Everyday Harm

Everyday Harm Domestic Violence, Court Rites and Cultures of Reconciliation

Paperback (18 May 2007)

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Publisher's Synopsis

Exposing the powerful contradictions between empowering rights and legal rites

By investigating the harms routinely experienced by the victims and survivors of domestic violence, both inside and outside of law, Everyday Harm studies the limits of what domestic violence law can--and cannot--accomplish. Combining detailed ethnographic research and theoretical analysis, Mindie Lazarus-Black illustrates the ways persistent cultural norms and ingrained bureaucratic procedures work to unravel laws designed to protect the safety of society's most vulnerable people.

Lazarus-Black's fieldwork in Trinidad traces a story with global implications about why and when people gain the right to ask the court for protection from violence, and what happens when they pursue those rights in court. Why is itthat, in spite of laws designed to empower subordinated people, so little results from that legislation? What happens in and around courts that makes it so difficult for people to obtain their legally available rights and protections? In the case of domestic violence law, what can such legislation mean for women's empowerment, gender equity, and protection? How do cultural norms and practices intercept the law?

Book information

ISBN: 9780252074080
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Imprint: University of Illinois Press
Pub date:
DEWEY: 345.025553
DEWEY edition: 22
Language: English
Number of pages: 200
Weight: 410g
Height: 156mm
Width: 228mm
Spine width: 20mm