Applying Anthropology to Gender-Based Violence: Global Responses, Local Practices 1498509037, 9781498509039

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Applying Anthropology to Gender-Based Violence

Applying Anthropology to Gender-Based Violence Global Responses, Local Practices Edited by Jennifer R. Wies and Hillary J. Haldane

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Chapter 8 reprinted by permission from Feminist Studies, vol. 41, no. 1. Portions of chapter 9 reprinted by permission from Human Organization, vol. 74, no. 3. Portions of chapter 12 reprinted by permission from Latin American Perspectives, vol. 41, no. 1. Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2015 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Applying anthropology to gender-based violence: global responses, local practices / edited by Jennifer R. Wies and Hillary J. Haldane. pages cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4985-0903-9 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4985-0904-6 (electronic) 1. Violence--Cross-cultural studies. 2. Women--Violence against--Cross-cultural studies. 3. Abused women--Cross-cultural studies. 4. Family violence--Cross-cultural studies. I. Wies, Jennifer R., editor of compilation. II. Haldane, Hillary J., editor of compilation. GN495.2 .A77 2015 303.6--dc23 2015017062 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

This volume is dedicated to Louise Lamphere, who has devoted her time, expertise, and compassion so generously to anthropologists studying gender-based violence.

Contents

List of Figures

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Acknowledgments

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1 Return to the Local: Lessons for Global Change Jennifer R. Wies and Hillary J. Haldane

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I: Ethnographic Intimacies 2 Women, Embodiment, and Domestic Violence in Northern Vietnam Lynn Kwiatkowski 3 Bureaucratic Bindings: Refugee Resettlement and Intimate Partner Abuse Elizabeth Wirtz

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II: Multi-Scalar Responses to Gender-Based Violence 4 Munted: Rebuilding Community after Disaster Hillary J. Haldane 5 Gender-Based Violence and the State in Guatemala’s Genocide and Beyond M. Gabriela Torres 6 Prostitution Diversion Programs and Structural Violence Yasmina Katsulis

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III: Critical Challenges in the Anthropology of Gender-Based Violence 7 Sex Trafficking of Native Peoples: History, Race, and Law April D. J. Petillo vii

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59 73

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Contents

8 Pa Manyen Fanm nan Konsa: Understanding Violence against Women after Haiti’s Earthquake Mark Schuller 9 Campus Sexual Violence Policies and Practices: A Holistic and Historical Approach to Research and Practice Jennifer R. Wies IV: Avenues for Change 10 “I’m a REAL Father Now!”: Using Applied Anthropology to Promote Positive Masculinities to Reduce Family Violence in Northern Uganda Rebecka Lundgren and Kimberly Ashburn 11 Employing Scholar-Activist Anthropology to Counter GenderBased Intimate Partner Violence in Belize Melissa A. Beske 12 Intimate Partner Violence, Social Change, and Scholar-Activism in Coastal Ecuador Karin Friederic

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References

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Index

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About the Contributors

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List of Figures

Fig. 10.1

Ideal Masculinity

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Fig. 10.2

A REAL Fathers Community Meeting, REAL Fathers Initiative. Photo credit: Dickens Ojamuge. 145

Fig. 10.3

A REAL Father Participating in Household Work, REAL Fathers Initiative. Photo credit: Dickens Ojamuge.

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Fig. 10.4

A REAL Father, Mother, and Child, REAL Fathers Initiative. Photo credit: Dickens Ojamuge. 150

Fig. 12.1

Quinindé, Ecuador, District Attorney’s office brochure, listing physical and sexual violence.

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Acknowledgments

A book like this relies on the heavy lifting of not only the authors and editors, but also on the part of the kin and community that support our efforts to expose the vile crimes against humanity. Our family and friends endure hours of stories of pain, misery and suffering, and they are often the ones who help us to see clearly why our work matters, and how it will contribute to making the world a better place. A major support for our efforts here has been the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA). In 2007, Jennifer and Hillary approached the leadership and requested the right to establish a Topical Interest Group on the issue of gender-based violence. They agreed, and in the seven years since its inception, it has grown from one attendee into a group of sixty-plus undergraduates, PhD students, applied anthropologists, and faculty who gather at the annual meetings to present their work and share ideas. It has become a home for scholars and practitioners who work on the issue of gender-based violence. The SfAA’s support of our group and for providing a venue for our work is what led to this volume. The chapters herein arose from the March 2014 meetings in Albuquerque, and the speed with which we were able to make this book a reality owes much to the Society for giving us the time and space to share our collective goals. We also thank the efforts of all the frontline workers, activists, scholars, practitioners, and survivors who make up the ethnographic stories in the volume. These people often remain anonymous in our stories, or at most are given pseudonyms, but their work, experiences, and stories are the human element in what we do. As anthropologists, we cannot forget that what we know is entirely dependent upon them, and their willingness to let us listen. Jennifer R. Wies [Richmond, KY] Hillary J. Haldane [Fairfield, CT]

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Chapter One

Return to the Local Lessons for Global Change Jennifer R. Wies and Hillary J. Haldane

In 2005, the World Health Organization (WHO) published their findings from a multi-country study on rates of gender-based violence. The document finally proved what scholars, activists, and survivors had known for decades: the scale of violence against women is significant, and the scope of the problem is varied and complex. The WHO study, containing data drawn from over 24,000 interviews in ten countries, reignited interest in, and funding for, research to identify the problem of gender-based violence across cultural settings, attending to the differences of forms of violence and experiences of abuse in rural and urban, poor and wealthy, and Northern and Southern locales. Applying Anthropology to Gender-Based Violence: Global Responses, Local Practices is a response to the interest of gender-based violence and to the concern for the well-being of those who suffer. The volume directly links anthropological theory and methods to applied and practical solutions for addressing gender-based violence in myriad forms: domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, and institutional abuse. The volume focuses on methodological approaches and ethical dilemmas in gender-based violence research, the limits of universal human rights frameworks and presenting possible alternatives, practical approaches for improving the delivery of services to victims, and an action-oriented foundation for transdisciplinary collaboration. Decades since the inception of anti-violence movements, we are still falling short in our ability to effectively prevent and respond to genderbased violence. Thus, a priority of this volume is to identify the best practices for anthropologists and others to mobilize their efforts in a way that reduces harm without causing new problems as part of the process. 1

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This volume is distinct from other work on the topic of gender-based violence for several reasons. First, there is a recognition and articulation of a theoretical shift in conceptualizing gender-based violence. We expand the scope of gender-based violence research to include phenomena such as the commodification of identity among indigenous populations in North America, policies related to prostitution in the United States, gendered-violence among refugees in post-earthquake Haiti, and the struggles of displaced populations in Kenya. Second, the contributors explore new ways that anthropological research can integrate multidisciplinary frameworks and mixed methods to influence, shape, and change gender-based violence intervention systems and policy domains. Third, this volume takes an explicitly applied angle to conducting research by considering ways anthropology can offer solutions to local and global problems. APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY TO GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE The discipline of anthropology has historically been concerned with acts of violence and conflict, largely focusing on the presence of warfare or violence situated within cultural rituals, such as female genital cutting (see Wies and Haldane 2011). However, these early studies tended to avoid casting an eye toward violence at the interpersonal level, namely what we would refer to as intimate partner violence or gender-based violence today. The anthropology of gender-based violence has expanded significantly since the 1982 publication of Peggy Reeve Sanday’s work on sociocultural aspects of rape and the 1992 edited volume Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives (Counts, Brown, and Campbell 1992). While studies since have taken many directions, a particularly rich vein of work has examined the relationship between gender-based violence and the state. Parson’s (2013) ethnography of social suffering in Chile confronts the mechanisms whereby the state reproduces inequalities that allow the persistence of gender violence. Ethnographically situated in Peru, Alcalde (2010) traces women’s experiences with domestic violence and the ways that those experiences intersect with state-imposed structures of inequality and violence. Located in a domestic violence shelter, Plesset’s (2006) rich ethnographic data explores the institutions that respond to gender violence as intermediate agents of the state. McClusky’s (2001) deeply humanistic ethnography demonstrates the power of participant observationbased research to give voice to the women experiencing violence amidst an unstable state apparatus in Belize. More recently, our earlier volume Anthropology at the Front Lines of Gender-Based Violence (2011) specifically explores the roles and lives of frontline workers in global efforts to respond to and eliminate gender-based violence.

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The chapters in this volume demonstrate research, advocacy, and activism that apply anthropology to gender-based violence. When we invoke the words “apply” or “applying” to anthropology, we follow a tradition of mobilizing anthropological theory and method to solve social problems in local and global contexts. “Applying anthropology” implies that the writers assume an action-oriented approach to their anthropological practice. Applied anthropology begins with social problems and the applicability of research, utilizes appropriate methods, and then applies theory to the research process and findings. Throughout the volume, readers will note the work represented here shares a number of characteristics of the tradition of applied anthropology, wherein anthropologists “use the knowledge, skills, and perspective of their discipline to help solve human problems and facilitate change” (Chambers 1985, 8). First, applied anthropology begins with the intent to address social problems identified by communities. In this collection, the contributors place gender-based violence at the center of their analysis. Throughout the anthropology literature, violence is often mentioned, but gender-based violence is rarely the starting point of inquiry. As we have discussed elsewhere (Wies and Haldane 2011), acts of violence and conflict have been studied extensively in the anthropological literature, however, it was not until the 1980s that the study of gender-based violence in anthropology became a topic in its own right. This volume is unique in its emphasis on anthropological work that begins with the question of how people are affected by gender-based violence and the ways that local and global structures impact those experiences. In so doing, the collection squarely identifies gender-based violence as a social problem for which anthropologists can participate in a solution. As these chapters show, the solutions are varied. However, they all begin with one of the central tenets of anthropology: an emphasis on the holistic and comparative aspects of culture. Second, the applied anthropologists “put people first” by tailoring the design and implementation of their projects for the people who are supposed to benefit from the research most (Uphoff 1991). The contributors have experience living with and/or working directly with the people represented in their work. This deep and meaningful participant observation involvement establishes a binding tie between the anthropologist and local peoples and provides a backdrop for ethnographic intimacies that places emphasis on individual voices and collective cultural experiences. As Finan and van Willigen (1991, 1) state, “As anthropologists, we attempt to enter the world of our research subjects, to fathom their systems of meaning, and to accurately translate their categories of knowledge into categories we understand and use in other contexts.” The chapters in this volume collectively suggest that as we engage in this process of entering the world of our participants and consciously place their experiences at the forefront of our knowledge base,

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we are advancing the role of anthropology as one that can actively participate in the resolution of social problems. Third, applying anthropology requires attention to local peoples as agents who exist within larger structures. As Scheper-Hughes (1992, 221) suggests: In advanced industrialized societies and in modern, bureaucratic, and welfare states, the institutions of violence generally operate more covertly. A whole array of educational, social welfare, medical, psychiatric, and legal experts collaborate in the management and control of sentiments and practices that threaten the stability of the state and the fragile consensus on which it claims to base its legitimacy.

In our application of anthropology to gender-based violence, there is a shared recognition that individual experiences are shaped by structures and institutions that potentially create and maintain violence. Thus, in the analyses throughout this volume, careful attention is paid to the relationships, contestations, and influences between the local and structural levels. However, the case studies repeatedly show these larger structures and their embedded power as possible sites for cultural changes that can contribute to the diminishing and eradication of gender-based violence. This recognition of the potential for positive change that can occur when engaging structurally-violent systems is unique in that it reflects an applied approach of collaboration over dismissal. While challenging, this approach may yield results that are inconceivable without a framework that recognizes the multidirectional influences between local populations and structural violence. The fourth characteristic of applied anthropology is a commitment to engage in preventions and interventions. As scholars of gender-based violence, advocates for those affected by gender-based violence, and activists who continually seek venues for ameliorating violence experiences, we assert that the experiential knowledge gained in the application of anthropology informs the discipline’s theory, method, and practice, thereby influencing and possibly increasing the success of future gender-based violence intervention and prevention activities. As Hill-Burnett (1987, 124) states when reflecting upon the relationship between anthropological theory and practice, “The use of knowledge entails its further development, not simply by adding to it but through transforming its assumptions, categories, and paradigms. Knowledge is tested in use; when found wanting, it must be further developed or clarified.” This iterative model for improving the lives of people is most successful when we recognize the multiplicity of roles that anthropologists may take and value the experiential form of knowledge-making as equal to scientific contributions. Finally, despite efforts by anthropologists to apply theory and method to the solution of gender-based violence, one of the shortcomings of anthropology has been its limited engagement with other disciplinary approaches.

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Psychology, criminology, legal studies, and sociology, have been the dominant disciplines drawn upon for addressing gender-based violence and for offering remedies or solutions. Therefore, the fifth characteristic indicative of an applied anthropological approach is an explicit recognition of the need to enter into transdisciplinary conversations and collaborations. Anthropology has much to offer a transdisciplinary effort at this point in time: greater awareness of cultural differences in identifying and addressing violence has increased in other disciplines; longstanding theoretical models and methodological skills for contributing to a collaborative approach to minimize violence and the harm it causes; and a continued commitment to documenting the local, lived experiences of people around the world. Therefore, a goal of this volume is to highlight not only the strength of bringing applied anthropology into conversation with other disciplines around the topic of genderbased violence, but the necessity. ANTHROPOLOGY THEORY AND METHODS This volume is an example of how to combine applied anthropology, ethnography, and an emphasis on the local context in the study of gender-based violence. Throughout this volume and the anthropological studies of genderbased violence, one important theoretical framework has been to examine the role of history, structure and power in situating cases of abuse. Therefore, the majority of studies in anthropology that examine gender-based violence do not shy away from the material reality of people’s lives: the abuse is not “just in their head” and the factors that cause abuse to happen are not merely ideological in nature. Theoretically, the anthropology of gender-based violence examines the relations and asymmetry of power—girded by structures, historically produced, and consciously engaged—that allow for one person or group of people to direct violence against another. Furthermore, “doing” applied anthropology inherently has power dynamics that must be theoretically addressed and interrogated. Throughout this volume, the contributors are in positions that are not afforded to the people suffering in their fieldsites—they have access to passports and visas, they are affiliated with university or other institutional organizations, and they have the financial resources to carry out the work. Thus, they are in a position to influence how the information is gathered, presented, and disseminated. All of the contributors are deeply aware of this and the tension of working to end unequal relationships while acknowledging that the inequality is what produces the scholarship. This tension is at the heart of engaged and applied anthropology, and while the chapters herein cannot offer solutions to end the tension, the first step towards acknowledging possibilities for change is to be transparent of what the structures of inequality are, the various positions of

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the actors, and the ideology that supports the continued domination. In some ways, applied anthropology is grappling with a tension that is not dissimilar from what the very programs examined in this volume are trying to do: recognize the power structures (between husband and wife, indigenous populations and settlers, universities and the criminal justice system, etc.), identify the ideology that supports the imbalance, and identify what local citizens see as alternatives for change. The contributors also attend to the macrostructures that maintain the systems of inequity. Largely drawing upon political economic theories, the contributors see the ways that global capitalism has been an unavoidable factor in creating the forms of gender-based violence they engage in their work. As much anthropological work has pointed out over the last century, there is violence found in almost all societies, and capitalism is not solely responsible for the fact of violence in our species. However, it is clear that the very particular forms of violence this volume engages cannot be separated from the conditions of the global market and the rapacious appetite for resources and cheap labor global capitalism requires. Thus, the theoretical challenge is to attend to the specificity of how each locale, in its relationship to the global system, is impacted by the demands of the market on kin and community. Methodologically, each case study emphasizes the geographic specificity of the narrative, while connecting the experiences of the women and men with wider global trends. This approach underscores the importance of locally produced and disseminated understandings of gender-based violence to inform us of the limits of the top-down approach common in international engagement with gender-based violence, and highlights how unique each cultural context is as its constitutes grapple with a global epidemic. The chapters also take into account the very different resources available to address violence due to local economic constraints, and it is clear throughout the volume that resources are not equivalent. This volume takes us to local settings in Kenya, Uganda, Vietnam, Aotearoa New Zealand, Guatemala, Belize, Ecuador, Haiti, American Indian Tribal Country, and U.S. college campuses. Adelman (2004, 49) asserts that “a trend in domestic violence studies is either to remove from the analysis any overarching critique of culture, politics, and the economy, focusing instead on abstracted, isolated or decontextualized data; or to provide a snapshot or cross-sectional view of the context, grounding experiences to local circumstances.” This volume responds to this apparent dichotomy by synthesizing approaches to gender-based violence that begin at both the global and local level. We present chapters that are influenced by a methodological trend in the discipline that has developed over the last decade, but marries this to a mainstay of anthropology, the holistic view of local contexts, that has been at the heart of anthropology since its inception (Haldane 2010).

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In 2006, the small, but growing community of anthropologists working on gender-based violence was introduced to a new methodology and framework for engaging with forms of violence against women: the deterritorialized ethnography (Merry 2006a). This methodological approach grew out of the work of Sally Engle Merry, in which she traced the development and movement of a discourse of gender-based violence as it made its way from the halls of various United Nations offices in Geneva and New York, London and Paris, to diverse contexts like Suva, Beijing, Delhi, and Hong Kong. Merry’s work was critical for demonstrating the production of new regimes of knowledge, and a resulting global biopolitic. What Merry found was that while in individual cultural contexts there were still very diverse understandings of marriage, kinship, sexuality, love and companionship, the way nation-states were defining anti-violence efforts, and the way activists developed corresponding programs and prevention efforts, shared an emphasis on individual human rights, a legal framework and approach, and a criminalization of the behaviors defined as formed of gender-based violence. What appeared around the globe were ways of defining and addressing violence that looked strikingly similar to each other, and to the categories that were dominant in the West. The dominant characteristic of a deterritorialized ethnography is that the focus is on a problem, not a place. This approach has been useful in substantiating research of gender-based violence in-and-of-itself, and provides a framework for examining gender-based violence that is not geographically bound. It allows anthropologists to examine information from literature and reports to apply an anthropological lens to consider what has been left out, deemphasized, or possibly misrecognized. In this volume, the contributors use their anthropological insights to recast what may seem like an obvious social script—prostitution is bad (Katsulis), campuses should end rape (Wies), governments should not torture (Torres), and American Indians (Petillo) have been treated poorly—to complicate the narrative in a way that makes the historically predominant approaches to addressing these problems seem ill informed. These contributors challenge the “taken for grantedness” that has informed quick solutions to complex problems, which result in new problems in their wake. Yet, we also need to recognize that a deterritorialized ethnography complicates the notion of ethnography itself. In some ways, it can hardly be correct to still refer to this as ethnography in its true sense as a writing of a people. The individuals in a deterritorialized, problem-based project would not conceptualize themselves as “a people”—they do not share a language, a religion, an ethnicity, a kinship system, citizenship, or even an economic system. Therefore, this volume also includes pieces that also reterritorialize ethnography. Following from Deleuze and Guattari (1983), what we mean by reterritorialized ethnography in the field of gender-based violence is not so

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different from what we find in art, music, or pop culture more broadly—after the destruction that occurs via the deterritorialization (colonization, spread of capitalism) process, the emergence of new forms of action and thought, that may seem to have a common origin, can in fact be new examples of indigenous expression. There is no denying that the human rights framework for defining and acting against gender-based violence is powerful and has become embedded in cultural contexts all over the globe. What this volume demonstrates is how distinct each “local” is, and the myriad ways the local is speaking back. By emphasizing the wider ethnographic context of the expressions of violence, it allows us to see where broader global interventions can be successful, but similarly, how local ideas and actions can be recognized as equally valid. In some ways, a return to a more holistic understanding of the local, balancing the problem itself with the wider cultural context, brings us back to one of the main goals of anthropology: to learn about and from others. Several chapters in this volume draw upon a core method in anthropology, participant-observation, reminding us of the importance of doing anthropology at the frontlines of gender-based violence and focusing on the “imponderabilia of everyday life” (Malinowski 1922). The value of participantobservation is it provides the researcher with a way of thinking historically about the society in which they are living—the researcher must attend to the economic, social, civil, legal, spiritual, educational, and kin-based systems of people’s lives. In this respect, the researchers who focus on gender-based violence as a topic in their research setting cannot divorce the acts of violence from these other structures in an individual’s lives. Here, the contributors (Beske, Frederic, Haldane, Kwiatkowski, Schuller, and Wirtz) focus on gender-based violence with ethnographic sensibility—to foreground a holistic understanding of the people that does not reduce them to merely victims of violence, but as Belizean, Vietnamese, Kenyan, Haitian, etc. women who are enculturated and engendered by locally specific beliefs and through locally constituted structures. APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY CHALLENGES The chapters in this volume take on the challenge of being attentive to the local detail of their authors’ respective fieldsites, consider the historical and global resonances of the way they frame the problems they examine, remain mindful of the delicate balance between interfering and providing useful assistance, and identify ways for anthropology to partner with others to make the world a safer place. Great attention has been paid to the available literature, and each author carefully considered the standpoint of their interlocutors to present heterogeneous accounts of violence.

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The first section, titled Ethnographic Intimacies, brings the strength of anthropology to bear on the topic of gender-based violence: our qualitative and long term methodological encounter with interlocutors from places throughout the world. The two chapters in this section foreground the way ethnographic research lends itself to new and nuanced understandings of victim and survivor experiences. In these chapters, we see how women come to understand the abuse as an integral aspect of their lives and how they embody the violence. The chapters require those who wish to stop abuse to rethink how you remove the violence while keeping intact a woman’s sense of self. Lynn Kwiatkowski expertly unpacks this dilemma in her chapter, as she details the stories of women seeking to reconcile contradictory discourses of individual rights and the demands of kinship and marriage in Vietnam. This chapter makes explicit how necessary attention to notions of kinship is for understanding the reasons abuse occurs, but also for what appears on the surface to be the implicit acceptance of abuse as a normalized facet of life. The next chapter, by Elizabeth Wirtz, explores a second type of dislocation, one of refugee status and liminality, contextualized by the intimate and structural forms of violence women experience in the refugee camps of Kenya. Within these camps, the bureaucratic strictures of the refugee resettlement process create a dilemma for abused women, due to their identity within the refugee camp as a family member, and not as an individual. Wirtz examines the way refugee women are forced to choose between two forms of abuse: the dehumanizing and structurally oppressive confines of the camp by moving away from the abuser and beginning the resettlement process anew on their own or expediting resettlement in a different country with a husband who inflicts violence on a regular basis. This section most explicitly identifies the ways that contemporary Western responses to violence fall short of meeting local needs in variable contexts. From this, the privileging of women’s voices and close readings of their circumstances point to promising avenues in the fight against violence. The women themselves clearly identify the barriers to violence-free lives, and their perspectives, drawn from ethnographically intimate engagements, can inform a more holistic approach to ending violence going forward. The second section of the volume, Multi-Scalar Responses to GenderBased Violence contains three chapters exploring the relationship between victim experiences and the state apparatus charged with categorizing the violence, remedying the violence, and creating the context for violence in the first place. In the first chapter of this section, Hillary Haldane details the ways people in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand responded after a magnitude 6.3 earthquake destroyed local services and the local economy. As families were left homeless, jobless, and in many cases, on the margins of food insecurity,

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the chapter explores how social service providers in the city responded to the increase in cases of abuse, while at the same time managing their own posttraumatic stress. Haldane’s chapter also points to the long-term effects of suffering, showing how victims and service providers became trapped both in cycles of despair and desperation. At the same time, she finds the disaster provided the state and local service providers to rethink how to address violence more broadly, pinpointing the way to a more holistic notion of abuse and survivorship. M. Gabriela Torres explores the relationship between evangelical religious identity and state practice in Guatemala during the years of the country’s genocide. This chapter examines General Efrain Rio Montt’s use of Christian doctrine in his justification for patriarchal practices and repression in the 1980s. Torres demonstrates how the power of the military and the power of the religious doctrine were mutually reinforcing to fuel that repressive regime against women in the name of the state and the church. Torres also seeks to understand why, despite clear evidence of Rio Montt’s culpability, he is still a revered figure in the country, and how this reverence normalizes women’s lack of autonomy and control in their lives and perpetuates violence against them. In the next chapter, Yasmina Katsulis explores the way prostitution is being reconstituted as a form of gender-based violence. In particular, Katsulis examines the politics of court-ordered diversion programs that shift away from criminalizing a woman’s behavior and instead diverts her from sex work. Katsulis details how the “good intentions” that serve as the foundation for the program, are undermined by a persistent criminal justice approach that ultimately creates a form of structural violence for the women, leading it to fail those who are most vulnerable. The third section, entitled Critical Challenges in the Anthropology of Gender-Based Violence, explores forms and contexts of violence that are difficult to categorize, hard to theorize, and seemingly impervious to the decades of intervention efforts to end the abuse. April D. J. Petillo presents the challenge of addressing human trafficking, or “modern day slavery,” as a national/international issue when the victims are indigenous, Native American women. The American racialization of the trafficking debate has focused almost exclusively on binaries that render Native women’s bodies as invisible, rapable, and available for violence. In this chapter, Petillo draws upon legal theories of decolonization to consider how centering indigeneity in the debate over trafficking provides a more nuanced understanding of the phenomena of borders, migrants, and genderbased violence. Mark Schuller also brings together political-economy, history, and cultural context in his chapter on gender-based violence in Haiti. In this piece, Schuller compares women’s narratives of violence before and after the dev-

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astating 2010 earthquake, identifying the ways that conceptions of violence are never static, though the responses to violence tend to be. This disjuncture between nongovernmental organization (NGO) conceptions of violence and women’s lived experiences highlights the increased vulnerability that the earthquake created for women, even as NGO efforts to address violence received increased attention. Schuller argues that it is by addressing the longstanding racial and gender inequities in Haiti that the violence will ultimately decrease, rather than merely addressing the violence ad hoc. Campus sexual violence is a problem that seems to defy decades of activism and policy. Jennifer Wies addresses this issue in her chapter, in which she asserts that institutions of higher education, as charged by Title IX, have been given the power to categorize, define, and adjudicate cases of campus rape, thereby acting as independent entities from the local criminal justice apparatus and from state and federal law. Written from the position of both researcher and practitioner, Wies points to the contradiction that universities are currently in a position to protect the educational rights of both the victim and the perpetrator, creating tensions at the local level. The fourth and final section of the volume, Avenues for Change provides the most recent findings from applied research aimed at addressing and eliminating violence. This section is critical as it depicts ways local communities can work against violence, and offers solutions for change that can be applied in many cross-cultural contexts. Rebecka Lundgren and Kimberly Ashburn bring attention to the perpetrators of most cases of violence: men. Lundgren and Ashburn detail the scope of a program in Uganda to minimize abuse for women and children by focusing on the values men hold about their roles as husbands and fathers. In finding that discussions with the wives/mothers were also essential to the program’s success, Lundgren and Ashburn identify a way forward for considering the holistic complex of intimate-partner violence as an individual, household, and kin-based issue, one that cannot be addressed via the victim or perpetrator alone. Melissa Beske details the power of naming violence and bringing abuse to the public sphere in the next chapter. Beske’s chapter draws upon her long-term fieldwork in Belize and her role as a community activist, to detail the importance of making the wider public aware of abuse in order to enact policies, structures, and institutions to intervene with violence and ultimately prevent it from happening. Beske’s chapter uniquely reveals the way one can engage in a community as a scholar-activist, how to simultaneously learn from the community, and ultimately work with them in order to bring about social change. We end this section and the volume with a chapter by Karin Friederic, who has worked as a scholar-activist in Ecuador for over a decade. Friederic offers another example of how one can minimize harm while maximizing

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good as an ethically engaged scholar-activist. Having founded an NGO focused on medical care in the region, Friederic reflects on the practical and moral dilemmas in doing such work and offers important guidelines for how collaborative efforts can be the avenues for change. CONCLUSION We end each of the chapters in this volume with a set of questions written by the chapter contributors. The purpose of these questions is to allow the reader to identify the key concerns or issues the author hoped the reader would get out of the piece, and also to point the reader in the direction of what is still unanswerable. We hope the questions allow for a dialogue, a way to engage our readership and to hopefully identify new possibilities for answers. We hope the questions allow for a thoughtful reflection of the topics covered in the volume. We also hope the questions remind the reader that they are not alone in their concern for this topic. Sometimes working in the field of gender-based violence can be lonely. It is underfunded work, often unrecognized, and in some cases, seems unending and unsolvable. The contributors in this volume do not believe this to be true. One of the goals of this volume is to emphasize the role of building and maintaining community in order to address the issue of gender-based violence in all of our local contexts. In each of the chapters, it is evident that the work to address suffering is never an individual endeavor. This is not to claim that “community” is some magical cure for social ills (Joseph 2002). It is true that in some instances, the very “community” that comes together to address a problem, can exacerbate it. But it is also through the process of a group of people attempting to solve a problem that social scientists can see where there are the gaps, the produced vulnerabilities, and the areas of concern. Humans are responsible for causing violence. Therefore, human solutions are available to end it. We have to work together to make this happen.

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Ethnographic Intimacies

Chapter Two

Women, Embodiment, and Domestic Violence in Northern Vietnam Lynn Kwiatkowski 1

In northern Vietnam, many women are vulnerable to their husbands’ violence as an everyday experience. As Linh 2, a forty-nine-year-old farmer, states: My husband beats me very seriously. He has not only beaten and kicked me [for the last twenty-seven years], but also hit me with objects and threatened me with a knife. Sometimes I just run away. And when I hear that someone else has been beaten by others, I often feel very nervous, and I can’t move my legs. I can’t keep calm [because I think about my husband’s abuse toward me]. . . . I often have bruises on my face, body, hands, and legs. One time, he threw a bowl at my leg. So now, when I have to walk for a long time and up a steep road or hill, my leg hurts. . . . When the weather changes, it’s hard for me to breathe because he hit me in the back with his elbow. . . . I feel very afraid and disheartened.

This chapter emphasizes the importance of understanding abused Vietnamese women’s bodily and emotional experiences as being critically shaped by intersecting cultural, political, and economic forces. As Vietnamese women are culturally and socially defined in significant ways through their relationships to and care of their family members, this chapter explores how women make sense of their familial ties and body-selves as they experience physical and emotional abuse from their husbands. 3 This process occurs within a gendered sociocultural and political context that valorizes women sacrificing their own bodily and emotional well-being for their family, while simultaneously encouraging their protection through changing medical, social, and legal approaches to domestic violence. These contradictory discourses create a troubling environment for abused women. 15

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The impacts of domestic violence on women’s embodied experiences lead many abused Vietnamese women to seek assistance in: ending their husbands’ violence; recovering physically, emotionally, and economically from the abuse; and repairing their kinship relationships. Many women cope with their daily vulnerability to domestic violence and related trauma by asserting agency, including the ability to make decisions for themselves, and being hopeful that this interruption and exceptional problem in their lives will end and that they can overcome the emotional pain, physical injuries, and scars of gender violence. While not necessarily intentional, abused women asserting agency and being hopeful can be understood as ways in which abused Vietnamese women attempt to restore the integrity of their bodyselves. RESEARCH METHODS My analysis is based primarily on research I conducted between 2004 and 2013, and is also informed by my prior research in northern Vietnam. Within this time frame I conducted research during four periods, including in Hanoi in 2004, 2007, and 2013, and in Hoa Binh Province in 2010. I conducted participant observation, which included living within the communities in which I conducted research; spending time with women and their families; observing the activities of counselors and their discussions with abused women at a hospital-based counseling center; observing the care offered to patients at a local hospital; attending meetings of clubs for abused women, government sponsored Women’s Union meetings and activities, and other local events and rituals; visiting Western-style and local community-based shelters for abused women; and engaging in everyday activities in both rural and urban areas. I interviewed fifty-three women who said they had experienced domestic violence from their husbands. In addition, I also formally interviewed fifty-seven community members, and 108 government officials and leaders, biomedical health workers, local healers, police, local nongovernmental organization (NGO) personnel, international organization professionals, and other people, most of whom address domestic violence in their work. Many of the community members I interviewed worked as farmers on their family farms, and other people worked as professionals, business owners, factory workers, retailers, market traders, tailors, and others. Kinship was largely patrilineal in these communities, with some married couples living with or near the houses of the husbands’ parents. Most of the people I interacted with and interviewed identified with the majority Kinh ethnic group, and others identified with the Muong and Dao ethnic groups, which comprise three of fifty-four officially recognized ethnic groups.

