A Typology of Domestic Violence: Intimate Terrorism, Violent Resistance, and Situational Couple Violence (Northeastern Series on Gender, Crime, and Law) [Paperback]

Michael P. Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Northeastern Series on Gender, Crime, and Law | Publication Date: June 30, 2008

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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

Review

"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 )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Northeastern (June 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555536948
• ISBN-13: 978-1555536947
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #276,122 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #95 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Abuse & Self Defense > Domestic Violence

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Understanding different kinds of partner violence, February 16, 2011

By 

Toni Mclean "www.thinktwiceprogram.net" (Mittagong, Bowral Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Typology of Domestic Violence: Intimate Terrorism, Violent Resistance, and Situational Couple Violence (Northeastern Series on Gender, Crime, and Law) (Paperback)

A Typology of Domestic Violence provides a comprehensive and useful coverage of Michael Johnson's categories of partner violence offenders, despite the not insignificant limitation that Johnson has a strong pro-feminist perspective. Johnson has made one of the more useful contributions to the science of understanding partner violence, in particular by identifying that different kinds of surveys of different populations produce very different results with regard to the prevalence and nature of male and female perpetration, a result which was, and still is to some extent, a cause of much controversy in the field. This led to Johnson's 'unifying' explication, which included what any clinician working with high conflict couples would already have known from practise: that much violence between couples is bilateral, if not actually symmetrical, and in these cases issues of power and control are more to do with the nature and stage of the relationship than the external sociopolitical environment of male privilege.

Johnson is in a somewhat awkward position theoretically by holding strongly to the belief that women practise controlling, coercive violence (CCV)(referred to as intimate terrorism in the book), much less often than men. His 'unifying' theory that studies of different populations produce different outcomes leaves him with one foot in the boat of feminist theory and the other in the boat of family violence theory, with his feet an uncomfortable distance apart. Given that studies that identify higher levels of partner violence by women also indicate that women do cause significant injury to male partners (albeit it be at a somewhat lower rate than male violence against female partners), there has to be more consideration given to the possibility of women committing CCV. It can't be minimised as Johnson attempts to do.

However, notwithstanding that, Johnson does provide a useful framework for clinicians in understanding the nature of partner violence that may present, and hence whether or not it is safe or appropriate to proceed with counselling for the couple, separately or together.

The section on separation-initiated violence, though brief and inadequate, does at least raise this as a matter of importance for clinicians working with a victim of partner violence who is on the point of ending the relationship. There are situations where the victim may be at greater risk of violence at or after separation, and this has to be handled very carefully by the clinician and the target of the violence.