Wife-Battering: Cultural contexts versus western social sciences

This chapter reviews Western social science theories that attempt to explain wife-beating. It attempts to distinguish between wife-beating and wife-battering. The chapter proposes that individual psychological factors within a context of cultural tolerance predict the occurrence of an individual incident of wife-beating, while cultural, political, and economic factors may lead to wife-beating being more frequent and severe. The use of systems theory to explain wife abuse has been most fully articulated and tested by Murray Straus and his associates in an extensive body of research spanning the last ten years. Western social sciences have developed a variety of hypotheses to explain the occurrence of wife-beating. Various forms of stress theory, social learning theory, and exchange theory are currently receiving the most empirical support and attention in psychology. This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book.