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I use the term “domestic violence” in my chapter to refer particularly to husbands’ violence against their wives, and in some cases in-laws’ violence against women. The term “domestic violence,” or violence in the family, is currently commonly used by people in Vietnam, particularly since the 2007 approval of a domestic violence law. The law defines domestic violence as involving “purposeful acts of certain family members that cause or may possibly cause physical, mental or economic injuries to other family members” (National Assembly, Socialist Republic of Vietnam 2007, 1). WOMEN, THE BODY-SELF, AND GENDER VIOLENCE IN VIETNAM Regarding the prevalence of domestic violence in Vietnam, the government deemed 2013 to be the Vietnam Family Year, and recently approved a national strategy to “develop Vietnamese families by 2020” (Thanh Nien News.com 2013). Thus, an important concern of the government is domestic violence. The National Study on Domestic Violence against Women in Viet Nam, which was conducted jointly in 2009 and 2010 by the Vietnamese government, the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization (WHO), and other organizations, found that: 32 percent of women interviewed who had been married reported physical violence from their husbands during their marriage; 10 percent reported sexual violence from their husbands; and 54 percent reported emotional abuse from their husbands (GSO, UN JPGE, and WHO 2010, 50). The abused Vietnamese women I spoke with often described domestic violence as being experienced as a bodily and/or emotional assault. Cultural anthropologists and other scholars have viewed the body as a “sociocultural and historical phenomenon,” rather than a natural and biological given (Bourdieu 1977; Foucault 1978; Mauss 1935; Reischer and Koo 2004, 298; Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987). In this framework, the body is understood to be especially subject to hegemonic cultural constructions within historically specific societies. In my analysis, I draw on the concept of “social phenomenology,” which is “the idea that intersubjectivity is grounded in bodiliness or corporeality” (Van Wolputte 2004, 252). In this way, embodiment is seen as a requirement for exchange and relationship between bodies. Related to this idea, Veena Das (2008) uses the concept of subjectivity to analyze violence, stating that subjectivity points to “the importance of the intersubjective character of experience . . . as providing the ground” (284) to analyze the phenomena of violence. Das and Arthur Kleinman (2000) define subjectivity as, “the felt interior experience of the person that includes his or her positions in a field of relational power” (1), or the “lived and imaginary experience of the subject”

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(10). For Vietnamese, the body and sense of self/personhood have long been deeply tied to broader social relations and social structures, such as the family and society. These ideas are still conceptualized today, linking physical and emotional well-being to harmonious social relationships (Gammeltoft 1999). DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, GENDER, AND THE FAMILY IN VIETNAM Linking the body-self to gender violence, the contemporary global feminist movement considers gender violence, and spousal domestic violence in particular, to entail a variety of forms. These ideas have influenced some Vietnamese officials and professionals to develop the understanding that spousal domestic violence occurs within marriages when husbands abuse their wives physically, emotionally, sexually, and/or economically. 4 The perpetration of these forms of domestic violence is related to hegemonic cultural discourses of gendered bodies, persons, and kinship relationships. Abused Vietnamese women’s experiences of this gender violence involve not only their relationships to their abusive husbands, but also their relationships to their families and others, as they conceptualize and negotiate gender violence in their communities on an ongoing basis. Abused women’s embodied experiences of gender violence, their social relationships, and these cultural discourses intersect to influence the shaping of the women’s subjectivity. Van Wolputte (2004) argued that among the Himba herding people in northwest Namibia, “. . . selfhood implies a body-self that originates in ‘outer’ fields of meaning and extends in space and place, in material culture, in animals, and in the bodies of others” (252). For Vietnamese women, the body-self can be understood, at least partially, in relation to others, and more specifically to one’s family. Within a historically largely patriarchal and patrilineal kinship system, particularly with Chinese colonial influences beginning in 111 BCE, women become a part of their husbands’ extended families upon marriage. As daughters-in-law entering their husbands’ patrilineage, full integration into a husband’s family is not always an easy process, with domestic conflicts sometimes involving violence. Coexisting with the Vietnamese patrilineal kinship system is a bilateral kinship system that has emphasized children’s relationships to their mothers and mothers’ families, as well as their fathers and fathers’ families (Luong 2003). However, the patrilineal kinship model has remained stronger historically. The political power of patrilineages was limited by the Communist Party-led government beginning in the mid-twentieth century through processes such as land reform and collectivization of agriculture. By the early 1990s, though, lineages began to gain more political and economic strength, and kin and patrilineage

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networks have been revitalized. This change followed the economic and social reforms that were part of doi moi, or renovation, policies which officially began in 1986 and emerged after a decade of economic crisis (Luong 2003; Malarney 2002; Werner 2002). With economic restructuring and social reforms, the Vietnamese government moved from a socialist state-centered planned economy model to a market system with socialist characteristics (Kerkvliet 2005). Belanger and Barbieri (2009) assert that, under both the pre-communist and communist governments, family membership has been “an individual’s most fundamental social affiliation, and one’s reputation and future depended on actions and behaviors of his or her entire family and kin group” (16). Membership within their husbands’ families remains very important to abused women’s sense of self, even in the face of the violence they are subjected to. This idea is also conveyed by the state. While the government made divorce legal in the mid-twentieth century, even if abused women desire to leave their abusive husbands the government makes it very difficult to acquire a divorce. For example, counseling with local government officials is required prior to being granted one. On a social level, women who divorce are often stigmatized and discriminated against by others in their community (17). Women have been made responsible for maintaining family unity and harmony, through state programs such as the Cultured Family campaign (Leshkowich 2014; Vu 2008). Abused women’s sense of self and social respectability can be contingent on their relationship to their families, especially their husbands and children. Not only can other family members affect their lives, but their own actions, such as obtaining a divorce, can have negative impacts on the reputations, everyday lives, and futures of their nuclear and extended family members. While this kind of social and family system has been negotiable, it is one abused women seriously consider when weighing options available for diminishing or ending their husbands’ violence toward them. Although new forms of femininity and womanhood are found in Vietnam, such as the Communist state ideology of women being equal to men, discourses of what it means to be a good wife in the Confucian-influenced patriarchal and patrilineal family in Vietnam still persist and influence women’s sense of their body-self (Belanger and Pendakis 2009; Drummond 2004; Duvvury, Nguyen, and Carney 2012; Ngo 2004). For the Vietnamese state, modernity under doi moi entails a cultural revitalization of the values of “traditional” Vietnamese culture (Werner 2002), which serve as a moral guide during a period of uncertainty with rapid change and globalization. This includes the renewal of traditional gender values. For example, important historical Confucian-inspired documents used to instruct women about their proper social roles and subject positions were family education manuals (gia huan ca). They instructed women and

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men about proper social relationships and bodily comportment, and they helped to nurture a “Vietnamese consciousness” (Richey 2013, 64). For example, the manuals include instructions for women to: maintain their chastity; be faithful to their husbands; refrain from talking, gossiping, or complaining much; and obey their husbands. Written in verse, and circulating in Vietnam possibly as early as the fifteenth century, they became part of popular oral tradition, with people memorizing and transmitting these ideas (Marr 1981; Richey 2013; Tai 1992). Significant here is the importance these documents and popular oral traditions have in shaping women’s gendered embodied experiences and social relationships within the family. Confucian ideas orient moral cultivation of the person with the stability of larger social groupings, such as families and the nation, and can have a tangible impact on many women’s lives. THE GENDERED BODY AND SELF As the gendered body and self in Vietnam are culturally shaped in historically specific ways, Horton and Rydstrom (2011) have argued that male and female bodies are culturally constructed as different physiologically, and that these differences align with men’s and women’s gendered “characters” (548). For instance, as members of patrilineages, males are perceived to be superior to females, as descent is traced through males and men hold leadership positions within the patrilineage. Sons’ bodies can perpetuate the family lineage, morality, honor, and reputation, while daughters, who will be absorbed into their husbands’ patrilineages, have bodies which are culturally constructed as deficient. Women are perceived to make up for deficiencies in their bodies through certain emotions and behaviors, such as self-denial, endurance, and respect (Horton and Rydstrom 2011). The culturally constructed bodily constitution and gendered character of Vietnamese women provide the cultural justification for state officials and leaders, and other Vietnamese people, to entreat women to endure their husbands’ abuse toward them. Some abused women try to embody these cultural ideals of womanhood, in the face of their husbands’ abuse. Ideas of men’s “hot” constitution, as compared to women’s “cool” constitution, and related cultural constructions of men’s greater tendencies toward anger and violence are drawn upon by some Vietnamese to explain, naturalize, and legitimate men’s violence against their wives (Horton and Rydstrom 2011; Rydstrom 2003). Men and women’s gendered bodies and subject positions are constructed differently in these discourses, while a competing discourse asserts that men and women are equal. This alternative discourse allows for other Vietnamese women and men to condemn domestic violence. Contemporary discourses about proper womanhood conveyed to women at

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the local level by government-sponsored Women’s Union leaders, during meetings or events, reflect Confucian-influenced gender ideologies, cultural ideas about women and men’s physiologies and gendered characters, and the significance of women’s subject positions within families, along with conceptions of gender equality. Confucian-influenced discourses convey the notion that spouses should live in harmony, and that women should: create a happy family; work hard; attend to their husbands’ needs; care for their children, in-laws, and parents; and make themselves beautiful for their husband. I spoke with many women who also asserted that women should sacrifice their needs for their family (see also Pettus 2003). Many abused women reflected the ideal of sacrifice which marked a woman as a good wife and mother, although some women were blamed for their husbands’ violence (Kwiatkowski 2011). While women’s position and sense of body-self is not static (Belanger and Pendakis 2009), abused Vietnamese women often make choices that prioritize the needs of their family members over the integrity and security of their own body-self. While many abused women have divorced their abusive husbands (United Nations Viet Nam 2008; Viet Nam News 2011), many more remain in their marriages and families. 5 In addition to economic concerns, one of the most common reasons abused women offered for remaining with their husbands was concern for the emotional welfare and futures of their children, which they believed would be harmed without the constant presence, emotional guidance, and support of both parents within their household. There is also a strong sense that emotional loss and loneliness will inevitably be experienced by a divorced woman. VIETNAMESE WOMEN’S EMBODIED EXPERIENCES OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE In my analysis of abused Vietnamese women’s embodied experiences of domestic violence, I also draw from Das and Kleinman’s (2000) assertion that in situations of violence, whether political violence or interpersonal violence, people may experience “unremitting engagement with violence in their everyday lives, through which their subjectivity is produced” (8). In such a situation of violence, “The grounds on which trust in everyday life is built seem to disappear, revealing the ordinary as uncanny and in need of being recovered . . . [and] there is a feeling of extreme contingency and vulnerability in carrying out everyday activities” (8). For many abused Vietnamese women, feelings of vulnerability are ongoing and continuous. Abused women’s embodied experiences and subjectivity are shaped by intersecting experiences of gender violence, related cultural discourses of gender and family, structures of inequality, and power relations (Das and Kleinman

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2000). With domestic violence, abusive husbands focus disciplinary actions on the body-selves of their wives, but this form of gender violence does not operate only on an individual level. Instead, domestic violence is linked to and supported by cultural discourses and the broader social structure in Vietnam. For example, one abused woman with whom I spoke, named Thanh, who was in her thirties, poor, with two young sons, said she was subject to marital sexual violence, physical violence, and verbal and other emotional abuse from her husband. Thanh was the main provider of income in her household, which included her parents-in-law. About her work, she emphasized her embeddedness within her family by saying, “I never think about myself. I only earn money for my family. I don’t earn money for myself.” Thanh was ambivalent about her sense of her body-self and discussed how her husband’s violence corresponded with these feelings. . . . the hitting, I cannot tolerate it. But since I have no place to run, I have to stay in one place and suffer. I think the physical injuries will recover, but the mental (or emotional) injuries will never be cured. And my younger son sometimes asks why I am crying, but I never tell him. . . . My husband hits me every day, and many times my mouth bleeds and my son asks me about it, and I only tell him I have a problem with my teeth.

The structural problem of women having “no place to run,” as Thanh states, or more specifically, little economic ability to establish a new home and raise their children apart from their husbands, has led Thanh to incorporate and try to manage her experience of her husband’s violence into her everyday life. She has even come to cope with her regular experience of domestic violence by asserting that the physical injuries will recover over time. Still, she said her husband’s violence involves sexual abuse, including physically forcing her to imitate the sexual activities of actors in pornographic videos. Thanh said, “My husband doesn’t respect me, and thinks of me as a toy to play with any time.” Thanh perceives her husband to objectify her body-self, to imagine that her body can be manipulated as a child plays with a toy, without any regard for her feelings and physical well-being, or respect for her social status. After two years of domestic violence Thanh had sought assistance from a number of sources to treat her physical injuries and emotional suffering, and to end her husband’s violence. She sought help from neighbors, some of her relatives, medical personnel, counselors, traditional healers, Buddhist monks, police, and government leaders, including Women’s Union leaders. Through seeking assistance from others, Thanh sought to end this rupture in her life. This has been a difficult process, though as Thanh said,

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I have had many bruises on my face, but when people asked me [about them], I told them they only resulted from a fall. So, I hid it. But after my neighbors realized it was my husband hitting me, they advised me to leave him. I thought I would be happy, but what about the children? They would not have [both] a mother and a father. So I’ve tried to suffer through his violence, but, as I said, my physical injuries will heal, but my emotional distress will never heal. [She began to cry, and said,] Maybe my sons will understand my actions when they are older.

When I interviewed her, she said that counselors and Women’s Union leaders had helped her emotionally, members of her community had helped her family economically, and their combined assistance had aided in reducing, but not ending, her husband’s violence toward her. Other abused women also linked their sense of self to their social relationships with their husbands, in-laws, neighbors and/or other community members, particularly through the ethic of respect. Ha, a farmer who has heart disease was beaten and emotionally abused by her husband for two years. She said he gambled and sometimes asked her for money, and that he “just wants to play outside the family; he does not want to help me and our children.” She said she felt that she was not respected by her husband, and had sought a variety of ways to stop his abuse. Another woman named Kim, who married at age nineteen and divorced her abusive husband five years later, now works as a teacher in a private preschool. Her ex-husband also gambled, and she perceived him to be addicted to it. While he physically abused her on a regular basis, she said, It is not normal, because when a husband beats his wife anything can happen, even the worst thing. A wife can die. When he has beaten me, it has been very serious. He often hit my head, and strangled me. I was afraid that if I would continue to live like this, my son would live without his mother [since I might be killed], and without parents because my husband is so bad. I thought the best thing for my son would be to divorce him, and maybe in the future, my son will understand my actions.

Her ex-husband had also often told her she should leave their family. Kim’s father-in-law and sister-in-law had also beaten her when her then-husband was not at home. When a conflict arose involving Kim telling her parents-inlaw that her sister-in-law took a chicken and rice from their home without permission, her sister-in-law denied it, and her father-in-law beat Kim with a staff. She said about that violence, “I thought I had died. . . . They are all family, and I feel like I am only a guest in this family . . . at that time I felt very badly and upset. I thought they did not respect me. They did not consider me even as a household helper. And now when I think about it, I feel very badly, and I was very afraid of being beaten at that time. I am still afraid that he will beat me now.”

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Some abused women appealed to their husbands’ family members’ sense of respect, which is influenced by the actions of their kin. Linh, who as I discussed earlier was seriously beaten and threatened with a knife by her husband, appealed to her husband’s cousin’s sense of esteem. Linh said to me, “I sent a letter to his cousin, in which I had written ‘your cousin often beats me. If you don’t ask him to stop, I will call the police and he might be punished and have to go to prison for a few days. You will feel very embarrassed.” When his cousin next visited their house, he advised Linh’s husband to stop beating her. Abused women are often themselves embarrassed by the violence they are subject to, the lack of respect they are accorded by their husbands and sometimes other family members, and the conflict in their family. A woman named Hue, who is a farmer in her thirties, said her husband had regularly punched her arms. Like many abused women, she has never told people outside of her family about this, although circumstances have resulted in neighbors and others learning about the violence. Hue said, “I think this is my own family issue, and I want to solve it by myself. I’m afraid others will mock my family.” Some husbands perceived their wives’ bodies to be an instrument to perpetuate their patrilineage, through the birth of a son. This view continues a long, historical perspective of one of women’s functions as wives, sometimes held by women themselves (Luong 2003). A woman in her late fifties named Hanh spoke with me about her experience of physical and economic violence from her husband and their eventual divorce after thirty-eight years of marriage. She and her husband have two adult daughters. The children were in their twenties and Hanh in her forties when her husband desired to marry another woman in order to have a son. Hanh said her husband had beaten her for several months after he began his relationship with the other woman, so that Hanh would divorce him and he could marry the woman. Hanh’s husband seems to have objectified her body, at least in her later years, when he judged her to be valuable to him only in regard to her ability to bear a son; as Hanh said, “He didn’t need me anymore.” In 2004, Hanh’s husband threw her out of their house and locked the door; she said she simultaneously ran away from his beatings at that time. She was able to live with her second daughter for three or four months, and then located an apartment to rent. In earlier years, Hanh’s husband had manipulated the sale of her house and property, which they had lived in following their marriage, and used the money gained from the sale to build a new house in the countryside near his family. He placed the home and the land it was built on in the name of Hanh’s mother-in-law. Upon Hanh’s eventual divorce, because they had not retained records of her earlier ownership and sale of her previous house, she received no funds from the property that she had originally owned. When I met Hanh, she was in counseling, which she has been going

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to for nine years, and was working with government officials and the media toward acquiring her share of her property, as part of an ongoing process of healing. Many abused women and community members perceived one of the causes of domestic violence to be alcohol addiction and drunkenness (see also GSO, UN JPGE, and WHO 2010 and Vu et al. 1999). The WHO reported that the prevalence of alcohol use disorders in Vietnam in 2010 was 8.7 percent for Vietnamese men, compared to 0.9 percent for women and 4.6 percent for the WHO Western Pacific Region (World Health Organization 2014, 28). A woman named Binh had been married to two abusive husbands and has one young daughter. She divorced her first husband, and remains married to her second husband. Binh said that both men became violent toward her when they drank alcohol. She said, My current husband, just because he drinks too much alcohol, often beats me, swears at me, and throws anything in the house within his reach, at me and against the wall. But after that, when he is normal [and no longer drunk], he has said he was sorry, but everything was broken and we had to buy new items [to replace the broken items]. . . . My face, legs, and hands are sometimes bruised, and I have small injuries. . . . [When this had happened] I was very sad, I just cried. I still feel sad because my husband is still drinking alcohol and swearing at me.

In Vietnam, alcohol consumption is considered to be a particularly significant aspect of masculinity, included in men’s socializing practices and symbolically important to the maintenance of harmonious relationships that can serve as sources of support for men and their families (Vu 2013). While gender inequality is a more significant source of husbands’ violence toward their wives, Vietnamese commonly perceive drunkenness to be the cause of domestic violence. Thanh, like many other abused Vietnamese women, found it very difficult to leave her husband since she sees her children’s needs as part of, or prioritized above, her own needs. Another abused woman named Huong, who had a twelve-year-old son, experienced physical violence from her husband and constant pressure from him and her mother-in-law to give them money she earned. She said that she began to apply for a divorce on two occasions, but each time she did not complete the process. She said, “I did not get divorced because of my family. My mother will cry if I get divorced. Vietnamese women have to live for many persons, not only for herself. . . . I shared my problems with many people, my friends, family, my husband’s family, even friends of my mother-in-law, but they said, ‘so you can get divorced.’ But for many reasons, my son, I cannot get a divorce.” Vietnamese women often find their sense of self and identity through their relationships with family members, and in their gendered kinship posi-

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tions, particularly those of mother and wife. As Huong said, “Vietnamese women have to live for many persons, not only for herself.” I noted previously that a prominent gendered discourse of womanhood in Vietnam, which has only begun to change in recent years, is that women should sacrifice their selves for their families, tying their sense of what it means to be a woman to their relationships with and actions toward others. I have spoken with abused women who have said that they have sacrificed their physical and emotional well-being for their children, as they have remained in their marriages and homes while being subjected to their husbands’ violence. Through Confucian ideologies that remain relevant today, women are perceived to be “the guardians of familial relationships” (Duvvury, Nguyen, and Carney 2012). While there are some women who have divorced their husbands, such as Kim, Hanh, and Binh, divorce among abused women was not common among the women I have interviewed. Like Hanh, some abused women who are divorced were pressured by their husbands to agree to the divorce. CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have argued that Vietnamese women’s embodied experiences of domestic violence from their husbands are varied, but they link women to cultural discourses of gender and kinship that include women’s need to sacrifice their bodily and emotional well-being for their families and to care for their children. With wife abuse in Vietnam, women are experiencing these cultural discourses through their bodies and emotions in social relationships with other people. While cultural discourses of gender and domestic violence are changing, influenced by international and local groups such as UN organizations working in Vietnam and local Vietnamese NGOs addressing domestic violence, the government conveys conflicting ideologies to women and men, which makes the negotiation of these discourses and the prevention of violence difficult. Yet, even with these conflicting ideologies, abused women’s subjectivity may be reshaped to some degree through their capacity to seek assistance to end their husbands’ abuse and recapture their lives. These insights, based on ethnographic research, help us to understand how the problem of gender violence, including men’s violence against their wives, cannot be solved by simply addressing the violent behavior of individuals. Instead, larger cultural systems of particular societies, such as gender and kinship systems, cultural conceptions of violence and the body, structures of inequality, and power relations must be reassessed in order to address the sources of gender violence. Anthropological research can help us to garner this kind of understanding of gender violence cross-culturally as societies work toward ending gender violence.

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QUESTIONS 1. How can the concept of “subjectivity” aid in analyzing and understanding gender violence? 2. Given the examples of domestic violence in northern Vietnam, what are ways that the bodily and emotional experiences of individuals subjected to gender violence may be shaped by intersecting cultural, political, and economic forces? 3. What are some of the insights that can be gained by drawing upon anthropological research methods and theory to analyze domestic violence, and the benefits of applying the research findings to individual societies? NOTES 1. I sincerely thank Dr. Le Thi Quy and Dr. Nguyen Thi Hoai Duc for their generous assistance to me while I was affiliated with their institutions in Vietnam. I offer my deepest gratitude to the Vietnamese women and men who shared their experiences, knowledge, and time with me during my research in their communities. For their financial support of my research, I wish to thank The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Colorado Injury Control Research Center, and Colorado State University. 2. All names used in this chapter are pseudonyms, to protect the identity of the participants in my research. 3. Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock write of the “body-self” as they move from the “Cartesian dualism that separates mind from body, spirit from matter, and real (i.e., visible, palpable) from unreal” (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987, 6–7). 4. While wives have committed violence against their husbands in Vietnam, the incidence is much lower than that of husbands committing violence against their wives (GSO, UN-JPGE, and WHO 2010, 101). 5. A survey conducted by the Vietnam Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the General Statistics Office, and supported by UNICEF, reported that there was an increase in divorces from 2000 to 2013, with 51,361 divorces in 2000 and 145,791 in 2013 (Saigoneer 2014).

Chapter Three

Bureaucratic Bindings: Refugee Resettlement and Intimate Partner Abuse Elizabeth Wirtz 1

Miriam 2 , a Somali refugee woman, looks into the distance with tear-filled eyes, and says: I am tired and stressed all the time from these problems. I wish I had a better husband, that he would not be so cruel to me. But what can I do? If we separate now, how much longer will I be delayed here? What about my children? What would happen to them? I feel trapped. I don’t want to be living here trapped with this man anymore, but I don’t want to be trapped in this horrible place any longer either. What am I to do?

Miriam says that she loves her husband of seven years but that in the past two years he has become a stranger to her. He began drinking more, staying out late, and sometimes not coming home at all. He sometimes sells some of the sparse family food rations to buy alcohol and cigarettes, leaving her and their three children with little to eat. During his worse moments, he also hits her. “The hitting used to be not so much often as it is now. Now it seems he is angry all the time and taking it out on me. He comes here like a drunkard and beats me until I can’t move and am just left here to cry by myself.” This chapter explores women’s experiences with intimate partner abuse (IPA) in the context of refugee resettlement. I use the term “intimate partner abuse” as opposed to more frequently used terms like “domestic abuse” or “intimate partner violence,” as it accommodates a wider range of violating behavior, including non-physically violent interactions, specifically within intimate relationships. Miriam’s concern for herself and her children grows 29

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as the abuse she experiences escalates. Like many victims of IPA, Miriam faces a variety of dilemmas that influence her decision to leave her abusive partner. She is concerned about the welfare and fate of her children, her ability to access food, shelter, and social support if she leaves, and the stigma she may face in her community as a divorced woman. In addition, as a refugee, Miriam’s decision to leave is influenced by another factor—the resettlement process. Miriam has been dreaming of the day when she will finally leave the confines of the refugee camp in Kenya and travel to her new life in the United States. It is a dream that gives her hope and strength to endure the harsh circumstances of her life. However, Miriam knows that if she divorces her husband, this action is likely to delay her resettlement process and lengthen the time she has to wait in the camp. This is a risk she is frightened to take. Miriam, like many refugee women who experience IPA, finds herself forced to decide between two undesirable outcomes: to leave her abuser and prolong her confinement in the camp or to remain with her abuser in the hope that she will soon be resettled to a third country. This chapter examines the ways in which the refugee resettlement process shapes women’s reactions to IPA and influences their decisions about if, when, and how to leave an abusive partner. I show that the overly bureaucratic underpinnings characterizing humanitarian aid and refugee management are a form of structural violence that shape the lives of refugee women and create situations that perpetuate abuse against them. However, despite the institutional rules and regulations that constrain women’s agency, they exhibit resilience and adaptiveness in creating alternative options. IN THE CONFINES OF THE CAMP This chapter is based on qualitative ethnographic data collected over a period of 18 months from 2010 through 2014 in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya. Indepth and semi-structured interviews with 161 people (including 118 Somali women, 14 Somali men, and 29 humanitarian aid workers) inform the findings presented here. During this research, I elicited local cultural understandings of abuse to determine the boundaries between culturally defined acceptable and unacceptable behavior (Carlson 2005; Henry 2006; Simister 2010). For example, many of the organizations working with refugees view any form of hitting, slapping, or pushing as IPA, while Somalis tend to view minor physical altercations as corrective behavior to address a failure of duties on the part of the partner, and instead measure abusive behavior by the degree of the resulting injury (Simister 2010). In addition, I found that refugee women include non-physical forms of abuse such as emotional and ver-

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bal abuse, and control of resources as particularly detrimental to intimate relationships and their well-being. Kakuma Refugee Camp, located roughly 95 kilometers south of the South Sudan border, is home to approximately 186,000 refugees. It was first established as an official United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) camp in 1992 (Horn 2010a). Kakuma, like many refugee camps, is located in an economically, politically, and socially marginalized area. The vast majority of the world’s refugees are relegated to the peripheries of developing countries, as host countries struggle to maintain safety and stability for their own citizens and therefore have trouble managing the burden of large influxes of refugees (Aukot 2004; Lischer 2005; Montclos and Kagwanja 2000). Kenya’s policy toward refugees is one of “warehousing,” in which refugee movement is restricted and they are confined to one of two camps, Kakuma or Dadaab (Crisp 1999; Oka 2014). Refugee livelihoods are also curtailed since the Kenyan Government prohibits them from owning land, livestock, and seeking paid work (Oka 2011). Kakuma is situated in a remote semi-arid terrain with an average temperature of 104 degrees Fahrenheit (Aukot 2004; Crisp 2003). Within this harsh landscape, poverty and insecurity are endemic and “outbreaks of violence and unrest occur without warning” (Crisp 2003, 17). Kakuma, while arguably better than the war torn countries from which refugees flee, is not a pleasant place. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of refugees continue to carry out their daily lives within this seemingly perpetual waiting room. It is within this state of permanent transience that refugees order their lives, create meaning, and establish ways of being. IPA may escalate as a result of forced migration and is the most prevalent type of gender-based violence experienced by women in refugee camps (Horn 2010b). A report on IPA in Kakuma found that 39 percent of Somali men reported approving of the practice of wife beating while 12 percent of Somali women reported being beaten by their partner sometime in the previous month (McGinn 2000). Given the privacy and stigma surrounding these issues, it is likely that these numbers are underreported. The occurrence of IPA among forcibly displaced groups has been attributed to a variety of causes such as drug and alcohol use, lack of employment opportunities, poverty, and a breakdown of social and legal support systems (Carlson 2005; Friedman 1992; Horn 2010a, 2010b; Martin 2004). One study on IPA in refugee camps indicated that the single greatest source of marital arguments is lack of food, illustrating the impact of larger structural factors on interpersonal interactions (Horn 2010a). Those who examine IPA in refugee settings have become increasingly cognizant of underlying structural factors contributing to abuse, rather than simply cultural or interpersonal causes, noting that the “nature of the refugee camp . . . plays a role in creating conditions that facilitate domestic violence”

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(Carlson 2005, 11). Humanitarian organizations devote considerable time and resources to addressing IPA within refugee communities. However, rarely do these organizations recognize the ways in which humanitarian and refugee management efforts both inadvertently and advertently contribute to IPA. Humanitarian endeavors, such as those providing protection and aid to refugee populations, are touted as a “neutral, apolitical, and impartial forum” (Oka 2014, 3). Various studies have shown that humanitarianism is instead a contested political arena with different actors and institutions holding divergent goals and agendas that frame and shape the relief process (Harrell-Bond 1986; Hilhorst and Jansen 2010; Ramadan 2010; Schuller 2012b). Humanitarianism itself is an intensely political process with multi-scalar negotiations among international governing organizations (IGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and host and resettlement nation-states, which produce policies that strongly influence refugee lives (Guttieri 2005; Whiteford and Eden 2011). Refugee camps, while ideally spaces of refuge and safety for victims of forced migration, many times become spaces of violence and abuse against refugees. Refugees, as victims of forced migration, and by virtue of their statelessness, exist in a space of liminality, neither belonging to their country of origin, nor to the country in which they “temporarily” reside (Hyndman 2000; Kibreab 1999). While multilateral institutions like the UNHCR exist to manage refugee populations, refugees remain subject to local and international mechanisms of state control. At the same time that multi-lateral institutions, local and international governments, and NGOs operate to manage refugee populations, they cannot, or do not confer legal rights in the way that governing bodies are subject to (Agier 2011; Schmiechen 2004; Verdirame and Harrell-Bond 2005). The absence of legal, economic, and social rights position refugees at increased vulnerability to both structural and physical forms of violence and abuse, including gender-based violence. Here, forms of structural abuse, enacted through governing bureaucracies, are both causative of and exacerbate IPA. Within this context, refugees negotiate life on the margins, and in these camps they remain, for better or for worse, until repatriation, resettlement, or death do they depart. DREAMS OF ESCAPE There are an estimated 10.5 million refugees worldwide who are considered under the protection and auspices of the UNHCR (UNHCR 2014a). Forced migrants who cross international borders spend an average of seventeen years in exile (Agier 2011). Refugees, as stateless peoples, do not adhere to the current world order of belonging through citizenship within a sovereign nation-state. Thus, they exist within a liminal state, a state that needs to be

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reconciled. The UNHCR distinguishes three durable solutions to the refugee “problem”: local integration, repatriation, and resettlement (UNHCR 2014b). Whether refugees can be locally integrated relies on the policies of the host country. In Kenya, local integration is prohibited so encampment stands in its place. Repatriation, or return to one’s home country, is the next solution, but in protracted crisis situations repatriation is not feasible. The final solution, resettlement, entails resettling refugees permanently to a third country, typically in the “Western” countries of North America, Europe, and Australia. In reality, resettlement is rarely used as a solution. Of the 10.5 million refugees worldwide, less than 1 percent are ever resettled (UNHCR 2014a). Despite these odds, the arduous process involved, and the extended period of time spent waiting for resettlement, the dream of resettlement is a force that powerfully shapes refugee lives. It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of resettlement for refugees. Even though most will never be resettled, refugees invest an incredible amount of time and energy into the process. Resettlement is a common topic of conversation among refugees as they share information with each other about the stages and status of their process, stories of those who have successfully gone abroad, as well as stories of failure and despair. The women I spoke with frequently mentioned the salience of resettlement in their lives. To them, relocation to a third country is seen as the sole way to escape the mundane and monotonous tone of life in the camp and to create a better life for themselves and their families. It is seen as a path to escape violence, poverty, and dependence on humanitarian aid, as well as a future for their children through education and economic opportunities. For refugees who have been encamped in exile for many years with no foreseeable prospects of returning home, resettlement represents their last hope for establishing something that resembles a normal life. The importance placed on resettlement, and the difficulty in obtaining it, can lead to detrimental thoughts and behavior within refugee populations. In her study of Somalis in the Dadaab refugee camps, Cindy Horst (2006) expertly illustrates the complexity surrounding resettlement opportunities and subsequent impacts on refugees. She discusses the emergence of the concept buufis, a word unique to Somalis in exile used to signify a conglomeration of states of being. She explains that buufis can at times broadly refer to mental or emotional problems, but more specifically embodies, “someone’s hope, longing, desire or dream to go for resettlement. . . . The Somali refugees in the camps use it in three other contexts: resettlement itself, the people who long to go overseas, and the madness that at times occurs when the dream to go overseas is shattered” (Horst 2006, 163). Indeed, the extreme longing for resettlement can, and many times does, manifest as a kind of sickness that infects the refugee body politic.

