Book details

Book description

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

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.