Gender Violence
A Cultural Perspective

Sally Engle Merry (Author)

9780631223580, Wiley

Hardback, published 27 November 2008

224 pages
25.4 x 18 x 1.8 cm, 0.553 kg

This acute analysis raises a troubling paradox: neither the growing awareness of gender violence, nor the activism directed toward it have lessened its incidence. If anything can make a difference, however, this book will.
-Jean Comaroff, University of Chicago

Gender Violence skillfully charts a tempered course through some of the most charged and globally relevant issues today. Sally Merry draws on her extensive and long-term research both to provide a primer for neophytes in how to think about gender violence and a sophisticated analysis of the structural conditions that unevenly distribute those subject to it. With critical care, she adheres to the complex and ambiguous social, personal, and political predicaments that foster its occlusion while addressing how activism has shaped the changing terms in which it is made visible, confronted, and understood.
-Ann Laura Stoler, The New School

Taking an anthropological perspective, this comprehensive book offers a highly readable and concise overview of what constitutes gender violence, its social context, and important directions in intervention and reform.

• Uses stories, personal accounts, case studies and a global perspective to provide a vivid and engaging portrait of forms of violence in gendered relationships
• Extensively covers many forms of gender violence including domestic violence, rape, murder, wartime sexual assault, prison and police violence, female genital cutting, dowry murders, female infanticide, “honor” killings, and sex trafficking
• Examines major approaches to diminishing gender violence such as criminalization, batterer retraining programs, and human rights interventions
• Highlights the role of social movements in defining the problem and mobilizing reforms in the US and internationally

Preface vi

1 Introduction 1

Subject Areas: Archaeology [HD]