Books in the Frontiers of Anthropology series

Levinson's study of family violence breaks new ground by taking a global perspective of this social ill. He uses ethnographic work on 90 societies to analyse the incidence, causes and correlates of family violence. Through the use of both quantitative analysis and ethnographic description, he tests the efficacy of various current theories against world-wide family violence data. Among the author's more important conclusions are that women's economic equality and independence reduces family violence and that family violence is clearly correlated with more general violence in a society.

Warehousing Violence addresses an issue of major concern for the prison system - how to maintain order amongst violent criminals who are in prison for life. Fleisher, an anthropologist who served as a line corrections officer at a maximum security prison in California, points to the success of at least one experiment in non-violence among very violent people. Through a mixture of hands-on management, strict control and innovative prison industry, he shows how even the `hardest cases' can be kept relatively placid in prison.