Notes Introduction 1 In Britain, for example, we have had surveys on a national level (see Hough and Mayhew, 1983; Chambers and Tombs, 1984; Hough and Mayhew, 1985; Mayhew eta/., 1989; Kinsey and Anderson, 1992; Mayhew eta/., 1993, Mayhew eta/., 1994; Mirrlees-Black eta/., 1996; Mirrlees-Black eta/., 1998) and on a local level (see Kinsey, 1985; Jones eta/., 1986; Lea eta/., 1986; Lea et al., 1988; Painter eta/., 1989; Painter eta/., 1990a; Painter eta/., 1990b; Crawford eta/., 1990; Jones eta/., 1990; Mooney, 1992). 2 Self-complete questionnaires were used in Manchester's Crime Survey of Women for Women (Bains, 1987) and McGibbon et al.'s (1989) survey of domestic violence for Hammersmith and Fulham Council. 3 This framework is derived from that utilized by Young (1981; 1994) in order to analyse traditional and contemporary paradigms of criminological theory and that of Jaggar (1983) in relation to feminist political theory. However, it should be pointed out that this structure will result to some extent in the cre­ ation of ideal types - we must be aware that there are theorists who lack con­ sistency and others whose work falls between the different theoretical strands. 2 Positivism: Scientific Explanations of Violence 1 Other early biological determinist work on female criminality includes that of Adams (1910), Thomas (1923) and Pollak (1950). 2 In Crime: Its Causes and Remedies, Lombroso did, however, comment on other factors that might be relevant. For example, on women and urban crime: 'women are more criminal in the more civilized countries. They are almost always drawn into crime by a false pride about their poverty, by a desire for luxury, and by masculine occupations and education, which give them the means and opportunity to commit crimes such as forgeries, crimes against the laws of the press and swindling' (1918 ed: 54). 3 Prior to this Wilson worked for the Nixon government: in 1972 he was Chair of the National Advisory Council for Drug Abuse Prevention, the prelude to the modern 'War Against Drugs'. 4 However, as we shall see, contemporary positivist accounts of domestic vio­ lence, those of evolutionary theory and the family violence approach - which includes the work of Gelles and Cornell (1985) - confront the fact that domestic violence is much more widespread than traditional individual positivism would countenance. 5 This is not to suggest that all individual positivist explanations of domestic violence support the view that it is predominantly located in the lower socio-economic groups. Gayford (1978), for example, found no class rela­ tionship in his study. 227 228 Notes 6 As we have seen in discussing Lombroso, the application of the basic tenets of evolutionary theory to criminal behaviour in general is not a new idea. Further, as Janet Sayers has pointed out in Biological Politics, evolutionary theory was frequently utilized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to justify sex-role specialization. This is particularly evident in the work of social Darwinists such as Spencer (1873, 1884) and feminist essen­ tialists (e.g. Blackwell, 1875; Gilman, 1898; Addams, 1922). 'Nature', as noted in our previous criticisms of traditional classicist thinkers, was at this time commonly presented as having fitted the two sexes for their current social roles - women as child-rearers and therefore confined to the private sphere (i.e. the home) and men as workers in the public sphere. 3 Violence and the Three Feminisms 1 In 1891 it became illegal following the R v Jackson ruling for a husband to beat or imprison his wife. Prior to this a husband had in common law the right to confine and exercise reasonable chastisement of his wife; however, how far this 'right' extended is unclear (see Clark, 1992; Doggett, 1992). 2 At this time, the property a woman owned on marriage or acquired after­ wards became the property of her husband: 'at common law ... a woman effec­ tively had nothing during marriage' (Doggett, 1992: 38). And as Brophy and Smart (1981) note, until the middle of the nineteenth century it was only conceivable to refer to father's rights, never the mother's rights, with respect to legitimate children. Indeed Caroline Norton's husband gave their children to his mistress to look after (Smart, 1989). 3 This is not to imply that there had not been earlier forms of collective oppo­ sition to domestic violence, however, these had taken place more on the level of the community. For example, violence against wives certainly met with disapproval amongst Puritans who saw it as disruptive of family life (Taves, 1989) and it has been pointed out that 'charivaris', a public shaming ritual, was used against wife-beaters (Dobash and Dobash, 1979; Doggett, 1992). 4 In the United States, many nineteenth century feminists campaigned against wife-beating through the temperance movement (Gordon, 1988). S Cobbe, towards the end of her life, became prominent in the anti-vivisection movement, creating The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection Society in 1898. 