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THE RESETTLEMENT PROCESS: AN EXERCISE IN BUREAUCRATIC CONTROL The nature of the resettlement process requires refugees to devote significant mental and physical energy to resettlement efforts. During my research in Kakuma, I had a difficult time piecing together the mechanisms behind the resettlement process. Explanations of procedural rules and regulations often differ depending on with whom you are speaking. Anthropologist Bram Jansen faced similar issues during his research in Kakuma noting that, “UNHCR and other agencies were unsuccessful in clearly explaining their policies in a way that refugees (or researchers, for that matter) actually understood, and a steady flow of rumors added to confusion about procedures and forms of assistance” (Jansen 2008, 574). Refugees and humanitarian workers faced the challenge of navigating a terrain of confusing and sometimes contradictory rules, regulations, and requirements. There is unpredictability and inconsistency within the system based on the individual personnel handling each case and the organizational culture and history of local offices. Humanitarian operations attempt to curtail possible mistakes, oversights, personal biases, and corruption by implementing an extensive review process involving multiple personnel of differing ranks and in various locations (both “on the ground” in refugee camps and in headquarters). While this may help to resolve some of the internal inconsistencies that are likely to arise from such a complex system, it also creates a long and arduous process that can take years, and sometimes decades, to complete a single case. Here I focus on the procedures that refugees undergo as it was described to me in Kakuma, and most immediately on the effect this system had on women experiencing IPA. I am concerned with how humanitarian officials and refugees perceive the system to work, as opposed to how it is supposed to work. There is frequently a dissonance between how official bureaucratic procedures are supposed to be implemented and how they are actually implemented. In this case, the latter is more important as it is the actual interactions that refugees have with humanitarian and governmental representatives, and their perceptions of how the system works that influences their behavior. RESETTLEMENT IN KAKUMA When refugees first arrive in Kakuma, they are processed either directly through UNHCR or through an implementing partner. Personal and demographic information, as well as reasons for claiming asylum are recorded and entered into the UNHCR system. From there, they are assigned a case number and a food ration card. If they arrive with family members, then the

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family 3 will be assigned to one case number/ration card. At a later point in time, cases are called to UNHCR for Refugee Status Determination (RSD), in which the members of the case number are extensively and sometimes repeatedly interviewed to determine if they meet the requirements for refugee status. If granted refugee status, then the individual or family is granted permission to remain in Kakuma. If refugee status is rejected, they have ninety days to vacate the country. Once the RSD process has been completed, the individual or family moves from asylum-seeker status to refugee status and are then eligible for resettlement. The UNHCR resettlement office closely examines all of the information pertaining to their case, including their initial files and RSD interviews. If the UNHCR official examining the case determines that they meet the criteria for resettlement, then the case begins a long and convoluted path through UNCHR channels, as it passes among employees and supervisors. If all of the involved UNHCR personnel agree that the case is valid and eligible, then UNHCR will submit the case to one of the receiving countries. Receiving countries, especially the United States, as the largest intake country of refugees worldwide, exert an immense amount of control over the process. They determine how many refugees they will admit each year as well as the demographic composition of the cases they are prepared to accept, including but not limited to: family size, nationality, and categorical representation. Receiving countries also have their own requirements and vetting processes, including extensive security and medical screenings, carried out by their internal agencies to determine if they will accept the case for resettlement or reject it. It is important to note that each of these phases may take years, making the entire process extremely lengthy. If a case is accepted by the receiving country for resettlement, then refugees are given as little as a few days to a few weeks until their departure to settle their affairs and say farewell to their loved ones and life in the camp. If the case is rejected, it is likely to be ultimately terminated. The termination of a resettlement case is the end of the line in this process and indicates permanent relegation to camp life. CORRUPTION IN THE SYSTEM The complexity of the resettlement process is compounded by the existence of corruption within the organizations that monitor and oversee it. Guglielmo Verdirame and Barbara Harrell-Bond, in their extensive study on refugee rights, argue that “the need for the resettlement process to be fair, transparent, and efficient is paramount, but none of these attributes could be ascribed to the procedures in place for resettling refugees from Kenya and Uganda” (2005, 283). In refugee camps, stories abound of cases where refugees were

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either exploited by humanitarian workers or were able to exploit the system themselves in order to succeed in the RSD and resettlement processes. Refugees view the exchange of cash bribes, sex acts, and other favors as a means to secure resettlement. Many of the official processes within refugee camps are far from just and fair. Mirroring Verdirame and Harrell-Bond’s findings, another study reported that, “An internal investigation exposed the existence of a ‘cartel involving refugees, UNHCR current and former staff, and resettled refugees in the Diaspora’” (Jansen 2008, 574). Beyond widespread documented extortion, refugees are aware that their fate lies in the hands of individuals who must be persuaded of their “vulnerability” and “deservingness” of resettlement (see Eastmond 2007; Jansen 2008). Rumors of humanitarian corruption are widespread among refugee communities. At the same time, humanitarian workers perceive refugees to be manipulative and conniving. Both sides view the other as consistently attempting to “cheat the system” in order to personally benefit, and this leads to suspicion and antagonism between them. Though many of the dysfunctions within the system appear to stem from corruption, the local level experiences expose a pattern that is more nuanced. For example, refugees may feel that personnel within humanitarian organizations purposefully withhold information. One refugee woman explained to me, There are some people who fled Somalia in 1991 to Kenya and the UNHCR is doing resettlements for those who have been here a long time. So families that go for resettlement finish those medical tests, interviews, and everything they have completed but they are still in the camp. They are still in the camp and are waiting for their flight but have never been taken out and no one tells them what is happening and why they don’t leave. Like some have been waiting to leave for years and they wait so long that they become too stressed and even in preparation to leave they close their shops and the children drop from school, but they never leave. It is making them to go mad just waiting and not knowing. You cannot plan a life like that.

Yet, I met with many humanitarian workers who spoke of the danger of giving refugees too much information or knowledge about how the system works for fear that they will use the information inappropriately. As one humanitarian worker put it, “We have to balance between giving the refugees enough information about how things work so that they can defend their rights, but not tell them everything because then they will commit fraud and change their stories so that they fit the criteria we are looking for.” Thus, humanitarian workers attempt to disseminate just enough about the procedures to respond to the refugees, but not enough so that they fully understand the system. This practice leads to confusion among refugees that translates

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into suspicion and anger against the humanitarian organizations and personnel. The perceived need to guard information leads to a process that is shrouded with mystery and obfuscation. The combination of corruption, misperceptions, and ambiguity involved in the process leads refugees to think that resettlement is something that can be obtained through moderating behavior rather than a right and privilege that is granted to those for whom there is truly no other durable solution. They are not entirely incorrect in this assumption. “Deserving” resettlement is something that can be created and negotiated within refugee camps. Jansen argues that “along with this desire for resettlement, many refugees developed a belief that resettlement was something that they could organize and achieve. It became more than luck or need per se; instead, need and vulnerability became intertwined with opportunity, and thus subject to negotiation” (Jansen 2008, 573). Numerous studies, including my own, indicate that there is a minimal level of control that refugees can exert to alter the outcome of a case. However, the results are not uniform and not guaranteed so there are always risks involved with negotiating the system. Various sources cite the ways refugees alter their behavior in attempts to secure resettlement including; fabricating or exaggerating facts during interviews, inflicting self-harm and mutilation, and succumbing to exploitation (bribes and sexual favors) (see Hilhorst and Jansen 2010; Horst 2006; Jansen 2008). I found that maneuvering family constructs is another means by which refugees exert their agency and attempt to negotiate a confusing system in order to achieve resettlement. Given the extreme measures that refugees are willing to undertake for a benefit they may never be granted, it comes as no surprise that remaining in an abusive relationship can come to be viewed as an acceptable sacrifice in the quest for resettlement. ALTERATIONS TO CASES Refugees do not simply wait for the future, they create a life in the present— they age, they get married, they get divorced, they have children, and some of them pass away. It is likely that during years in exile, the family to which a refugee belongs has greatly transformed. When the composition of a case changes, refugees must notify the UNHCR so that they can alter their official files. This notification process aids the UNHCR in monitoring refugee files so that they can amend ration cards, residence assignments, and resettlement cases accordingly. Unfortunately, depending on the status and stage of a resettlement case, a change in family composition can delay an already lengthy process. According to one UNCHR official that I interviewed in Kakuma,

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Elizabeth Wirtz For UNHCR processes, as far as housing locations, ration cards, and cases, there is no problem with combining or separating cases when there is a marriage or a divorce. We can do that easily in our system here if we have the proper documentation and proof of family change. But once the resettlement case is forwarded to the resettlement country to process, then it is out of our hands and a change in family size or composition might delay that process. Then the process for resettlement with that country’s government can actually be delayed quite a bit. But as far as UNHCR is concerned, we try to make the process as easy as possible because we support family reunification and try to help the family together.

There is no indication of how long a case will be delayed in the resettlement process if there is a change in the family composition. It is also clear from my research that refugees are largely unaware that resettlement cases are only delayed after they have been sent from UNHCR to the potential receiving country. This means that they are under the impression that a change in family composition at any point after being granted refugee status (after the RSD process is complete) will result in a delay of their case. Here, the concern is with one type of family compositional change, divorce, which results in the separation, delay, and potential rejection of resettlement cases. CONFLICTING DESIRES: ESCAPE FROM ABUSE OR ESCAPE FROM THE CAMP? The harsh conditions of camp life and the strenuous bureaucratic processes that refugees face contribute to desperation for escape. Given how much is at stake, and the efforts and sacrifices refugees invest in the resettlement process, it is understandable that refugees are hesitant to do anything that could jeopardize or prolong the process. As evidenced by Miriam’s narrative, women are acutely aware of the risks involved and the potential deleterious effects of leaving an abusive partner. The refugee resettlement process leaves many women feeling trapped within an abusive relationship for fear of prolonging their case or having it outright rejected. The system seems to force two possible outcomes: (1) women can either seek help from humanitarian organizations to separate their case and divorce their abusive husbands, or (2) women can remain silent within an abusive relationship in the hopes that their resettlement to a third country is expedited. TRAPPED IN ABUSE Miriam is one of many women in Kakuma who feels trapped between an abusive partner and an abusive system. Ilham faces a similar struggle. Her husband has become increasingly abusive since they arrived in Kakuma nine

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years ago. He is both physically violent toward her and verbally abusive. She is hesitant to turn to her family, who also reside in the camp, as they did not approve of the marriage. In her words, I have come to hate this man. He is my husband but he does not act like a husband is supposed to act. In the past, I thought about going to the agencies . . . for help. But now, we have already finished our medical and are waiting for the resettlement papers. It is too late, if I go now; I know I will never leave here. I am forced to just struggle through my problems on my own. There is no one to help me.

In addition to her hesitancy to seek help for herself, Ilham is worried about what will happen to her children if she leaves her husband. “There are also these children I have. The first one, the boy, is mine so that is not a problem. But these others, the ones we have together, I know that if I try to leave him, he will take the children. How can I live my life, how can I be a mother, without my children?” Ilham’s case illustrates an additional bind women are placed in when considering the consequences of leaving an abusive partner. If her and her husband’s resettlement cases are separated, her children can only remain on one of the cases. As the UNHCR official explained to me, “The biggest challenge you find in these cases are for child custody issues. We used to have a children’s court to help decide these issues, but that was suspended last year. I am not sure why it was suspended, but it is supposed to start again this year.” The children’s court helps to determine child custody placement in cases like Ilham’s. Even if the court was not suspended, there is the possibility that her children will be placed with her husband. If their case is separated, Ilham not only faces the likelihood of a delay in her process, but also the chance that either she or her husband may be resettled without the other, and she may never see her children again. A scenario where the couple does not have a unified resettlement case evidences the importance of resettlement issues impacting women’s ability to leave abusive partners. For example, Falis was separated from her husband while fleeing her home. When she arrived in Kakuma, she found that her husband had been there for some time and they were reunited. He had already begun his resettlement process so he encouraged Falis to register on her own. His plan was for one of them to be resettled and then to apply for a family reunification to relocate the one that was left in Kakuma. In the camp, she discovered he was HIV positive, and their marriage took a turn for the worse: I asked him to use a condom when we have sex because I know that this virus is stronger than me and it can destroy me if I have it. He refused to wear those condoms. That is when I started to refuse him sex. I did not want to have sex

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Elizabeth Wirtz with him unless he used a condom to protect me, because I fear that virus so much. That is when things started to get very bad. That is when he began to beat me and rape me. I would refuse sex with him because I was scared, and then he would beat me and rape me. I don’t know how I made it through that time. God was protecting me. For all that he did, I never contracted that disease. But one night he beat me so bad I could not bear the pain. I just knew that one day this man was going to kill me.

After the beatings reached a breaking point for her, Falis turned to the humanitarian organizations for help, “I really struggled at that time. But it was not as difficult for me to leave him as it is for other women I know. We have different registrations and I have already been for my interview. I need to be patient now and wait. One day I will leave this place and then I will be truly free from him.” Falis certainly had difficulty leaving her husband, and like many women who are victims of intimate partner abuse, it was not an easy decision. However, Falis did not have to consider the implications of her separation on her chances of being resettled. These women’s stories illustrate the complexity involved in leaving an abusive partner within the refugee camp based on their position and status within the resettlement process and their interactions with the humanitarian system. NEGOTIATING THE SYSTEM Though refugees frequently find themselves constrained by the bureaucratic systems that emerge from humanitarian operations, they are rarely completely bound by this system. Refugees develop innovative ways to cope with the often oppressive and demeaning conditions to which they are subject. Some of the women in this study were able to create new ways of living, new methods for forming families, and new ways of managing their marital relations. For example, some women chose to remain “officially” married to their husbands in order to maintain their unified resettlement case, yet successfully “unofficially” separated from them. Within the refugee camp, various layers of authority stem from diverse nodes of power. There is the “official” system derived from the UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations, the Kenyan government, and the governments of the receiving countries. Medially, there exists an “unofficial” system that is centered on traditional forms of authority and governance from within the refugee communities. In times of war, many communities are torn apart. However, they are also rebuilt in the relative stability of the refugee camps. Religious and community leaders emerge or regain their positions of power within the camp. These refugees maintain traditional customs and modes of governance. For Somali refugees, religious leaders hold a particularly prominent and influential role in the community as they have the power

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to settle disputes and administer punishments. These leaders are often consulted in cases of marital and family conflict and their advice and rulings are taken seriously within the Somali refugee community. Many refugees prefer to resolve their issues within their community and out of the purview of the humanitarian organizations. In an effort to resolve the dilemma created by the “official” system, women turn to “unofficial” avenues. In Kenya, Muslims adhere to the kadhi courts, which are a legal system run by religious leaders and guided by Islamic law. Within these courts, many women are able to successfully obtain a divorce from their abusers without involving the humanitarian system. In these cases, parallel systems of rule exist. Within one system, the woman is married and bound to her husband through their case file within the humanitarian organizations. Under the other system, the woman is socially separated from her husband and they are no longer bound to the rights and obligations recognized under marriage. Semira is one woman who was able to secure such an arrangement. She explained, I was having so much difficulty with him at that time. We were fighting every day and he was becoming like an animal. He would hit me in front of the children and toss things to the walls until they would break. I couldn’t stand him anymore. I asked him for a divorce and he refused to give me that divorce. He said we were almost to be going to Canada and this would ruin everything. After speaking with my brother, he advised us to go to the Sheikh for a solution. That Sheikh gave us a divorce and advised us to let each other alone until we are resettled. He said life will be better there and we can resolve our problems and maybe decide to marry again. I know I will never resolve my problems with him but I am not concerned. When I am in Canada, I can just leave him there and find my own home away from him.

Semira was able to remove herself from a dangerous and volatile relationship without jeopardizing her resettlement case. She now lives with one of her aunts and only interacts with her ex-husband when they are required to on issues regarding their case. A plethora of refugee families do not coincide with the “official” UNHCR records (see also Horn 2010a). Thus, refugees adapt their family structures in response to extremely constricting and inflexible systems. CONCLUSION When women suffer from intimate partner abuse, they face a myriad of factors that influence their decisions regarding separation from their abusers. They also face numerous barriers that constrain their ability to carry out their decisions. For refugee women, a rigorous and confusing resettlement process

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compounds their decision-making process and ability to leave abusive partners. Many refugee women find themselves trapped, forced to choose between a life with an abuser or an extended confinement in a harsh and unforgiving place. It is essential to recognize that these decisions are never straightforward, nor are the consequences of the decisions. If a woman chooses to divorce her abusive husband, “officially” or “unofficially,” it does not mean that the abuse ends. She is still geographically confined to the camp with her abuser and may experience further abuse as a result. One of the primary goals of the UNHCR is to protect refugees from physical harm, including IPA. How can those tasked with managing refugee populations hope to achieve this goal if the bureaucratic policies and processes involved, and the enactment of these policies exacerbate instances of IPA and constrict women’s ability to escape an abusive relationship? Michel Agier (2011) argues that, “every policy of assistance is simultaneously an instrument of control over its beneficiaries” (12). While those charged with managing and aiding refugee populations will inevitably control and shape the lives of those they serve, it need not entail negative outcomes. Through applying anthropological methods to the study of IPA, and by listening to the struggles refugee women face, we can uncover mechanisms of structural violence and bring to light the ways in which techniques of control and management converge with various forms of violence to shape the wellbeing of refugee women. Only once we understand something, can we hope to change it. QUESTIONS 1. How can humanitarian organizations and other intervention projects that focus on gender-based violence, address their complicity to and involvement in systems of abuse against intended recipients? 2. How do experiences of statelessness and vulnerability shape women’s agentive projects? 3. How can examining women’s experiences of and responses to intimate partner abuse through an anthropological lens help make visible the mechanisms of structural violence? NOTES 1. I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to the women in this study who opened their hearts and homes to me. I would also like to thank the humanitarian organizations and personnel in Kakuma Refugee Camp who took the time to speak with me and facilitated this research. My appreciation goes to Ryan Plis, Jonas Ecke, and Kyle Jones for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Funding for this research project was provided by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (DGE-1333468) and the Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (BCS-1324243), and the Purdue Research Foundation

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Research Grant. Any opinions, findings, errors, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding sources. 2. All names appearing in this chapter are pseudonyms. 3. There is much debate around how the UNHCR defines “family,” as it is many times based on Western notions of the nuclear family unit. However, many refugee populations have differing cultural conceptions of what constitutes a family unit. Regarding this tension, Horst (2006) argues that the UNHCR version if family is inadequate as it, “is in accordance with the Western idea of the nuclear family as an independent unit, but it does not fit Somali practices of social responsibility” (Horst 2006, 179). Numerous issues arise from culturally insensitive and faulty classifications of family.

II

Multi-Scalar Responses to GenderBased Violence

Chapter Four

Munted Rebuilding Community after Disaster Hillary J. Haldane

Around lunchtime on Tuesday, February 22, 2011, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck the Canterbury region of Aotearoa New Zealand 1 (hereafter Aotearoa) resulting in the deaths of 185 individuals and causing thousands of injuries. The South Island’s major industrial and civic hub, Christchurch, was decimated, or “munted” 2 to use the local vernacular, with major historic, tourist, and government buildings destroyed, as well as over 10,000 homes deemed inhabitable by the state. In a city of just over 350,000, this devastation made a sizable impact on people’s economic, social, and psychological lives. The earthquake was the one of the worst disasters in the nation’s history, and by the end of 2013 the economic costs to individuals and the nation had risen from an initial estimate of ten billion dollars to over forty billion dollars. As the four-year anniversary of the earthquake approached, millions in insurance claims were still contested or delayed, and the region was experiencing rising costs not evident or anticipated in the initial assessment. Such costs included the price of housing for all the migrant labor that flooded into the region to assist with the construction, as well as the need to provide services—water, sewage, emergency medical care, and the like—to that migrant labor community. In the context of a place that is rebuilding from a “natural” disaster, this chapter considers how one particular group of service providers, frontline antiviolence workers, has been impacted by these events, analyzing not only the increase or changes in caseloads as a result of the earthquake, but how they have also been traumatized by the events and carry this experience into their work. This chapter identifies three main areas of 47

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concern for worker safety and care, and offers suggestions for thinking through holistic services in the aftermath of disaster. THE PLACE AND PEOPLE OF AOTEAROA In order to understand how frontline work in Christchurch takes shape, it is important to know the history and diversity of the peoples of the country. Aotearoa is a small island nation located in the southern Pacific, nearly 4,600 miles to the south of Hawai’i and close to 3,000 miles north of Antarctica. The nearest countries to Aotearoa are New Caledonia to the north, and Australia to the west, both nearly 2,000 miles away at their closest points. The population of the country is just over four million inhabitants spread out across three main islands, with nearly a third of the country’s population living in and around the city of Auckland on the North Island. The country has three other major urban centers, Wellington, the nation’s capital, Christchurch, and Dunedin, the city with the country’s first university. With a landmass of 103,000 square miles across three islands, it is roughly the size of the state of Colorado. Outside the main cities, it is sparsely populated, and the majority of roads in the country are two-lane highways crossing a terrain that spans from subtropical weather and rainforest biomes in the north, to glaciers and the home of numerous penguin species in the south. Aotearoa is also the homeland of the Maori peoples, Polynesians who arrived in the islands around 700 AD. Maori are related culturally to other Polynesian peoples, especially to Tahitians and to native Hawai’ians, and linguistically have many similarities to other Polynesian languages. The Maori had a very stratified and complex social structure by the time the first wave of British colonists arrived in the late 1700s, with emphasis placed on three main groups: the whanau, or household; the hapu, or subtribe; and the iwi, the bones, or tribe that one belonged to. It was not until the British began to create their own settlements in Aotearoa that the Maori began to think of themselves collectively as “a people” per se, thus pan-Maorism is a product of colonial discrimination and war, akin to what is found in many settler societies like the United States, Canada, and Australia. Despite almost two centuries of British warfare, oppression, and attempts to simultaneously eradicate and assimilate the indigenous people, or tangata whenua (people of the land) of Aotearoa, Maori have maintained a cultural identity and set of practices that are distinct from the Pakeha, or settler population, though as the culture has changed over time, syncretic elements of Maori culture have appeared in Pakeha life and vice versa. Since the 1970s, there has been greater official recognition of Maori life and culture as important and vital to the well-being of the nation-state. This recognition did not come about entirely peacefully, nor is it maintained easily, but the estab-

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lishment of a system of compensation for indigenous loss (The Waitangi Tribunal), the elevation of the Waitangi Treaty to a foundational document for the nation, and the recognition of Maori as one of three official languages in the country are all important markers of Maori visibility in the place of the nation. Aotearoa’s official presentation of the country is one of bicultural status (Maori and Tau iwi—non-Maori). Biculturalism is the critical discursive structure of Aotearoa life. For the last thirty years, various social, political, and civic institutions have foregrounded the concept of biculturalism that emphasizes the unique place of Maori in Aotearoa life, and of the relationships with Tau iwi, or non-Maori. However, there is considerable diversity in the population of the country today. Maori constitute roughly 15 percent of the four million inhabitants, Pakeha about 70 percent, and the remaining 15 percent are Asian, other Pacific Islanders, or immigrants from Latin America and Africa. This diverse population creates a tension between the ideology of biculturalism and the reality of multiculturalism (Howard 1999; Matthews 1999; Pearson 1996). As all non-Maori are folded into the broad category Tau iwi, it is largely dominated by Pakeha culture and sensibilities, and therefore operates with de facto Pakeha desires, needs, and goals. This is particularly true in the case of offering services to survivors of violence, where the models for prevention and intervention were established to consider the unique needs of Maori but did not consider the forms of racism, discrimination and injustice that nonPakeha Tau iwi experienced at the hands of the Pakeha dominated nationstate. Thus, the national culture has been one in flux, to embrace and foreground an indigenous population that has its “culture” only on the island, while simultaneously recognizing and celebrating the diversity of cultures the various immigrant populations have brought to the country over a twohundred year history, and reconciling this with a modern, vibrant, and transforming national culture in the twenty-first century. While the tension between various ethnic groups ebbs and flows with the nation’s political-economic situation, the crisis brought on by the 2011 earthquake exposed various issues that had laid dormant in the national psyche. GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN AOTEAROA Aotearoa is considered to be a “first world,” or economically advanced, country. It consistently lands in the top rankings of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) categories and also is near the top of the list in the Human Development Index (HDI). Most politicians, economists, and other scholars consider Aotearoa to be a highly desirable place to live, with a good climate, robust resources, relatively high incomes, and excellent life expectancy. However, despite the relative wealth of the

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country and its enviable environment, Aotearoa also tops a number of other, less desirable rankings. Aotearoa has incredibly high rates of child abuse, domestic violence and other forms of intimate trauma, as well as high rates of child poverty and neglect. For a country that has so much, it is a conundrum as to why there are so many gaps in the system and why so many are left to suffer. Its levels of abuse are on par with some of the poorest countries in the world, despite decades of intervention and service provisioning. The first women’s refuge in the country was established in Christchurch in 1973 (Hancock 1979), and since then well over 60 different refuges have been established, 45 of which belong to the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges (NCIWR), an umbrella organization that advocates for funding and policy changes on behalf of the local refuges. The issue of ethnicity and violence intersected early on as refuges were being built across the country. The model of responding to domestic violence was initially influenced by predominantly Western, and largely ethnically White, middle class notions of what constituted a family, how abuse took place, and the resources that were needed to end the abuse. The initial models were also largely individual, psychologically focused ones, where the expectation was for behavioral change on the part of the perpetrator and the problem was one of power and control. By 1985, there was increased pressure from Maori groups for more culturally appropriate services. While some of the refuges established before 1985 were Maori refuges in the sense that most of the workers and victims at these safe houses were Maori, there was no clear statement by the NCIWR about the importance of cultural specificity and cultural awareness. Maori activists claimed that Pakeha women were dictating the agenda, treatment models, and program ideas for refuge, leaving Maori women and their culture behind. One major complaint was about issues of confidentiality. Pakeha women insisted that women in refuge were to not divulge the whereabouts or phone number of a refuge to anyone, including family members. Maori activists claimed that this Western notion of confidentiality was creating a breakdown of whanau ties. They insisted that in Maori culture family is the most important source of support and victims needed whanau support especially when living in a house full of strangers. This conflict represented the larger issues faced by workers operating from different cultural beliefs about safety and care, leading to creation of separate services for Maori and Pakeha women as part of a program of Parallel Development (NCIWR 2007). The idea behind Parallel Development was to respect Maori cultural beliefs and recognize the Treaty of Waitangi, giving sovereignty to Maori women over their own affairs. While Pakeha and Maori refuges would work together to cover emergency hotline hours with both Pakeha and Maori volunteers, maintain membership together in the NCIWR, and do citywide fundraisers together, the daily running of the refuges was left to the individual

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cultural group. After the founding of the first official Maori women’s refuge in Hamilton in 1987, Maori refuges quickly grew in number until almost every city in New Zealand had both a Pakeha and Maori refuge. The creation of separate refuges for Maori and Pakeha women based on the notion of parallel development reflects an important point on sexism and racism made by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her important work on intersectionality and domestic violence: Where systems of race, gender and class domination converge, as they do in the experiences of battered women of color, intervention strategies based solely on the experiences of battered women who do not share the same class or race backgrounds will be of limited help to women who because of race and class face different obstacles (1991, 1246)

As with many feminist ideas, both Maori and Pakeha men were resistant to the idea of refuge. Maori men in particular thought it was a problem that Maori women were attacking Maori men at a time when all Maori needed to work together to overcome Pakeha domination. Maori women responded by claiming that all forms of oppression needed to end, including the sexism and violence instigated by Maori men against Maori women (Balzer 1997). Maori women were sensitive to the fact that many Pakeha were using Maori family violence rates to stereotype Maori as naturally violent, but they felt that refuge served as a place to strengthen the community rather than tear it apart (Balzer 1997). However, they felt the Pakeha way of running a refuge was anti-community and would in fact separate Maori from one another. While the network of services for Pakeha and Maori women was growing, Pacific Islander and Asian women were voicing dissatisfaction and concern over the lack of sensitivity to the unique problems facing migrant women and women who did not speak English. In 1989 the first Pacific Islander refuge was established in Auckland, quickly followed by the opening of a second refuge for Pacific Island women. Now there are three refuges serving Pacific Island women affiliated with the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges as well as a number of independent organizations that focus on the needs of Pacific Island families experiencing violence and abuse. There is only one official organization affiliated with the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges that serves Asian women. Shakti Community Council Inc. was founded in 1995 by a group of eight women who wanted to help other migrant women living in Auckland. One of the primary services they offered was support to women experiencing family violence. Families from all Asian countries including Russia and African countries are directed to Shakti for services (Personal communication 2005).

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Thus the model of Parallel Development, which privileges the Treaty of Waitangi as a foundational document and identifies the special place of Maori in Aotearoa life, has come to not only orient the provisioning of services to survivors of domestic violence, but has been taken up in various forms across services sectors, in legal, health, and educational settings. The main programs available for perpetrators, Stopping Violence Services, also uses the Parallel Development approach, and services for victims of sexual assault, trafficking, and other forms of violence are now cared for and receive help via culturally safe and culturally specific approaches that owe their inspiration to the refuge model. This is not to say that the Parallel Development approach has been unchallenged or uniformly accepted. For example, there were a number of originally affiliated collective refuges that left the collective because of disagreements over Parallel Development, and a number of new refuges have been established that do not follow this protocol. In fact, the very first refuge in Aotearoa, the Christchurch Women’s Refuge, became unaffiliated from the national collective in 2010, and in 2011 changed their name to Aviva, a name that does not have any obvious reference to the services they provide. In interviews with Aviva staff no one mentioned that Parallel Development was the reason they left the collective, but the emphasis was on the ability of Aviva to serve all members of the community, regardless of age, gender, or ethnicity. METHODS AND APPROACH I have been exploring the problem of domestic violence in Aotearoa through study, research and advocacy work for over eighteen years. I carried out my first ethnographic study in 1997, conducting participant-observation in a women’s collective and refuge in Dunedin. I undertook a follow up study of frontline workers in Auckland in 2005, and made several shorter trips in 2000/2001, 2011, 2013, and 2015. Over the course of the site visits I have carried out 56 in-depth interviews with frontline workers in Dunedin, Auckland and Christchurch, in both individual interview settings and larger group interviews. I have conducted interviews with workers from all the identified ethnic groups in the country (Maori, Paskifika, Asian, Pakeha, and Middle Eastern, Latin American, and African [MELAA]) as well as in multiple job sectors—police, courts, healthcare, and non-governmental organizations. I have also conducted interviews with people who work with victims and perpetrators, adults and children, and a few interviews were conducted with people who are the directors of programs and who have little to no contact with clients or patients. In addition to my participation as an advocate at the women’s refuge, I worked on a crisis hotline, helped organize a fundraising event in coordination with the national day of awareness, and design and

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execute a public awareness campaign for South Auckland. Thus I carried out various forms of participant-observation as well as formal interviews and life history discussions. I also transitioned in my time as a researcher in the country from a single woman to a married mother of two, and my experiences with the pre-school system in the country for my own children greatly informed my understanding of family life beyond what I could glean from interviews and bearing witness to others’ lives. The majority of observations that follow are largely drawn from two trips made to Christchurch, one in 2011 and again in 2013. 3 I visited Christchurch in May of 2011, two and a half months after the February earthquake, and stayed for a month conducting interviews with various frontline workers as well as members of the university community. A follow-up visit in May 2013, allowed me to observe how frontline workers were faring two years on. FRONTLINE WORKERS AS WORKERS Frontline workers in any context have a difficult task. As has been noted extensively elsewhere, workers are often overworked and underpaid, and carry increasingly large caseloads as staff budgets are cut (Wies 2009). In my interviews with frontline workers in victim advocacy and perpetrator treatment, as well as the health, criminal justice and legal sectors, in Dunedin, Auckland and Christchurch, those who had worked in the field for more than a decade could describe a steady change in the way frontline work was carried out. Many of the long-term workers could describe how the work used to be much more volunteer-based and the organizational structure less defined. The shift to a more professionalized staff along with an organizational hierarchy coincided with changes in the country’s economic position and policies to liberalize (and privatize) institutions in society. The professionalization of the frontline has resulted in an expectation that workers have some sort of tertiary degree, and with the costs of education increasing in the country directly related to the decrease in funding from the government, it means more workers are carrying student loan debt, or are being discouraged from pursuing work in the social services sector, as wages are not adequate to pay off substantial student debt. For the individuals who do decide to pursue a career in frontline work, it is incredibly stressful and emotionally draining work (Haldane 2010). All of the frontline workers I have interviewed mention how rewarding they find the work, but also admit that it is not always easy to do. Under normal conditions, the workers I have interviewed over the years have identified key areas of stress and emotional duress: the inability to keep the stories they hear “at work” and not bring them home; the constant worry over a client

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who stops attending group, or just picks up and leaves the refuge in the middle of the night, and never returns; the person who calls the hotline, tells a harrowing tale, then just hangs up; and the constant stress of wondering if the jobs will last, as social services are often the first victim of government budget cuts (Haldane 2009). Also, workers are often identified as part of the problem not only by activists within the academy, but also by policy makers who see them as ineffective and unproductive. Thus, workers are in an unenviable position— low pay, little respect, and incredibly hard work. Many people who go into frontline work do so because they believe it will allow them to make positive changes in society. Accusing them of reproducing an inequitable system only exacerbates the burnout that plagues the sector (Taylor and Connolly 2013). FRONTLINE WORKERS AS SURVIVORS Prior to the earthquake, the majority of frontline workers in Christchurch were divided into two categories: those who had no personal experience with violence, and those who had been victims of violence themselves (Haldane 2013). While the earthquake did not produce more known interpersonal violence in workers’ lives (at least, as self-reported) all of the workers in the Canterbury region involved in this study expressed experiencing problems related to the earthquake. Workers lost homes, and many of the workers’ clients were homeless as well. Workers in my 2011 visit said that immediately after the earthquake, things were quiet in terms of the number of calls received about acts of violence or new clients added to the agency. One worker said: “it seemed as though the earthquake made people appreciate each other a bit more.” However, by the time of my visit in May 2011, the number of cases was reaching pre-earthquake levels, and in my visit in 2013, workers reported that more new cases were added and the level of need was higher than it had been prior to February 2011. At the same time, the main initiatives being pushed onto the workers to respond to the problem were actually limiting the scope of what they could accomplish. As the government was encouraging the various agencies to collaborate and even collapse services as part of the “rebuild” effort, workers themselves were juggling changing funding streams, new clients who were arriving as part of the rebuild labor force, and an inability to keep track of clients who had moved away after either overstaying their welcome on other people’s couches, or giving up on having their own homes rebuilt. In a large focus group discussion I held in May 2013, with a group of frontline workers who offer group services to perpetrators, the frustration and emotional toll was evident. When I asked the question “What sort of self-care do you practice” members of the group laughed. One long-term counselor

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quipped “there is no time for self-care, and no support for it.” This was openly stated in front of the program manager, indicating that the workers did not blame their manager for the problem, but rather the increased workload, decreased funding, and their own precarious circumstances were getting to be too much to bear. An additional concern for workers was the ability to maintain the level of culturally-specific services for clients from different ethnic backgrounds. As stated above, the emphasis on providing the most culturally appropriate care to members of the community is a valued aspect of the social services sector in Aotearoa. Workers expressed that they could not necessarily keep up the right balance of workers from similar backgrounds as their clients, as an overwhelming number of victims were coming from non-Pakeha groups, yet the number of non-Pakeha workers who had training and credentials did not match the levels of their Pakeha peers. One Maori member of a frontline staff told me that he was overwhelmed since he had to take on all the Maori clients, and he himself was emotionally spent. All the concerns expressed by workers about how they could continue in their work was relayed in the context of wanting to live up to the ideals of Parallel Development or respecting culture, and many felt they were falling short. An additional concern was that fewer resources were available for the long-term care that many clients needed, and what was available was going into policing efforts. The evidence from fieldsite visits in 2011 and 2013 reveals an important aspect of recovery from disaster: it is not just the physical space that must be rebuilt, but also the emotional well-being of all members of the community. The workers in this study were similarly stressed in 2013, two years after the earthquake, as they were in the first round of interviews in 2011. This points to an important aspect of emergency response and what constitutes a “rebuild”; that worker well-being must be the first consideration of any social service response, as the delivery of care to other victims will not be adequate if the workers themselves are still in shock and traumatized. CONCLUSION The interviews I conducted in 2011 and 2013 solidified my view that anthropology has to be used for social change. When I was afforded the opportunity in 2014 to work collaboratively with scholars from Aotearoa on a policy document to suggest changes in the family violence response on the part of the government, I took this as a chance to bring what I had learned from the frontline colleagues in Christchurch into the policy realm and advocate for their care. I identified three main areas of concern gleaned from the interview data to inform the policy suggestions.

