Introduction
Domestic violence is a repeated behavior of abuse by an individual on another both in a close intimate relationship like cohabitation or marriage. Since Dmestic violence is a form of social interaction, it is studied as an issue of interest as it’s a dysfunction in interaction and communication between two people. Domestic violence has been mainly experienced by wives from their husbands, but in current times even husbands are experiencing physical and verbal abuse from their wives. Understanding it as a social problem will entail first delving into concepts like sociology and the sociological imagination and what they mean in the context of the society.
Definitions
Sociology and Sociological Imagination
Sociology is a social science that studies humans and their social behavior, origin of social behavior, organizations, development and institutions that entail and govern this social behavior. It does this by employing scientific and empirical investigations (Ashley & Orenstein, 2005), and critical thought as they develop theories to explain this behavior. Social imagination is a concept in sociology defined by (Mills, 1959) as the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society. It is whereby an individual can pull himself away from a certain circumstance or situation and view it from another viewpoint, viewing the circumstance in terms of a social context; how certain things interrelate and affect each other. One can apply this social imagination to any activity.
It allows the sociologist to perceive an instance in any daily behavior as an avenue for people to interact or in a socio-economic sense while looking at the trade and exchange of goods and services, or even future predictions of causes of certain things. (Giddens, 1991) Looking at domestic violence from a sociological aspect and incorporating sociological imagination will help sociologists or researchers to understand its dynamics, its causes, why it’s prevalent in current society and eventually develop ways to prevent it.
Thesis statement
Literature Review
This section seeks to look at domestic violence and make clear distinctions about what it entails and clarifying some of the misconceptions associated with domestic violence. It will also look into various studies before done in domestic violence, compare or contrast methods and findings while also highlighting differences in dissimilar sources. In common daily communication, when one speaks of domestic violence, the other listener almost immediately concludes that the speaker is speaking of a husband physically or verbally abusing his wife or his woman. Although this is true but is not the only type violence between two partners. Changing times have introduces homosexual partners, cohabitation or women abusing their partners. This has resulted in a reevaluation of domestic violence.
Aspects of Domestic Violence
Johnson, 1995, 2000a proposes that domestic violence is based on four primary outline of partner violence namely: common partner violence whereby one partner physically bursts out on the other partner, or they both lash out on each other. Violent resistance that refers to self-defense in the face of physical or verbal abuse, intimate terrorism and joint violent power. (Follingstad, Rutledge, Berg, Hause&Polek, 1990) Support the outline of intimate terrorism whereby emotional abuse endured by women slowly changes women’s self-perceptions and views of their relationships negatively. To an extreme point where they self-worth reduces drastically, and they become trapped in an abusive relationship, believing that they deserve the abuse they receive (Browne, Williams & Dutton, 1999) as they look at violent resistance put forward that the only women who show violent resistance are those that kill their husbands. A standpoint that (Johnson, 1995, 2000a) differs by stating that women in abusive relationships show self-defense irrespective of whether they kill their husbands or not.
Joint violent power is the other outline that is visible when both partners are ferocious, aggressive and controlling, similar to two terrorists in an intimate relationship, in combat for control of the relationship. Prior, control was perceived as a masculine domain, and it was only to belong to the husband, but as culture has evolved and society has become more modernized. The female community has become empowered so much that they can compete for control as it is today not defined by gender; both men and women can fight for it. But because the men are fit physically, have more muscle and are stronger than their female counterparts the women tend to lose the fight for control and end up being the submissive partner in the relationship.
Coherent Argument.
Literature review of research done in domestic violence, especially on the definition, and the different aspects that give to its definition has influenced the writing of this paper. This paper will focus on domestic violence also known as intimate partner violence, where an individual experiences physical, emotional or verbal abuse from their partner. This is in a marriage set up or courtship or a dating context. It will delve into the acts employed by an individual to gain control over the partner’s behavior. The fact that domestic violence is between two people in an intimate relationship shows that it’s a social problem, not an individual problem.
Domestic Violence, a social problem
Social in that it affects two people as partners and eventually trickles to the society, causing stress in the family subsystem, in the macro system as the institution of marriage becomes faulty; the mesosystem as husband and wife are unproductive in their workplaces and displace their anger and aggression on others in the workplace, creating a non-conducive work environment. Domestic violence also has an impact on children; it results in juvenile delinquency in children below the age of eighteen. These children engage in violent behavior, truancy, aggressive arguments and fights with others in school to express and displace the stress they are experiencing in school. Also in school work they begin to perform poorer than they use to causing a decline in their grades. Within very little time, students who were obedient and productive and co-operative in school turn to become disobedient, aggressive and uncooperative; generally difficult to deal with. Therefore, it is a social problem as it affects all the systems in the society.