6 Chiswick Women's Aid split from the National Women's Aid Federation (NWAF) at their inaugural meeting: according to Dobash and Dobash, the majority of Women's Aid groups wished 'to form a democratic, egalitarian organisation (NWAF) and Chiswick, in the person of Erin Pizzey, wish[ed] to maintain central control, power, publicity and exclusive access to funds donated by the public' (1992: 33). 7 This debate has also been considered in criminology (Heidensohn, 1994); indeed Allison Morris and Loraine Gelsthorpe repeatedly put forward the view (see Morris, 1987; Gelsthorpe and Morris, 1988; Gelsthorpe and Notes 229 Morris, 1990) that a 'feminist criminology' cannot exist because neither criminology nor feminism presents a unified set of principles and practices: Criminology, like feminism, encompasses disparate and sometimes con­ flicting perspectives. The history of criminology well reflects these. In con­ trast, the tensions and conflicts within feminism are seen as indicative of an inchoate, unrigorous and 'indisciplined' discipline. There is no one specific feminism just as there is no one specific criminology. (1990: 2) Thus Gelsthorpe and Morris believe the phrase 'feminist perspectives in criminology' more accurately describes the body of feminist work that has contributed to the subject. 8 It should be pointed out, however, that patriarchy has not been utilized in either political (see Pateman, 1988) or feminist theory in a simple or unified manner (Walby, 1990; Stacey, 1993; Heidensohn, 1994). And there has been debate, particularly amongst socialist feminists, over the usefulness of the term (Barrett, 1980; Rowbotham, 1982; Wilson and Weir, 1986; Messerschmidt, 1993). 9 Of course, the three feminisms reflect the arena of debate in the second wave of feminism of the 1970s, since then massive discussion has occurred with the postmodernist development of a feminism which concentrated on differences between women (Fraser, 1997). That is one which is suspect of the universalising voice of second-wave feminism accusing it of speaking, in fact, for white, middle-class, First World women. The axes of ethnicity, class and sexuality come into play interesecting and fragmenting the universal woman. The problem of going too far down this path is well put by Anne Phillips: The argument suggests a very radical pluralism, in which seemingly endless differences by sex, race, age, class, culture ... all have to be taken into account. An obvious complaint would be that this emphasis leads us away from being able even to think of equality, for if people are so complex and diverse it seems impossible to conceive of them as in any sense being treated the same. (1992: 20) The feminist realist position set out in this book is sensitive to the differ­ ences between women; indeed it goes out of its way to examine differences of attitude and experience by all of the major social axes, but it notes that there is a considerable overlap of agreement and shared experience. Such a degree of consensus is not in essence unalterable over time but changes with the vicissitudes of male-female relationships and the differences in the social construction of what constitutes 'domestic violence'. Lastly, the analysis presented here takes issue with the form of postmodernism that seeks to confine itself to the study of the representation of violence and is seemingly unconcerned with the actual occurrence and patterning of violence in the real world (e.g. Young and Rush, 1994). 230 Notes 10 Indeed this introduction shows Barrett to have retreated from many of her original arguments; for example, she comments, 'although Women's Oppression Today begins from the proposition that marxism and feminism have not been integrated, it is written with a much greater sense of the desirability of this at a political level than I would now express' (ibid.: xxiii). For Barrett, 'the arguments of post-modernism already represent. .. a key position around which feminist theoretical work in the future is likely to revolve' (ibid.: xxxiv). And, as Bryson notes, post-modernism with its emphasis on the multiplicity of experiences and subjectivities that exist can, 'provide a salutary warning against simplistic certainties and over­ inclusiveness ... it can in principle avoid the incipient racism of much femi­ nist thought, whereby all women are seen as subject to the same processes, and the very different experiences of different groups ignored' (1992: 254). 11 Racism both on an individual and institutional level is considered by many commentators to compound the problems of black women experiencing domestic violence. And immigration law exacerbates the situation of immi­ grant women by, for example, forcing them to stay with violent husbands in order to fulfil immigration requirements (Mama, 1989; Kohli, 1992). 12 Walby sees a 'proper synthesis' as including waged work, housework, sexu­ ality, culture, violence and the state (1990: 7).