Victoria Sanford

Anthropology has long been associated with an ethos of “engagement.” The field’s core methods and practices involve long-term interpersonal contact between researchers and their study participants, giving major research topics in the field a distinctively human face. Can research findings be authentic and objective? Are anthropologists able to use their data to aid the participants of their study, and is that aid always welcome?

This powerful new book argues that violence against women should be understood as a systemic problem—one for which the state must be held accountable. The essays in Gender Violence in Peace and War examine a variety of cases where the state facilitates, legitimates, or perpetuates violence against women—a continuum that ranges from state-sponsored rape and torture in Guatemala, Indonesia, and Kenya to lax prosecution of domestic violence and sex trafficking in Russia and the United States.

This powerful new book argues that violence against women should be understood as a systemic problem—one for which the state must be held accountable. The essays in Gender Violence in Peace and War examine a variety of cases where the state facilitates, legitimates, or perpetuates violence against women—a continuum that ranges from state-sponsored rape and torture in Guatemala, Indonesia, and Kenya to lax prosecution of domestic violence and sex trafficking in Russia and the United States.