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The first main area of concern that arose from my interviews with earthquake survivors was the lack of support for their personal issues as they attempted to handle other people’s concerns as part of their professional work. There were workers who, in my return study in 2013, were still living in temporary housing and did not have access to funds to help repair their homes. The second main area of concern is the shift in funding priorities towards consolidation and away from individually focused services. At the time of my return visit in 2013, the main push was for collaborative service centers, which on the surface appear to be a sound idea, and in fact, workers have been asking for better wraparound care and services for years (Haldane 2009). However, there is scant evidence that this form of service provisioning is the most beneficial system from a client standpoint. As the country struggled economically since the 2008 global downturn, and with a conservative, pro-market government in place, it is not surprising that the shift to the warehouse approach may be motivated by fiscal considerations rather than empirical data about long-term client well-being. The third main area of concern is the long-term stability of a committed frontline workforce. As my colleagues and I noted in our review, the literature is clear that “worker burnout and lack of salary increases limit the ability of social service agencies to maintain a knowledgeable and experienced staff” (Taylor, Carswell, Haldane, and Taylor 2014). Was I interfering in the work of the frontline by using my research to contribute to policy recommendations? Yes. And I think it is a mistake to believe that any researcher is somehow able to “leave no trace.” I came to the scholarship of the frontline from my own long-term experience as a worker, and my commitment to women’s rights and the eradication of violence. While I did not always agree with all the findings produced by various disciplinary engagements with the work of the frontline, I was appreciative that there were scholars out there who saw the work as necessary and worthy of respect. My own suggestions for changes to the institutional approach to violence were entirely informed by the voices of the workers who willingly spoke with me, and especially in the context of surviving a disaster, they laid bare the critical importance of providing a social safety net for all people, not just those categorized as “victims.” QUESTIONS 1. How is the approach to domestic violence in Aotearoa different from the other cultural contexts presented in this book? What is similar? 2. What do you feel should be done to improve the working conditions for frontline workers?

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3. What qualities do you think are important for a person to possess in order to engage in frontline work? NOTES 1. Aotearoa, the Maori name for New Zealand, means “land of the long white cloud.” I use Aotearoa for the country’s name out of respect for the indigenous population of the country and due to its use by many of the frontline workers with whom I collaborate. 2. Munted, in the local vernacular, means to be “destroyed” or “ruined.” Its use in Aotearoa has become synonymous with the aftermath of the earthquake. 3. Quinnipiac University IRB#1911.

Chapter Five

Gender-Based Violence and the State in Guatemala’s Genocide and Beyond M. Gabriela Torres

In Guatemala, political authority rests on deeply entrenched gender inequities that were amplified during the height of state-sponsored violence in the 1980s. Culturally shared notions of a strict adherence to gendered duties, hierarchies, and the violence that these often entail within the domestic sphere now serve as the underpinnings of political, social, and statal power at the national level. Even when it is understood that authority systems bolstered by gender inequity erode women’s autonomy and rights, there is little scholarly scrutiny of the ways that such systems develop or the enduring consequences of their establishment. Gender-based violence, understood as the purposeful use of force to deny women their rights to life, body, and selfdetermination, is intimately tied to already functioning structural inequities. This is particularly the case when state-sponsored violence is concerned. In practice, states wielding authority through the amplification of gender inequities do not only reproduce gender-based violence; states that rely on authority built upon gender inequity ultimately delimit women’s futures as authorities and persons. In Guatemala, preexisting and accepted gender roles were ideal to both tame and enact a moral crisis during La Violencia (also termed the Guatemalan Genocide or the Guatemalan civil war, 1978–1984). Forceful leadership through the return of the “father” was seen as key to the resolution of the ideological divide in Guatemalan society during La Violencia. Positioning himself as the pater, or father, General Rios Montt and his successors based their power to rule on the recognition the sovereign’s own superior moral omniscience.

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As Carey and Torres (2010) suggest, culturally shared notions of the family in Guatemala are defined by gendered inequity where legally enshrined notions of potestad marital and patria potestas (translated as marital and offspring guardianship) through the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century have worked to give men legal power over many aspects of their wife and children’s behaviour and property, including full disposal of the very bodies of their women and children. In the Guatemalan context, cementing the right and ability of the father to guide the family with a firm hand or mano dura in a time of crisis naturalized and extended patriarchal power from an individual familial realm to the broader political sphere. Mano dura rule under Rios Montt during La Violencia in Guatemala had long-lasting consequences: more than 200,000 people were murdered, 440 indigenous villages were erased, more than 50,000 people disappeared, three million people flowed into and out of Guatemala as refugees, and the country’s rural economy destabilized. Today, despite the well-documented charges of mass murder leveled against him in national and international courts, Rios Montt and his rule through mano dura is still revered and respected by many in Guatemala as the “embodiment of honesty, law and order and national integrity” (Garrard-Burnett 2010, 9). This chapter asks how culturally shared notions of a strict adherence to gendered duties within the family came to constitute the preferred basis on which to build political power. By examining Sunday sermons and advertising campaigns in the pre and post-Rios Montt era, patterns of violence upon women’s cadavers, and the ways that women are disciplined when they veer from the family fold, this chapter suggests that culturally produced notions of authority that were cemented during La Violencia endure and continue to shape the political landscape of the nation serving to curtail the personhood of women. The material analyzed in this chapter is drawn primarily from public documents produced during La Violencia and found through archival research conducted at the National Congress Library in Guatemala, The General Archive of Central America, the Guatemalan National Library, and the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library. All relevant law decrees, newspaper accounts, and official government bulletins that referenced La Violencia were analyzed for the period 1978–1986. In addition, I draw from newspaper coverage of the most recent Guatemalan electoral cycle and two widely available official historical reviews resulting from Guatemala’s peace process: the four volumes of the Recovery of Historical Memory Project’s (REHMI) Guatemala: Nunca Más (1998) and the thirteen volumes published by the Historical Clarification Commission (CEH), entitled Memory of Silence (1999).

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COUNTERINSURGENCY, GOD, FAMILY AND THE EMBODIMENT OF AUTHORITY General Rios Montt began his presidency in 1982 by force through weekly Sunday sermons. One of the first of these began thus: In order to maintain a nationalist spirit we have to create a conscious sense of nationalism. Nationalism is the fruit of a family’s maturity. The family is itself the central focus of the homeland (patria). Families are expressions of love towards Guatemala. Families allow us to transcend the material realm into the spiritual realm of humanity. For our nationalism to be great, you must change yourself for the better so that when you express your ideas and ideals, you are consistently expressing and practicing acts rooted in obedience to moral values. . . . I will tell you why Guatemala is a great nation—because of the excellence of its soul. It is a great nation because you as a man or a woman know and follow your duties as husbands, wives, sons, daughters. Because you show that you fear God in this way you make Guatemala a great and strong nation. (Rios Montt’s August 15 Sunday Sermon. As quoted in the Diario de Centroamerica, August 17, 1982, 2).

The link between the military and Christian “moral” values was not limited to the Rios Montt period, since it had been a part of the military rhetoric often used to justify its role in the nation prior to Rios Montt’s forced tenure of office. In a 1978 commercial advertisement to commemorate Guatemalan independence, the Armed Forces provided a list that detailed the role that they envisioned for themselves in Guatemala: So that the inhabitants of the nation can live in liberty. . . . So that our belief in God continues to be respected and permitted. . . . So that freedom of thought can be maintained. . . . So that the family remains the principal nucleus of society. . . . So that the principal educators of children continue to be their parents. (Campo Pagado in El Imparcial September 14, 1978, 18).

The assertion of a belief in God and the promotion of Christian family values are central to military discourses of counterinsurgency, pre- and post-Rios Montt, because the threat of armed insurgency is described as a threat to the values that stand at the core of what the military presented as the essential Guatemalan character. Engaged in fratricidal state-sponsored violence, the military sought to reframe anticommunist and anti-insurgent discourse to fit within the scope of its mandate, namely, the defense of citizens. The defense of the nation and family was, after all, the role for which the Armed Forces were founded. In constructing its public image, the Guatemalan Armed Forces led by Rios Montt often invoked the role of the father as the provider of life. In the patriarchal family envisioned by the military, women were forced into a

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position where they depended on men for validation and the very life of their children. For example, in a full page advertisement disguised as a Mother’s Day greeting, the Armed Forces positioned itself as guaranteeing life: “The Guatemalan army greets the Guatemalan Mother this May 10, offering her the best gift: The security of her children.” (Prensa Libre, 7 May 1982, 20). The military used this ad to justify its role within the frame of providing for every mother’s most basic need: her child’s safety. It situates women as existing within the family alone and assessing their role to the nation as mothers. It reconstructs the military’s role in the conflict from aggressors to natural defenders of the family and producers of the essential values of Guatemalan-ness. Paralleling Agamben’s account of nineteenth-century Italy, periods of “legal exception,” a period when the typical functioning of the legal system is suspended, were regular occurrences during Rios Montt’s rule. In such periods of legal exception, law decrees originated in the executive office of the state, not in congress, and were made into law. The executive branch “changed from a derogatory and exceptional instrument for normative production to an ordinary source for the production of law” (Agamben 2005, 16). The military junta began its legal restructuring project by establishing a process through which it could use “the legislative faculties to govern through decree” so as to legitimate its legislative and executive power. Not satisfied with having direct control over the letter of the law, the military junta attempted to direct legal practice by securing the power to designate all judges. In the Fundamental Statute of Governance (Law-Decree 24–82), the Guatemalan Armed Forces defined themselves as sole wielders of executive and legislative powers, including dominion over how the law was created and executed. The validity of the juridical order exercised through exception is enacted by the inherently masculine power’s authority within the family to “the tracing of a threshold” between “the normal situation and chaos” (Agamben 1998, 19). In the Guatemalan context, patriarchal power reconstructed the rule of law through the natural authority of the father’s unquestionable guidance on issues of morality. According to an editorial in the official government newspaper: When the State, through its authorities, applies measures that guarantee its powers as it guarantees citizen rights, and when the state assumes at the same time a coercive attitude to ensure the rule of the law, it does so because it is the only possible way to defend democratic principles. (Diario de Centro América, 16 August 1982, 1)

As this excerpt illustrates, in order to let good triumph over evil and in order to best defend democracy, Guatemalans who fit within the description of

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being what state-sponsored advertisements called “for the most part honest, peace-loving, hardworking people” were asked to suspend their judgment of the state and trust their leader’s God-like guidance. After the first coup d’etat of 1982, power to redress political crimes came to rest in the hands of the head of state. Together with the special exemption tribunal laws, amnesty laws served to naturalize counterinsurgency violence by symbolically placing the actions of the military in the realm of “legality” and moral “righteousness.” As an article in the government’s official bulletin stated: “after having granted a period of amnesty, it is imperative to exercise the right to authority” (Diario de Centro América, 2 July 1982, 1). Yet, the type of authority that was sought by the Guatemalan army through amnesty laws was not limited to the reincorporation of transgressors but rather rested on a moral justification drawn from efforts to reintegrate the country, not only in the legal sense but in the sense of reacquiring national cohesion. As stated within the text of the first amnesty law, public support of amnesty meant the reunification of an imagined Guatemalan family: Pain, mourning, the destruction of life and goods don’t have to mean the deterioration of the nation, and that should be avoided with every effort and sacrifice. What better way to do it than to find paths where there will be no more orphans, no more massacres, no more ungratefulness and violence. Amnesty is the way towards a proper understanding, and the people fully support the governmental conduct that gives a chance to those that have mistakenly chosen a path that destroys human values. Guatemala needs all its children, let there be no more hesitation, let’s all take it up with courage so that we can contribute towards an absolute harmony with true dignity and the cloak of law and justice. (Diario de Centro América, 29 June 1983, 6).

Thus, national cohesion, defined as the suppression of dissent and sought through the extension of amnesties, was valued by the Guatemalan military in its efforts to rewrite Guatemala’s social fabric. Positioning itself as the decidedly male keeper of what it considered to be Guatemalan social values, the armed forces set out to both restrict and grant the rights of citizens. Both the gifting of citizen rights and the denial of equal levels of citizenship to all natural born Guatemalans, a discretionary gifting that particularly impacted women, were based on the self-perception that military leaders viewed themselves as fathers, shapers, and guides functioning above the mundanely political world of their nation. In this sense, the military’s involvement as guarantors of the law was simply a “natural” extension of the more essential calling that is part of paternal leadership and women’s subservience. In 1982, at least 18,000 people were killed or disappeared in Guatemala and the militarization of the countryside was launched through scorched earth policies envisioned as part of the “socioeconomic rewards” defined by the National Security and Development Plan (Ball, Kobrak, and Spirer 1999,

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28; Torres-Rivas 2000, 145). Scorched earth policies as a military strategy occurred primarily in the predominantly Mayan countryside and meant the burning or otherwise destruction of anything deemed useful to the insurgency, including people, crops, buildings, and animals. In this case, amnesty laws were used to complement the image of the nation-in-harmony. Special Exemption Tribunals, military run trials where possible insurgents were deemed executable without the regular burden of evidence, were instated and at the same time a full and generous amnesty was granted to those Guatemalans that directly or inadvertently collaborated with subversives, so that they could now return to their homes and reintegrate into their respective families. STATAL EMBODIMENT OF GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE: FEMICIDE IN GUATEMALA Thinking through the ways that gender-based violence comes to be employed by states allows for an expansion of the concept beyond its sometimes narrow focus on intimate partner violence. What is particularly important in this rethinking, is that a history of state sponsored violence shapes gender violence and political futures of women today. Using a framework of femicide, we can begin in the extended necrographies of guerilleras’ tortured bodies during La Violencia. Guerrilleras were eminently political, forceful, possibly violent, and decisively social actors. The marks left on dead bodies which suggest a modus operandi (scars, dismemberment, nudity, rape, and so on) are, in Allen Feldman’s words, narratives of violence that are “invested in material artifacts and relations that have a storytelling capacity on their own” (Feldman 1991, 14). The stories that are told by these necrographic maps tell us much about the acts of violence committed and, because they are publically represented, they also tell us about the social supports for gender-based violence. As I read Guatemala’s Historical Clarification Commission’s report, I found a story of overwhelming personal relevance. It is titled “Illustrative Case Number 22” and details the disappearances of five unrelated individuals. Yoli is the one that I knew so well that I often mistook her voice for that of my mother. My reading of it radically changed the remembrances I had created of Yoli as my parent’s friend, a woman I found intriguing because she drank her coffee with artificial sweetener. América Yolanda Urízar Martínez de Aguilar was a labour lawyer, union advisor at the CNT and the National Committee of Labour Unity, professor at the School for Labour Studies of the Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences in the Universidad de San Carlos (USAC) and a militant of the Armed Rebel Forces. To date the victim is still disappeared.

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A guerillera, a professional attorney, and a learned scholar, Yoli transgressed gender norms in multiple ways: she was not only involved in politics in the most committed way but she had placed herself in the position to teach Guatemala’s next generation of scholars and professionals. She also transgressed her gender, ethnic, and class position by opting to support workers movements and taking up arms in opposition to the armed forces an organization in which her father held a prominent role. Yoli’s story is quite unique in the historical record because the family, a military family, actively questioned her capture in public and private. On the 25th of March 1983, América Yolanda Urízar Martínez de Aguilar, who I called Yoli, was captured in a place close to the border between Mexico and Guatemala. The car she was travelling in was intercepted as she drove, in the company of two other people, to Guatemala City. The Commission on Historical Clarification (CEH) begins its account of Yoli’s “forced disappearance” with an excerpt of a letter written by Yoli’s parents. It states: Mr. President, you as a Christian cannot allow our daughter to be mistreated physically or mentally since you always remind us in your Sunday messages that all Guatemalans deserve to be respected as they resemble both God and the Nation. . . .

CEH meanders through the many other attempts made by Yoli’s parents to find their daughter in vain and ends the account of her life thus: Yolanda Urízar was detained in the detachment of Santa Ana Nerlín, department of Quetzaltenango. Later, she was transferred to Guatemala City where she was kept prisoner in the old Polytechnic School, according to sources ‘. . . witnesses . . . who have been in the same army-run clandestine prison in the basements of the old military school (Polytechnic), say she was taken there and underwent interrogations and tortures, and was found to be in a lamentable state having lost her use of reason.’

In the public record of the armed conflict, witnesses speculate that the continuous barrage of sexual and physical violence to which Yoli was subjected not only impacted her body but also “drained her mind of reason.” Reading this I was struck by how the state’s enactment of violence was in many ways aimed to deprive women in particular of their use of reason. Yoli’s life ends in a body without reason. The tortured female was a particular site for the rewriting of the Guatemalan nation-state. Women, as the culturally ideal vessels of the Guatemalan family, were not killed as often as men. However, in the instances where women were killed, their cadavers show evidence of overkill, meaning tortured to such an extent that more than one of their multiple injuries were lethal. Further, rape would imply that divergence from the expected behavioral norms resulted in greater punishment for women

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than for men precisely because the moral costs of “defilement” were higher. Cadaver reports of women victims are unusual and make up less than 10 percent of all cadaver accounts I collected. Evidence of sexual assault was present in 90 percent of the published cadaver accounts. Since the rapists were the authorities, often members of the regular armed forces during massacres, special police and army task unit members for forced detainments (REMHI 1998b), they had unquestioned impunity. Thus, making rapes public would not bring the perpetrators to justice and the physical safety of both the victims and their families depended on keeping rapes secret. Building on the violence, shame, and secrecy commonly associated with rape, the designers of Guatemala’s counterinsurgency policies attempted to force women and men—both indigenous and non-indigenous—into a symbolically subservient role where military impunity and authority could remain unquestioned. I am arguing that the public rape of women during the armed conflict and today works to constitute women as victim/objects—a category that women still occupy. Yoli’s disappearance patterns the deaths of many women as they come to be written about in public records, during La Violencia and in to the post-war period. The production female cadavers through different forms of gender-based violence and their prolific coverage in the media stands in stark contrast to the limits of women’s social portrayals in the media and in Guatemalan society more generally. The parade of cadavers of women’s tortured, discarded bodies has roots in state-sponsored violence of the past. The outcry about women’s deaths today is muted and their tortured bodies are commonplace. Femicide of this type has been occurring for nearly a decade and now nearly 4,000 women have been murdered since 2003 and the state is effectively absent in its prosecution of the authors of femicides. WOMEN IN MALE DOMAINS: DISCIPLINING THE SPACE FOR POLITICAL AGENCY The particular ways that violence impacted women in Guatemala has not only marked their bodies but it has also reshaped their conceptions of themselves. Violence does not just threaten bodily harm but, because it builds on preexisting cultural practices that devalue women, it restricts women’s ability to exist in the political sphere as knowing participants. Women who seek to participate in politics are bluntly confronted with the constraints of prevailing gender norms and notions of the ideal authority. In the 2011 election, three women were registered as presidential candidates in opposition to the military general, Otto Perez Molina, the country’s president since January of this year. Though Perez Molina’s candidacy was challenged because of his documented participation in massacres and torture during the 1980s, his gen-

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dered behavior, as a man involved in politics, massacres, verbal aggression or wearing fine suits that are impeccably tailored, has never been critiqued. Women’s political participation is simultaneously a contest and a contestation of femininity. In opinion polls administered in May and June of 2011, all four female candidates running at the time, former First Ladies Sandra Torres, Patricia Escobar de Arzu, Adela Camacho de Torrebiarte and Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum, were actively rejected by the electorate with the highest rates of rejection directed at Torres (28.9 percent of those polled reported they would not vote for Torres under any circumstances) (Prensa Libre, June 30, 2011, 2). According to political scientist Renzo Rosal, women raise the ire of the electorate for different and sometimes contradictory reasons. He argues in the case of the then three leading female candidates that: Torres generates the rejection because she puts forth a new idea of a woman in the political sphere that is not subservient to men’s decisions, Escobar de Arzú is rejected for the opposite reason, her attitude is completely submissive and she is overshadowed by the authoritarian figure of her husband the mayor of Guatemala City Alvaro Arzu. In Menchu’s case, the stigma is aggravated because she is a woman, indigenous, and leads a left leaning project. (Prensa Libre, June 30, 2011, 5)

The ties of kinship are one aspect of gender relations through which the breadth of women’s political agency is actively defined. On August 9, 2011 Sandra Torres was barred from running for President in 2011 because her candidacy was understood by the nation’s Constitutional Court to violate the Guatemalan Constitution. A month prior (April 7, 2011) to her official declaration of her presidential ambition, Sandra Torres de Colom had her marriage to the president dissolved by a family court. Her party’s attorneys argued that when she officially registered as a presidential candidate as a newly single woman, she was not in breach of the law that banned up to second degree affinal relatives of the current president from seeking power. The press, national and international alike, came ablaze with the controversy that came to be known as the “presidential divorce” and outrage centered on how the politically driven divorce mocked the institution of marriage. While it is clear that Torres’ manipulated the spirit of the law, how that manipulation gets addressed in the media and in the letter of the law is shaped undoubtedly by the prevailing Guatemalan conceptions of womanliness. Explaining her actions, the former first lady declared: “I am neither the first nor the last woman to get a divorce, but I am the first woman to get divorced for her country” (March 24, 2011). In her efforts to make her decision understandable, she openly described her divorce as a commitment to politics stating often at the outset of the controversy: “I am divorcing my husband but I am marrying the people.” The public dedication of a woman’s

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love to a higher cause is not unfamiliar in a country where novice nuns routinely pledge their love to God donning a white dress in a marriage-like ceremony. More to the point, Sandra herself had held the office of the nation’s first lady, an office that is typically a testament to a woman’s public devotion to the people. But Guatemalans were not ready for her political devotion outside the bounds of matrimony or the way the former first lady expressed her political designs. In the flurry of commentaries on the subject of the presidential divorce and the infamous presidential candidate, Guatemalans heartedly disagreed with her self-conception as a political subject. For most respondents Sandra’s preference for political power over her wifely duties was the lowest point of “moral depravity” that a country ten years shy of orchestrating genocide had seen. As Mario Antonio Sandoval noted in a prominent editorial in March 2011, “The Colom-Torres divorce is immoral, not in itself but because of the political reasons behind it. This is where the topic not only becomes public but it forces the rest of the political figures and parties to express their own intentions to act morally embracing the compatibility between politics and morality” (Prensa Libre, March 3, 2011). The legal challenge made to her candidacy was grounded on the idea that her divorce was not “real” and betrayed her political ambition; the opposition party cited President Alvaro Colom himself as evidence when he stated that he divorced “to allow her to aspire to the presidency as this is in the interests of the country, interests which are above the interests of his own marital union” (Prensa Libre, March 3, 2011). Why did the idea that it was desirable for a woman to suspend the links of marriage for the benefit of a political career lack cultural resonance in Guatemala? The ties of marriage, at least for a woman, take definite precedence over politics. An analysis of the public language surrounding the presidential divorce controversy shows that conjugal kinship ties shape the prevailing idea of a Guatemalan woman as a non-political subject. In the removal of Torres from candidacy, the Constitutional Tribunal argued that irrespective of her conjugal legal status at the time of her candidacy’s registration, she had a legal conjugal union with the president when he began his term in office and the act of having been married to a president precludes her from seeking office. The Tribunal clarified that “though it is true that the right to elect and be elected is a constitutionally right of citizenship, it is not an absolute right and is as with any other right subject to the limitations defined within the constitutional text itself” (Corte de la Constitucionalidad de la República de Guatemala, Sentencia Expediente, August 8, 2011, 2906–13). What the Tribunal’s legal language obfuscates is the knowledge that constitutions are themselves cultural texts that serve to promote particular gender norms. Marriage, in this case, was a limitation and it is quite probable that the former first lady and president divorced out of politi-

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cal ambition—in fact, the Tribunal considers at length statements by Alvaro Colom stating that the divorce was sought to make Torres’ candidacy legally viable. The Constitutional Tribunal agrees that Torres registered for the presidential candidacy when she was legally single yet it interprets the existence of an affinal relationship to Alvaro Colom throughout most of his term in office as the very definitional kin that should be precluded from candidacy. Conjugal relationships are thus understood through cultural norms that privilege women’s marital status over a women’s civic agency. The deep and prolific public outrage in the press to the legal divorce was squarely focused on the moral transgression implied in the political divorce. Journalist Claudia Navas Dangel in an editorial entitled “Huyyyyyyyyyyyy!” wrote that she was “fed up with all the chest pounding over Sandra and the President’s divorce” (La Hora, March 24, 2011). For Navas Dangel, the presidential divorce controversy was squarely an act of curtailing women’s rights to participate in the political sphere. In the midst of her rant of frustration against the commentators that denied Torres assertion that her divorce made her free to act as an independent citizen, she writes: “Now they grasp a hold of morality, principles and respect for the institution of marriage to see if by using our conservative ways we can mobilize, agitate against and ultimately prevent Sandra Torres’ candidacy from taking its course” (La Hora, March 24, 2011). The public discourse through which Sandra Torres was prevented from exercising her civil right openly, while gifted to her by exhusband Alvaro Colom to be “elect and be elected” crystallizes the ways that gender norms matter to a woman’s political ambition (Prensa Libre, March 24, 2011). Assessing the aftermath of the former First Lady’s bid for office, journalist and public relations image specialist, Brenda Sanchinelli Izeppi, summed up the predominant sentiments: Sandra Torres was mythicized and thousands of parallel stories were constructed around her transforming her into a type of goddess with the semblance of a woman and the body of an animal that wiggled its little legs at all possible instance. Videos, jokes and gossip of all kinds created the famous “Sandraphobia.” An omnipotent femme fatale that overlaid a bipolar and manipulative capacity to crack the fingers off anyone with her hysterical screams—including her ex—to make them obey her orders. Or else one that could perform the other extreme by dancing the victim’s tango as a vulnerable and unprotected woman savior of the poor.

Depicted as simultaneously animalistic, surreal, hysterical, and seductive, Sandra Torres committed an act of cultural gender transgression by divorcing her husband. The public reaction was unexpected by her and her husband (personal interview). Her own upbringing in the frontier department of the Peten provides reasons as to why Torres would have been lulled into thinking

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that her divorce would be culturally acceptable. For the urbane ladino elites of the nation, her political move violated decorum. Desperation on the excess of attention is evident in Alvaro Colom visceral reactions to questioning in the days after the announcement. While both officially refrained from comments on the divorce within a week of its filing, his initial reaction to prodding was to define divorce detractors as the same old “vampires” (Prensa Libre, March 24, 2011). A day later, he blurted in a press conference: “I appreciate that you are so worried about a divorce, really I do. But if you bring up the topic of morality you need to be careful” (Prensa Libre, March 25, 2011). Sandra Torres’ bid for office is not the first time that a prominent female politician transgressed the values and norms of Guatemalan femininity by dabbling in politics. Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum is one of the women who elicited public critique upon entering the political scene at the official end of the civil war and continued to raise the ire of the Guatemalan elite in her presidential bids that began in 2007. Earlier still, when she was simply a political figure without presidential aspirations, the cultural resistance to Menchu’s political power found in cartoons is narrated by Nelson (1999) who draws attention to a set of key motifs used to curtail and limit women’s political participation. In “Gendering the Ethnic-National Question,” Nelson focuses on the ways that Menchu is repeatedly discredited through an allusion to a secret “manliness within,” the source of her political ambition. For Sandra Torres and Rigoberta Menchu Tum, political candidacy transgresses gendered expectations that situate women as family members, bodies but never subjects with reason. CONCLUSION Guatemalan history is replete with evidence of a negative societal response to a woman’s transgression of gender roles. As a scholar of gender-based violence it is clear women who aspire to prominent political agents are punished (Torres 1999, 2005, 2008). Working on historical records of the civil war, it is clear that women’s bodies were key canvases upon which military efforts defined nation-genesis through violence. The acceptance of violence on women’s bodies during the civil war had lasting gendered consequences, including complacency around femicide (Carey and Torres 2010). Violence in Guatemala has gendered women politically into being represented as victims or objects of torture—a role which in itself engenders a particular political agency for women in Guatemala. Interestingly, the construction of women as simple victims of violence also reinforces social mores that actively discipline women out of political agency.

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During the Rios Montt era, the Guatemalan military legitimated itself through established notions of paternal love, guidance, and discipline employed towards the moral goal of their legally sanctioned institutional mandate to lead the nation on the road to a civilizing democracy by safeguarding its honor and moving the country beyond chaos and anarchy toward good. Regular Sunday sermons, advertising campaigns and the wording of legislations worked to delimit gendered roles that gave primacy and legitimacy to the moral male head within the family. For Rios Montt in particular, the very belief in and the everyday practice of family values that restricted women’s political presence was the basis for a leader’s transcendence into the spiritual, moral, and political realms. Adhering to the culturally shared notions of duties within the family is what, in Rios Montt’s theology, enabled Guatemalans to transcend and demonstrate that they feared God, and therefore, the statal father. The process of naturalizing the counterinsurgent state as a civilizing, democratizing and ultimately a familial process re-enshrines the ideal leadership and citizen rights in the male’s domain through a masterful management of culturally resonant notions of masculinity. Instead of being conceived as inalienable or constitutionally guaranteed, citizen rights under Rios Montt came to be conceived of as bestowed at the discretion of the executive power and its agents. Guatemala’s constitutional court drew on such discretionary power in its ruling on Torres’ presidential divorce. Access to power, in the past and today, comes to be defined by gendered practices that place the gifting of belonging with paternal discretion. Not only were citizen’s rights discretionary, but the degree of citizenship—political participation included—was defined and determined by the father’s good judgment. This reframing, I suggest, has very tangible impacts on the lives of women today and may be key to understanding not only femicide and its endurance but also the challenges to women’s leadership in politics in Guatemala. There is still much work needed to explore the link between the ways that violence against women is publically represented and the social reproduction of violence. Continued work on how femicides are represented in the Guatemalan media and how their representation intersects with prevalent notions of femininity in the country has the potential to shape journalistic practice. Understanding that the persistence of violence against women is not just interpersonal but is actively shaped by states and their agents as they play out the gendered roles that they have gained from their own social milieu has the potential to extend the purview of foreign aid programs focused narrowly on legal restructuring and the accounting of gender-based violence offenses. For individuals, this study should suggest that being a disinterested bystander in the face of violence against women in our midst has long-term consequences for all of us, and not just for the women whose stories we have become too accustomed to seeing.

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QUESTIONS 1. In your own country, in which ways does the state support or amplify pre-existing gender inequities? 2. In what ways is violence against women represented in popular media today? Explore the ways that popular media representations of violence against women might work to curtail women’s futures. 3. What examples can you think of where laws in your country worked to further gender inequities and sustain gender-based violence?

Chapter Six

Prostitution Diversion Programs and Structural Violence Yasmina Katsulis

In response to the growing recognition that incarceration may exacerbate problems associated with sex work/prostitution, courts around the country have increasingly supported alternative sentencing options intended to curb involvement in the sex trade. One of these options, Prostitution Diversion Programs (PDPs), seek to “divert individuals with prostitution offenses away from prison and into desperately needed community-based services” (Mueller 2012, 5). PDPs can help sex workers avoid a criminal record that would create long-lasting barriers to employment, as well as link them to services such as drug treatment and trauma-focused mental health services. However, there are multiple limitations to this approach. This chapter problematizes PDPs, through an in-depth examination of the program, with special emphasis on the issue of gender-based and other forms of structural violence. I will lay out a critical framework for understanding the PDP as a social institution that provides some benefits to participants, but also operates as a mechanism of neoliberal governance and social control. First, I examine the role of the criminal justice system in contributing to structural violence and the revolving door of arrests. Next, I provide a brief history of the therapeutic justice movement and problem-solving courts out of which PDPs have emerged. I then review the sparse literature we have on program outcomes identified with PDPs. Finally, I discuss the role of neoliberalism, responsibilisation, and the issues of citizenship and social inclusion as they relate to these programs. This discussion and analysis is based on my work on sex markets in the United States. and in Mexico for the past fifteen years. A consistent thread throughout my work is the role of social and structural factors in shaping 73

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outcome disparities among those involved in different sectors of the market. For example, I have examined gender-based health disparities in sexual health outcomes among male, female, and transgender workers; differences in the severity, frequency, and types of violence experienced among those working in indoor versus outdoor venues, including how the risk of violence is mitigated within those venues; the relationship between legal status and work-related harms, including violence, substance abuse and addiction, and mental health outcomes; the relationship between housing security and HIV risk-behaviors; the ways in which race, class, and gender-based violence shape the experience of paid sex and risk-taking among sex tourists; the context of youth sex work and survival sex; how larger political, economic, and social changes have contributed to the emergence of the sex market on the United States–Mexico border, and so on. PROSTITUTION AS GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE Weitzer warns that “In no area of the social sciences has ideology contaminated knowledge more pervasively than in writings on the sex industry. Too often in this area, the canons of scientific inquiry are suspended and research deliberately skewed to serve a particular political agenda” (2005, 934). Indeed, public officials, who have the authority to support specific policies and programs (and not others), are exposed to a wide array of definitions about what prostitution is: Is it a social problem? A moral problem? A threat to the nation? A threat to the family? A problem of poverty? In the media, prostitutes are alternately portrayed as broken and traumatized, or as women with a cold, calculating sense of ambition or a heart of gold. Only for the past few decades has prostitution been reframed (and only by some scholars) as a form of gender-based violence (Weitzer 2005). Although the vulnerabilities of women and girls involved in prostitution were acknowledged by early feminist reformers (Hobson 1989; Walkowitz 1980), the more explicit definition of (all) prostitution as violence is fairly recent (Farley 2003; Farley et al. 1998; Farley and Kelly 2000; Overall 1992; Raymond 1998). The appeal of this stance is that it disrupts the naturalization of prostitution as the “world’s oldest profession,” the one which has always been here and always will be. It also highlights the ways in which sex markets are highly gendered and emerge from gender inequity. It points to the need to abolish prostitution, and suggests that abolition is not only desirable and critical, but feasible. The idea of prostitution as violence undergirds much contemporary abolitionist work—ipso facto, if prostitution itself is gender-based violence, then eliminating prostitution is the only way to eliminate that violence. If all women involved in prostitution are framed as victims of prostitution, rather than a result of poverty or a lack of viable alternatives, then prostitution itself

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becomes the problem—rather than the host of social conditions that lead up to it. While abolition may seem a very simple solution to some, there are no demonstrably effective abolitionist programs in practice. VIOLENCE AS AN OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY CONCERN FOR SEX WORKERS The idea of prostitution as violence is very distinct from the idea of violence as an occupational health and safety concern for sex workers. This latter framework immediately provides a platform for social justice, and the development, testing, and implementation of pragmatic strategies that can provide a meaningful impact on health and quality of life without eliminating sex markets themselves (Barnard 1993; Katsulis et al. 2010; Sanders and Campbell 2007). We might think of this as a harm reduction approach. This perspective also provides a site for deconstructing claims about how, and if, abolition should occur. As argued by Thukral and Ditmore (2003, 10), “the immediate goal of getting sex workers off the streets must be balanced against the harm done by sweeps and the longer-term goal of assisting people who currently live on the margins of society to move towards self-sufficiency.” Given that some sex workers are more vulnerable to harm than other sex workers, a harm reduction approach would require that the following questions be addressed: In what way does social context influence vulnerability to harm? What role does law, policy, and practice play in shaping exposure to harm? How do social institutions differentially impact those involved in different sectors of sex markets? This requires empirical and rigorously scientific thinking about how a range of policy and policing practices impact the degree and frequency of violence within specific sectors of the commercial sex market, including the predictors of violence, the role of specific legal regimes, and environments (both social and physical). For example sex work activists, such as those involved in sex workers unions, have helped to give voice to those who are harmed by punitive legal policies, stigma, and discrimination. Instead of merely focusing on the ways in which the harms associated with the sex industry are gender-based, this approach indicates the need for a more intersectional approach, which takes into account the ways in which harms and benefits are also class and race-based, state sanctioned, and socially determined, more generally. Roe-Sepowitz et al. (2011, 273) note that: “Poverty resulting from an inconsistent source of income, along with limited education and employment skills . . . represent significant barriers for sex workers who want to exit prostitution, and there are few comprehensive programs designed to assist in the exiting process in the United States.” Although structural interventions

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would lessen the likelihood of the need to engage in prostitution (for reasons of poverty, unemployment, basic survival, drug addiction, social mobility, etc.), or at least allow sex workers to do so on their own terms; these preventive interventions are not typically the focus of abolitionists. Instead, abolitionists tend to focus on legal solutions that involve the criminal justice system, policing and arresting those involved in the sex trade (particularly clients, but also, ironically, sex workers themselves as targets of rehabilitation). As the popularization of the anti-trafficking movement redefines prostitution as victimization and gender-based violence, abolitionist policies (rather than harm reduction policies) are increasingly favored. As Bernstein (2010, 50) notes: During the past decade, the term “trafficking” has once again been made synonymous with not only forced but also voluntary prostitution, while an earlier wave of political struggles for both sex workers’ and migrants’ rights has been eclipsed . . . this displacement has been facilitated by the embrace of human rights discourses by abolitionist feminists, who have effectively neutralized domains of political struggle around questions of labor, migration, and sexual freedom via the tropes of prostitution as gender violence and sexual slavery.

