . . . Recommended.""--Choice ""Johnson and Stark establish the empirical basis for the feminist position that physical violence in the context of an abusive relationship is harmful because, in addition to injuring women's bodies, it is persistent, threatening, and ultimately coercive, and therefore erodes women's personhood. They both incorporate insights from feminist research into defining and understanding partner perpetrated violent acts and injurious outcomes in a gendered world. Johnson and Stark both offer feminist sociologists important tools for the 'conscious reformulation of the nature of sexual violence' for which Bumiller calls. Their books should be widely read and debated and are appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses, especially in criminology, social research methods, and of course violence and gender.""--Gender & Society

Johnson's compelling distinction between intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence has been the most influential of the typologies proposed in the past two decades. In this volume, Johnson lays the case for his thesis that the past forty years of domestic violence research have generated misleading and contradictory findings because researchers have failed to recognize distinctions between these types. The clarity and brevity of his argument and the liveliness of his style make this book an excellent choice for students and researchers who want to understand domestic violence typologies. --Contemporary Sociology

Johnson s compelling distinction between intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence has been the most influential of the typologies proposed in the past two decades. In this volume, Johnson lays the case for his thesis that the past forty years of domestic violence research have generated misleading and contradictory findings because researchers have failed to recognize distinctions between these types. The clarity and brevity of his argument and the liveliness of his style make this book an excellent choice for students and researchers who want to understand domestic violence typologies. Contemporary Sociology

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

Author Information

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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