Klein, R.C.A. (1998).  Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Family Violence. London, New York: Routledge.

Offers an innovative discussion of current European research on conflict and violence in family relationships. Includes original work by scholars from Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Poland, Spain, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom as well as integrative commentaries by U.S. and British scholars.

Family conflict and violence against women are complex social phenomena that bear on the cultural, legal, and social environment in which they occur, on individual and social efforts to explain them, and on intricate interactive processes through which they are sustained, altered, and experienced.

The book takes the reader on a trek through an imaginary neighborhood to visit nuclear families, hear from extended family, and look at the wider community in which families and relationships exist. The reader witnesses struggles for power, safety, and integrity, and the never-ending quest of explaining why those we love do sometimes hurt us. As for appropriate gear, readers need intellectual curiosity and conceptual stamina, but no detailed knowledge of any particular discipline.

A short biographical paragraph precedes each chapter in which the authors describe their academic background and the particular vantage point from which they observe conflict and violence in the family. These introductions may help understand each author's academic ancestry and angle of vision. Three concluding commentaries reflect on the empirical and theoretical ground covered in the preceding chapters.

Contributors:

Ileana Arias, University of Georgia, USA

Rebekah Bradley, University of South Carolina, USA

M. Angeles Cerezo, University of Valencia, Spain

Rosaleen Croghan, The Open University, United Kingdom

Keith E. Davis, University of South Carolina, USA

Frank Fincham, University of Wales, United Kingdom

Carol Hagemann-White, University of Osnabrueck, Germany

Renate Klein, University of Maine, USA

Anna Kwiatkowska, University of Bialystok, Poland

Didier Le Gall, University of Caen-Basse Normandie, France

Sylvia Mastenbroek, Private Practice, The Netherlands

Dorothy Miell, The Open University, United Kingdom

K. Daniel O'Leary, The University at Stony Brook, USA

Renee Romkens, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands

Bo Wagner Soerensen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Mara Theodossopoulou, University of Athens, Greece

Vana Theodossopoulou-Papalois, The London School of Economics, United Kingdom