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Rights, Religion, and Community: Approaches to Violence Against Women in the Context of Globalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Sally Engle Merry
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Abstract

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Within the burgeoning global discourse on human rights, gender violence provides one of the most important examples of the use of rights to tackle a newly defined social problem. A comparison of three quite different approaches to violence against women in a single town, each of which is rooted in a global movement, reveals sharp differences in the way the problem is defined and the solutions are imagined. One approach focuses on the assertion of rights and relies on a feminist analysis of patriarchy, another on prayer and the elimination of enemy forces within a framework of Pentecostal Christianity, and one on repentance and reconciliation within the framework of the family and the community. Despite these differences, however, all three employ similar technologies of the self, focusing on knowing feelings, making choices, and building self-esteem. This article demonstrates how globalization allows differences on the basis of religion and culture while promoting similarities in techniques of fashioning the self, thus promoting modern subjectivity in the midst of difference.

Type
International Research on Women and Violence
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , 2001 , pp. 39 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Law and Society Association

Footnotes

This research was generously supported by a grant from the Cultural Anthropology Program and the Law and Social Sciences Program of the National Science Foundation, SBR–9807208, and an earlier grant from the Law and Social Sciences Program, SBR–9320009. I am grateful to all the generous people in Hawai'i who shared their stories and perspectives with me as well, as their commitment to forging a more-just society. Neal Milner was very helpful with insights and ethnographic collaboration, particularly in the analysis of the religious approaches. I learned a great deal from conversations with Yuklin Aluli, Manu Meyer, and Marilyn Brown. Jane Collier offered valuable comments on an earlier version of the article and helped me to reframe it. I was skillfully assisted by Madelaine Adelman and Marilyn Brown on this project. I also benefited from comments by audiences at the University of California/San Diego and the Conference on Women in Palestine, in Gaza in 1999, and the support of the American Bar Foundation.

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