Cultural Practices and Their Role in Promoting Family Violence

Dr. Arifa K. JavedFor

Soc. 5870 Violence in the FamilyOctober 1st,2013

Studying Deviance Cross Culturally

• Ethnocentrism

• Cultural Absolutism VS Cultural Relativism

• Being judgmental VS Understanding the Cultural Context

• Variation of Time and Space

• What is included in cultural practices?

• Norms, values, mores and folkways

• Definition of family violence

• Variation by time and space

Two Important Cultural Practicesamong Hindu Families in India

• Dowry• Definition: Gifts in cash and kind a woman gets to

take from her father’s family to the new family she joins after marriage

• Significance of a male child• Agricultural economy and physical strength• Religious beliefs• Relationship between the concept of salvation and

funeral pyre lit by son

Dowry

• Its religious and cultural significance• Lack of inheritance rights for female• Dowry as a compensation for the lack of female

inheritance rights• Dowry and status of women• Difference between dowry and bride price • Bride price is a compensation given to the family

of the girl by the groom as she is seen as an asset transferred from her birth family to him. It is usually a lower caste practice.

Growing consumerism and changing dowry norms

• Caste, social class and dowry demands

• Problems in responding to dowry demands

• Dowry Deaths

• Laws prohibiting dowry

Some related concepts

• Hindu marriage and joint family

• Changing quagmire of relationships-new additions and subtractions

• A woman’s status when she enters the family as a bride

• Her status when she becomes a mother- in- law

• How her status changes when she changes when she bears a son

Female Feticide

• Definition

• Aborting unborn female fetus

• Role of religion, tradition and technology

• Amniocentesis test and its easy accessibility

• Imbalance in sex ratio in some of the northern states of Haryana, Punjab, U.P. and New Delhi

Legal Measures to check these practices

• Strict laws• Anti dowry laws and zero tolerance for dowry

deaths • Life in prison for husband and in-laws when

found guilty• Amniocentesis test banned• Doctors can lose their license for determining the

sex of the unborn child for any reason other than the safety of the unborn child or the mother