Applying Anthropology to Gender-Based Violence
Global Responses, Local Practices
Contributions by Kimberly Ashburn, Melissa Beske, Karin Friederic, Hillary J. Haldane, Yasmina Katsulis, Lynn Kwiatkowski, Rebecka Lundgren, April DJ Petillo, Mark Schuller Northern Illinois Univers, M. Gabriela Torres Wheaton College, Jennifer R. Wies, Elizabeth Wirtz Edited by Jennifer R. Wies, Hillary J. Haldane
Publication date:
20 August 2015Length of book:
226 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
236x161mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781498509039
Applying Anthropology to Gender-Based Violence: Global Responses, Local Practices addresses the gaps in theory, methods, and practices that are currently used to engage the problem of gender-based violence. This book complements the work carried out in the legal, human services, and health fields by demonstrating how a focus on local issues and responses can better inform a collaborative global response to the problem of gender-based violence. With chapters covering Africa, Asia, Latin and North America, and Oceania, the volume illustrates the various ways scholars, practitioners, frontline workers, and policy makers can work together to end violence in their local communities. The chapters in this volume provide ample evidence that top-down responses to violence have been inadequate, and that solutions are available when the local historical, political, and social context is taken into consideration. Applying Anthropology to Gender-Based Violence contains useful insights that, when combined with the efforts of other disciplines, offer solutions to the problem of gender-based violence.
'Sometimes working in the field of gender-based violence can be lonely,' the editors of this volume remark in their introductory chapter. 'It is underfunded work, often unrecognized, and in some cases, seems unending and unsolvable.' Hence, the studies in this book, grounded by ethnographic data and impelled by social activism, are a valuable addition to the anthropological corpus. Contributors demonstrate that gender-based violence is global in its reach and culturally nuanced within local contexts. They also make clear the challenges of using feminist ideas to effect positive social changes. The strongest chapters, Mark Schuller’s discussion of post-earthquake Haiti and Melissa Beske’s treatment of intimate partner violence in Belize, for example, attend to gender as intersectional and activism as complicated by researchers’ positionalities. . . .Summing Up: Recommended. All academic levels/libraries.