NCJ Number
190140
Journal
Violence Against Women Volume: 7 Issue: 7 Dated: July 2001 Pages: 826-847
Date Published
July 2001
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This article questioned the dominant belief that violence against women in Greenland was primarily due to the rapid social change that had occurred in that country since the 1950's, and argued that men's motives for using violence against women stemmed from, as they did elsewhere, a feeling that they were entitled to control their wives through intimidation and physical violence.
Abstract
Among those who have studied spousal violence in Greenland, there is a dominant belief that men beat their wives because they are under the stress of being in transition between traditional and modern society. This perspective seeks to locate men's violence in the Arctic within a special explanatory framework. Under this framework, the perpetrators of violence are not viewed as motivated social actors, but rather as victims of externally inflicted change. An empirically grounded approach, however, must ask the following questions: What motivates men in specific sociocultural settings to beat their wives or partners? What do they gain, intentionally and unintentionally, from using violence? How is violence possible in the first place? The author's interviews with battered Greenland women indicated that their men turned to violence to shut them up and put them in their place. One woman summed up her husband's violent attacks by stating, "He is obsessed with being right always." Another woman said that her ex-husband had disapproved of her being too clever, outspoken, and eager to discuss all kinds of matters. Another woman stated that "Many men, perhaps most men, beat to show the woman that they are stronger than she is, without any other particular motive." Men's efforts to silence, control, intimidate, and discipline their wives in every way were recurrent in the interviews. 8 notes and 42 references