Challenge Online

Challenge, Vol. 16, Issue 1

Ida Rousseau Mukenge — 2020-09-30

Differences in Types of Intimate Partner Violence

Anne Caroll Baird — 2020-09-30

Intimate partner violence has been recognized as a serious social problem in the United States since the 1970s, when the leaders in the Women’s Movement became alarmed at victimization of women in their own homes by their husbands or boyfriends (Dobash and Dobash 1992). Women still make up 70 percent of all intimate partner homicides, and are twice as likely to be killed by an intimate partner as men are (Catalano, Smith, Snyder, and Rand 2009). The Anti Violence against Women Acts of 1994 and subsequent years have led to more uniform state policies on domestic violence and other violence against women, but have been used to justify intrusion into private homes, particularly with mandatory arrest laws (Davis, O’Sullivan, Farole, and Remple 2008). The law has not been successful at specific deterrence (Peterson 2008), but it has been more effective at punishment (Dixon 2008). Treating all domestic violence cases as though they were the same also has implications for treatment programs (Peterson 2008; Saunders 2008). In this article, I consider the importance of making distinctions among types of intimate partner violence, the effects of failure to do so, along with implications for research, advocacy, and treatment.

Interfaith Families through Conversion to Islam

Mansa Bilal Mark King — 2020-09-30

This study explored family responses to a relatives’ conversion to Islam in a country where Muslims are a minority. Fifteen Akans who embraced Islam in Ghana were interviewed. Target families were primarily Christian or followers of the customary Akan religion. My interviewees lived in the majority-Fante area on Ghana’s coastal south. Family background questions focused on ethnicity, religious composition, and affluence. Questions about family response focused on rituals like naming ceremonies, weddings, and funerals, but also on expressive and instrumental support. Instant adaptation, ongoing disruption, and sometimes a transition from disruption to adaptation emerged as familial patterns of response to Muslim conversion. Findings are contextualized in the far-reaching religious transformation of Africa over the past century; the increasing fragmentation of families where state-funded safety-nets are disappearing or nonexistent; and the need for more study of Muslim-minorities who primarily live outside of Southwest Asia and North Africa.

Family and Religion in Luba Life

Tshilemalema Mukenge — 2020-09-30

The Luba people who are the focus of this article live the eastern Kasai Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Luba established one of the great pre-colonial empires of the central Congo savannah. It stretched from the eastern Congo River to Lake Tanzania and northwest to the convergence of the Lulua and Kasai Rivers.1 The family occupies a central place in the personal life of each Luba man or woman and in the social, economic, and political organization of Luba society. Anthropological studies from as early as the 1950s have stressed the central position of the family in the social organization of African societies (Radcliffe-Brown and Forde 1953). The purpose of this article is to review the principal elements of the organizational structure of Luba society that convey power and importance to the Luba family. Luba people’s conception of the purpose and role of the family, of values and norms that inspire and regulate their behaviors as family members, as well as the actual changing forms of their familial behaviors across the time can inform us on these elements (Van Caeneghem 1956; Mukenge 1967; 2002). Calling on the author’s previous fieldwork among the Luba and other early studies, this article examines, in anthropological and historical contexts, religion and worldview as pivotal in defining relationships between family and other social institutions. A list of selected references is included.

Organizational Membership and Business Success

Colbert Rhodes — 2020-09-30

The homophily principle is that similarity breeds connection and affects the structure of personal networks in all kinds of social structures. The result is that networks become very homogeneous. The “birds of a feather flock together” limit social worlds because they restrict the movement of information received by people, the attitudes they form, and the interactions in which they engage. Research has shown that homophily is strongest in race and ethnic interactions, followed by divides in age, religion and gender. This paper examines organizational membership, business networking and homophily among entrepreneurs engaged in classic enterprises such as retail and service industries. The search for information and resources to improve entrepreneurial enterprises is a major task of the self-employed. Using a sample of black entrepreneurs, this work examines the impact of networking outside of the structure of homophily. We ask if this networking is perceived as improving the overall operation of the business. We examine the characteristics of entrepreneurs and how these characteristics affect the decisions to move outside of familiar homophily networks. Granovetter’s network theory of strong/ weak ties is used to describe the process of networking in both types of voluntary organizations.