Citation

Smith E. J. Afr. Am. Stud. 2008; 12(2): 156-179.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s12111-008-9039-4

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Drawing on interviews with African American males in violent intimate relationships, this paper focuses on individual causes (exposure to violence), cultural causes (constructions of masculinity) and structural causes (unemployment and incarceration) of intimate partner violence (IPV) among African American men. IPV is “triggered” by two threats to masculinity, though I focus exclusively on the first trigger (breadwinning). The analyses are framed by Merton’s strain theory (1968) and his theory of unintended consequences (1976). I argue that at least for African American men, this framework when added to feminist theory and masculinity theory extends our understanding of battering, from the perspective of the batterer, beyond what other models have been able to accomplish. In short, from the point of view of many batterers, battering provides an accessible mechanism for African American men—who live in a social world plagued by a system of racial domination— to reassert their masculinity and thus maintain their male privilege and dominance in their heterosexual relationships. Yet battering has the unanticipated consequence of alienating them further from these same intimate partners, thus perpetuating the cycle of violence.