Sanctions And Sanctuary

Bringing together evidence from 15 Western and non-Western societies - ranging from hunter-gatherers to urban Americans - this book examines wife-beating from a worldwide perspective. Cross-cultural comparison aims to give a more accurate picture of cultural influences on wife-battering and to show the commonalities and differences of the phenomenon across world cultures. The authors offer hypotheses concerning the cultural factors that facilitate or discourage wife-beating. The book is intended for scholars and students in anthropology, women's studies and disciplines such as psychology, sociology, public health, nursing and social work, where both scholarship and clinical practice are concerned with the prevention, treatment and elimination of interpersonal violence.