Editorial

Citation

Lowe Davies, M., Fry, D.P., Graham-Kevan, N. and Ireland, J.L. (2013), "Editorial", Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, Vol. 5 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jacpr.2013.55005caa.001

Editorial

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, Volume 5, Issue 3.

Welcome to third issue of the Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research of 2013. As has always been the aim of this journal, this issue brings together an eclectic mix of papers intending to inform and interest readers across disciplines. The current set of six papers build on work presented in previous editions, with studies that inform those who work in the broad fields of aggression and peace research.

This issue is opened by a paper by Bruce Bonta that discusses whether peaceful societies prohibit violence and indeed whether such societal groups embrace the need for peacefulness as opposed to accepting violence as both normal and inevitable. Specifically this paper examines the ways that people within those societies view peacefulness compared to how violence is viewed in other societies. Questioning these very fundamental values about how peace and violence are viewed at a societal level informs both the theorist and practitioner and suggests ways to challenge the most basic and general patterns of violence and attitudes thereof.

The second paper in this issue is a paper by Darlington Mutanda, which follows on from a paper published in a previous edition of this journal by the same author, and discusses the continuing political violence in Zimbabwe since 1980. The main aim of this paper is to evaluate the benefits of mediation in resolving politically motivated conflicts in Zimbabwe in particular and in Africa more generally. The author suggests that mediation can have positive outcomes in bringing stability to countries burdened by long-standing politically motivated violence. The author hopes that policy makers will find this paper useful as they move forward to promoting sustainable development in African nations.

The third paper, authored by Suzanne Martin and Axel Klein, investigates the issue of workplace bullying. More specifically, the paper examines, using semi-structured interviewing, how human resources staff and those who work in occupational health services assess cases of alleged bullying in one UK NHS trust, two universities and a criminal justice agency. The paper also considers the views of staff who have been victims of bullying, and trade union representatives. Results overall showed a problem with the non-reporting of bullying cases, which means that victimised individuals are poorly served. This study has implications for services that require training in dealing with bullying cases within the workplace and offers suggestions on how such cases may better be managed.

The fourth paper of this issue, by Jorgen Koller, with the intriguing title of “The ecological fallacy (Dutton, 1994) revised”, offers a brief review to examine the question raised by Dutton (1994), considering whether an ecological fallacy within the feminist views of the abuse within heterosexual relationships is still relevant. The paper discusses a series of pertinent issues current in the literature on relationship abuse and concludes that any one-sided approach to such study is unhelpful to both theory and practice and contributes to the fact that it remains difficult for males and females, especially lesbians, to articulate themselves as victims of relationship violence. The paper calls for greater understanding of female perpetration of such assaults.

The next paper, authored by Laura Stockdale and colleagues continues the relationship abuse theme forwarded by the previous paper to examine sex-differences in verbal aggression within romantic relationships via meta-analysis. Findings revealed that women use more verbal aggression than men in romantic relationships, although overall levels of verbal aggression use were relatively high regardless of sex. The authors claim that this study offers advice for clinicians and practitioners working with those within violent relationships with specific emphasis on considering how to reduce verbal aggression and interventions to encourage positive couple communications.

The final paper in this issue is written by Alexander Wettstein and colleagues and investigates additive and interactive roles of aggression and prosocial behaviour with social preferences in a large sample of young children. Multilevel regressions revealed additive linear effects of social preference and prosociality on resource control with moderate levels of social aggression also facilitating resource control specifically for children who were disliked. This study offers advice and information for any theorist or practitioner working in a range of educational settings. The authors suggest that rather than punishing social aggression, educational strategies should actually promote the use of equally effective prosocial strategies and modify the social norms in educational settings thusly.

The editorial team hopes that, as always, this issue gives broad scope to the study of aggression, conflict and peace studies and offers interest, information and advice to further these fields theoretically and practically in the future. We welcome new submissions from a wide range of subject areas, theoretical backgrounds, and methodologies that further our theoretical and practical understanding of human aggression conflict and peace. Submissions should be made through our ScholarOne site (www://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jacpr).

Reference

Dutton, D.G. (1994), “Patriarchy and wife assult: the ecological fallacy”, Violence and Victims, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 167-82