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The process of the social construction of woman abuse includes the essential idea of typification: that how we “typify” abused women can be a part of justifying help, or it can provide the scientific justification for a male discourse which legitimates abuse and buffers batterers from guilt. Because Straus and Gelles are widely used by the press and academics as authorities, it is essential to recognize their return to an ideological position they once seemingly abandoned: that women are as violent as men, are not acting in self-defense, and may be ultimately responsible for male violence. As this debate is carried on in public, “newsmaking criminology” must be used to provide the media with alternative feminist views.

Several theorists contend that male university/college students who physically, sexually, and psychologically abuse their female dating partners are more likely than men who are not abusive to adhere to the ideology of familial patriarchy. These scholars also argue that men who hold familial patriarchal attitudes and beliefs, and who are supported by their male peers, are most likely to victimize their dating partners. This research provides quantitative data from a national representative sample of Canadian male undergraduate students that support these hypotheses.

There is a severe lack of knowledge about sexual assault on Canadian college campuses. This exploratory study of 259 Canadian undergraduate women (mostly white, of British or European heritage, with about half from families of total incomes of over Can $50,000) provides evidence that although Canada generally has a lower crime rate than the United States, sexual aggression against women does not seem to be lower. Further, there is an extraordinary victimization rate for the stranger sexual advances that are legal or barely illegal, but which form a major component of women's fear. Most surveyed women have in the past year been victimized by uncomfortable stranger aggression in public places, while approximately one-third of those who date reported at least one episode of physical, verbal, or psychological sexual coercion. Close to 25% of the women said they had sexual intercourse when they did not want to during the past year.

It is estimated that there are over a million pornographic sites on the Internet, with as many as 10,000 added every week. In addition to having a major financial impact, adult pornography is strongly associated with various types of violence against women, especially sexual assault. Some studies have found that the contribution of pornography to woman abuse in dating, marriage, and during or after separation/divorce is related to male peer support, which refers to the attachments to male peers and the resources they provide that perpetuate and legitimate woman abuse. The main objective of this chapter is twofold: (1) to review the extant social scientific research on the relationship between violence against women, male peer support, and adult Internet pornography and (2) to suggest new directions in empirical work on the association between these three social problems.

Canadian researchers, especially feminists, have shown, that male violence against women in both intimate relationships and public places is a significant social problem. Compared to the amount of rigorous work done on this important issue, an equally if not more serious problem for women—corporateviolence—has been given little empirical, theoretical, and political attention The primary purpose of this paper is to articulate how, some left realist survey techniques and policy proposals can contribute to the study, prevention, and control of corporate violence against Canadian women in the industrial workplace. The authors conclude this article by pointing to a few pitfalls of realism which must be add ressed before it can be effectively applied in the Canadian context.

While women experience male violence and intimidation in both public and private settings, the most serious and common threats to their physical and psychological well-being are abusive acts committed by known men. However, the Solicitor General of Canada's recent crime advice to women does not address this problem. The principal objective of this paper is to show how this discourse obscures the reality of woman abuse in Canada.

Left realism has generated enormous interest and controversy in critical criminology over the past several years both in North America and in the United Kingdom. While there are important similarities between the writings from these countries, there are also some deep differences and divisions. This article provides some explication of these similarities and differences within a critical context.

The Canadian Urban Victimization Survey (CUVS) has made an important contribution to the development of victimology in Canada. This research has major limitations that preclude it from providing an adequate understanding of the gender, class, and ethnic dimensions of criminal victimization. This article argues that British left realist survey technology can be productively employed in a Canadian program of local crime survey research to produce a more detailed description of patterns of victimization, its impact, and control.

Wife abuse is endemic to many Canadian families. This article reviews the current Canadian sociological research on female victimization in marital relationships. The extant literature is categorized mainly under four headings: definitions, incidence, theories, and policy issues. The article concludes with a few brief suggestions for future research.

Although there is an already large British literature both supporting and attacking left realism, and a growing North American interest on the subject among criminologists, there has been surprisingly little written which attempts to locate both the strengths and weaknesses of the left realist position on crime control. Perhaps the place where the left realists may be weakest is in response to a feminist critique. Actually, it is not only left realism but the socialist left in general which has been unsuccessful in providing adequate responses to the issues brought forth by feminists. This paper attempts to locate the position of left realism within the left criminology debate, and to find its strong and weak points. Further, it attempts to explicate the feminist critique, and to suggest responses critical criminologists might explore, such as those proposed by peacemaking criminology. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** AW502012 00004

Despite the important role which the police play in the reproduction of social order, there is a lacuna in critical criminological literature on the policing of democratic societies. As a consequence, the mistaken impression is fostered that policing in Canada is not problematic. This paper challenges this view, documenting the extent of police malpractice and raising the question of the need for police accountability. Within this context the authors discuss three forms which police accountability has historically taken: judicial inquiry, community police monitoring groups, and consultative liaison panels. One problem which the authors note is the way in which all three models depend upon the police for information about the nature of crime and policing, making them susceptible to dominant discourses about policing. Thus they continue by discussing the left realist model as potentially a fourth model. This form of police accountability emerged in Britain during the 1980s and is characterized by the production of an alternative discourse on crime and police practices based on locally conducted and controlled victimization surveys. The extent to which this practice of police accountability might be relevant to the Canadian context remains yet to be explored. The authors note in closing, however, that this is an empirical and not a theoretical question, meaning that Canadian criminologists must become more practical and less academic in their discourses of social control.

