'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.

Choice Reviews

With chapters covering Africa, Asia, Latin and North America, and Oceania, the book provides ample evidence that richly-textured and qualitatively-informed research can illuminate work that is more quantitative in scope. . . .The volume contains useful insights that, when combined with the efforts of other disciplines, offer solutions to the problem of gender-based violence.

Quinnipiac University News + Events

This volume represents a new generation of anthropological thinking on gender-based violence: at once, local and global, refusing to choose between culture and political economy (or bodies and minds), and presenting complex analyses of pragmatic efforts to resolve entrenched social problems while also recognizing the potentials and pitfalls of relying on "community" or engagement with a bureaucratic and capitalist state. Wies and Haldane have assembled an impressive ethnographic collection that documents collaborative, and sometimes contentious, efforts by scholars, activists and survivors to better understand and thus undermine gender-based violence within contexts (e.g. natural disasters, political violence, university campuses) and among people (e.g. trafficked indigenous women, fathers, scholar-activists) not often included in studies of gender-based violence.

Madelaine Adelman, Arizona State University