Beyond 'Culture' as an explanation for intimate violence: the politics and possibilities of plural resistance. Issue 4 (3rd April 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Piedalue, Amy
• Is Part Of: Gender, place and culture. Volume 24:Issue 4(2017)
• Page Start: 563
• Page End: 574
• Publication Date: 2017-04-03
• Subjects: Domestic violence -- structural violence -- regional patriarchies -- Islamophobia -- plural resistance; violencia doméstica -- violencia estructural -- patriarcados regionales -- islamofobia -- resistencia plural; 家庭暴力 -- 结构性暴力 -- 区域復权体制 -- 伊斯兰恐惧症 -- 多重抵抗。; Human geography -- Periodicals; Feminism -- Periodicals; Géographie féministe -- Périodiques; 305.305
• DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2016.1219323
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0966-369X

Abstract

Abstract: This article interrogates simplified culturalist explanations of gendered violence, which evoke timeless 'tradition' and religiosity to locate violence in racialized places and upon 'othered' bodies. I examine structural processes that shape women's experiences of and vulnerability to intimate violence. My analysis complicates culturalist narratives, but engages critically with culture as one context within which violence is embedded. Drawing on field research within Muslim communities in Hyderabad, India, I discuss the complexities of interwoven experiences of structural, state, and intimate gender violence. I draw attention to how anti-violence organizations working in marginalized communities theorize these complexities, and practices of what I am calling 'plural resistance, ' which these organizations enact through equally complex responses to such violences. Plural resistance describes community-based strategies that simultaneously reject both gender violence and other forms of systemic violence, such as poverty born of uneven development. Embodied resistance to gender violence provides a critical lens for understanding articulations between regional patriarchies, exclusionary state practices, uneven development, and Islamophobia.