Tiltai

The article adresses the problem of social work support to domestically violent males. The causes of violence and the process of help and resocialization are discussed. The research results reveal that domestically violent males receive informational, legal, psychological and social help, however, the component of social-psychological help is underdeveloped, lack of involvement of social workers is felt. Possibilities of social work support are underutilized, social workers rarely participate in the whole of support process. Usually the role of social worker is carried out by probation officers.

The article explores the dynamics of domestic violence in the city of Klaipėda over the period 2010 to 2014, with the aim of demonstrating how the Republic of Lithuania’s Law on Protection against Domestic Violence (LOPADV), passed in 2011, raised a relatively marginalised phenomenon to the level of a relevant social problem. The statistical data presented in the article call for a detailed analysis of the dynamics of the phenomenon in order to identify the social and legal causes of changes in domestic violence, and to anticipate prerequisites for strategies related to the safety of the victims of violence and the prevention of violence. The article analyses cases of violence registered with Klaipėda city’s Chief Police Commissariat, in an attempt to evaluate the social profile of domestic violence, and to highlight the essential characteristics of perpetrators and victims. By transcending the rather narrow boundaries of the psychological treatment of this phenomenon, an attempt is made to identify the most important empirical characteristics that would lead in the long run to an opportunity for the sociological interpretation of the phenomenon.

Gender terms have been used to interpret some aspects of the archaeology of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age monuments. Frequently male and female inhumations are aligned cardinally and standing stones may be ‘male’ pillar and ‘female’ lozenges. However, the astronomical alignments at monuments are frequently on lunar standstills and solstices which bisect the cardinal alignments. The anthropology of gender suggests that the concept of a ‘gender of power’ is useful in explaining how ritual power is realised through the scrambling of sexual identities. Proficiency in aligning monuments on lunar-solar cycles may well have been a device to appropriate ritual power.

Scant attention has been paid in the social sciences to the problem of defining units of analysis. The problem of using culture as a unit of analysis is that culture is not a unit of analysis like a jury is a unit of analysis. It is also a more ambiguous unit of analysis than religion, ethnicity or gender, units which are possible to identify and define. It is concluded that the individual is the least problematic unit for analysis. The limitations of using the individual as the unit of analysis are that group characteristics and behaviors can only be measured indirectly and studies are prone to the ‘individual differences fallacy.’ It is dubious that one can generalize from individuals beyond the community. There are no ultimate primitive units of culture and whatever unit for analysis the researcher selects depends on the questions asked. Always however, a unit of analysis must be clearly defined, it cannot be used as a variable rather variables are extracted from the unit of analysis. Most importantly, there should always be a theory of analysis that justifies the choice of the units for analysis.