Methodology
(Jacobson and Gottman, 1998) conducted an experiment on couples, who identified themselves as being in violent abusive relationships. In addition, Gottman and Jacobson had identified and described the male spouses as violent, emotionally and physically abusive. Over and above interviewing them, the two administered psychological testing on the couples and carried out objective observation on the couples in a laboratory physiologically as they argued. Findings from this experiment concluded that there are various typologies of male batterers. This provided empirical evidence for Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart who stated that in domestic violence, there are varied types of male batterers namely dysphoric-borderline, normally-brutal-antisocial and family only (Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart, 1994). This was a scientific approach objective, testable, reliable and valid as compared to employing non-experimental approaches like ex post facto and case studies that are less scientific.
Symbolic Interactionist Theory
The theoretical framework that would explain domestic violence by men on their partners would be symbolic interactionism. This theory delves into the society and seeks to find out the different subjective meanings that people have attached to events, person, behavior or certain objects. These meanings dictate how people will behave in relation to the object or event or person. (Anderson & Taylor, 2009) As the man physically abuses his partner, he desires to control his wife’s behavior that she only acts how he wants her to act. In addition to control, the man also wants to instill fear in his wife that will result in unquestionable submission and obedience from his wife. After consistent physical, verbal and emotional abuse from the husband, the wife begins to perceive her husband as a symbol of fear, eliciting fear and unquestionable obedience and submission from her.
Functionalist and conflict theories
The functionalist theory would not clearly explain domestic violence. Functionalist theory proposes that every subsystem or interaction serves a particular specific function in the macro system of society that influences the proper functioning of this macro system and the harmony of the society. Domestic violence doesn’t serve any beneficial or unifying purpose it the society it actually serves to disintegrate the society and cause imbalance it the marriage institution. It fragments the society rather that unifying it. On the other hand, the conflict theory proposes that people and systems within the society are in constant conflict for the meager resources that are perishing; thus people will do anything and everything to reach the inaccessible resources. This eventually results in the breakdown of society into the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ where the ‘haves’ have the resources and oppress the ‘have-nots’ so that they may not get the resources while the have-nots are always striving with all their might to reach the resources. This is not the case in domestic violence; the husband abuses the wife to force her to submission out of fear and not to acquire certain meager perishable resources. The wife is coerced by her husband to unquestionable obedience, not because of any unavailable resources, but for the man to have control over her..
Conclusion
Over time, domestic violence has become one of the social evils that affect the functioning of society, in its lesser subsystems and in the mesosystem of the society. Thus, sociologists have taken up the social evil as a subject of interest; they have come up with different aspects within this social evil and researched into all aspects, providing the sociological discipline with more knowledge about domestic violence. Influenced by these discoveries over time sociologists can now investigate possible ways in dealing with the domestic violence and ways of even preventing it among couples. This would greatly contribute to the stability of the marriage institution and the proper functioning of the society. This knowledge gained from sociological research can be used in a multidisciplinary approach. These include people in other professions such as the field of psychology, communication, relations and other social sciences and humanities. This knowledge is helpful in finding solutions to domestic violence and effective treatment strategies for people, who are in abusive relationships, or people who have been affected by domestic violence such as battered women and men and children who have grown up in abusive homes.
Reference
Anderson, M.L. and Taylor, H.F. (2009). Sociology: The Essentials. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Ashley D, Orenstein DM (2005). Sociological theory: Classical statements (6th ed.). Boston, Massachusetts, USA: Pearson Education. pp. 3–5, 32–36.
Follingstad, D. R., Bradbury, T. N., Arias, I., Byrne, C. A., &Karney, B.R. (1997). Marital violence, marital distress, and attributions.Journal of Family Psychology,11, 367-372
Giddens, A. (1991). Introduction to Sociology. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.
Holtz-Munroe, A., & Stuart, G. L. (1994).Typologies of male batterers: Three subtypes and the differences between them. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 476-497
Jacobson, N., &Gottman, J. (1998).When men batter women: New Insights into ending abusive relationships. New York: Simon &Schusster.
Mills, W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