Note, for example, the following excerpt about a recent case concerning Love, an individual arrested for prostitution many times in the past, “Prostitutes might be called victims, but they’re still arrested, still handcuffed, and still held in cages. The only difference is that they’re now in a system that doesn’t distinguish between workers and trafficked people” (Crabapple 2015, n.p.). I expand Bernstein’s argument by applying it to PDPs, an intervention increasingly favored by abolitionists and the anti-trafficking movement. THE RULE OF LAW: AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF STRUCTURAL AND SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE A landmark volume on the study of violence, Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology, provides evidence of the growing importance of a multidisciplinary, but anthropologically informed, field of violence studies. In this volume, anthropologists Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Phillipe Bourgois, introduce the concept of a violence continuum, through which conceptual links can be made between seemingly disparate forms of violence by juxtaposing “the routine, ordinary, and normative violence of everyday life (‘terror as usual’) with sudden interruptions of extraordinary, pathological, excessive, or ‘gratuitous’ violence” (2004, 5). The interrelationships between physical,

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structural and symbolic violence are also explored. Central to their concept of the violence continuum is that it contains “all expressions of radical social exclusion, dehumanization, depersonalization, pseudospeciation, and reification which normalize atrocious behavior and violence towards others” (21), including a recognition that violence encompasses “all forms of ‘controlling processes’ that assault basic human freedoms and individual or collective survival” (22). Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois further note that “close attention to the ‘little’ violences produced in the structures, habituses, and mentalities of everyday life shifts our attention to pathologies of class, race, and gender inequalities” (19). I employ this framework to better understand the relationship between the state (specifically, the policies and programs carried out within the criminal justice system) and the everyday violence(s) experienced by the prostitute/criminal. 1 Application of the violence continuum to the study of PDPs allows us to ask if PDPs represent a form of state-sanctioned violence that both: a) reinforce structural inequalities in already marginalized communities; as well as b) provide a venue for enacting symbolic violence against the prostitute/ criminal. What is meant by structural and symbolic violence? The concept of structural violence has been defined and utilized in myriad ways within anthropology to understand the systematic (and systemic) harms emerging out of social inequities (including race, gender, and poverty). Noting the steep gradients of inequality that shape “the distribution of suffering” (Farmer 1996, 272), Farmer (2004, 307) would later write that “the concept of structural violence is intended to inform the study of the social machinery of oppression.” This is a form of everyday violence, in that it is sometimes made invisible, or is taken for granted as the status quo. It is linked, in some ways, to anthropologist, sociologist, and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence, characterized by Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois as “the violence that is often ‘mis-recognized’ for something else, usually something good” (2004, 21). For Bourdieu, “Symbolic violence is violence wielded with tacit complicity between its victims and its agents, insofar as both remain unconscious of submitting to or wielding it (1997, 141); it is a gentle invisible violence, unrecognized as such, chosen as much as undergone” (1990, 127). This is a critical concept for understanding the ways in which PDPs operate, in that they encourage compliance with, and internalization of, the status quo—a topic explored more fully in the section on neoliberal governmentalities. For now, we turn to the idea of prostitution and social mobility as part of a solution to structural violence (though not without potential consequence), as well as the enforcement of criminal penalties for prostitution as a potential driver of further marginalization. Ironically, prostitution can provide a viable solution to gendered inequalities and existing structural violence which include economic dependency on men and/or government benefits, the gendered wage gap, the cost of child-

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care, patterns of discontinuous and part-time employment, and the resulting lack of benefits such as health insurance, retirement planning, and sick leave (Phoenix 2010). However, involvement in the sex trade can also exacerbate already entrenched forms of structural violence, exposing sex workers to a range of structural harms in terms of economic stability, abuse and exploitation. For instance, a criminal record due to prostitution-related offenses can limit alternative means of employment, particularly when that offense is categorized as a felony. This also impacts the right to vote on issues that would directly affect them. Finally, involvement in the sex trade can result in bodily harms such as increased drug or alcohol use, mental illness (trauma, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation), sexually transmitted infections, and physical and symbolic violence. Many of these consequences are directly linked to policing efforts (displacement from familiar areas, time needed to negotiate safely with potential clients, and reluctance to report incidence of abuse to police). I, and others, have argued that policing negatively impacts the most vulnerable members of society, especially women in poverty (Dewey and Kelly 2011; Katsulis 2009; Sarang 2010; Sears 2010; Shannon et al., 1982; Shannon et al., 2009; van der Meulen, Durisin, and Love 2013). Law enforcement practices around prostitution-related offenses are biased: policing efforts typically focus on street-based, female workers in economically deprived neighborhoods (Phoenix 2010). In the United States, this population faces several challenges, including housing insecurity and substance dependency (Thukral and Ditmore 2003). Nearly every day, streetbased sex workers are subject to public and law enforcement scrutiny, including arrests, court summons/tickets, and police sweeps (where everyone that looks like a prostitute in an area known for prostitution is temporarily removed). Police surveillance of the commercial sex trade reduces the likelihood that client violence (rape, assault, robbery) will be reported; additionally, in many areas, police are found to be unresponsive to sex workers who do report that they are in need of help or have been found to be perpetrators of violence, rape, harassment, and extortion themselves (Katsulis 2009; Katsulis et al. 2010). Police should protect sex workers from violence, rather than perpetrate that violence; public indifference to structural violence more generally (and the role of the state in exacerbating that violence), further intensifies the harms associated with the sex industry. Current policing efforts around the commercial sex industry can rightly be considered an extension of structural violence. The Revolving Door of Arrests As noted by Mueller (2012, 3), “a record stigmatizes, prevents the person from being hired for quality jobs that pay a living wage (or even minimum wage sometimes) or from accessing housing due to background checks, par-

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ticularly if that record is for felony prostitution.” The seemingly never-ending cycle of arrests, now referred to as the “revolving door” of incarceration, have inspired a growing recognition that: frequent arrests that result in prostitutes repeatedly going in and out of the court system . . coming back out only to face the same situation, with no lasting change or benefit to prostitutes or the surrounding community . . . is not merely ineffective, but . . . tremendously expensive . . . [in terms of] law enforcement . . . the criminal court system . . . [and] the human cost (Thukral and Ditmore 2003, 5).

Gender, race, class, and age play a central role in how prostitution offenses are dealt with by police. Street-based workers, women of color, and women in poverty are more likely than others to be arrested, and, due to anti-trafficking efforts, transactions involving foreign women are often more heavily policed than transactions involving whites (Munro and Scoular 2013). It has been established by several studies that transwomen, who may experience insurmountable barriers to legal work due to their status as gender outlaws, are often also “profiled” for prostitution (a phenomenon colloquially referred to as “walking while trans”) (Binfa 2012; Woods et al. 2013). The FBI (U.S. Department of Justice 2013) notes that women are arrested far more often than men for prostitution-related offenses 2—women account for nearly 70 percent of arrests. 3 Additionally, penalties (which include how the crime is classified and the fees or jail time imposed by the court) for (female) sex workers are harsher than those given to (male) clients in twelve U.S. states, while only 4 states provide stiffer penalties for clients than those engaged in prostitution (ProCon.org). In Arizona, for example, the penalty for prostitution includes jail time (from fifteen days to 1.5 years, depending on the number of offenses) and is classified as a Class 5 Felony after the fourth offense; the penalty for clients, however, is classified as a Class 3 misdemeanor and includes up to thirty days in jail and/or a fine of $500.00 (ibid). Finally, U.S. federal law imparts the following penalties for those convicted of prostitution: (1) denial of a visa, admission to the United States, or status adjustment; (2) denial of employment; and (3) refusal to issue or renew, or to suspend or revoke, a certificate of registration for contracted employees. PROSTITUTION DIVERSION PROGRAMS AND THE COURTS Therapeutic Jurisprudence Trilling (1950, 221–22) notes that despite the best of intentions, “Some paradox of our nature leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the

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object of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the objects of our pity, then our wisdom, ultimately our coercion.” Reflecting on the role of neoliberalism as it relates to contemporary forms of social control, Leon and Shdaimah (2012, 251) note that, “Neoliberal policies are characterized by a blurring of therapeutic and coercive mechanisms, heightened scrutiny, and a focus on individual problems at the expense of systemic factors.” It is this neoliberal context which has given rise to a new form of governance— therapeutic jurisprudence. Therapeutic jurisprudence represents a “significant rhetorical shift from a punitive and retributive model of criminal justice toward a rehabilitative one” (Kaye 2013, 209). In a telling introduction to the therapeutic community as it is experienced among female prisoners, McCorkle (2013, 3) defines the process of (re)habilitation as one in which a: set of social technologies that mobilize surveillance, confrontation, humiliation, and discipline for the purposes of “breaking down” a self that is thought to be diseased . . . guided by a philosophy of addiction which holds that the self is the ultimate source of social disorder (in the form of crime and poverty), institutional disorder (in the form of prison overcrowding and inmate recidivism), and personal disorder (in the form of drug addiction).

Although on its face the idea of providing individuals with treatment rather than prison time is compelling, the therapeutic approach to crime has been criticized for several reasons, including its ineffectiveness, the potential circumvention of defendant’s rights (in those cases where a guilty plea is required to access services), prosecutorial overreach, equity, and the potential for net-widening, which “refers to the risk of new criminal reforms expanding the social control over individuals” (Kantorowicz 2013, 1). Hoffman (2002, 2066) has characterized the therapeutic court in the following way: Defendants are “clients”; judges are a bizarre amalgam of untrained psychiatrists, parental figures, storytellers, and confessors; sentencing decisions are made off-the-record by a “therapeutic team” or by “community leaders”; and court proceedings are unabashed theater. Successful defendants—that is, defendants who demonstrate that they can navigate the re-education process and speak the therapeutic language—are “graduated” from the system in festive ceremonies that typically include graduation cake, balloons, the distribution of mementos like pens, mugs, or T-shirts, parting speeches by the graduates and the judge, and often the pièce de rèsistance: a big hug from the judge.

Compliance, according to Hoffman, is often measured by a perceived heightening of self-esteem on the part of clients, an “attitude adjustment,” and the adoption of addiction/recovery narratives utilized by the courts. He further argues that therapeutic judges represent a danger for several reasons, asserting that “they are amateur therapists but have the powers of real judges,” and that “they act in concert with each other, their communities, prosecutors,

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defense lawyers, and the self-interested therapeutic cottage industry, contrary to the fundamental principle of judicial independence” (2002, 2072). A Brief History of Specialty Courts Specialty courts (also called problem-solving or treatment courts) were introduced three decades ago; the first such court (for drug offenses) was established in Miami-Dade County in 1989 (National Association of Drug Court Professionals). By 2012, there were 2,734 Drug Courts operating throughout the United States supported through an annual $243 million dollars of state appropriation funds, as well as an additional $88.8 million dollars in federal funding (ibid.). There are now an additional 1,200 specialty courts, including Mental Health Courts, Veteran’s Treatment Courts, Reentry Drug Courts for formerly incarcerated individuals, Community Courts for “quality of life” crimes, Domestic Violence Courts, Gambling Courts, Truancy Courts, Gun Courts, and Homeless Courts (ibid.). These courts seek to address the larger problem of growth within the industrial prison complex, which has led to an incarcerated population of 2.2 million (1 in 100 American adults), with an additional 7.2 million under criminal supervision (e.g., probation, parole) (Huddleston, Marlowe, and Casebolt 2011, 5). For two decades, Drug Courts have worked closely with the scientific community to identify evidence-based procedures and best practices, generating more scientific research than “virtually all other correctional programs combined” (Huddleston, Marlowe, and Casebolt 2011, 9). To date, this has culminated in seven published meta-analyses (Aos, Miller, and Drake 2006; Downey and Roman 2010; Latimer, Morton-Bourgon, and Chretien 2006; Lowenkamp, Holsinger, and Latessa 2005; MacKenzie 2006; Shaffer 2006; Wilson, Mitchell, and MacKenzie 2006) demonstrating an 8 to 45 percent reduction in rearrests for up to fourteen years (Finigan, Carey, and Cox 2007). Huddleston, Marlowe, and Casebolt (2011, 10) note that in addition to preventing re-arrest, “Drug Courts also significantly reduced illicit drug and alcohol use, improved family relationships, lowered family conflicts and increased participants’ access to needed financial and social services,” and are highly cost effective, with “net economic benefits . . . as high as $27 for every $1 invested” (Huddleston, Marlowe, and Casebolt 2011, 10; see also Kralstein 2010; Rempel and Green 2009; Rossman, Green, and Rempel 2009). Due to the plethora of scientific data on Drug Courts, we now know that there are ten key components that must be incorporated in order to maintain fidelity with the Drug Court model. This includes: (1) integration of treatment services with justice system case processing; (2) a non-adversarial approach that promotes public safety while protecting participants’ due process rights; (3) early identification and prompt placement of eligible participants;

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(4) access to a continuum of treatment and rehabilitation services; (5) frequent alcohol and other drug testing; (6) a coordinated strategy to participants’ compliance; (7) ongoing judicial interaction; (8) monitoring and evaluation of program goals and effectiveness; (9) continuing interdisciplinary education to promote effective planning, implementation, and operations; and (10) partnerships among Drug Courts, public agencies, and communitybased organizations to generate local support and enhance program effectiveness (adapted from Huddleston, Marlowe, and Casebolt 2011, 15). Unlike Drug Courts, there is no comparative data available for PDPs. Yet, by 2012, there were at least 14 known specialty courts for prostitution (modeled after drug and mental health courts) and six court-affiliated diversion projects in the United States (Mueller 2012). PDPs are developed at the local level; there is no nation-wide, evidence-based model upon which to build; thus innovators in this area typically visit other known specialty courts or court-affiliated projects and incorporate ideas that they feel will work in their own community. As there are limited published data on PDP efficacy (what is available typically only refers to program completion and recidivism rates), there is no understanding of whether or not (or why) PDPs are effective, for whom they would be effective, what components would be needed to ensure that they are effective, how they might differ from the Drug Court model, or how to measure program outcomes to improve existing programs. There is also no consensus on whether the specialty court model works better than a court-affiliated project, and under what circumstances. However, there are several rich qualitative studies that examine PDP participant’s experiences in the programs. PDP Program Components and Outcomes Leon and Shdaimah (2012, 257) argue that “The governance of prostitute women is still coercive, paternalistic, and punitive.” It is yet unclear if PDPs in any way disrupt, challenge, or simply reinforce that paradigm. Program components for PDPs typically include trauma-based therapy, individual and/or group counseling, drug or alcohol treatment, and drug testing (Alonzo-Dunsmoor 2005; Leon and Shdaimah 2012; Roe-Sepowitz et al. 2011; Schepel 2011; Schweig, Malangone, and Goodman 2012; Wahab 2005, 2006) and require intensive participation that can last up to 6 months. PDPs predominantly serve a specific group of sex workers (those who are the most visible and garner the most public concern), namely, female street-based sex workers struggling with drug addiction (Wahab 2005, 2006). No randomized controlled studies have been published to establish PDPs as an effective intervention that either increases the likelihood of exiting prostitution or decreases the likelihood of re-arrest. However, there is one study that sought to identify risk factors for re-arrest among program partici-

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pants of the Phoenix, Arizona DIGNITY Diversion program (Roe-Sepowitz et al., 2011). Utilizing secondary data collected during the intake process, as well as prostitution specific recidivism records, the study found that those who completed the program were significantly less likely to be arrested for prostitution (within 12 months of the initial arrest) than those who only participated in the intake process and/or did not complete the program. Prior arrests, addiction, and having sought treatment for drug or alcohol use were also identified as salient risk factors for re-arrest. The 46-hour program of classes and meetings (carried out over a period of months) has been described as a “multifaceted diversion program designed to assist the participants in developing an understanding of their options, an awareness of the risks they face, and to introduce ideas about how to take care of themselves physically and psychologically from past, current, and potential abuse experiences” (ibid., 275). In her review of stakeholder perspectives about a PDP based in Salt Lake City, Wahab (2006) notes that the perceived objectives of that particular program could be categorized in at least two ways, as harm reduction efforts (meeting someone where they are, reducing risks associated with drug use or prostitution) and as efforts to “clean up” participants and get them “off the streets” (away from both drugs and prostitution), thereby protecting them from themselves, as well as reducing the threat they were perceived to represent to the community. However, program requirements (such as drug testing) were inconsistent, subjective, and not based on evidence-based practice (i.e., there is no evidence that drug testing reduces the likelihood of engaging in prostitution). Benefits of the PDP (ibid., 82), from the perspective of participants, included access to counseling, social service referrals, “help with sobriety, support and empowerment, and ‘being out’” (that is, having others to talk to about their involvement in prostitution-related activities while being accepted rather than judged), all of which, although an “unintended consequence,” decreased “feelings of isolation” (ibid., 83). Participants reported that the program did facilitate harm reduction efforts in that they: Received counseling, they felt supported by counselors . . . they reported engaging harm reduction behaviors, and consequently believed that they were protecting themselves from HIV/AIDS by using harm reduction. On the other hand, the sex worker stakeholders reported . . . the PDP did not get women out of the sex industry, nor did it get them off of the streets, nor off of drugs, despite the fact that some women found support for sobriety while in the program. In addition, sex workers who were still working [in prostitution] while in the PDP reported not feeling safe or comfortable talking about their active work status while in the program . . . [fearing] punitive consequences for such disclosures. (ibid., 80)

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Wahab argues that although service providers understood the primary objective of PDPs as diverting sex workers from jail, clients did not mention this as a benefit, or goal, of the program. Sadly, it was noted instead that: “The majority of stakeholders, including the sex workers themselves, were doubtful that the PDP could facilitate women’s permanent exit from the sex industry, nor did anybody believe that the PDP could eliminate sex work from Salt Lake City” (ibid., 80). While there is no quantitative outcome data to support this assumption, it should be noted that there is not any statistical data to refute this assumption. PDPs do not address the social factors that lead to sex work as a “sensible” choice, namely, poverty, gender and race-based discrimination, unemployment, and basic survival (Katsulis 2009). In recognition that “little is known about how defendants perceive such programs or what motivates them to participate in them,” Shdaimah and Wiechelt (2012, 157) elected to study the PDP in Baltimore City, Maryland. Findings suggested that PDP participants “looked to the court for concrete assistance with housing, jobs, addiction treatment, and removal of incarceration consequences that bar them from legitimately meeting their basic needs” (ibid., 167); however “requests for concrete assistance, such as housing and addiction treatment, were secondary to their desire for empathy and compassion” (ibid., 158). Successful participants are those who have learned to both accommodate and appropriate the discursive frameworks used to justify the program—what Shdaimah and Wiechelt refer to as the “language of dependence and the desire to change” (ibid., 170). In order to demonstrate success in the program, clients adopt: A discourse of supplication that is resonant with cultural norms that are more likely to be acceptable to decision makers. Women who are seen as vulnerable victims elicit sympathy. Such a portrayal is consonant with a gendered understanding of women as damsels in distress rather than criminals, especially when the alleged crimes cross boundaries of sexual propriety. (ibid, 169)

As a result of a very gendered set of expectations, their own fortitude and ability to survive in a hostile world is no longer in the foreground (Katsulis et al. 2010). The participants internalize the idea that they alone are responsible for getting themselves off the streets. There is no concomitant outcry for systemic change that would address the structural violence they navigate on a daily basis. FROM CRIMINAL TO VICTIM TO SURVIVOR: A NEO-LIBERAL ACHIEVEMENT? Rose (1990) warns that “[P]ower in (neo)liberal societies operates not to constrain individuals, but through the creation, shaping and utilization of

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human beings as subjects who voluntarily subject themselves to discipline and control” (as cited by Scoular and O’Neill 2007, 767). Prostitution diversion programs represent a concerted effort to shift resources away from the revolving door of incarceration and towards interventions that seek to support women willing (and able) to cease their behavior (becoming a “survivor” rather than a “victim”). They are meant to offer an alternative, a choice for those who have been arrested to voluntarily exit the sex industry in exchange for lenience. The seemingly well-intentioned overarching goal is to divert women from prostitution (e.g., help women “exit” prostitution). However, individuals who are ineligible for the program, or do not successfully complete the program, may still be convicted, fined, and/or incarcerated. Thus, although PDPs present an alternative to incarceration for some, court authority is used to discourage non-compliance. Only those who complete the program and cease all prostitution-related activities are referred to as a “survivor”—a person who has “escaped” the life of prostitution. Therefore, the diversion/rehabilitation model reinforces the hegemonic notion that prostitution is violence against women, and the model of women as victims of prostitution does not allow for the development of a rights based approach that would provide an avenue for resistance and collective change (Scoular and O’Neill 2007). British scholars have viewed renewed policing and diversion efforts as mechanisms of neoliberal governance via processes that promote “re-education” over structural change, placing the onus for change on already marginalized populations rather than holding the state accountable for ameliorating and addressing social inequities. This perspective is increasingly recognized in a British social and political environment wherein there is a strong proclivity towards evidence-based practice and the political will to try new strategies. 4 Contemporary forms of neoliberal governance help to “entrench the on-going hegemonic moral and political regulation of sex workers by continuing to privilege certain forms of citizenship” (Scoular and O’Neill 2007, 765). For example, Scoular and Sanders (2010, 33) have argued that: By prioritizing “exiting” as a means of facilitating social inclusion rather than offering recognition, rights or redistribution to sex workers as a group, abolitionist systems promote forms of self-governance which require active citizens to self-regulate according to the norms of the family and the market. Those who act responsibly by adopting appropriate lifestyles via work and norms of sexuality are offered inclusion; those who do not or cannot and instead remain in sex work (which retains its criminal label) are further excluded, having failed to meet the increasingly normalized terms of citizenship in late- capitalist societies.

Majia Holmer Nadesan (2008, 3) argues that “Under neoliberal governmentalities . . . the welfare state sheds responsibility for its pastorate by shifting

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risk and empowerment to its subjects,” adding that “Neoliberal refusal to endorse distributive justice—which aims to ensure adequate conditions of possibility for individual self-government—[absolves the state] of responsibility for equitable distribution of society’s resources” (Nadesan 2008, 31). This shifting of responsibility to the properly self-governing citizen means that “Individuals who fail to take “responsibility” for their self-government . . . are subject to various forms of guidance and discipline exercised by various “expert” authorities. . . . Should rehabilitative efforts fail, punitive disciplinary reforms may be availed” (Nadesan 2008, 34). By “failing” to exit prostitution, sex workers are then more likely to be portrayed, no longer as victims, but as “recalcitrant individuals unwilling to accept offers of “help and support” (Melrose 2006, 12). And this can then be used by the courts to justify further criminalization and the withdrawal of those supports. CONCLUSION In the only outcome study on PDPs ever published, Roe-Sepowitz et al. (2011, 273) note that “[I]nterventions assisting individuals in exiting prostitution have both human and community benefits.” Participants (if eligible) are granted the (often single) opportunity to demonstrate their capacity for self-governance by immediately exiting prostitution. Those who do not demonstrate a capacity for self-governance are then subject to the consequences assigned to them by the state (fines, jail, and prison). How can this help to guide us in future research on gender-based violence within commercialized sex markets? First, we need to keep in mind the following: “it is difficult to conceive of violence without addressing its almost inevitably gendered contours, a separate category for gendered violence risks obscuring the extent to which gender operates throughout all forms of violence” (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2004, 22). Most studies of violence should incorporate an analysis of how gender operates as a powerful social organization tool for violence more generally. However, we must take care that when violence is examined (particularly as it relates to a largely female population), that other contours of that violence are also taken into account. Following this goal, I have tried, in this chapter, to incorporate the concepts of structural and symbolic violence in my examination of PDPs. Although prostitution diversion programs provide a range of benefits to participants (particularly, but not necessarily only, program completers), I argue in this paper that these programs (as they are currently structured) represent an extension of state-sanctioned structural violence that continues to focus on changing individual women’s behaviors rather than addressing the problems inherent within the social environment. PDPs represent a (thus far unproven) micro-level solution to a much larger, and highly complex, set

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of macro-level problems. A multidisciplinary and anthropologically-informed framework for future research must examine prostitution policies and related programs through the lens of empirical evidence that such programs either deter, or perpetuate, everyday violence (or both). The programs are likely more applicable and beneficial to some social groups than others. It is here where the question of equity becomes even more central, and the necessity of anthropologically-informed research strategies so necessary. Many of the women (and men and transgender individuals) entering prostitution are often already disenfranchised, and likely become more so as a result of their work as well as the policing of their work. Thus, a program that extends the punitive arm of the state, while doing hardly anything to address the issue of marginalization and structural violence, is surely doomed to fail. Those who are the most vulnerable and marginalized are made even more so through the process of policing, arrest, and incarceration. According to the Prostitution Alternatives Roundtable (PART), services needed by those who want a viable opportunity to exit the sex trade include “substance abuse treatment, trauma counseling, medical and mental health care, housing, educational opportunities (GED, literacy, college, etc.), job training and placement support, and other community and peer supports” (Mueller 2012, 3). However, there can and must be services offered to those who are not actively involved in exiting the sex trade. These same supports would reduce harms associated with sex work, improving the lives of those who can and do cease prostitution, as well as those who cannot and do not stop engaging in prostitution. Well-funded, transitional shelters for those seeking to exit sex work are desperately needed. Residents would reside in the shelter for an extended period, and be provided with support to identify long-term solutions with respect to employment and housing. Transgender women and men should also be included, but the availability of such services is severely limited. A “housing first” model would allow the federal and state governments to redirect resources invested in policing and incarceration towards housing and service programs, including treatment for drug addiction, mental health, employment, financial management, and other healthcare needs (Thukral and Ditmore 2003). In Illinois alone (see Mueller 2012), multiple legislative projects have also been sought to protect sex workers from the legal problems that complicate their ability to leave the sex trade, including: a treatment and transition center for mothers with non-violent offenses, record sealing, First Offender Probation-Prostitution, the Predator Accountability Act, End Demand campaigns, the Safe Children Act, and the Justice for Victims of Sex Trafficking Act. This chapter has examined what we know about prostitution diversion programs as a potential solution to the “supply” side of commercialized sex markets. I argue that we really do not know enough about the lived experi-

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ences of people in these programs as they relate to exiting prostitution. Additionally, PDPs exacerbate gender and race-based structural violence in that they focus on exiting to demonstrate compliance with neoliberal governmentalities. While it is true that sex workers can benefit from these programs (most especially, if they are willing to accommodate the ideological underpinnings of those programs), we do not know if they are effective in providing the supports necessary to exit (even when one wants to). What we do know is that they do not provide a mechanism for a rights-based approach that provides sex workers with the support that they need to reduce the harms associated with their work activities, unless and until they are able to “exit.” For the most marginalized sex workers in the United States, PDPs may reinforce the idea that individuals are culpable for the structurally violent landscape in which they live, and that their rights and protections as citizens are contingent upon their willingness to comply with a punitive, hegemonic system. QUESTIONS 1. This chapter argues that structural interventions would lessen the likelihood of the need to engage in prostitution. What kinds of structural factors make entry into the sex industry more or less likely for some groups than others? What kinds of interventions could support those who want to support themselves in some other line of work? 2. In what ways do the goals and practices of harm reduction directly challenge the idea that prostitution can and should be immediately abolished? 3. What values might harm reduction activists, practitioners, and scholars share with abolitionist activists, practitioners, and scholars- specifically, in terms of prevention as it relates to entry into prostitution? NOTES 1. I use the phrase prostitute/criminal to call attention to the fact that although sex workers have been defined by the anti-trafficking movement as victims, and may even be thought of as victims by law enforcement or the courts, they are still treated as criminals in that their activities remain against the law, and the authority of law is used to divert them away from prostitution. 2. Prostitution-related offences are defined in law as “commercialized vice,” which in turn is defined as: “the unlawful promotion of or participation in sexual activities for profit, including attempts to solicit customers or transport persons for prostitution purposes; to own, manage, or operate a dwelling or other establishment for the purpose of providing a place where prostitution is performed; or to otherwise assist or promote prostitution” (U.S. Department of Justice 2011).

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3. Because local and national arrest data do not differentiate between prostitution and soliciting a prostitute, the number of males arrested for engaging in prostitution (as opposed to soliciting services) is unknown. 4. See, for example, the document printed in 2004 by the National Youth Campaign on Sexual Exploitation, “Paying the Price: A Consultation Paper on Prostitution,” examines a range of alternative strategies to protect and support those involved in prostitution, as well as the communities in which sex workers live and work. These strategies include shifting the focus onto prostitute users, the regulation and licensure of indoor and outdoor sex markets, etc. In comparison, a recent federal grant opportunity (OVC 2014, 4) noted the following: “The Federal Government is opposed to prostitution and related activities, which are inherently harmful and dehumanizing and contribute to the phenomenon of trafficking in persons. U.S. nongovernmental organizations and their subgrantees cannot use U.S. Government funds to lobby for, promote, or advocate the legalization or regulation of prostitution as a legitimate form of work.”

