Bringing together evidence from 15 Western and non-Western societies - ranging from hunter-gatherers to urban Americans - this book examines wife-beating from a worldwide perspective. Cross-cultural comparison aims to give a more accurate picture of cultural influences on wife-battering and to show the commonalities and differences of the phenomeno

This vitally important volume places the problem of wife beating in a broad cultural context in a search for strategies to reform societies, including our own, that are prone to this pernicious form of violence. Based on first hand ethnographic data on more than a dozen societies, including a number in Oceania, this collection explores the social and cultural factors that work either to inhibit or to promote domestic violence against women. The volume also includes a study of abuse among nonhuman primates and a cross-cultural analysis of the legal aspects of wife beating. By presenting counterexamples from other cultures, contributors challenge Western assumptions about the factors leading to wife beating. Through a close examination of societies where wife beating is infrequent or absent, To Have and To Hit identifies the factors-economic, social, political, and cultural-that must be explored and transformed in order to combat this violence and eventually eliminate it.

Are the prerogatives of age universal? This first-ever anthropological exploration of relationships between older and younger women suggests that this may be the case.

Cross-cultural in nature, the volume looks at relationships between women of different age groups in a village in Taiwan, a town in central Sudan, a rural setting in western Kenya, an Andean peasant community, a horticultural village in Melanesia, and an Aboriginal community in Australia. Adding an interspecies perspective is a study of two age groups of Japanese Macaques. Included is an ethnographic bibliography that lists books with a wealth of information on women in sixty societies.

The volume will appeal not only to anthropologists but also to readers interested in women's issues, gender studies, life course studies, gerontology, and intergenerational relations.