The relationship between male peer support and premarital woman abuse is evaluated by integrating three bodies of knowledge, namely, woman abuse, social support, and reference others. Using data from a convenience sample of male undergraduate students, this study tests four hypotheses derived from a male peer support model. The findings support the model relating male peer group dynamics and woman abuse in university dating relationships.

This paper reviews the current empirical literature on the relationship between male peer support and woman abuse in intimate, heterosexual relationships. Suggestions for future quantitative and qualitative studies are provided. Furthermore, this review concludes with a call for more rigorous attempts at theory construction and testing.

A rapidly growing social scientific literature shows that many women are at great risk of being killed, beaten, or psychologically abused when they exit or try to leave their marital and/or cohabiting partners. However, less than a handful of studies have examined maleto-female sexual assaults during and after separation or divorce. Furthermore, the bulk of the limited empirical work on this problem was done in urban areas. Thus, the main objective of this article is to help fill two major research gaps by presenting the preliminary results of an ongoing exploratory study of separation and/or divorce sexual assault in rural Ohio.

This article aims to build on M. Wilson and M. Daly's male proprietariness thesis by integrating it with a theory of interventions. The challenge thesis contributed by a number of feminists focuses on the concepts of male proprietariness, estrangement, and intimate femicide, with mechanisms identified as exit, voice, and loyalty. An elaborated version of the challenge model shows male intimate partners on a continuum of proprietariness, female intimate partners are located on a continuum of resistance, mechanisms of resistance/change are linked with the choice of different kinds of interventions, harms experienced by estranged wives/cohabitating partners can be located on a continuum of harms, and person/situational factors are included because they help account for variations in male violence via their impact on proprietariness and deviance. Loyalty/love-invoked interventions could more likely reduce intimate femicide among coresiding female intimates. The criminal justice system is usually invoked by voice and these voice-invoked interventions increase the confidence of the battered wife symbolizing society's opposition to women abuse and could most probably end battering. Exit and exit-invoked mechanism are effective in ending battering for most battered women, although they may provoke a more fatal violence among dependent partners. The effectiveness of any of the chosen interventions varies with their appropriateness and timing.

Cet article est une reponse a deux membres du corps universitaire ayant conteste la validite d'une etude co-realisee par l'A. au sujet des abus et violences dans les relations de couples d'etudiants. L'un des points souleves concerne la definition des abus, et particulierement l'importance respective des atteintes psychologiques et des aggressions corporelles. Un second point, plus theorique, concerne la place de la notion de patriarcat dans ces comportements

This paper presents incidence and prevalence data gathered from the first Canadian national representative sample survey on the sexual, physical, and psychological victimization of women in university/college dating relationships. The results, derived from the Conflict Tactics Scale and the Sexual Experiences Survey, reveal that men are more likely to report having engaged in less lethal forms of abuse, and women are more likely to report having been victimized by such behaviour.

Many women are victimized by their boyfriends. Furthermore, male social networks may encourag e members to abuse their girlfriends. A review of relevant literature shows that social support theory may be useful for understanding this problem. The purpose of this paper is to describe this social psychological theory's potential contribution to the study of woman abuse in dating relationships.

One of the significant shortcomings of the criminological canon, including its critical strands—feminist, cultural and green—has been its urbancentric bias. In this theoretical model, rural communities are idealised as conforming to the typical small-scale traditional societies based on cohesive organic forms of solidarity and close density acquaintance networks. This article challenges the myth that rural communities are relatively crime free places of ‘moral virtue’ with no need for a closer scrutiny of rural context, rural places, and rural peoples about crime and other social problems. This challenge is likewise woven into the conceptual and empirical narratives of the other articles in this Special Edition, which we argue constitute an important body of innovative work, not just for reinvigorating debates in rural criminology, but also critical criminology. For without a critical perspective of place, the realities of context are too easily overlooked. A new criminology of crime and place will help keep both critical criminology and rural criminology firmly anchored in both the sociological and the criminological imagination. We argue that intersectionality, a framework that resists privileging any particular social structural category of analysis, but is cognisant of the power effects of colonialism, class, race and gender, can provide the theoretical scaffolding to further develop such a project.