III

Critical Challenges in the Anthropology of Gender-Based Violence

Chapter Seven

Sex Trafficking of Native Peoples History, Race, and Law April D. J. Petillo 1

Commercialized sexual exploitation (CSE) is generally defined as the exchange of some form of payment for sexual access via prostitution, pornography, or similar activities. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that there are 4.5 million people, mostly adults, sexually exploited globally (2012). In 2013 alone, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center received nearly 4,000 calls from people reporting sex trafficking in the United States. Sex trafficking, as we understand it today, has only recently been legislated against, and depends on highly secretive behavior. This, coupled with structural challenges, means there is little data currently available beyond anecdotal stories. Furthermore, there has been scant consideration of contemporary targeted trafficking of Native 2 peoples throughout Indian Country and no published national data, while historical and legal circumstances may encourage exploitation. To date, domestic research has been specific to Minnesota, Alaska, and Oregon and reliant on one or two community perspectives. We do know that the high rates of sexual violence and exploitation in Native communities have long been considered a human rights issue (Amnesty International 2007), though there is no concrete nationwide data on the prevalence of sex trafficking of Native peoples. Sex trafficking of Native women is where gender, ethnicity, and political status collide with U.S. law. Trafficking interventions seemingly increase Native women’s vulnerability since current U.S. laws systematically afford them less redress in tribal courts and muddies access to state and federal entities. A jurisdictional maze complicates tribal interventions, creating confusion over legal authority and clouding proper procedures when jurisdiction is clear. Currently, only three Native nations are not subject to Public Law 93

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83-280 (18 U.S.C. § 1162, 28 U.S.C. § 1360, commonly referred to as PL280), which grants state authorities criminal jurisdiction on reservations, have anti-sex trafficking tribal codes (Greer 2013). Effectively, in the majority of Native nations, trafficking is technically legal. Additionally, U.S. antitrafficking law, focused on international victims crossing international borders and age-specific definitions of coercion and force, effectively excludes much of Indian Country. This chapter examines domestic racially targeted sex trafficking and U.S. anti-trafficking law in Indian Country through the experiences of women. The methods informing this chapter include primary and secondary sources rather than long-term ethnographic fieldwork. Primary sources include interviews conducted between 2013 and 2014 with 18 legal scholars, policy makers, law enforcement, service providers, and advocates who work specifically in, for, and with Indian Country. Interview insight is further informed by responses (n=48) to a confidential, online national survey conducted during the same time. Secondary sources include U.S. laws as well as reports on sexual violence and sex trafficking specific to Indian Country including U.S. federal, international, and service provider initiated documents from the state and national levels. Primary data informed both the analysis of the secondary legal data and the interpretation of impact of the histories of Native peoples on the contemporary problem. If we acknowledge that the systems built to reinforce the idea of Native women as “consumable and expendable bodies” (or ethnically different bodies claimed as “conquered” by the United States) also increase their likelihood of contemporary targeted recruitment into sex trafficking, we can create better informed solutions to address trafficking and its societal consequences. Rendering this multiscalar violence visible encourages fundamentally different options that engage Native self-determined, culturally sound justice, safety, and protection for Indian Country and beyond. Such insight also highlights structural reasons as to why U.S. laws are simply not working for Native communities. MAPPING STRUCTURAL VULNERABILITY PRESCRIBED TO NATIVE PEOPLES THROUGH TIME Domestic U.S. sex trafficking of Native peoples is intricately tied to structural processes, which have enslaved and commodified people by colonialist gendered and ethnoracial categories throughout U.S. history. These categories have defined our historical perceptions and contemporary lives, socially “marked” certain people as different, and, at times, identified those who are excluded from legal protection and those who are targeted for exploitation through structurally violent means. Marking and treating certain bodies as

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consumable (through excruciating work and dehumanizing treatment) or expendable (through reduction of rights and personal safety) informs the creation of social perception and thus the contours of citizenship, status, and belonging—all of which impact laws. Existing studies on trafficking point to the deliberate targeting of Native women and youth seeking to meet their basic survival needs and manage poverty (Pierce and Koepplinger 2011). Other research has identified potential Native targets as those vulnerable due to mental illness, substance abuse, and/or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) as well as Two-Spirit (transgender, gay and/or bisexual) youth fleeing homophobic abuse and violence (Pierce and Koepplinger 2011). For these individuals, traffickers’ portrayal of the sex trade as quick empowerment and financial independence likely sound appealing (Pierce and Koepplinger 2011). Other documented trafficker tactics include scouting recruits at ethnically specific events like Native gatherings and conventions (DeMarban 2010) as well as finessing introductions at reservation party houses or at pow wows (Farley et al. 2011; Minnesota American Indian Women’s Resource Center 2009). Once they have lured people into urban locations away from their communities of origin, traffickers generally take more forceful measures—including threats, physical harm, encouraging/supporting drug addiction, and strict movement control—to ensure compliance. These methods are also effective in rural situations where, in close-knit communities, reputation and local coercion can be as straightforward as knowledge that your trafficker can easily locate you (interviewee). While traffickers often relocate their recruits, some maintain “stables” in the same area or neighborhood of recruitment. Interviewees in Minnesota, California, and Arizona indicated that some traffickers have tried to recruit from within their agency groups via groomed girls from such “stables” seeking services. Thus, trafficking is not only about the movement of bodies across international borders; it is also about coercive control. These nuances frame the elements that complicate anti-trafficking laws in Indian Country. An Exercise in Ineffectiveness: U.S. Law in Indian Country Criminal jurisdiction, especially around sex crimes in Indian Country, is a complicated puzzle. U.S. anti-trafficking laws, based on the Indian Country Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. § 1152, commonly referred to as ICCA and also known as the General Crimes Act), are extended to Indian Country. However, ICCA does not cover crimes committed by one Native American against another. Per the Major Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. § 1153, commonly referred to as MCA), certain crimes committed by one Native American against another Native person or their property are under federal criminal jurisdiction. However, none of these crimes meets the legal definition of trafficking. The

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ICCA’s Native on Native exemption and the MCA’s limited scope are unable to address issues such as the generational prostitution and child trafficking in Native families (Farley et al. 2011; Minnesota American Indian Women’s Resource Center 2009). Nor do they address recent increases in reservation gang activity, which is specifically, and sometimes exclusively, Native (Deer 2010; Hailer 2008) and which may exacerbate entry into prostitution (Pierce and Koepplinger 2011). In the last two decades, Indian Country Native gangs and “criminal enterprises” have trended towards the sex trade rather than the drug trade, since the penalties and costs are lower and the income potential greater (Greer 2013). This example underscores that the nature of trafficking in Indian Country is not purely interracial (non-Native on Native) and, based on location, may not be immediately categorized as a crime. If the perpetrator is non-Native, there is no loophole, per Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191 (1978), and safety for vulnerable Native citizens depends on the response rate and ease of maneuvering the legal and jurisdictional gaps (Deer 2009) connecting Indian Country and the U.S. criminal legal system. U.S. anti-trafficking laws, as written, are not a good fit in Indian Country either. Contemporary U.S. anti-trafficking law grew out of the White Slave Traffic Act of 1910 (Ch. 395, 36 Stat. 825; codified as amended at 18 U.S.C. §§ 2421–2424), now known as the Mann Act, criminalizing commercial transport, interstate or international, of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” A Mann Act scholar who I interviewed indicated that she rarely heard of the act applied to situations with Native people. Native women would have to be seen as “White” to claim redress under the Mann Act, as it was “. . . passed in this kind of moment of hysteria about protecting the country’s daughters. [Those] arguing for the law . . . [did] not see Native women as the country’s daughters at all . . . It’s very stark how much the White slavery discourse . . . really did reflect an idea that White was the norm.” The vague legal language of “immorality” was invoked to control “uncivilized” sexual behavior. As its title suggests, this post-civil war Reconstruction legislation also subtly addressed the fear of race mixing and slavery’s legacy, reflected in the law’s frequent use to keep consenting interracial adult couples apart. This history shows that current anti-trafficking laws are not explicit in their applicability to Indian Country beyond provisions for coalition building and working with tribal systems. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (P.L. 106–386, commonly referred to as TVPA) and its reauthorizations 2003 (H.R. 2620), 2005 (H.R. 972), and 2008 (H.R. 7311) are the bulk of contemporary U.S. anti-trafficking law. The TVPA defines sex trafficking as,

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recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act is under eighteen years of age.

The law’s main focus is on the 1) movement of person/persons for 2) commercial sexual exploitation through 3) force, fraud, or coercion. In addition to the federal law (TVPA) which is only applicable in federal cases, each state is responsible to enact its own laws applicable within its state boundaries and courts. Pierce and Koepplinger (2011) note that there are also 40 state anti-trafficking laws with varying criteria. Some require adult victims to prove force, fraud, or coercion (AZ 13–1307) and others focus on the behavior of the trafficker instead (MINN. STAT. § 609.321, subd. 7a, 2009). And, in a number of states, trafficking penalties are less than those for rape and kidnapping offenses, despite the prolonged cruelty usually involved in trafficking crimes. For the majority of interviewed service providers and advocates (both community and tribally funded) who were providing support to Native sex trafficking survivors, the discord between federal and state definitions creates funding obstacles impacting trafficking survivor services. For example, the law’s “movement across borders” focus is primarily international and is blind to the crisscrossing of sovereign borders that happens domestically (Deer 2010). Movement across federal reservations or tribal homelands recognized only by state authority is ignored in this definition. How does the TVP help members of Native communities without federal or state recognition? What legal option is appropriate for those trafficked from their homes or within their own neighborhoods? In other words, what is available for those trafficked without “movement” or within “borders?” One North Dakota Native advocate shared a story about women and children trafficked out of their own homes for sex work in their home community, illustrating an instance where a law dependent on movement across borders is problematic. Without an expanded definition and de-emphasis on “federal borders,” many cases of trafficking are missed. Further complicating the operationalization of sex trafficking law is the fact that sex may not always be exchanged for money, but instead for food, drugs, housing, or any other number of basic survival goods. In cash poor areas of Indian Country, women may be trafficked for survival or addiction purposes which are not always understood as extensions of the exchange required by law. Service provider, law enforcement, legal, and tribal services personnel aware of sex trafficking in their communities consistently noted that areas with certain kinds of poverty decreased the likelihood of money exchange, citing instances where rent, food, drugs, and decreased harassment or protection were more likely the “goods” exchanged.

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The concept of force is similarly complex. In U.S. law, individuals under eighteen are de facto assumed to experience coercion. This is complicated by contradictory state laws, which criminalize youth arrested for prostitution, regardless of the potential that they may be trafficked. “Safe Harbor” state laws view prostituting youth as victims rather than criminals to provide some relief, but the “age of coercion” limits are inconsistent. Victims are required to assist with trafficker prosecution “in every reasonable way” (TVPA 2000, § 7102(8); § 7105(b)(1)(a)) and adults must prove considerable force to be eligible for services. Adult survivors may find it difficult to prove involuntary participation when sex trade byproducts (photographs, videos, etc.) exist (Leidholdt 2007). While it may be reasonable to presume that this type of evidence only proves feigned compliance or a lack of effective survival strategies (Neuwirth 2008), it is challenging to counter such evidence in court. Law enforcement interviewees confirmed advocate and service provider observations that adult survivors seeking legal interventions were frequently also investigated as accomplices in the trafficking of others, often regardless of survival strategy or attempts to help fellow captives. Another limitation of U.S. anti-trafficking law in Indian Country is language. Where U.S. law is specific in its three focal points, it is equally unclear in defining “sexual access.” Many close-knit, sometimes rural communities use different language to identity what the law calls trafficking, making it challenging to easily know which laws apply. Interviewees and survey respondents indicated language about women “disappearing,” “leaving and never coming back,” or being “lost.” They also indicated that a simple lack of detail about friends and relatives can indicate trafficking. One advocate, a trafficking survivor herself, said she often reminds herself that her tribal tradition is to avoid “talking about it” too much so as to prevent “recalling dark places.” Still others indicated that the language of “trafficking” is still new in their communities, and they are struggling to define its scope. These limitations illustrate that there are cases where there is no option to pursue trafficking charges. In these instances, tribal code, and/or U.S. law pursuant to sexual assault and/or rape may apply. But communities still have to contend with a slow and often stymied jurisdictional process, a slowly improving but still high rate of federal prosecutors declining cases (known as the declination rate), and short penalties overall when federal authorities do accept cases, even with penalties enhanced by the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 (P..L. 111–211. 111 Stat. 151 commonly referred to as TLOA). This is important because, in many instances, federal jurisdiction is the only authorized criminal jurisdiction. Interview data attested to a great variety in approaches advocated by tribal law enforcement, lawyers, and service providers. In addition, community members and some advocates wanted to explore community-led solution making for sex trafficking. Some lawyers and

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legal scholars advocated for better laws, while service providers often wanted training for law enforcement (on sex trafficking and tribal needs around it). Still others focused on creative lawyering to cover the gaps left by TVPA, the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (Title IV, sec. 40001–40703 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, H.R. 3355, signed as P. L. 103–322, referred to as VAWA), VAWA’s 2013 reauthorization, and other existing state and federal mandates. Strikingly, all respondents acknowledged the colonialist foundations of the U.S. legal system in creating these gaps in the first place. As one interviewee explained, It’s one of the absolute obscenities of federal Indian policy, that if you are not an Indian, if you are not a member of a given tribe and you come on tribal land, you can basically do what you want and the most that the tribal police can do is detain you in the hope that non-tribal authorities will cooperate with them and then deal with you or the crime appropriately because the tribe can’t do it. That’s one of the great insults of conquest.

Native policy interviewees spoke about the reluctance to examine colonial assessments of Native law and social control inherent in the required reliance on federal jurisdiction. Advocates, both in interviews and surveys, noted that there were only a few dedicated police personnel looking beyond the colonial stereotype of Native women to ask those arrested for prostitution about force or coercion and accurately identify the behavior as trafficking. And, a few service providers mentioned how our colonialist stereotypes of each other and sex trafficking blind interventions. One provider noted that traffickers could be “upstanding citizens—a [tribal] council member, priest, teacher, policeman” or those not normally suspect—instead of “some guy with a pink fuzzy hat and Cadillac.” Informants also equally noted the importance of Native interventions in creating policy that heals. Laws Defined by Our Racial Hierarchies Contemporary law making cannot be easily divorced from a society’s long history of discriminatory cultural patterns. As critical race legal theory suggests, changing these centuries-old understandings about race, gender, and sexuality requires that structural interests converge precisely with the change sought (Delgado and Stefancic 2001). That convergence is rare, especially at the intersection of identities (Crenshaw 1989). Precedent shows that our laws are inherently tied to social hierarchies and also work to ensure continued divisions. Systems like law and policy write the history of racialized and gendered displacement and colonization on particular bodies in ways that simultaneously increase their likelihood for recruitment into sex trafficking while decreasing access to legal safety and redress. Legal history, wherein rape was defined by race, gender, and sexuality, verifies this (Deer 2010;

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Getches et al. 2011). Racist fear of non-Western cultures and structural, racial hierarchy filled the law with “institutional sexual use” of “peculiar femaleness” determined by race (Bell 2008, 955; see also Hartman 1997; Thompson 2006; Wallace-Sanders 2002). 3 Native American women’s history includes additional conditions of colonization, which encouraged structurally targeted violence. European settlers targeted Native women for sexual enslavement from the beginning of the colonial period (Pierce and Koepplinger 2011) and that dehumanization process has continued through sexual violence and hypersexualized social stereotyping since contact (Deer 2009; Smith 2005). Legal interventions offering “redress by category,” that is, defining the criminal law available for operationalization based on the combination of victim and perpetrator’s ethnorace, keep our attention on who does what to define crime, reinforcing racial hierarchies begun long ago. Keeping our legal focus on violent action across racial lines offers little to address the problem of sex trafficking. Native Peoples, U.S. Law, and Social Control Robust and diverse Native social control systems structured social expectations and behavior well before settler colonialism. For Native communities, transformation and adaptation was normal, but pure reliance on another authority was not. Systems that did not prove themselves consistently effective were replaced with those that were. It is internationally noted that “the system designed by the United States to address criminal justice and public safety [around sexual violence] in Indian Country simply does not work” (Deer 2009, 151 quoting Washburn 2005, 40). More importantly, using a system sometimes viewed as a colonial villain in Indian Country to administer justice gives defendants the opportunity to “see themselves as martyrs and . . . evade the most difficult aspects of introspection that can be produced by a judgment of guilt” (Deer 2009, 151 quoting, Washburn 2005, 40). This avoids true community accountability, which is prized in tribal Nations (Deer 2009). Without community legitimacy and accountability, conviction is a twisted badge of honor, not punishment. From an American Indian Studies (AIS) perspective, which prioritizes the multiplicity of Native voices and experiences, positive legal change in the U.S. system is not reliable (Kidwell and Velie 2005). In fact, it has been damaging. The overall impact of federal Indian policy has severely marked contemporary Native identity and expression by tearing asunder North American Indigenous people and their homelands, keeping people and land separated for centuries, and denying at least one generation ready access to their related language and tradition (Holm, Pearson, and Chavis 2003). For communities that view tradition as the source of guiding principles defining

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safety and justice, such structural violence is the source of the vulnerabilities which make them targets for traffickers. In no uncertain terms, the current justice paradigm established for Indian Country reinforces structural, political, and representational intersectional categories (Crenshaw 1991) which continue particular micro-aggressive experiences (Sue et al., 2007). The inchoate range of statutes, laws, and court decisions binds tribal governments seeking to more directly create and enforce Native self-determined safety for their citizens. The contradictory legal system erodes Native self-determination through “social structures centered on fear and hate,” which encourage communal tensions such as the intracommunity violence that interviewees consistently referred to in their comments (Williams 1991, 234). Built on the federal treaty offers of fiduciary guardianship in exchange for considerable land, the current criminal jurisdiction scheme relies on conceptual wardship equating “Native” with “child” and does not serve Native self-determination. This confusing jurisdictional puzzle, dependent on colonial territories and ethnoracial identities, requires Native peoples to constantly refer to an outside authority and reify that authoritative source. Notably, that reliance on colonial territories and ethnoracial identities resembles the legal parameters around the rape of Native American women and legal structural precedent upholding systematic racial hierarchies. Further, U.S. criminal jurisdiction around sexual violence in Indian Country generally, and sex trafficking specifically, looks different when illuminated by rape law precedents. As Deer (2009, 150) states: Sexual assault mimics the worst traits of colonization in its attack on the body, invasion of physical boundaries, and disregard for humanity. A survivor . . . may experience many of the same symptoms . . . as a people surviving colonization. The perpetrators of sexual assault and colonization thrive on power and control over their victims. The U.S. government, as a perpetrator of colonization, has attempted to assert long-lasting control over land and people—usurping governments, spirituality, and identity. . . . Paradoxically, today authority over most sexual assaults on Indian reservations falls under the auspices of the federal government . . .

Legislation such as PL280 can further complicate justice by involving another outside entity in the process (Deer 2009). Native reliance on the U.S. legal criminal system requires Native communities to embrace the likely source of sexual violence in the first place. Where structural change is possible, overturning past legislative oversights is lengthy and arduous at best. Nor are mechanisms for doing so representative of Natives’ or Native women’s experience. An example is the Supreme Court’s continued reluctance to support or expand Native sovereignty or self-determination since the Rehnquist Court Era (Williams 2005).

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Effectively, the U.S. government has coerced dependence since contact. Each phase of relationship between Native leadership and the U.S. government includes the United States encroaching on the elements that determine identity for Native peoples (Holm, Pearson, and Chavis 2003). This encroachment negatively impacts Native-specific and oriented responses to sexual violence, as well as results in preconceptions of who and what is Indian in the U.S. imagination. These preconceptions, sometimes used by both Native and non-Native people, inform everyday political decisions and build legal structures. Thus, decision-making is unaligned with Native selfdetermination because there is often little that is still authentically Native in it. Simply, there is and has been little to no Native representation in the criminal jurisdictional structure as it exists now. All of this influences the potential effectiveness of U.S. law in Indian Country. The neoliberal, individualistic impulse is to legislate, continually reworking our “top down” approach. But this analysis suggests that legislative improvements are not contributing to resolutions. TLOA appears potentially effective, however those in Indian Country feel its good intentions are mostly helpful “on paper only” (Dobie 2011, 57). For social justice advocates, the TLOA legal and medical response improvements were just too difficult to implement because they rely on the “will of those enforcing it” (ibid). When interviewed years later, law enforcement personnel, lawyers, and legal scholars echoed similar sentiments. Consider the VAWA 2013 reauthorization, wherein the majority of provisional expansions squarely targeting domestic and dating violence of Native Alaskan women (often cited as particularly vulnerable to trafficking) were excluded (Landreth 2013) alongside the minor victory of including Indian Country sex trafficking in its provisions. VAWA 2013 enactment took significant U.S. legislative debate for months and public outcry, including a recommendation that the United States address this violence immediately in accordance with the internationally recognized basic human right to freedom from violence in the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’ 2012 report on the situation of Indigenous peoples in the United States. While there was considerable hope about VAWA 2013, interviewees indicated skepticism about how those changes would impact their work. At the time, service providers indicated that they had little use for either law, since TLOA operated as a minimally funded mandate and VAWA 2013 had yet to impact their work across Native America broadly. Recognizing that sexual violence in Indian Country is directly linked to U.S. failure to enforce safety, one of Amnesty International’s 53 recommendations was that the U.S. honor its trust responsibility by removing the jurisdictional “confusion and complexity” which inhibits justice in Indian Country broadly (Amnesty International 2007, 83). Federal anti-trafficking law does not lend itself to countering the Indian Country systems of oversight

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and governance, which block its use. The Indian Country reality is that some people are trafficked from their homes, often for something other than money and that others are “disappeared,” none of which work well for traditional U.S. law enforcement and policy making reliant on more direct definitions and understandings of applicable laws. RETHINKING APPROACHES TO SEX TRAFFICKING POLICY IN INDIAN COUNTRY The history of the United States demonstrates that the commodification and consumption of Native bodies has been a regular marker of land conquest and socioeconomic power in ways that have remained consistent in stereotypes across geography, time, and cultures. The persistence of these ideas suggests that these beliefs are systemic and influence U.S. structural systems and responses. Imperialist beliefs that Native lives are not important and Native safety is inconsequential are evident in the trafficking of Native peoples and systematic, structural responses to it. So, how do we change the story, and by extension, the contemporary targeted trafficking of Native peoples? First, this chapter calls for exploring a different approach rather than revamping the same options. The U.S. policy impulse is to improve by building on precedent. While that has worked for the U.S. government in Indian Country, it has not worked for Indian Country very well at all. Tribal governments’ and Native service providers’ unique insights are stalled by a system still grounded in fear of Native differences. One interviewee explained the need to return community social control to the ideals and principles behind traditional methods in order to address contemporary issues, rather than use traditional methods, per se. Such a focus might mean that gendered balance and respect are represented by a balanced, respectful cosmic world—without which chaos exists. Refocusing might mean tremendous communal effort and investment in that balance rather than outside reliance alone. That effort might include replacing structures, such as the current U.S. criminal structure, when it has proven to be consistently ineffective. This change in approach also means turning our focus towards criminal behavior rather than racially-defined redress. Much is made of the Department of Justice (DOJ) statistic that 86–88 percent of reported sexually violent incidents involve Native victims and non-Native perpetrators (Amnesty International 2007; Dobie 2011). While this has interracial complexities, too much focus on this statistic anchors the discussion in the U.S. jurisdiction schema rather than in the landscape of violence. The cycle of these sexual violence conversations is steeped in racial categories based on minimal, unreliable, currently available “official” data. But, tribal lawyers and law en-

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forcement interviews suggested that in some regions the majority of declined cases involved Native perpetrators. Beyond recycling U.S. racial divisions, this also detracts from viable community solutions addressing the landscape of issues. The second lesson from this analysis is to start local. The majority of survey and interview respondents expressed surprise that someone reached out to ask about their experience around trafficking. As people with firsthand experience maneuvering policy that can serve either as a lifeline or a cage for sex trafficking survivors, their anecdotal insight is vast. Understanding local confusion around legal constraints, the local activities that make up “sex trafficking,” and how local communities talk about the experience of trafficking in the everyday are necessary details for defining community safety. These details are lost without continual effort to inform large U.S. polices with local insight. Changing where we begin our investigation also means looking at what we find differently and more specifically. Considering the high federal declination rates of sex trafficking cases (Riley 2007), more complete data on Native experience would broaden available solutions beyond the current historically under-investigated and overused options. Native policy makers, law enforcement and lawyers are all at a loss for information on trafficking in and across Indian Country. While some interviewees indicated a strong need for training law enforcement, many others cited a glaring need for data. Those in Native policy making circles stressed the need for Native nation to Native nation comparison, rather than comparison to the U.S. entities or overall. Finally, through an examination of trafficking policy in Indian Country, we are compelled to consider multiple options for alleviating violence, rather than one. To do so, we need to be clearer and more inclusive in the definitions of trafficking used. While U.S. anti-trafficking law is relatively new, there can be less confusion about how and where this law is applicable. That clarity need not come at the cost of excluding large pockets of vulnerable communities. Interviewees indicated that better symmetry across federal and state law, cooperation with local tribal governments, consultation with local community to develop legal language, and support for research steeped in Native understandings would lead to interventions that can work in Indian Country. Legal scholars noted the lack of focus beyond the Midwest and West coast. Others were concerned about the lack of attention to “missing women.” Clarity in these areas can bridge contradictions between what service providers and advocates know, what law enforcement needs, and what policy makers can plan for. Furthermore, Native community members indicate that we need to pay more attention to coercive control than movement of bodies in existing laws. People on the ground are clear that anti-trafficking law’s preoccupation with movement is inadequate in addressing the coercive control of trafficked Na-

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tive women. If there is a need to maintain a focus on movement, the concept of borders needs to include and respect internal, domestic sovereign borders differently. Most important, work in Indian Country requires the understanding that Native self-determination is both the issue and a part of the solution, always. Interventions that are violent to a community’s idea of itself will never keep a community safe from traffickers nor will it create justice. Further, a historical perspective reveals that trafficking, and all Indian Country sexual violence, is an issue of Native self-determination. There is no wavering on this point, as neither trafficking nor sexual violence reflects the content and character of Native goals. A historical perspective, informed by the insights of people in Indian Country, also tells us that Native-determined solutions must be a part of the answer. Continued insistence and sole reliance on interventions developed without community insights are violent to the community as well as the community’s sense of itself. Approaches that neither accept nor work in service of Native self-determinism do not create safety, justice, or protection in Indian Country. CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have argued that sex trafficking in Indian Country represents the colonialist structure that created it. In order to remedy this form of gender-based violence, it is necessary to redefine the communal goals and focus away from those established by structural violence(s) specific to a particular group. Native Nations can effectively develop their own approaches to sexual violence and the sex trafficking of Native peoples, especially if these approaches are not developed in a conceptual vacuum. Anthropologists can help mobilize what Native communities already know to be true to develop legal interventions which reinforce Native self-determination and address targeted Indian Country sex trafficking in an effective, culturally appropriate way. Anthropologists can bridge insights about the impact of structural injustices on particular communities and the role that Native governance can play in stemming those specific vulnerabilities around sex trafficking. This chapter does not present all of the possible questions or solutions for addressing the contemporary targeted sex trafficking of Native peoples but it does provide a different location, cognizant of structural and systematic injustices, from which to view the landscape. QUESTIONS 1. How do our understandings of boundaries or borders impact the application of anti-trafficking law and criminal jurisdiction? Are some

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boundaries or borders more important than others for when considering the elimination of sex trafficking? Why or why not? 2. How are the vulnerabilities addressed in this chapter similar to vulnerabilities for ethnoracial groups that are not Native? How are those vulnerabilities gender specific? How are those vulnerabilities specific to Native peoples? 3. As an anthropologist, what would you suggest that policy makers consider when making a law that can be applied across diverse, global communities? NOTES 1. This chapter is based on my PhD dissertation, “By Force or By Choice: Contemporary Targeted Trafficking of Native Peoples,” (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona). Native/Indian advocates have generously and bravely shared and entrusted their stories with me. I am sincerely grateful. A portion of this work was generously supported by the Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund. Thank you, Manley Begay, Robert Williams, and Robert Hershey for encouraging my exploration. My gratitude is extended to Sarah Deer and Alexandria Pierce who provided immense insight and encouragement early in my research. This chapter has greatly benefitted from discussions at four conferences/meetings between 2013 and 2014: the Gender Based Violence Sessions of Society for Applied Anthropology, the FAQ-UCSD: Salon Series in Feminist and Queer of Color Critique, the American Indian Studies Association Conference and the National Congress of American Indians Meeting. Thank you, Michael Petillo, for your unending support, constant ear and truly impressive patience. You inspire me. 2. This chapter deals specifically with Native America, which is diverse in culture, history, and origin. For brevity, Native American and Native are used interchangeably to refer to peoples whose self-identified heritage combines pre-contact ancestral/historical ties to what is now the United States, maintenance of traditional lifeways and/or cultural distinctiveness. “Indian” is used in reference to legal language or honoring peoples’ preferences as indicated. Distinct nuances in the historical experience and legal treatment of Native Alaskans and Native Hawaiians are mentioned specifically or otherwise not referenced here. 3. African American women’s experiences illuminate how “peculiar womanhood” was legally regarded and, thus provide some insight into Native women’s experience.

Chapter Eight

Pa Manyen Fanm nan Konsa Understanding Violence against Women after Haiti’s Earthquake Mark Schuller 1

On January 12, 2010, an earthquake in Haiti sent shockwaves across the world, triggering an unprecedented international response. Not even counting the outpouring of solidarity from within Haiti, which largely went uncounted and unacknowledged, the outpouring of international aid was unparalleled in recent memory: at a March 2010 United Nations conference, world governments pledged ten billion, with over half earmarked for the following eighteen months. Private citizens from around the world contributed three billion in cash donations, and took trips to Haiti to assist with rebuilding. In the aftermath of the earthquake, following standard humanitarian practice, there was a gender-based violence “sub-cluster” (of the “Protection” Cluster) in the United Nations (UN) organized humanitarian response. Unlike all but one other cluster, the gender-based violence subcluster was coorganized by the Haitian government, met outside of a UN military base, and held meetings in one of Haiti’s national languages, French (Miles 2012). Additionally, after years of successful efforts by feminists to address women’s issues in development through the Women in Development paradigm (Porter and Judd 1999; Zaoudé and Sandler 2001), the World Food Program adopted policies that focused on women for food assistance. The indicators identified above would suggest a degree of hopefulness in confronting gender-based violence. While numerous studies have documented a stunted level of progress for many indicators (e.g., Katz 2013; Peck 2013; Schuller 2012a), one area of progress from this transnational effort was attention to gender-based violence, which also unfortunately increased after 107

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the earthquake (d’Adesky 2012; MADRE et al., 2011; NYU School of Law Center for Human Rights and Global Justice 2011; Nolan 2011). As JeanCharles (2014) documents, the discourse of gender-based violence in postearthquake Haiti reproduced troubling, albeit familiar, patterns that tend to trigger either denial or demonization: scores of reactionary articles or blogs blamed the victims, denied the seriousness of the problem, or cast Haitian men as predators. As Jean-Charles argued, gender-based violence also provided a platform for white liberal feminists such as Eve Ensler and journalist Mac MacLellan to play the heroes by defending victims through rhetorical strategies of exaggeration, victimhood, erasure of activism, and demonization of Haitian men, which Black feminists point out are familiar discourses regarding Black men historically (see Davis 1983; Spillers 1987). Complementing Jean-Charles’ discourse analysis to answer these questions, this chapter offers long-term ethnographic engagement and analyses from Haitian women to examine how these discourses are embodied and contribute to what disaster scholars term “vulnerability” (Oliver-Smith 1999). I argue that understanding women’s vulnerability and efforts to reduce gender-based violence requires attention to intersectionality, the multiple forms of oppression based on distinct but overlapping identities, such as race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and parental status (Collins 1990; Crenshaw 1991). As a result of both intersectionality and structural violence, Haitian women’s condition, particularly among Port-au-Prince’s poor majority, was markedly worsened. As in other contexts, these preexisting gender inequalities rendered Haitian women more vulnerable to disasters (Enarson 1998, 2012; Henrici, Helmuth, and Braun 2010). The title of the chapter, “Pa Manyen Fanm nan Konsa” (don’t touch the woman like that), is the title of a song from one of Haiti’s most popular performers, previously known as “Sweet Micky,” now Michel Martelly, President of the Republic of Haiti. However, in a landscape that is rife with contradictions, in May 2011 President Martelly’s first choice for Prime Minister Daniel Rouzier publicly declared he would close the Ministry of Women’s Condition and Rights. This very public gaffe, quickly reversed in response to a vocal outcry, shows the multiple ways in which Haitian women are being handled. Women’s bodies are sites of an intersection of social realities: poverty, inequality, neoliberal globalization, and patriarchy, particularly since the earthquake. The acronym “GBV,” standing for gender-based violence, was the official language; Haitian women’s organizations rather used the phrase vyolans kap fèt sou fanm, violence against women. Since this chapter is about the official response, and since grassroots groups like KOFAVIV were forced to use it, I use it. I define gender-based violence as structural and/or embodied violence against an individual or population based on gender identity or expression, often in tandem with other political, economic, and racial forms of violence and inequality.

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This chapter resulted from my fourteen years of research in Haiti, begun as dissertation research in Port-au-Prince conducted with two women’s nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Based on my years of collaboration with the NGO sector in Haiti, one of these organizations requested I make a documentary film about their organization. This film became Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy. Following the earthquake, I led three large studies of the internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. The first two studies included a sample of 106 camps in 2010 and 2011, and a three-year comparative mixed-methods ethnographic study begun in the summer of 2011 that included over 130 recorded interviews. All quotes in the chapter are from interviews with women between 2003 and 2012. GENDER AND STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE BEFORE THE EARTHQUAKE Simone’s testimony serves as her istwa, which means “history” in the sense of national histories written within prescribed parameters but also “story” in the sense of stories people creatively tell (Bell 2001; Schuller 2012). As Trouillot (1995, 28) pointed out, they are the same, as “history” is written by political actors. Simone states: My father hadn’t lived with my mom since I was a baby. So my mother did everything for me. She sent me to school. In 1994, I couldn’t go to school anymore because paramilitary FRAPH [French acronym, Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti] came inside my mother’s house, they raped me, they beat me badly, and they killed my grandmother. Then they threw my mother and me out. When I became a young woman, I couldn’t go to school because they beat my skull, but I could still sew. I found a guy who loved me because I wasn’t an ugly girl. When I got pregnant, he said it wasn’t his, despite the fact that my mother knew about him. I gave him two children like that: when I had the first child, he started helping out, but nine months later, he stopped supporting me. After he promised he would help raise his child, I consented to becoming pregnant with his second child. After this, he beat me even though I didn’t do anything. So he just up and left. Remember I had two children. For them to survive I had to work in the factory. I worked hard, but I didn’t earn much money. I worked in the factory for 1050-1100 goud [per month, around $70], and I had two kids. While working in the factory I found someone who loved me, and he told me he’d help me out and pay for my home. While I was with him I became pregnant with his [my third] child. He said he didn’t want a child . . . and I had the child, and this person too said that it wasn’t his . . .

