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This article reviews American literature on intimate partner violence. Several major surveys have been carried out by researchers from different theoretical perspectives (e.g. family violence vs. violence against women), and the findings of these studies have been the subject of much debate. This review of the literature offers a detailed summary of these debates—concerning gender symmetry and bidirectional violence, how violence is defined and what causes it, and how it is dealt with in criminal law—as a contribution to the construction of “intimate partner violence” as an object of study. The condemnation that such violence elicits is also an object of analysis.