Review Essay: Culture, Feminism, and Male Violence

A review article on books by: Elizabeth Pleck, Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Oxford, 1987); Kersti Yllo & Michele Bograd (Eds), Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse (Newbury Park, Calif: Sage, 1988); & Jane Caputi, The Age of Sex Crime (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State U Popular Press, 1987 [see listings in IRPS No. 59]). Historic, methodological, semiotic, & policy analyses toward a theory of male violence are provided. Pleck's history of law & policy problematizes the role of the state in controlling violence. Yllo & Bograd critique positivist methodology, decry the lack of political analysis of violence in creating policy, & present proposals for linking research & praxis. Caputi analyzes serial sex crimes from 1888 to the present, & mass-mediated myths to reveal a political character of the crimes that is founded in patriarchal creation myths. All the authors are faulted for focusing only on the US & GB, & neglecting race, colonization, & global economic policies in theorizing about violence. 10 References. V. Wagener