Her istwa highlights the multiple forms of oppression Haitian women faced even before the earthquake. In this case, her experiences reveal violence

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perpetrated by members of the paramilitary group FRAPH and her partner, as well as forms of structural violence, the long-term, often invisible systems of inequality and poverty (Farmer 2004; Harrison 1997). In Simone’s case, patriarchy intertwined with poverty limited her choices and confined her to low paying work, abusive relationships, and the need to care for her children. These long-term, structural, and historical forces in turn render Simone more vulnerable to physical violence. Unpacking her istwa reveals and requires a general understanding of how structural violence operates based on intersecting inequalities. Simone was at risk because gender operates alongside violence, extreme poverty, and gendered inequality. Dry-eyed and matter of fact, Simone held her head up high as she retold her istwa in the school run by her women’s organization, Òganizasyon Fanm Vanyan. In Haiti, gender inequality is grafted onto economic inequality and desperation, exemplifying the feminization of poverty (Brenner 2000; McLanahan, Sorensen, and Watson 1989). Marie-Jocelyn Lassègue, founder of feminist NGO Fanm Yo La and former Minister of Women’s Condition and Rights added, “There is also a feminization of unemployment: most unemployed are women.” Edele, a self-described “humanist-feminist activist” theorizes women’s experiences in this vein, “There is no justice in the country. . . . I mean, everyone is a victim. Therefore, women are double victims of the situation.” Given women’s traditional role in the household, women formally employed as wage laborers work a “second shift” at home (Hochschild 1989), as laid off factory worker Thérèse argues: “Who does the paid work? Who does the housework, huh? We women, we are everything. It’s true, men have their role, but women play the bigger role. Long ago men used to pay for the children’s school, but now it’s on women’s shoulders. Women pay the consequence.” This second shift is also exacerbated by the fact that many women are heads of household, the “mother and the father,” a common expression across the Caribbean, characterized with having “matrifocal” households (e.g., Clarke 1957). According to the Ministry of Women’s Condition and Rights at a 2004 conference, 59 percent of Port-au-Prince households were headed by single women. This pattern is attributed to various reasons, including violence to the family during slavery, the cultural importance of maternity, and the practice of san papa, unknown or non-recognized paternity (Maternowska 2006). Men are also more likely to migrate for seasonal labor, especially to the Dominican Republic in the sugar cane plantations (Simmons 2010). Some women understood their situations to be aggravated by the contemporary economic crisis. This includes Martha, who stated that her husband, “[D]oes a little work around the house. . . . Since the crisis in the country, he can’t find work. He goes looking for work, but no one has any jobs to give him.” Martha’s husband became an auto-mechanic, a relatively well-paying

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and high-status job for a man with no formal education. But as a job in the informal sector, it is vulnerable to vast fluctuation. The result is that, in Martha’s words, “I alone provide for our whole family. And I do most of the work in the house.” Like many people in poverty, Martha had a limited health care budget. In December 2005, she became blind as a result of diabetes and was unable to travel the streets of Port-au-Prince to get to work. She died in 2008. VIOLENCE AND DISASTERS: HAITI AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE Feminist researchers have made corrections to the literature on disasters, previously myopic on the topic of gender, arguing how gender as a social construct renders women more vulnerable in disaster situations (Enarson 1998, 2012), particularly to gender-based violence (Anastario, Larrance, and Lawry 2008; INCITE! 2012; Ross 2012). From a political ecology perspective, recognizing the interconnection between the political economy and human societies’ exploitation of the natural environment, the concept of vulnerability outlines the societal conditions that augment the destructiveness of natural events (Oliver-Smith 2002, 2004). Attention to vulnerability, guided by an intersectional analysis of structural violence, offers tools to understand the complex of social factors that led to an alarming wave of gender-based violence after the earthquake, particularly in the internally displaced persons camps. This analysis, coming from Haitian women living in camps, shifts the gaze away from individual perpetrators and asks questions about the role of larger forces and structures in facilitating, producing, augmenting, supporting, and silencing this violence. Consequently, women’s own lived intersectional analyses also point to solutions that similarly address the multiple forms of injustices that contribute to violence. “PAWÒL FANM”: HAITIAN WOMEN’S VOICES SINCE THE EARTHQUAKE Camps for internally displaced persons became visible symbols of the humanitarian crisis. The Small Arms Survey found that 22 percent of women living in the camps experienced violence the first year following the earthquake, compared to two percent outside the camps (Muggah 2011). Many Haitian women activists cited the proverb, abse sou klou, “an abscess on an open wound,” to describe the increase. Said Malya of KOFAVIV, “We worked hard to bring rapists to justice before the earthquake. After, it’s like we had to start from zero.” Activists began using the phrase “gender after-

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shocks” to describe the secondary impacts of the earthquake and how they in turn increased gender-based violence (d’Adesky et. al. 2012). As the humanitarian crisis wore on, camps became symbols of the failure, begging the question of where to assign blame. As Ulysse (2010), JeanCharles (2014), and other Haitian feminist scholars have noted, narratives of post-quake problems easily slot into longstanding discourses denigrating the world’s “unthinkable” first free black republic (Trouillot 1995). Media accounts of the earthquake blamed the Haitian government (especially evident at the five-year mark, when nearly all stories pointed to this), “corruption” (Transparency International’s “Corruption Perception Index” listed Haiti at or near the top), or Haitian “culture” as a fatalistic, present-oriented, to-eachher-or-his-own mentality that resists progress or planning ahead (e.g., the New York Times’ David Brooks). Believing the discourse that people were only in the camps for the free services (Schwartz et. al. 2011), purported landowners responded by cutting life-saving services such as water and sanitation. Hélène reported that at her former camp, “The priest kicked out the doctors. He told the Americans not to saturate the grounds.” As a result, many residents felt abandoned by NGOs and other aid agencies. Aline Despaines, president of the women’s organization Organisation des Femmes Devouées en Action (OFEDA), who lived in a camp, explained, “It’s like they forgot this camp. No one has ever passed through here to investigate. We sent a letter to all the NGOs we know: UNICEF, OIM, WPF, World Vision, but we have received nothing. Only Mercy Corps came by to offer people a little water. However, you see the reservoir? It’s empty. Water never comes out anymore.” Unfortunately these cases were far from unique; 42.3 percent of the camps did not have access to water as of August 2010, seven months after the earthquake (Schuller and Levey 2014). Due to blame-the-victim discourses that claim that most people were “illegitimate” IDPs or “faking it” (Schwartz, Pierre, and Calpas 2011), camps on private land had less access to water—a resource that the UN considers a basic human right—than camps on public land. The sanitation infrastructure was insufficient and contributed to a permeating stench; as 29.2 percent of the camps did not have a toilet. While the Sphere Minimum Standards state that no more than twenty people should share a toilet (The Sphere Project 2004), the average was 273 per toilet. One camp, Plas Lapè, had just thirty toilets for over 30,000 residents. Of camps with a toilet, 26 percent went without cleaning for several months. The lack of sanitation measures hastened the spread of cholera in October 2010, which epidemiological (Piarroux et al., 2011) and genetic (Hendriksen, Price, and Shupp 2011) evidence pinpointed to infected United Nations troops at a base with a leaky sewage. Cholera killed over 4,000 people in the first three months (Agence France-Presse 2011); by January 2012 it had claimed 7,025 lives (MSPP 2012), and 8,361 by October 2013, with fifty new deaths monthly.

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Despite the additional media attention and UN Flash Appeal for over 170 million dollars, little progress was made in obtaining life-saving services: as of January 2011, 25.5 instead of 29.2 percent of camps still lacked toilets, and 38.6 instead of 42.3 percent of camps still did not have water (Schuller and Levey 2014). The shortage of public facilities in the camps and local responses by NGOs and camp committees to charge for use of toilets had a disproportionate impact on women. Malya said, “Imagine! Having to pay for a bathroom! Men can get away with one time per day, but we women! And who is in charge of the children?” Making matters worse is that despite the emergency rations provided by NGOs throughout the first three months following the earthquake, residents of at least 31 camps (all that I had visited by the summer of 2010) were not offered sanitary napkins or tampons. Said Murielle Dorismond, “Half of the population needs this! It’s good that people are finally concerned about the public health concerns of human waste. But what about menstrual blood? Do we not count as people?” Furthermore, the lack of provisions in the camps presents particular dangers for women, as State University of Haiti student and blogger Carine Exantus said: In my camp, there are 12 toilets in the front and 12 toilets in the back for 4,200 people. You can’t use the shower: you wash to get dirty. People hardly use these facilities anymore. Everyone at their tent has a little plastic tub, where they throw water over themselves, or they just shower in public. In my journal I wrote about this: young women suffer sexual aggression because they have to shower in public.

Carine’s interview testimony explicitly connects the poor state of public facilities in the camps with the issue of gender-based violence. Theorizing from her own lived experience (Collins 1990, 32), Carine articulates the necessity of understanding an intersectional approach that also addresses the limited progress within the international aid response. In addition to the failures, this intersectional analysis of structural violence requires attention to the ways that humanitarian aid was gendered and how this contributes to gender-based violence. GENDER IDEOLOGIES AND PRACTICES OF HUMANITARIAN AID As a result of women’s culturally valorized status of poto mitan (central pillars of the family and society), conscious shifts in donor policies, and years of tireless advocacy from feminists working within aid agencies (Porter and Judd 1999), donors have made policy decisions to favor women, for

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example in microcredit and food aid. Reflecting this, a male USAID/Haiti employee said, “You give money to a man and he’s as likely to spend it on beer or a lover as on his family. But if you give to a woman, you’re guaranteed that she will prioritize feeding herself and her children.” Since the earthquake, donors and large NGOs have adopted the World Food Program’s guidelines to give food aid exclusively to women, using a system of ration cards whereby camp committees give food cards to women the night before the food distribution by the NGO and UN troops. In theory, these policies are advantageous to women. However, the practice is more complicated, as women are not isolated individuals disarticulated from men in their family and community (Bhavnani, Foran, and Kurian 2003), some of whom understandably seek to use this distribution system to their advantage. Additionally, in some cases, declaring women to be heads of household actively discouraged men’s responsibility and reproduced a stereotype of matrifocality (Spillers 1987). In other cases, women as aid recipients became targets for gender-based violence. Food distribution was managed by NGOs and officially-recognized committees before the government ceased distribution in April 2010. The system of distributing cards had several negative consequences as a result of gendered ideologies and practices. The first was a disruption of Haitian family structure. Haitian anthropologist Michel Laguerre (1982) discussed how the traditional multigenerational household pattern, the lakou, was maintained in urban Port-au-Prince. Our 2011 survey of 791 households across eight camps shows that the modified, urbanized lakou system fissioned in the camps, as witnessed by a decline in the number of people in the household, down from a mean of 5.37 to 3.36 people. Qualitative interviews with camp residents and aid agency representatives suggest that humanitarian policies and practices triggered this fission. In addition to the Women in Development guidelines, it is possible that humanitarian agencies have a worldview that differs from people in Haiti, wherein the norm of “nuclear” households is asserted in favor of an extended family model. These policies and practices contributed to the unintended consequence of breaking up families since the same quantity of food aid was distributed to households of two or eight people. Multigenerational families often split up to increase their chances of receiving aid, sending young mothers forth as new “heads of households.” A 2012 follow up study outlined that 47 percent of people did not move back with their pre-earthquake households once they left the camps (Schuller 2012). These ideologically-laden policies tethered women even further to their children and contributed to gendered discourses and stereotypes of women as singularly mothers, providing an ideological option for men to leave the household. Furthermore, women became targets of sexual harassment and sexual violence, as camp committees, comprised disproportionately of men, held the

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power to distribute ration cards. As creations of the international humanitarian effort, these committees are seen as a mechanism for local participation by international aid agencies. The same agencies require committees to be placed in camps that receive assistance. The majority of committee members admitted to appointing themselves, and in many other cases, the NGOs chose the local committee, often edging out preexisting grassroots organization members. These committees were given the power by NGOs to decide who should receive aid. The Humanitarian Accountability Project (2010) reported that NGOs gave too much power to these committees, while knowing very little about them. These committees were also gendered, with women comprising fewer than a quarter of members (Schuller 2010). KOFAVIV’s Malya Villard argued that the practice of powerful men giving out cards leads too often to sexual harassment and even forced sex in exchange for the food cards. “Already [in March 2010] we have heard over two dozen members tell us that they were forced to submit to sexual relations with the guy in exchange for the cards.” This is supported by a New York University (NYU) investigation (2011) that found that at least the discourse of transactional sex, exchanging sex for ration cards, was commonplace. Magalie, a Kolonbi camp resident in her fifties, never received food aid. When I asked her why, she theorized, “It’s because the guys in the committee choose young women with large buttocks.” In the St. Louis camp, the Red Cross gave the male camp committee president the responsibility to give the official list of who was a “real” resident and therefore eligible for relocation assistance valued at 500 U.S. dollars or more. According to Sandy Nelzy (2013), the camp president held this over at least two mothers, one of whom was married, to demand sex. The most comprehensive study of gender-based violence in the camps reported that 37 percent of pregnant women (n=1251) reported having sex for survival, mostly in exchange for shelter but also for food (d’Adesky et al. 2012). Unfortunately, the NYU report also found that reported incidents of gender-based violence, including sex-for-food, increased when the official food aid ended in April 2010. While the researchers did not collect corroborating data, they are investigating whether a causal link exists between food insecurity and gender-based violence. The report by d’Adesky includes a much larger data set that also captures the experiences of rural women; however, it is limited by the worldwide problem of under-reporting rape, fear of revictimization, lack of confidence in the police (or fear of consequences), and stigma. The report strongly suggests that the ways in which humanitarian aid invoked gendered stereotypes played a contributing role in increasing violence.

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Intersectional Problems, Intersectional Solutions Continuing a history of activism, women’s groups are among the leaders in improving living conditions within the camps. Elisabeth Senatus, a leader within the women’s group l’Etoile Brillante (shining star), said, “We might have potential that we weren’t aware of. We use what resources we have in hand. We don’t wait for millions to arrive, we create.” L’Étoile Brillante created a primary school and an adult literacy program, income-generating activities for women such as manufacturing artisanal soaps and jewelry, and weekly plays and movie nights, while engaging men in efforts to reduce gender-based violence. When I visited the camp in August 2010, there were no reported instances of rape. L’Etoile Brillante was supported by the Haitian-Dominican Women’s Movement and their Haitian Diaspora partners such as Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees. Solutions for gender-based violence must not only focus on police patrols and incarceration. An intersectional approach, one that addresses structural violence, requires attention to multiple issues that may not be readily identifiable as “feminist” to some international agencies. Women’s groups in Haiti are at the forefront of a growing post-earthquake social movement, a coalition of grassroots groups spanning multiple issues and political perspectives. This mobilization poses solutions to Haiti’s internally displaced persons crisis through a lens of human rights, demanding accountability from the Haitian government and donors. The first item for resolution is permanent housing, defined by local organizations as a women’s issue, as it is directly related to gender-based violence. The first Minister of Women’s Condition and Rights, Lise-Marie Dejean, said: In 1993, a journalist asked me what the coming government needed to do to meet women’s needs. I said housing. One of the emblems we had for the 2000 Global Women’s March was a cardboard box because people used to sleep in them. January 12 sharpened the focus on the housing problem and violence. Because now women live in a series of conditions one on top of one another, a lack of privacy. They are at the mercy of any vagabond who would want to rape them.

Activists within KOFAVIV who were involved in many of the internally displaced persons camps, and part of a larger mobilization demanding housing rights, described a direct link between violence and housing. Said Eramithe: I think that if the government provided permanent housing, the incidents of rape and violence would diminish. True, even when people had houses there was still violence. But it was never this bad. I think if someone has a house to stay in, she has more security. Now, the person’s under plastic. All it takes is

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someone to come by with a razor and rip the tent, and he can come inside and do what he wants. It’s like you’re sleeping in the street if you’re in a tent.

Years after the earthquake, housing remains an urgent priority. At an official ceremony in 2014, Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe outlined progress, including the construction of 5,000 homes. The New York Times reported a total of 7,515 homes constructed, and the Shelter Cluster outlined 27,000 homes repaired (New York Times Editorial Board 2014). This pales in comparison to the 105,000 houses completely destroyed and 188,383 houses collapsed or badly damaged as a result of the earthquake. The fifth anniversary of the earthquake was hijacked by the political crisis as terms of parliament were set to expire on that very day, and the elections and ratification of the new Prime Minister were on the negotiating table. Yet, the women’s organization Solidarity of Haitian Women (SOFA) led a march of hundreds of women, the only national mobilization that day. CONCLUSION This chapter has outlined the complex, intersectional experiences of women before and after the earthquake in Haiti. The women’s experiences extend far beyond gender-based violence, yet they nonetheless ground understandings of this problem within women’s lived realities and pose challenges for identifying culturally-appropriate solutions that address women’s multiple identities. Unfortunately political processes work against such an intersectional approach. For example, the court system (including the international human rights apparatus) tends to flatten complexity and reproduce essentialist concepts within mainstream, “Western” liberal feminism (Williams 1991). While many people working within humanitarian agencies, activists working alongside KOFAVIV, and others have a more nuanced understanding, processes linked to NGOization (Alvarez 1999; Lang 2000; Nagar 2006) limit their responses to those that match donors’ priorities and classificatory schema even as gender “mainstreaming” is attempted (Bessis 2001). Added to the culturally, racially, and class-specific definitions of gender issues is an inherently hierarchical and bureaucratic structure that shifts decision-making powers upward through a system of intermediaries (Schuller 2012a). While resources to reduce gender-based violence increase, it is important to remain vigilant so that these tools do not cut off solutions such as permanent housing and economic justice, nor do further violence through amplifying negative stereotypes, thus justifying continued foreign occupation and control. The corrective solution to the mistakes and missteps detailed in this chapter is strikingly simple: include Haitian women’s own analyses, allow them handle their own bodies and movement, and make decisions based on Haitian women’s multiple subjectivities and the issues that they embody.

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QUESTIONS 1. This chapter suggests that rates of gender-based violence increased after the earthquake despite and in some cases because of humanitarian aid policies. While keeping Women in Development priorities and intentions, how could these issues have been mitigated? 2. This chapter argues that intersectionality, acknowledging multiple axes of oppression and inequality, would be a more appropriate approach to preventing gender-based violence. Why have international aid efforts failed to adopt an intersectional approach? What changes would be necessary in order to adopt such an approach? 3. Why have Haitian women’s voices been silenced by the agencies sent there to work in their interests? What specific changes to the reward structure would need to be made in order to listen and respond to women’s concerns? NOTES 1. First I would like to thank the grassroots organizations and their members whose activism makes not only this research possible but offers hope for other visions for Haiti. Research was made possible from the National Science Foundation (#1122704), CUNY Haiti Initiative, the Professional Staff-Congress, CUNY. The UCSB Center for Black Studies Research supported Poto Mitan. A hearty thank you to research assistants Marie Laviode Alexis, Sabine Bernard, Théagène Dauphin, Jean Dider Deslorges, Mackenzy Dor, Jean Rony Emile, Junior Jean François, Robenson Jn-Julien, Sandy Nelzy, Adlin Noël, Rose-Mercie Saintilmot, Stephanie Semé, Roody Jean Therlius, Jimmy Toussaint, Tracey Ulcena, Castelot Val, and Jude Wesh. Karl Bryant, Beth Currans, Elaine Enarson, Hillary Haldane, Jane Henrici, Trude Jacobsen, Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, and participants of the Royal Holloway University of London Seminar Series and University of Iowa Anthropology Department’s Colloquium Series offered useful critiques. This piece was first presented at a plenary of the 2012 Haitian Studies Association. I would also like to thank the Feminist Studies editorial collective for their insightful critiques and also permission to reprint segments of the article.

Chapter Nine

Campus Sexual Violence Policies and Practices A Holistic and Historical Approach to Research and Practice Jennifer R. Wies

This chapter applies anthropology to the issue of campus sexual violence in the United States. Writing from the position of both researcher and practitioner, I examine the evolution of campus sexual violence policies and how these policies influence local-level negotiations of intervention and prevention practices. I argue that in order to situate the current era of campus antiviolence work in the United States, it requires us to take (1) a historical perspective to understand the current cultural context of campus sexual violence policy and (2) a holistic approach that incorporates the local-level experiences of frontline workers who are situated between the macrostructural systems that produce policy and the individuals whom these policies act upon. This volume and others have established gender-based violence as a topic of anthropological research in its own right, using many different frameworks. Anthropologists have also addressed sexual violence in particular (see Baxi 2014; Sanday 1981, 1990, 1996). Within recent scholarly examinations is a call to disciplinary action, with the goal that, “greater visibility might bring further research as well as policy implications, believing that ethnographic research exposing the problem of sexual violence would help to ameliorate its prevalence in contemporary everyday life” (McChesney and Singleton 2010, 1). However, as is often the case within anthropology, a discipline founded upon a gaze towards the Other, anthropologists tend to avoid casting a critical gaze upon their own village. This may be due in part 119

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to the vulnerability of engaging ourselves and members of our own community as research subjects. This is particularly the case when considering the topic of sexual violence, as the victims with whom we interact may simultaneously be colleagues, friends, or students. APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY TO CAMPUS SEXUAL VIOLENCE: METHODS AND FRAMEWORKS This chapter and my work on the topic of campus sexual violence broadly are based on my experiences as a practitioner and researcher. Since the year 2000, I have worked with, advocated for, and conducted research with victims of gender-based violence, including those affected by sexual violence on campus. This includes volunteering with community-based rape crisis centers, where I answered the twenty-four-hour hotline and provided medical advocacy during forensic sexual assault exams, and my full-time work as a domestic violence shelter advocate, which included responding to a crisis line, staffing the twenty-four-hour shelter, and providing educational programs for residents and children of the shelter. In 2005, I transitioned to a position working as the Victim Services Coordinator at a publicly-funded, land-grant university, and then later became the director of a women’s center at a private university. These roles allowed me to gain an intimate understanding of campus sexual violence. In conjunction with these roles, I have maintained a research agenda analyzing gender-based violence response and intervention structures in the United States. My intersectional identity as a scholar, advocate, and activist yields rich fieldnotes and has enabled me to engage people and places that would otherwise be invisible. These multiple and intersecting identities follow what Ortner (1995, 173) says of ethnography, “It has always meant the attempt to understand another life world using the self—as much of it as possible—as the instrument of knowing.” In the analysis that follows, I argue that it is necessary to attend to the historical particulars of campus sexual violence practices, which include intervention and prevention strategies, as well as the policies that have been influenced by local practices and which pressure local agents in the anticampus sexual violence movement. In this way, I am guided by a political economic framework that allows me to analyze power inequalities shaped by macrostructural political and economic forces in a dynamic context affected by and shaping histories (Roseberry 1998; Wolf 1999, 2001). Adelman (2004, 61) succinctly sees the political economy approach as one that “examines interlocking structural factors, changes over time, and differences across space.” This follows the approach that Dobash and Dobash (1983) call for

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when examining acts of violence against women, which is to situate the problem in historical, institutional, and interactional contexts. Within this framework, power is a constant concern. Power is defined as an ability to exercise influence over others who accept or resist that influence, thereby placing both parties in a power relationship. It is a covert force that works through people and social relationships in a persistent web. Lacking concrete forms, “. . . . Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategic situation in a particular society” (Foucault 1990, 93). To study power at any level is to seek relationships where power is exercised, as well as where power is resisted and negotiated. In The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), Foucault examines power through statements which comprise discourse as units that establish a set of rules of what is appropriate and meaningful at a given time. These power relationships are the foundation of actions and are not always at the fore of daily life, and must be uncovered within quotidian negotiations. For example, despite anthropology’s attention to sexual violence around the world, and the increased public and scholarly attention to campus sexual violence in the United States, very little anthropological inquiry has focused specifically on campus sexual violence policies and practices. The invisibility of campus sexual violence can be explained, in part, by the significant amount of power that this form of violence wields. Interrogating the issue of campus sexual violence is acutely emotional and inextricably interconnected to power inequalities in society, and in the campus environment in particular. Yet, it is this intersection of power and emotion that calls for the continued need to apply the core tenets of anthropology to researching everyday forms of violence. Through a holistic study of how power operates and influences individuals and structures, anthropologists can contribute to the alleviation of social suffering. CAMPUS ANTI-VIOLENCE HISTORIES: THE EVOLUTION OF POLICY STRUCTURES In 1987, a group of researchers in the field of psychology sought to fill in the gaps concerning the incidence of sexual assault and rape on college and university campuses. In a comprehensive study, Koss, Gidycz, and Wisniewski (1987) distributed the Sexual Experiences Survey to a national sample of 6,159 women and men enrolled in 32 institutions representative of the diversity of higher education in the United States. The results of this study indicated that one in four college women had been victims of sexual assault. While this figure seems incredible, it has been repeatedly verified in the literature (Fisher, Cullen, and Turner 2000), and has fueled the development of a

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campus anti-sexual violence movement which has sought to engage policymakers and campus administrators as top-down partners in eradicating campus sexual violence. As Fisher (2014, 15) notes: From a policy perspective, college administrators might be disturbed to learn that, for every 1,000 women attending their institution, 45 incidents of completed, attempted, or threatened rape may occur in a given academic year (based on a victimization rate of 44.76 per 1,000 college women). For a campus with 10,000 women, this would mean the number of completed, attempted, and threatened rapes would be close to 450. On any one campus and more broadly, when projected over the Nation’s female population enrolled in institutions of higher education, these figures suggest that rape is a potential problem of large proportion and of public policy interest.

The Formation of Campus Sexual Violence Policies: 1990s–2000s The repeatedly documented rates of campus sexual violence and decades of persistent activism originating at the grassroots level have called for a policy structure that would protect victims of campus sexual violence and establish effective prevention measures across the United States. A landmark policy related to campus sexual violence is the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act of 1990. This legislation requires schools to disclose crime statistics and information related to campus safety and security in an Annual Security Report. The act is named for Jeanne Clery, a student at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, who was found raped and murdered in her campus residence hall in 1986. Without a federal mandate, there was no obligation for the university to make the crime information publicly available—and indeed the institution did not share the information related to this crime at the time. The 1990 Clery Act requires schools to report information related to crime statistics and missing persons and to provide timely warnings and emergency notifications to the campus community if there is a safety or security threat. In addition, the 1990 Clery Act mandates the provision of resources to victims of violence and notification services to victims related to their complaint. The Department of Education serves as the compliance authority and may leverage fines of up to $35,000 per infraction upon an institution that does not publicly make available crime and safety information by the annual October 1 deadline. In addition to fines, the Department of Education (DOE) has the power to suspend the distribution of federal student aid packages to noncompliant institutions. This serves as a mechanism for mobilizing multiple pressures to ensure compliance, as parents and families of students who rely upon financial aid may be acutely interested in the institution’s adherence to federal guidelines if failure to adhere means that their child will no longer have the federal aid to assist with college or university tuition. Thus, with the implementation of the Clery Act,

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campuses across the United States developed processes for complying with the DOE’s Annual Security Report mandates. In 1994, the United States Congress passed the Violence against Women Act (VAWA) as part of the federal Crime Bill. The result of more than four years of lobbying by more than a thousand organizations (Meyer-Emerick 2001), VAWA addressed the physical and sexual safety of individuals, and included several areas where policies were clarified and practices were implemented to increase safety for women. VAWA funded services for domestic violence and rape victims and for training police and court officials about domestic violence. In addition, the act provided victims the federal right to sue the perpetrator of gender-based violence. Finally, VAWA mandated that states and American Indian nations acknowledge other entity’s restraining orders, known as full faith and credit. The law attempted to move away from victim blaming and toward gaining the support and sympathy of the public for survivors of domestic violence (Brandwein 1999). Funding provided under VAWA allowed then-President Bill Clinton to announce a new national, twenty-four-hour toll-free hotline in 1996. VAWA remains an important backdrop for campus sexual violence because it provides both funding and continued national attention to the issue of gender-based violence broadly, inclusive of campus sexual violence. Indeed, the VAWA grant entitled Grants to Reduce Campus Crimes against Women provided the soft monies for my first full-time campus advocacy position in 2005. When I first began working as a campus victim advocate, the Clery Act and VAWA were the two pieces of legislation provided the guiding framework for campus sexual violence intervention and prevention practices. I participated in the annual Campus Security Report data collection, providing anonymous figures that reflected the number of victims that I provided services to and the types of violence that they reported to me. I was able to use the Clery Act guidelines to secure alternative housing arrangements for victims of violence when the perpetrators lived in the same residence hall. As a campus victim advocate, I was equipped with the power to make requests to faculty and staff across the university to assist with providing accommodations. Strategic Policy Negotiations: The Rise of Title IX in Campus Sexual Violence Guidance The implementing regulations of the Education Amendments of 1972 declare in Title IX, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” In its essence, Title IX calls for equal access to educational programs and activities based on gender. The popular understanding of

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Title IX is that it provides for women’s equal inclusion in sports activities organized by educational institutions. When I first became a full-time campus victim advocate in 2005, it was not apparent at the local level that Title IX could be leveraged as a mechanism for strengthening support for student victims of sexual assault. I remember discussing the possibility of invoking Title IX violations on the women’s studies and women’s centers listservs, and conversations at conference. Yet, it did not immediately seem to be an avenue for organizing around at the local level. After all, campus victim advocates may be working with dozens of clients at any given time, providing assistance with securing medical care, obtaining safe housing through partnerships with residence life, working with class instructors to rearrange course schedules, and delivering prevention programming. This type of top-down policy reinterpretation seemed, to me, overwhelmingly impossible. Yet, there was momentum for considering the possibility of holding educational institutions accountable for inaction when a person reported sexual violence or sexual harassment. Legal practitioners began to test the possibilities in court, and legal scholars started to speak out about the possible interpretations of Title IX. At the same time, local-level advocates were seeking new, structural forces to provide the justification for continued service provision for victims of violence and options for bringing alleged perpetrators before judicial boards by closing loopholes. These efforts marked a partnership between local level campus advocates and activists and national legal scholars and practitioners. For example, in a 2007 case (Lisa Simpson; Anne Gilmore, v. University of Colorado Boulder, et al. (No. 06-1184, No. 07-1182; 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 21478) U.S. Ct. of Appeals, 10th Circuit, September 6, 2007), “The court stated that under Title IX, a college or university can be said to have intentionally acted in clear violation of the law when the violation is caused by an official policy, which may be a policy of deliberate indifference to providing adequate training or guidance that is obviously necessary” (Lewis, Schuster, and Sokolow 2010, 8–9). This finding was based on Davis v. Monroe County Bd. of Ed., 526 U.S. 629 (1999), which established that Title IX could be used to hold institutions accountable when sexual violence was reported and the institution failed to respond in a manner that protected the educational rights of the victim. These rulings paved the way for issues related to campus sexual violence to be considered under the umbrella of Title IX, allowing students to lodge complaints against campuses in the event that those institutions were not providing safe and equitable learning opportunities. It is of note, that from a campus victim advocate perspective, encouraging a student to pursue a “deliberate indifference” complaint created a significant vulnerability. A Title IX complaint names the college or university, not individuals; thus, a Title IX complaint simultaneously implicates everyone yet no one. In many cases,

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a Title IX complaint investigation may immediately begin with the very office dedicated to helping and supporting victims of campus sexual violence. For victim advocates, this means that the investigation would begin with them. The repercussions of Title IX investigations were significant, as this meant that campus victim advocates who assisted victims with understanding or pursuing a Title IX complaint opened up the possibility of exposing themselves to scrutiny, or worse, establishing themselves as a scapegoat during the investigation. This vulnerability was particularly poignant because while case law demonstrated movement towards using Title IX in campus sexual violence cases; the Department of Education had yet to issue guidance that explicitly placed sexual violence within the context of “discrimination” as used in the 1972 educational amendment. Eventually, from the top-down, Vice President Joseph Biden and Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan did clarify the relationship between sexual violence, education, and discrimination. On April 4, 2011, Vice President Joseph Biden announced, “Students across the county deserve the safest possible environment in which to learn. That’s why we’re taking new steps to help our nation’s schools, universities, and colleges end the cycle of sexual violence on campus.” Echoing his comments, a statement was issued to colleges, universities, and schools across the country, wherein the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali (2011, 1) wrote: Education has long been recognized as the great equalizer in America. The U.S. Department of Education and its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) believe that providing all students with an educational environment free from discrimination is extremely important. The sexual harassment of students, including sexual violence, interferes with students’ rights to receive an education free from discrimination and, in the case of sexual violence, is a crime.

The “Dear Colleague Letter,” 1 as it is referred to, provides unprecedented direction to campuses concerning sexual violence cases by clearly stating that sexual violence is a violation of the institution’s commitment to providing a gender discrimination-free learning environment under Title IX. This guidance was further supported when the Violence against Women Act was reauthorized by President Barack Obama on March 7, 2013. Included in this Act is Section 304, commonly referred to as the SaVE Act. This Act expands the 1990 Clery Act by including additional categories of reportable violence, such as crimes based on gender identity, crimes based on national origin, and domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking. In addition, this act specifies that the Annual Security Report include statements pertaining to the school’s programs designed to prevent domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking, as well as the policies and procedures that are in place when a report of these incidences are received.

