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 firsthand ethnographic data from 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.