Coercive control : the entrapment of women in personal life
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Coercive control : the entrapment of women in personal life
(Interpersonal violence / series editors, Claire Renzetti, Jeffrey L. Edleson)
Oxford University Press, 2007
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 402-440) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Despite its great achievements, the domestic violence revolution is stalled, Evan Stark argues, a provocative conclusion he documents by showing that interventions have failed to improve women's long-term safety in relationships or to hold perpetrators accountable. Stark traces this failure to a startling paradox, that the singular focus on violence against women masks an even more devastating reality. In millions of abusive relationships, men use a largely unidentified form of subjugation that more closely resembles kidnapping or indentured servitude than assault. He calls this pattern "coercive control". Drawing on sources that range from FBI statistics and film to dozens of actual cases from his thirty years of experience as an award-winning researcher, advocate, and forensic expert, Stark shows in terrifying detail how men can use coervice control to extend their dominance over time and through social space in ways that subvert women's autonomy, isolate them, and infiltrate the most intimate corners in their lives.
Against this backdrop, Stark analyses the cases of three women tried for crimes committed in the context of abuse, showing that their reactions are only intelligible when they are reframed as victims of coercive control rather than as "battered wives". The story of physical and sexual violence against women has been told often. But this is the first book to show that most abused women who seek help do so because their rights and liberties have been jeopardised, not because they have been injured. The coercive control model Stark develops resolves three of the most perplexing the legal system has failed to win them justice. Elevating coercive control from a second-class misdemeanor to a human rights violation, Stark explains why law, policy, and advocacy must shift its focus to emphasise how coercive control jeopardises women's freedom in everyday life. Fiercely argues and eminently readable, Stark's work is certain to breathe new life into the domestic violence revolution.
Table of Contents
- I. THE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE REVOLUTION: PROMISE AND DISAPPOINTMENT
- 1. The Revolution Unfolds
- 2. The Revolution Stalled
- II. ENIGMAS OF ABUSE
- 3. The Proper Measure of Abuse
- 4. The Entrapment Enigma
- 5. Representing Battered Women
- III. FROM DOMESTIC VIOLENCE TO COERCIVE CONTROL
- 6. Up to Inequality
- 7. The Theory of Coercive Control
- 8. The Technology of Coercive Control
- IV. LIVING WITH COERCIVE CONTROL
- 9. When Battered Women Kill
- 10. For Love or Money
- 11. The Special Reasonableness of Battered Women
- Conclusion: Freedom is Not Free
by "Nielsen BookData"