Violent networks: The origin and management of domestic conflict.

Abstract

A tween two individuals. One person annoys or offends another, who retaliates aggressively. The party who has been attacked may respond in kind or may rely exclusively on nonviolent means to bring the confrontation to an end; in either case, it may seem to onlookers that there is a principal aggressor and a principal victim. If third parties are present or are invoked, they may intervene in reaction to the event that the two antagonists have brought about, but their involvement is incidental and remedial. When domestic violence is seen in this way, its occurrence may appear rooted solely in the personalities or characteristics of the two parties most immediately involved or in the nature of the relationship between them.The principal argument of this chapter is that a better understanding of domestic violence-and, by extension, of violence more generally-requires a recognition of the crucial role played at every stage by people other than the immediate combatants. Human beings in the real world are embedded in extensive social networks and are continually For helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter, I thank

Types of Conjugal Networks, Conjugal Conflict and Conjugal Quality

“…Thus, one important result of this study is that contextual unbalance is critical for couple functioning. A likely explanation for this effect is that unicentric networks may increase tensions between spouses in cases of conflict because of unbalanced third parties involvement (Baumgartner, 1993;Burger and Milardo, 1995;Klein and Milardo, 2000).…”

“…It has been hypothesized that the spouse with greater support from his or her network, does better than the other (Baumgartner, 1993). Alternatively, network types might be more influential for women than for men as women are more involved in kinship connections: they report larger networks of relatives and greater contact and exchange with them (Coenen Huther et al, 1994;Johnson, 2000).…”

Situational determinants in intimate partner violence

“…In her review of the cross-cultural ethnographic literature on domestic conflict, Baumgartner (1993) concludes that the evidence ''indicates that the likelihood that a man will resort to violent self-help varies systematically with the amount of support that he and his wife are able to generate within their larger social networks'' (p. 213). The strength and intimacy of social ties is important in determining the type of involvement that third parties may have with couples experiencing IPV.…”

Aggressive suicide

“…There is thus variation even within intimate conflicts. We can explain some of this variation by accounting for other dimensions of the conflict structure, such as the relative status of the adversaries, or their relationships with third parties (see, e.g., Baumgartner, 1992). But for the development and testing of theory to proceed, we also require more fine-grained analysis of the structure of intimate conflicts.…”