Description
Book SynopsisAn ethnographic study of women's shelters in Parma, Italy, this book examines how local residents understand, explain, and negotiate gender relations and intimate partner violence.
Trade Review"As a reader it is interesting to see how resistance to change and gender role transformation that couples experience on a daily basis can be negotiated in different ways by key informants. For people who want to have a broader understanding of intimate partner violence and how it is interwoven in Italian society, this is an interesting book that almost reads like a novel... [As] an anthropologist, the author is leading the way in conducting research in this particular domain." --
Canadian Journal of Sociology Online"
Sheltering Women is an ethnographic study of grassroots efforts to counter heterosexual intimate-partner violence in a northern Italian community. But this description simply captures the book's starting point. Sonja Plesset's study is actually a nuanced and theoretically rich analysis of gender relations in the broadest sense: a highly readable, intriguing account of the context and cultural meanings of gendered violence." --
American Anthropologist"In this captivating ethnography of two women's organizations concerned with intimate partner violence in Parma, Italy, Sonja Plesset explores the consequences of feminist theory and activism for law and everyday life. Originating in the Cold War political cultures of Communism and Christian Democracy, the organizations differentially privilege motherhood but share disappointment over feminism's failure to alter men's roles at home. Plesset analyzes narratives of domestic violence, and interviewees' interpretations of its surprising prevalence and meaning, in ways that speak both to any society undergoing the 'modernization' of gender relations, and specifically to Italy, whose strongly hegemonic religious institutions, family-dependent welfare state, very low birthrate, and emphasis on making a
bella figura combine to shape a particular range of outcomes." -- Jane Schneider * City University of New York *
"In this beautifully written ethnography, Sonja Plesset illustrates how gendered understandings impact people at multiple levels: in the inner workings of women's shelters, in the larger sociocultural context of Parma, and in the changing Italian legal system. The insights that the author provides into the reasoning of wives who stay with abusive husbands and those who leave them, as well as into the abusive husbands themselves, makes for sometimes harrowing, but always enlightening reading." -- David Sutton * Southern Illinois University *
Table of Contents@fmct:Contents @toc4:Acknowledgments iii @toc2:Introduction 1 1. Engaging the Field 000 2. Post-Feminist Uncertainties 000 3. Politics of Gender and Shelter 000 4. Two Sides of Shame 000 5. Gender Proficiencies 000 6. Engendering Resistance 000 7. Gendered Divides 000 @toc4:Notes 000 Works Cited 000 Index 000
