Sex and violence

About this book

How do we recognize and identify sex and violence in our own and other cultures? How do anthropologists and feminists differ in their analysis of the relationship between sexuality and violence? The contributors to Sex and Violence are established anthropologists and committed feminists, personally involved in the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in the answers to these questions. They look closely at the relationship between social anthropology and its political effect, particularly in terms of the theory and ethnography of gender relations. The range of case studies - from Bolivia, Brazil, Britain, Colombia, Fiji, Peru, Japan and the USA - challenges what constitutes violence and sexuality in other cultures and questions the appropriateness of these culturally loaded terms for the analysis of other societies. The chapters examine the distinctive ways in which human relationships are realized and expressed through idioms which we in the west recognize and identify as both sexual and violent. They also take up the question of objectification in the study of others by focusing specifically on sex and violence - a topic which, in the west and in feminist politics, epitomizes the hierarchical relation between those who look and those who are looked at. This collection of rich and varied ethnographic case studies is an important and original contribution to the debate between feminism and anthropology. Its exploration of gender difference and gender hierarchy is of central concern to both anthropologists and feminists, and the book's multi-cultural approach will appeal to a wide readership, including students and teachers of social anthropology, cultural studies and gender studies.