ICPR Abstracts: Session 35

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Session 35: Symposium

European Perspectives on Family Conflict
and Domestic Violence: Part I

Conflict Resolution Tactics in an Urban Greek Family:
A Psycho-Social Approach

Vana Papalois
The London School of Economics and Political Science

The purpose of this presentation is twofold:  (a) to provide 
a conceptual framework (CF) in which the distinctive 
psychosocial characteristics of the modern Greek family 
are described, and (b) to discuss findings of a case study 
regarding conflict resolution tactics employed in an urban 
Greek family setting. Specifically, the Greek society is 
currently undergoing a dramatic transition phase from a 
collectivist to an individualist value system. The Greek 
family constitutes the primary mechanism through which 
the above sociocultural transition is taking place. The 
present study discusses the case of an urban nuclear Greek 
family of middle socioeconomic status. The family faces 
an interpersonal conflict situation (allocation of family 
property resources) in which members of the extended 
family are involved. By using a qualitative case study 
research design, we analyze the decision making process 
that takes place in a conversation between members of the 
nuclear family (mother, father, 21-year old daughter) as 
they try to evaluate appropriate courses of action (conflict 
resolution strategies and tactics) that coincide with their 
personal values and preferences. Findings of the study are 
discussed by using CF with a special emphasis on the 
notion of the Greek philotimo (love of honor). 


Family Conflicts in France

Didier Le Gall
University of Caen Basse-Normandie

My objective is to analyze family conflicts in France, but 
from a special perspective. At the present time, we are 
trying to highlight the social relationships of young people 
coming from different social environments, that is, from 
different contexts of social life (school, holidays, job or 
moonlighting, spare time and leisure activities, sports 
activities, and so on). Our data consist of three to eleven 
hour long, in-depth interviews with 90 boys and girls 
between 17 and 20 years of age. The interviews focus on 
participants ties with family members and on explaining 
the presence or absence of such ties (including parents, 
sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, 
stepparents, half sisters, half brothers, quasi-sisters, quasi-
brothers, grandstepparents, to godfathers and godmothers). 
In that way, we will delineate their social networks. 
        But in our work, we consider a relationship 
between two persons to be more than a simple interaction 
or a simple sharing of activities. With each social tie, with 
each friend, emerges a small world, a little part of society, 
a social circle. This perspective incorporates the notion of 
circles by C. Bougle (a contemporary of Durkheim), the 
Nous (We) of G. Gurvitch, and more recently, the social 
circles of A. Degenne for whom each circle is at the same 
time a group of persons and an accompanying system of 
rules, codes, and symbols which we can call the springs of 
action of this circle.  From my own perspective, I 
analyze family conflicts in a similar way. However, I do 
not consider family a circle (as we usually do), but a 
context. Within this context, I try to locate circles, and to 
understand why some people are very close to some 
individuals (i.e., what is the spring of action of this circle) 
but far from others (weak ties), and sometimes even 
opposed to still others (i.e., no contact, except when they 
have no choice). 
        In the light of the family story, I try to discover 
the original problem underlying conflict:  an ambiguous 
attitude of some persons toward the death of a dear 
member of the family?  An ambiguous attitude toward an 
inheritance, a divorce or a new marital union?  A social 
success seen as indecent? 
        That is, this work consists, on the one hand, of 
making an inventory of the different kinds of family 
conflicts (from a soft version:  conflicts appear like a silent 
strain, to a hard version: conflicts appear like a definitive 
break). On the other hand, it consists of understanding the 
original objects of disorder and of appreciating their 
consequences for the family dynamic; all that, without 
forgetting that some families function, and are 
represented, very closely to a traditional model, while 
others are closer to a modern model. And I think that, with 
this specific approach, which doesn't consider the family a 
homogeneous group but a context in which there are 
different kinds of ties, it will be possible to illustrate in a 
unique way what family conflicts are. Of course, this 
context is a special one because it concerns the family. For 
example, even if there are no ties between some persons, 
sometimes these persons have no choice:  they have to 
meet each other at the time of a marriage or a funeral. But 
that is precisely what interests us here. 


Contested Identities:
The Battered Woman as Icon of Passivity?

Renee Romkens
University of Utrecht

Although contested from the very beginning, the concept 
of the "battered wife syndrome" is still increasing in 
popularity. It rests on two crucial assumptions: battered 
women develop a behavioral pattern signified by 
helplessness and passivity. Particularly among legal 
professions this concept is applied in cases to defend 
battered women who have killed their spouse. Based on 
findings from a national Dutch survey among 1016 women 
on wife battering and marital rape, I will present the range 
of prevention- and resistance strategies that battered 
women develop in relation with their spouse.  In view of 
these findings, I will critically discuss the limited validity 
of the concept of 'battered woman syndrome'. From a 
cultural-psychological point of view the popularity of the 
concept BWS may be analyzed as representing a 
problematic but highly archetypical image of the Victim as 
an unambiguous identity, which will remain popular 
despite evidence to the contrary. 

Discussant
Frank Fincham
University of Wales