Shame, Gender Violence, and Ethics: Terrors of Injustice draws from contemporary, concrete atrocities against women and marginalized communities to re-conceptualize moral shame and to set moral shame apart from dimensions of subordination, humiliation, and disgrace. The interdisciplinary collection starts with a contribution from a Yazidi-survivor of genocidal and sexual violence, whose case brings together core themes: gender, ethnic and religious identity, and violence and shame. Further accounts of shame and gendered violence in this collection take the reader to other and equally disturbing accounts of lesser-known atrocities from around the world. Although shame is sometimes posited as an inevitable companion to human life, editors Lenart Skof and She M. Hawke situate the discussion in the theoretical landscape of shame, and the contributors challenge this concept through fields as diverse as law, journalism, activism, philosophy, theology, ecofeminism, and gender and cultural studies. Their discussion of gendered shame makes room for it to be both a negative and a redemptive concept. Combining junior and senior scholarship, this collection examines power relations in the cycle of shame and violence.
Industry Reviews
This multidisciplinary, internationally focused collection of well-written, well-argued papers parses theoretical and pragmatic challenges posed by gender-based violence around the world.... A rich, diverse array of topics undergirds an approach highlighting the role of shame as it interacts with power, marginalization, ethics, and injustice. An important contribution to the literature, this edited volume offers sophisticated theoretical analyses.... [F]or all who want to better understand the importance of shame in society, this collection is a valuable read.... Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers. * Choice Reviews * She M. Hawke and Lenart Skof have carefully curated an international collection of loving, sensitive, hopeful, rigorous, and original multi-disciplinary scholarship that learns from and honors survivors by witnessing their stories. In so doing, we learn about how shame converges with violence. Each chapter provides unique opportunities for the reader to be nurtured through analyses of shame and violence to cultivate change to their own and others' ways of life that may directly or indirectly enable violence and injustice. This book is an essential resource to understand what relationships among power, shame, and violence do. Yet, it is more than that. The reader is provided with opportunities to reflect on how survivors instruct a non-violent advocacy that guides us closer to understanding justice and rights for all humans, other species, and the environment. -- Clifton Evers, Newcastle University This important volume brings together diverse textual testimonies of gendered violence from voices less often heard within the academy. These essays powerfully expose and analyze the intersections of gender, shame, violence, and injustice and the systematic use of gendered terror to enforce the subordination of women across the globe. This book is a must-read for anyone concerned about global gender justice. -- Kelly Oliver, Vanderbilt University