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A notable aspect of Section 304 is the mandate that colleges and universities provide prevention education related to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. This prevention education is required to be offered to all incoming students and all new employees of the institution and is to follow the model of bystander intervention, for which there is evidence of increased intervention activities among student peers when training is implemented among college-aged students (Banyard 2008; Banyard, Plante, and Moynihan 2004; Coker et al., 2011; Gidycz, Orchowski, and Berkowitz 2011; Potter and Stapleton 2011) Today the Title IX context is the result of sweeping policy changes, both in the creation of new sections to legislation such as VAWA and new guidance originating in well-established legal precedents such as the Title IX educational amendment. The macrostructural policies impose significant amounts of power and responsibility upon institutions of higher education; at the same time, the policies also provide the necessary legal framework for intervention services for victims of campus sexual violence and guidance for establishing processes for the adjudication of alleged perpetrators. In this way, the current legal context invests significant levels of power with higher education institutions, a history which is made more visible to show how “political and economic forces have structured risk for forms of extreme suffering” (Farmer 2003, 30). Thus, campuses have become “institutions involved in the allocation of resources within a system of property rights regulated and guaranteed by governments in a system that ultimately rests on the threat of force” (Graeber 2012, 112). In this context, I turn next to the resource and power distribution system that falls short of providing adequate, safe, and responsive care to victims of sexual violence by looking at intervention practices at the local level. THE CHANGING CONTEXTS OF LOCAL INTERVENTION PRACTICES On a college or university campus, intervention strategies include services for victims of campus sexual violence—for those campuses privileged enough to support such services—and disciplinary interventions for those found responsible for committing acts of campus sexual violence. In this section, I draw from my ethnographic and practitioner experiences to explain the evolution of services for victims of campus sexual violence by examining the process of naming violence. In addition, I examine examples of oncampus judicial processes designed to serve as an educational intervention for alleged perpetrators of violence. For decades, providing support services for victims of campus sexual violence relied upon a partnership between campus entities and community-

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based, often nonprofit, organizations that provide assistance to victims of sexual violence and domestic violence. With the authorization of the 1994 VAWA legislation, Congress allocated funds to support anti-violence against women infrastructure in the United States, which also provided funds to grants for reducing campus crimes against women through the Department of Justice. These funds spurred the campus practices of establishing a position of campus victim advocate to coordinate intervention services for campus citizens reporting gender-based violence. Imagine for a moment the act of going to the victim advocate’s office on a college campus. These individuals are often housed in women’s centers, student health centers, or women’s and gender studies departments, where the anti-violence movement may be displayed in posters, clothesline projects, or office signs designating the space as the place where violence is discussed. There is an implicit understanding when a student visits the victim advocate that “something” has happened—to the student or the student’s friend. This understanding contours the conversation between a student and the advocate before it begins, as both parties know why they are there. Thus, in the microlevel moment, the issue of how to name the violence is irrelevant. As we look at the history of campus anti-violence advocacy, the process and act of naming violence is important and has been shaped by macro-level policies that shape the interpersonal practices in the victim advocate’s office. The “Dear Colleague Letter” defines sexual violence as “physical sexual acts perpetrated against a person’s will or where a person is incapable of giving consent due to the victim’s use of drugs or alcohol.” These acts include “rape, sexual assault, sexual battery, and sexual coercion” (Ali 2011, 1–2). The guidance then situates this definition within a larger framework of sex discrimination, calling upon a letter issued in 2001: As noted in the 2001 Guidance, however, a recipient’s general policy prohibiting sex discrimination will not be considered effective and would violate Title IX if, because of the lack of a specific policy, students are unaware of what kind of conduct constitutes sexual harassment, including sexual violence, or that such conduct is prohibited sex discrimination. (Ali 2011, 7; emphasis added)

Therefore, the current recommended practice for colleges and universities is to adopt the phrase “sexual misconduct,” which is inclusive of nonconsensual sexual contact, sexual harassment, nonconsensual sexual intercourse (this includes penetration where the victim was assaulted without consent or by means of force, including rape), and exploitation (voyeurism, bullying, domestic violence, and stalking). Furthermore, sexual misconduct is viewed as a form of sexual harassment, a complex of behaviors that can drastically expand the scope of reports under Title IX, and therefore, substantially in-

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crease the number of individuals entitled to services as a result of experiences sexual harassment. While campus policies are reconfigured to meet this guidance, which also distinguishes the campus judicial process from the criminal judicial system through distinctions in naming violence acts, the acts of sexual violence remain the same. Renaming these acts and rebranding them on pamphlets, brochures, and websites has not fundamentally changed students’ experience. However, with each change in the guidance and corresponding recommendations, changes do occur in the victim advocate and student victim transaction. While students would often disclose that “something” happened to them, they are often hesitant to use the labels that scholars of gender-based violence use regularly, including sexual violence and especially rape. Students who did name the violence often used the phrases constructed by campus social script, which were largely “sexual assault” or “sexual violence.” As a campus victim advocate, structural powers compelled me to fulfill the policy mandates by recording my contact with the student victim and classifying their victimization according to the recommended categories— which would be dependent upon the historical moment of policy guidance. Lazarus-Black (2007, 160) suggests that, “Laws name behavior as a new crime when specific political, social, and economic conditions coalesce in ways that enable changes in earlier relations and structures of power.” Analyzing the power structures involved in naming campus sexual violence is one opportunity to understand the way that power is exercised within a policy context. For example, when I worked as a campus victim advocate, I would occasionally gently push a woman to categorize her experiences as sexual violence so I could offer her supportive services that may not be otherwise available to her. The policy structure enabled me to access resources to support her; but her experience would also need to fit within the culturally-sanctioned imaginary of campus sexual violence to be eligible for these services. In the current Title IX context, there may be more of a disincentive to name sexual violence experiences as sexual misconduct or sexual harassment, as this would also initiate a mandatory Title IX investigation into the incident. Another aspect of intervention services is the process that addresses the perpetrator. Through legislation, campuses are invested with the power to both adjudicate incidents of sexual violence and operate judicial systems. Very few students, staff, faculty, and family members are familiar with the campus judicial process, unless they themselves have had occasion to utilize it. 2 The process itself is relatively invisible to scholars and activists as well, since very few people have access to the internal workings of the campus judicial process. The evolution of judicial affairs processes illustrates another layer of negotiations at the local level that are influenced by federal policy and affect the strategies of local level actors, as I describe here.

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The campus judicial process results in findings related to the responsibility of the accused person. This is an explicit way to distinguish the campus adjudication process from a criminal justice proceeding. Thus, a student accused of sexual violence would be found “responsible” or “not responsible.” Since the campus judicial process is by definition an educational process, a finding of “responsible” on college and university campuses may result in a sanction related to the educational context, such as a suspension or expulsion of the student found responsible—but not a criminal finding of guilty. Furthermore, the process for determining a responsible finding changed in the aftermath of the 2011 guidance. One of the most discussed items that emerged from the “Dear Colleague Letter” was the requirement that campus judicial boards adopt a model of “preponderance of evidence” when hearing campus sexual violence cases. A preponderance of evidence means that “it is more likely than not that sexual harassment or violence occurred” (Ali 2011, 11). Outlining the specifics of a preponderance of evidence standard came in response to campus judicial procedures that previously relied upon a standard of evidence that required a standard of “clear and convincing” to render a responsible finding. Determining a preponderance of evidence is considered a lower burden of proof than substantiating a clear and convincing standard. Complicating this further, the Dear Colleague Letter indicates that equal rights are given to both the victim and the accused perpetrator in the campus judicial process. This requires campus actors to provide both parties equal access to resources, such as an advocate, during the judicial hearing. In addition, this guidance clearly states that an alleged perpetrator cannot be sanctioned in the educational context until a responsible finding is levied; to ensure that the alleged perpetrator’s educational rights are not infringed upon. Therefore, the new guidance requires campuses to pursue adjudication for alleged perpetrators when an investigation reveals sexual misconduct, while making it more difficult to in fact find the alleged perpetrator responsible and issue educational sanctions. From a frontline advocacy perspective, this new guidance delimits the options available for victims of campus sexual violence to report their experiences, since they no longer have the power to determine whether or not they will pursue a complaint against the alleged perpetrator. Thus, the advocate’s role is to assist the victim in understanding the process itself and the options within the process (such as obtaining a “stay away” order, rearranging course schedules, etc.), whereas in the past, the nature of advocacy included whether or not a victim should pursue campus-based adjudication. While policy makers have applauded the legislated changes to local-level practices, my ethnographic, practitioner experience textures the intervention policies focusing on the alleged perpetrators. The literature has substantiated

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that victims of campus sexual violence are hesitant to report their experiences, identifying a desire to “protect” the alleged perpetrator. Women would say to me that they “didn’t want him to get in trouble,” sometimes mentioning that they do not want to compromise his academic standing or role on a sports team. Prior to the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter guidance, it was feasible for campus violence advocates to provide the federally-mandated services to the victim without pursuing an investigation of the alleged perpetrator and still be technically compliant. The new guidance requires that the alleged perpetrator be included in a Title IX investigation, in order to ensure the reporting victim is provided an equitable learning environment. HOLISM AND HISTORIES: TOWARD AN APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY OF CAMPUS SEXUAL VIOLENCE What is missed without a historical and holistic approach to campus sexual violence, and gender-based violence, more broadly? First, the emergence of stronger policies at the national level are the result of many factors, originating from the macrostructural systems in a top-down manner and from the grassroots actors providing services and support to victims of campus sexual violence at the local level. These changes were not unilaterally constructed or implemented, nor were they created without input from multiscalar stakeholders. Thus, while critics of the Title IX policies have suggested that the new guidance decreases reporting rates due to the mandatory investigation expectation and the inability for faculty and staff to ensure confidentiality when a student discloses violence; their analysis is not steeped in a holistic framework. These critiques often blame the structural policy systems as revictimizing and inattentive to local experience, yet these policy systems were supported by local-level advocates and activists in order to ensure that alleged perpetrators are investigated in systems where institutional powers may be reticent to do so. Without the legislated power to ensure that alleged perpetrators are investigated in a Title IX process, there remains the possibility that individuals may be informally sanctioned or not investigated at all. Furthermore, accounting for history must be contextualized within a holistic framework that includes the perspectives of the numerous stakeholders involved in campus sexual violence response and prevention. Specifically, I argue here that to fully understand the current campus sexual violence policy context, our gaze should focus upon the frontline workers who work with both victims and perpetrators of campus sexual violence. Researchers of gender-based violence have alleviated pain and suffering among vulnerable populations throughout the world by focusing on the articulation of their needs and voices to ameliorate social suffering. Through our focus on those

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most dispossessed, we often turn against those who are situated at the interface between victims and the political economic processes made visible through policies. This includes examining the conditions, experiences, and negotiations that take place at the interface of victims and the state, such as those who work at the front-lines in anti-gender-based violence advocacy and activism (Wies and Haldane 2011, see also Wies 2009; Wies and Coy 2013). CONCLUSION In his piece “In Both, Our Possibilities: Anthropology on the Margins,” Erve Chambers (2010, 375) states: Whatever anthropology might be today, and however it is practiced, it is not at all what it was in its beginnings. It is different, in part, because we have imagined it differently, but even more so because we experience anthropology in a world that is itself changed. More than we might care to acknowledge, we are shaped by the uses that others have for us, and we are deeply influenced by the human environments in which we find ourselves.

As the cultural context of campus sexual violence changes, so too must our anthropological approach to studying this form of gender-based violence in the United States. Reflecting upon the Chambers quotation, I find it thought provoking that I did not originally intend to have spent the last decade focusing upon campus sexual violence as a researcher or advocate. The human environment identified the scope of the issue, and I saw anthropology as a mechanism for alleviating social suffering. A key priority that this chapter brings to light is the continued need for holistic and historically informed research of campus sexual violence. Applying a political economy framework that emphasizes both history and power, the current context of campus sexual violence practices and policies presents an opportunity to understand the history of how the U.S. cultural imaginary has dealt with sexual violence on college and university campuses. This history is important, as the current policy context is the result of several transformations of how institutions of higher education have served the state powers that issue policy. Through an emphasis on holistic, multi-level research with the multiple constituents involved in anti-campus sexual violence efforts, anthropologists can continue to examine and expand our scope of influence and advocacy. QUESTIONS 1. This chapter is written from the position of practitioner and researcher. What are the benefits of operationalizing an intersectional identity in

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this case study? What are the possible ethical implications of researching from a practitioner position? 2. Around the world, we see examples of parallel systems of justice related to gender-based violence (e.g., women’s police stations in Brazil, diversion programs for prostitution in the United States). How are these systems similar to and different from the campus processes designed to handle campus sexual violence? 3. What would a holistic and historical framework reveal about your own institution or organization’s policies related to sexual violence, sexual harassment, or sexual discrimination? Who are the key agents involved in creating safe and equitable educational or employment environments? What policies are implicated in your place of learning or work? NOTES 1. While there are many “Dear Colleague Letters,” the April 4, 2011 letter is the letter that plays most prominently into the discussion related to sexual violence on campus and Title IX. 2. In this piece, I focus my attention on the campus judicial process pertaining to students. Currently (2015), reports of sexual misconduct among faculty and staff would likely result in an investigation by the Title IX unit, a process that has come to dominate the handling of such reports.

IV

Avenues for Change

Chapter Ten

“I’m a REAL Father Now!” Using Applied Anthropology to Promote Positive Masculinities to Reduce Family Violence in Northern Uganda Rebecka Lundgren and Kimberly Ashburn

Family violence, which includes intimate partner violence (IPV) and physical child discipline 1, is one of the most prevalent forms of violence against women and children worldwide. The intergenerational cycle of family violence is well documented. Witnessing a mother being beaten or other experiences of childhood violence such as physical child discipline have been consistently demonstrated in diverse settings to increase the likelihood of an individual to perpetuate or experience violence in future life (Bott et al. 2012; Gil-Gonzalez et al. 2008). Other factors, many of which play out at the family level, have also been shown to be related to violence including: cultural norms that accept violence as a method of dispute resolution or discipline, absent or maladaptive instruction regarding alternatives to violence, absent or rejection from fathers, male control of household decision-making and wealth, cultural norms supporting male dominance over women, controlling behavior by husbands, economic hardship, and substance abuse (Morrison, Ellsberg, and Bott 2007). In this chapter we explore the iterative process of research, program implementation, and stakeholder and participant involvement during the development and testing of the REAL (Responsible, Engaged and Loving) Fathers Initiative (RFI), a program to prevent family violence in northern Uganda. We share results from research used to inform the design of RFI collected during the formative phase of the Gender Roles and Equality Transformation (GREAT) project, a separate but related project designed to address the 135

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formulation of gender equitable norms among youth to reduce gender-based violence in communities similar to the RFI sites in Northern Uganda. We also present results from qualitative data gathered during pretesting of the RFI program design, and qualitative evaluation data from RFI including life history interviews conducted with 10 fathers and a focus group with 10 mentors who participated in RFI. Finally, we draw on RFI quantitative evaluation results from the randomized control trial from the first cohort of 340 fathers. This chapter describes the intervention and how these data were used to design and revise the intervention and inform future scale-up processes. GENDER AND FAMILY VIOLENCE IN ANTHROPOLOGY Family violence is a global phenomenon, but the forms it takes vary widely, depending on local systems of meaning, kinship structures, gender inequalities, and levels of violence in the wider society. Anthropologists bring a holistic, systems perspective to work on family violence, recognizing that the meaning of violence is, as Sally Engle Merry (2009, 19) states, “embedded in larger structures of power and violence and shaped by cultural meanings of race, class, nation, family and marriage as well as gender. Larger structures give meaning to interpersonal, intimate violence for perpetrators and for victims.” This holistic understanding explains why certain forms and situations of violence are considered as legitimate discipline (termed as punishment in northern Uganda) while others are interpreted as abuse (mistreatment). The anthropological perspective requires that practitioners consider the ways that the wider context of power gives meaning to violence for perpetrators and for victims and address these factors in violence prevention efforts. This emphasis on context leads to efforts to understand the meaning of IPV from various perspectives and to build these insights into program design. For example, in northern Uganda, conjugal relationships are defined by patrilineal kinship structures and the practice of bride price, hence violence prevention efforts must consider not only the spousal relationship but also the role of the broader family network. Using an anthropological lens contributes to understanding gender itself as performed for audiences in various contexts. Violence is part of the performance of gendered identities. For example, men may beat their wives to prove to other men that they are in control and women may accept beatings from their partners to demonstrate their competency in the role of obedient wife. In short, in many settings “doing violence” may be a way of “doing gender” and the performance of gender identities may depend on acquiescing to violence or being violent. Within family relationships, some forms and situations of violence are seen as legitimate discipline while others are interpreted as abuse. The context and pre-

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vailing norms of gender performance distinguish them. The line between what is abuse and what is discipline can and does change over time, and these changing social norms can be facilitated by culturally informed, well-designed intervention efforts. The causes of family violence are complex, but seem related to power, the normative use of violence, and inequitable gender norms. Feminist theory recognizes the role of patriarchy and societal gender inequality, as well as the social construction of gender, to explain how sociocultural values about family violence are transmitted and learned at the individual level. A social constructionist approach which views femininities and masculinities as historically, socially, and economically constructed, and the development of gender norms and identities as a process, provides evidence indicating that family violence is a learned behavior (Heise 2011). Despite the influential role of social structures, young people shape gender norms both as individuals and as a group and can create new norms that alter the trajectory of their lives and their communities (James 2007). Since the majority of cases of family violence are men perpetrating abuse against women, engaging men and boys in preventing violence is a good place to start. There is a growing body of literature demonstrating that, through welldeveloped interventions, men and boys can and do change attitudes and behavior (Barker, Ricardo, and Nascimiento 2007; Barker et al. 2010; Lundgren and Amin 2014; Lundgren et al. 2012; Shattuck et al. 2011). Indeed, evidence shows that programs involving men in family violence prevention initiatives are more effective than those that target women and girls exclusively, and, because many of the risk factors for future perpetration of IPV occur in the family unit, involving fathers can have significant positive outcomes (Bakermans-Kranenburg et al. 2003). Changing attitudes and behaviors of young men is a priority, given that studies which focus on selfprotection and self-advocacy of girls and women have not been shown to change their lifetime risk factor for violence (Morrison, Ellseberg, and Bott 2007). Furthermore, targeting family violence prevention through men and boys also potentially mitigates the risks sometimes involved in women-focused empowerment programs in contexts of strict conceptions of masculinity. In other words, fatherhood violence prevention programs may be successful in part because fatherhood is a gateway opportunity to establish positive and gender-equitable masculinities (McAllister et al. 2012). Over a period of several years, the Institute for Reproductive Health/ Georgetown University (IRH/GU) and Save the Children, an international non-governmental organization, designed and tested RFI in northern Uganda, with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). RFI is an offshoot of another USAID-funded project implemented in the same region by IRH/GU in partnership with Save the Children and Pathfinder International. The objective of the Gender Roles and Equality

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Transformation Project (GREAT) was to develop and test scalable strategies to prevent family violence and improve the sexual and reproductive health of boys and girls at different stages of the life course. The data generated by GREAT revealed widespread and far-reaching experiences of family violence and identified the challenges facing boys as they transition into marriage and parenthood in a context of limited resources, inadequate social support, and lack of role models (http://irh.org/projects/great_project). This understanding, combined with the expressed desire of boys for guidance as they assumed new adult responsibilities, prompted the decision to develop and seek funding for a fatherhood program to prevent family violence. Designed to build positive partnerships and parenting practices among young fathers (aged sixteen to twenty-five), the goal of RFI is to reduce the incidence of IPV and physical discipline of children in post-conflict northern Uganda. The core of RFI is a 12-session mentoring program and community awareness campaign that reaches young men at a formative moment in their life course before their expectations, attitudes, and behaviors related to parenting and relationships are well-established. The program is designed to challenge the gender norms and sexual scripts that trigger coercion and relationship violence and teach effective parenting, communication, and conflict resolution skills. RFI focuses on young fathers who are parenting toddlers (aged one to three), as this is the developmental stage where children begin to test boundaries and exert independence, and is thus the time when disciplining, frequently accompanied by violence, often begins (Brunell and Kopp 2010; Davis 2011). Evidence suggests that during this stage, children carefully observe and later model their parents’ behaviors (Bandura 1986). FAMILY VIOLENCE IN NORTHERN UGANDA Violence against women and children in Uganda is widespread. A little more than half of Ugandan women have experienced a form of violence and 98 percent of children report having experienced violence, with most incidents taking place in the home (Naker 2005; Uganda Bureau of Statistics 2012). As a post conflict setting, Northern Uganda has particularly high levels of family violence: 61.5 percent of women fifteen to forty-nine have experienced IPV and 16.5 percent of ever pregnant women report experiencing violence while pregnant (Uganda Bureau of Statistics 2012). Northern Uganda has been deeply affected by the twenty-three-year conflict fought between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan military forces, ending in a ceasefire in 2008. Tens of thousands of men, women, and children lost their lives during the conflict. LRA forces raided local villages killing innocent people and abducting children, using them as child soldiers and forcing girls to become “wives” for their officers. These

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atrocities continued for two decades, uprooting more than two million people from their villages into camps for internally displaced people (IDP). Several studies have shown high levels of gender-based violence in the IDP camps, including acts of physical assault, sexual assault, rape, and sex work (Mulumba 2011; Okello 2007; Patel et al. 2012). Sexual violence in particular was a common occurrence in the IDP camps (Finnstrom 2008). IDP camps had few economic opportunities, leading to forced marriages of girls and young women and widow inheritance. Widow inheritance is a traditional practice where at the death of her husband, a wife accepts or is obliged to marry the brother or other male relative of her late husband. This practice was designed to provide a home and financial security for the widow and her children, as well as ensure that the wealth and property the widow might inherit or bestow is kept in the patrilineal family. A widow who is obliged by in-laws to accept marriage to her late husband’s male relative may leave her in a position of limited power, and therefore prone to potential violence. Since 2008, most of the IDPs have resettled in their ancestral villages but the acceptability and use of violence continue to be part of their lives outside of the camps. Dramatic economic and social changes have resulted from the conflict in Uganda. The Acholi ethnic group moved into northern Uganda from southern Sudan around 1000 CE. The Acholi are a patrilineal culture organized into hamlets with local chiefs, or Rwot, who are believed to have spiritual powers. Men were traditionally hunters but also kept sheep, goats, and cattle, which they still do today. Women work in agriculture raising sesame seeds, sorghum, vegetables, and other local crops, and are primary care takers of the home. In Acholi culture men are expected to exert control over their wives and families, and cultural norms require women and children to obey their fathers, husbands, and brothers. Although they have survived the chaos of displacement, many young people have lost their parents or other elder relatives in the conflict. The guidance and advice that would have traditionally been provided to young men by their father or uncle is missing. Frustration resulting from their failure to protect their families and villages during the war is widely acknowledged as one reason why violence is widespread, as men try to compensate for their inability to fulfill the masculine role. Traditionally, patrilineal inheritance of land ensured young families food security. However, in post-conflict Uganda, land has become scarce and the economy is increasingly shifting from an agrarian economy to a cash-based system. Cash is needed to cover school fees as part of Uganda’s compulsory primary school education and other basic needs. With few economic opportunities in their communities, men migrate to neighboring South Sudan and other economic centers to find work. Some travel as far as the fishing communities of Lake Victoria to work in the fishing industry. These factors have put consid-

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erable strain on young newly married men as they strive to fulfill their traditional role as provider. METHODS Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect information to inform the design, implementation, and evaluation of RFI. Information from the GREAT formative research was supplemented by focus groups and interviews with young fathers and their wives to develop the RFI intervention. Baseline and endline quantitative surveys were also conducted to evaluate whether the program was effective. GREAT and REAL were conceived as intervention science projects with the goal of contributing to the well-being of Acholi youth. In an effort to design culturally appropriate and acceptable interventions, applied anthropological methods and approaches were used to guide program design and implementation. Our challenge was to apply an approach that would fit within resource constraints of an implementation project while retaining the underlying tenets of the anthropological perspective, namely the holistic integration of interdisciplinary theories and methods (Whitehead 2002). The application of anthropology to applied endeavors encompasses mixed method approaches, an appreciation of emic and etic viewpoints, iterative data collection and analysis from multiple perspectives, and making connections between human behaviors and context (Butler 2005). The GREAT formative research included a team approach to data collection and analysis, engaging cultural insiders as ethnographers and key informants, a brief period of participant observation before data collection, and interview methods designed to elicit holistic understanding of cultural systems, such as the use of participatory techniques such as social mapping. Life histories were collected from tirty-six boys and girls (ages ten to nineteen) at different stages of the life course: early adolescents (ages ten to fourteen), older adolescents, newly married, and pregnant youth. Information from the life histories of the newly married (five boys and three girls) and new parents (three boys and five girls) were of particular interest for the development of RFI. In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with individuals nominated by youth as a significant influence on their lives. These included parents/guardians (nine), siblings and other relatives (eight), community members such as teachers, health providers and religious or civic leaders (eleven), and peers (twelve). Additional research was conducted to inform the design of the RFI mentoring curriculum and to craft tailored, context-specific community message boards. In March 2013, Save the Children organized and trained a qualitative data collection team. The team conducted group discussions in two parishes

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of Attiak sub-county with a total of 20 young fathers between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five, and nine of their wives. Semi-structured discussion guides were developed from a review of literature and international materials on parenting and fatherhood, as well as GREAT formative research findings about violence. Young fathers were selected purposively from the two parishes to be part of the discussion groups. In the first parish, five fathers were involved in one discussion group and a total of nine fathers and their wives, for a total of eighteen participants, were included in a discussion group in the second parish. The discussions were conducted in Acholi and lasted approximately two hours with each group. The following week, the team returned to talk with the same groups of young fathers and couples. An ecological, systems framework was applied to the data from the formative research and pre-testing to understand the complex interplay of the factors that influence family violence and identify key points for prevention and intervention. Additionally, RFI was evaluated using a randomized control design employing baseline and endline quantitative surveys. The project was implemented in two phases among two cohorts with 340 fathers in cohort one and 160 in cohort two for a total of 500 fathers. Men were evenly assigned to intervention (250 men) and control (250 men) arms. Fathers assigned to the intervention arm received both components of the intervention, mentoring, and community posters. Control group men were only exposed to the community posters. After data analysis of endline survey data, the most successful components of RFI were implemented among control arm fathers. Quantitative data described here are drawn from the endline survey of the first cohort after the completion of the intervention. The endline survey included questions on background characteristics of study respondents, attitudes and behaviors related to IPV, child discipline and other parenting skills, and exposure to the intervention. FRAMEWORK In order to design an intervention addressing one of the root causes of family violence, gender asymmetries, it was important to understand how masculinity was conceptualized in these communities. Drawing upon the GREAT formative research and RFI pretesting, a framework was developed to illustrate the meaning of the “ideal man.” This framework, shown in Figure 10.1, guided understandings of the gender norms and social processes related to becoming a man in this cultural context and facilitated development of a program focusing on positive elements of masculinity. Three fundamental and interrelated qualities emerged from the data defining an ideal man in this setting: a good provider, a respected person, and a man with authority.

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These three concepts are overlapping themes in gender identity among Acholi men. Men expressed a desire to adhere to community norms of traditional marriage, payment of bride price, and producing an heir. Marriage in the Acholi culture is a lengthy process involving the parents of the bride and groom at various important steps and payment of bride price. Bride price is a traditional practice where the family of the groom makes a payment to the family of the bride to confer the marital contract. Bride price is paid in the form of sheep, goats, cattle, material goods, and cash. The bride price is often not spent by the bride’s family but is often saved to be used as payment of bride price for her brothers when they marry. The bride price can be repaid in the event of dissolution of the marriage, depending on the agreement made at the time of the marriage. Bride price is an essential part of marriage and provides parental rights of the father over any children he has with the wife,

Figure 10.1.

Ideal Masculinity

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and also makes it more difficult for a wife to be accepted back into her natal home should she become unhappy in her marriage. Men saw their primary role as provider and protector, and an ideal man is the authority figure and primary decision maker in his household. However, excessive authority in the household may lead to discord in the marital relationship. A man’s authority over his wife and parental rights are earned by payment of bride price to his wife and her family. If bride price has not been paid or only partially paid, a woman who wishes to leave her husband if he exerts too much control or authority, including excessive use of violence, can be accepted back into her natal home. Until a man pays the bride price, his children do not legally belong to his lineage. Thus, the husband must maintain a careful balance between demonstrating his masculinity by maintaining authority over the household while creating and sustaining a harmonious relationship with his wife. Marriage is a rite of passage which brings new respect, and a man who produces an heir is recognized as a full member of the community. Fatherhood is a source of pride and men described feeling joy and happiness when their first child was born. Young men were motivated to be good fathers by their desire to gain respect from their wife and children, community, and elders. Men expressed love and affection for their children and wished to strengthen their emotional bonds with them. Fathers also wanted to raise their children to be respectful of others. Men were committed to traditional marriage and payment of bride price, and were motivated to maintain peaceful marital relationships by the threat of losing their wives and children. The young men explained that if their wife leaves them, they would need an elder to negotiate her return. Several men did not have an elder to provide this support and worried about what would happen in this situation. Many challenges of achieving “ideal” status were mentioned by fathers. The lack of a role model, limited resources to pay for school fees and other needs, high demands on land and forced labor migration away from home are all significant factors that threaten men from becoming an “ideal father.” Young fathers explained that they faced a much more difficult challenge than their fathers who had inherited land, could count on the support of elders, and did not need to earn cash to pay for school fees and other necessities. Young fathers found living up to strict social norms stressful and expressed the need for support to meet the requirements for achieving ideal manhood. RESPONSIBLE, ENGAGED AND LOVING (REAL) FATHERS INITIATIVE The core of RFI is a mentoring program. Building on widespread respect for elders and advice-giving in northern Uganda, Save the Children identified

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and trained 63 men to serve as mentors to young fathers. Each mentor was assigned four young fathers to advise (for a total of 250 fathers participating in the program) based on an established evidence-based protocol. The mentors had twelve points of contact with each of their mentees (six individual sessions and six group sessions). Mentors were selected based on local formative research and with the participation of the young fathers, in order to ensure that the selected mentors were people they trust and respect, and from whom they would like to receive advice. Mentors included fathers, uncles, clan leaders, religious leaders such as catechists, and cultural leaders who play a traditional role preparing boys for marriage. Identified and trained mentors conducted six mentoring sessions with the young fathers using a pre-tested curriculum. This included four individual sessions with men only and two home-based couple sessions with the men and their wives/partners. The focus of the mentoring program was two-fold: increase positive father-child interactions and the use of non-violent child discipline strategies; and improve couple communication, respect, and use of non-violent conflict resolution skills. Through individual sessions and home visits, mentors provided young fathers the opportunity to reflect on and practice newly-learned positive communication and conflict-resolution skills as well as specific ways to be supportive partners and caregivers. They were also provided homework which involved simple activities to try out new forms of communication and child-rearing strategies with their partners in between sessions. As originally conceived, RFI did not explicitly include women in the intervention activities. However, at the men’s request, an inception visit was included to secure permission from their wives for their participation. Also, based on results of pretesting with men and two focus groups conducted with their wives, two of the six mentoring visits were designed to be conducted with the couple. One young father explained, “Sometimes women think differently than we do, and may misunderstand what is happening. [If she doesn’t understand], my wife might leave me or tease me back to the old ways.” Once a month for six consecutive months, male mentors invited their mentees to participate in a group session that centered on the unveiling of posters with messages designed to appeal emotionally to the community about the importance of fatherhood and men as role models and care takers of their children and families. The behavior change messages were conveyed through posters featuring pre-tested images and some supporting phrases. The posters were sequenced over time to capture attention and initiate conversation, but most importantly, to reinforce the messages provided to fathers by their mentors. The poster series ended with a call to action in which the mentees were asked to commit to a new behavior and sign a community pledge board. The young fathers, in groups of ten to fifteen, discussed the messages of the posters and reflected as a group on how they resonated with

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the individual advice received from their mentors. A team of mentors led these discussions and asked guiding questions to spur critical thinking about inequitable gender norms, harmful parenting practices, and intimate partner violence. The posters were then placed on six community message boards in strategic locations where people frequently gathered in order to promote diffusion of information. In order to address the underlying causes of family violence, the intervention was designed to challenge the gender norms and sexual scripts that often trigger coercion and violence in relationships and teach effective parenting, communication, and problem-solving skills. It used the perspective of “positive masculinity,” a potentially effective, although still not well-tested, approach to male involvement. This entails, for example, validating men’s caring nature and desire for positive masculinity, understanding how men’s violence is caused both by male privilege and feelings of powerlessness, and affirming the critical role men can play as supportive partners and caregivers. The theoretical basis of the intervention also draws heavily on cognitive social learning theory that suggests children acquire gender-related attitudes and norms, both through direct guidance from parents and by imitating parents and others, and that gender is understood at a very early age (Bandura 1986). Successful programs include activities that are connected to real-life experiences, which critically examine masculinity and gender norms (Barker et al. 2007) and take into account that men’s role in parenting is often culturally and institutionally devalued (Hawkins and Dollahite 1997).

Figure 10.2. A REAL Fathers Community Meeting, REAL Fathers Initiative. Photo credit: Dickens Ojamuge.

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EVALUATION FINDINGS Findings from focus group discussions with wives of RFI participants, life history interviews, and quantitative survey data were used to assess acceptability and effectiveness of the intervention. In focus group discussions, wives were very supportive of the mentoring sessions with their husbands and keenly interested in the content of the discussions. Wives supported their husbands’ participation in RFI by preparing their husbands a meal and making sure the men were on time for mentoring sessions. Wives inquired with their husbands about the topics that were discussed in sessions with mentors, and most wives participated in the “homework” with their husbands. Wives noted positive changes in their husbands’ behavior, including interaction with their children, helping with household chores and child-care activities, and improved communication. Wives also said there was a reduction in alcohol use and IPV. However, wives were very concerned with their husbands falling back into their old behaviors when the program ended. Preliminary results of the endline survey and life history interviews among young fathers who were in the intervention arm of RFI show positive results overall. A total of 310 fathers were included in the endline survey among of the study (197 intervention and 113 control participants). At endline, young men ranged in age from seventeen to twenty-seven years and, with the exception of four men, all belonged to the Acholi ethnic group. Almost all had attended school (97 percent), with slightly more than half (53 percent) having some primary school as the highest level of education. Farming was the most frequently mentioned livelihood (92.6 percent). All had been married for more than a year at the time of the endline survey and 71 percent had paid a portion of the bride price. A total of 85 percent of all fathers were threatened with violence during childhood, which was significantly associated with approval and use of intimate partner violence. Intervention group fathers spent more time with their children engaging in activities such as singing and playing games. Results of the life history interviews yielded similar results, many fathers said that they bathed and fed their child and played games or sang songs with them. Fathers also talked about making long-term investments in livestock or tree plantations in preparation for paying for their child’s education. Fewer fathers in the intervention (21 percent) as compared to control (29.2 percent) group reported hitting the child in the three months prior to the survey. In addition, more fathers in the intervention group (42.6 percent) felt they could be very good role models for their child, compared to only 21.2 percent of control group fathers. Over 77 percent of the fathers in the intervention arm talked to others about their newly learned parenting skills. Survey data also revealed that a higher percentage of men in the intervention arm versus the control arm talked with their wives about how to raise

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their child, the type of discipline they would use, and the decision not to use physical violence as a method of child punishment. Similarly, in the life history interview narratives, many men said that they had “a loving home,” that they supported their wives, and were happy to have someone with whom to discuss family matters and plan for the future. Many men had shifted their expectation that women “do everything,” now viewing an expanded role for themselves which encompassed household and child care responsibilities. During life history interviews, young men talked about using the “yellow card” as an alternative conflict resolution strategy. The “yellow card” is taken from soccer, a popular sport in northern Uganda. A “yellow card” is shown during a soccer match to signal a penalty and when a player is given two “yellow cards,” the player is taken out of the game. When a disagreement or potential for conflict arises, the “yellow card” is used by the husband or the wife as a signal to their partner that they are displeased with their behavior and to serve as a request for a time-out or cooling off period. Couples are advised to use the “yellow card” to postpone discussion until they can discuss the issue more calmly. The example provided in the curriculum is of the husband coming back home late after drinking, and rather than

Figure 10.3. A REAL Father Participating in Household Work, REAL Fathers Initiative. Photo credit: Dickens Ojamuge.

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the wife locking him out and the inevitable conflict that ensues, the wife pull out the “yellow card.” The husband will receive the clear message that his wife is upset with his behavior. The couple then has the opportunity to cool off and paves the way for the couple to discuss the incident calmly. Finally, of the 340 men included in the first cohort of the project, men in the intervention versus control group reported significantly less shouting or yelling, 32.8 percent compared to 56.9 percent (p