Norms and Violence Against Women in Ethiopia by Fejerskov, Adam Moe; Engberg-Pedersen, Lars; Zeleke, Meron;

Long description:

This book examines the complex subject of violence against women (VAW), moving beyond ways of thinking that privilege Western positions and subordinate local perspectives. Chapters analyse the profound clashes between different perspectives on VAW, demonstrating how actors engage with such norms in diverse places from Ethiopian villages, to government offices in Addis Ababa, to meeting rooms in the UN headquarters in New York.

Norms and Violence Against Women in Ethiopia proposes a novel theoretical framework that sees norms and normative engagement through interconnected situations rather than hierarchical chains. This decolonizing approach recognizes the equal legitimacy of different normative realities without privileging Western perspectives – questioning any notion of the global as universal and the local as periphery. The result is a nuanced understanding of norm interaction and contestation that better explains both resistance to and potential for social change. Chapters cover key issues including intimate partner violence, marital rape, and child marriage, as well as the impacts of positive masculinity on gender violence.

This timely book is an essential resource for scholars and students of sociology, international relations, global governance, and postcolonial studies. Providing insights on resistance to the implementation of social norms, the book is also beneficial to practitioners of international development and political sociology.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0] License. It is free to read, download and share via Elgaronline, thanks to generous funding support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.

This book examines the complex subject of violence against women (VAW), moving beyond ways of thinking that privilege Western positions and subordinate local perspectives. Chapters analyse the profound clashes between different perspectives on VAW, demonstrating how actors engage with such norms in diverse places from Ethiopian villages, to government offices in Addis Ababa, to meeting rooms in the UN headquarters in New York.

‘This book advances a welcome paradigm shift with regard to understanding global order through a multi-nodal framework to study norms. The book develops a decolonizing approach in order to distribute privileges thereby enabling a pluriversal understanding of how norms around violence against women are contested, translated, and transformed. It is an excellent contribution for scholars, experts, and practitioners interested in the ‘work’ of norms in a global context.’

Table of Contents:

Contents
1 Towards a decolonizing multi-nodal understanding of norms 1
Lars Engberg-Pedersen, Adam Moe Fejerskov, Meron Zeleke
and Dereje Feyissa
2 Vanguardism: the limits of Ethiopia’s state feminism in
combating violence against women 19
Dereje Feyissa
3 Global norms vs. local practices: the adjudication of intimate
partner violence cases in Addis Ababa 40
Helen Abelle
4 Unrecognized or silenced offence? Unveiling grassroot
perceptions of marital rape and Ethiopia’s reluctance to
criminalize marital rape 60
Meron Zeleke
5 The role of local and global institutional actors in combating
child marriage among girls at Quarit Woreda 78
Yitaktu Tibebu
6 Convergence and divergence of Ethiopian policies and global
norms to eliminate violence against women 95
Lars Engberg-Pedersen and Anchinesh Shiferaw Mulu
7 The classroom as a site of norm engagement: on becoming a
node in the gender normative order 114
Fana Gebresenbet and Anchinesh Shiferaw Mulu
8 African Union, gender violence and the positive masculinity
approach 134
Karmen Tornius
9 Norm engagement in conference room 4 of the UN building
in New York 152
Lars Engberg-Pedersen
10 Thinking in the US and acting in Ethiopia: social norms,
behaviouralism, and competing visions of gendered change 171
Adam Moe Fejerskov