Gender Violence

A Cultural Perspective

Merry, Sally Engle

Blackwell Introductions to Engaged Anthropology

1. Edition November 2008
220 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd

ISBN: 978-0-631-22359-7

John Wiley & Sons

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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

2 Gender Violence and Social Movements 25

3 Punishment, Safety, and Reform: Interventions in Domestic
Violence 48

4 Gender Violence as a Human Rights Violation 77

5 Poverty, Racism, and Migration 102

6 Violent "Cultural" Practices in the Family 127

7 Women and Armed Confl ict 156

8 Conclusions 179

References 187

Index 207

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

Sally Engle Merry is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Law and Society Program at New York University. Her recent books include Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice (2006), and The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law between the Local and the Global, (co-edited with Mark Goodale; 2007). She is past president of the Law and Society Association and the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology.

S. E. Merry, Professor of Anthropology, New York University