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Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life 


Evan Stark

ISBN13: 9780195154276ISBN10: 0195154274 
hardback, 464 pages 

Apr 2007,  In Stock 

List Price:$35.00 
Barnes and Noble price $28


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Description

Despite its great achievements, the domestic violence revolution is stalled,
Evan Stark argues, a provocative conclusion he documents by showing that
interventions have failed to improve women's long-term safety in
relationships or to hold perpetrators accountable. Stark traces this failure
to a startling paradox, that the singular focus on violence against women
masks an even more devastating reality. In millions of abusive
relationships, men use a largely unidentified form of subjugation that more
closely resembles kidnapping or indentured servitude than assault. He calls
this pattern coercive control. Drawing on sources that range from FBI
statistics and film to dozens of actual cases from his thirty years of
experience as an award-winning researcher, advocate, and forensic expert,
Stark shows in terrifying detail how men can use coercive control to extend
their dominance over time and through social space in ways that subvert
women's autonomy, isolate them, and infiltrate the most intimate corners of
their lives. Against this backdrop, Stark analyzes the cases of three women
tried for crimes committed in the context of abuse, showing that their
reactions are only intelligible when they are reframed as victims of
coercive control rather than as battered wives.

The story of physical and sexual violence against women has been told often.
But this is the first book to show that most abused women who seek help do
so because their rights and liberties have been jeopardized, not because
they have been injured. The coercive control model Stark develops resolves
three of the most perplexing challenges posed by abuse: why these
relationships endure, why abused women develop a profile of problems seen
among no other group of assault victims, and why the legal system has failed
to win them justice.

Elevating coercive control from a second-class misdemeanor to a human rights
violation, Stark explains why law, policy, and advocacy must shift its focus
to emphasize how coercive control jeopardizes women's freedom in everyday
life.

Fiercely argued and eminently readable, Starks work is certain to breathe
new life into the domestic violence revolution. 


Reviews


"Coercive Control is compelling in the way it frames woman-battering as a
web of coercive controls and enforcement. Evan Stark provides a rich history
of the refuge/shelter movement and a powerful critique of the criminal legal
system. This pathbreaking exploration of the entrapment of women in intimate
partnerships, with its important exploration of social context and critical
focus on male social and economic privilege, is a must read - a crucial
addition to the literature."-- Barbara J. Hart, Senior Policy and Legal
Advisor, Battered Women's Justice Project 

"Evan Stark's brilliant book will transform our understanding of violence
against women and place the anti-abuse campaign squarely in the center of
the feminist revolution and the movement for universal human rights. In
Stark's new paradigm, we see that physical violence is only the tip of an
iceberg of intimidation, isolation, and deprivation of daily necessities
that amounts to a denial to women of personhood and full citizenship. Every
human rights theorist, advocate, and jurist needs to read this landmark
volume and use it to reinvigorate the movement toward true equality for
women. If every law enforcement officer, shelter provider, social worker,
and legislator would also read the stories Stark tells about women's
everyday struggles in hostage-like relationships, society's approach to the
abuse of women would be immeasurably strengthened."-- Heidi Hartmann,
Institute for Women's Policy Research and the George Washington University 

"Evan Stark has written a momentous work conceptualizing abuse of women by
their intimate partners as a major human rights violation. Dr. Stark has
explicated the concrete deprivations and structural restraints which are the
daily realities of women who have abusive intimate partners. He shows how
these abuses create hostage-like living conditions and constrain women's
ability to function as fully free citizens in society. Coercive Control is
essential reading for everyone in the mental health and legal professions
who treat and represent women. It will help us grasp the oppression suffered
by women who may not have visible, physical injuries so that we may help
them achieve safety and freedom."-- Marjory D. Fields, J.D., family law and
human rights lawyer in private practice and retired Justice, New York State
Supreme and Family Courts 


Product Details


464 pages; 2 line illus.; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-515427-6ISBN10:
0-19-515427-4 


About the Author(s)


Evan Stark, Associate Professor, School of Public Affairs, Rutgers
University 

Dr. Evan Stark was a founder of one of America's first domestic violence
shelters, the New Haven Project for Battered Women. He has worked in direct
service provision for victims of domestic violence, as an advocate for the
rights and needs of victims and as a researcher. He co-directed the first
major federal research program on domestic violence in health-care settings
and identified domestic violence as a leading cause of  female injury and
the context for multiple medical and mental health problems. Dr. Stark has
written extensively on the issue of domestic violence and health and is
co-author of Women at Risk: Domestic Violence and Women's Health (1996). 

 

Irene Weiser
Stop Family Violence
331 W. 57th St #518
New York, NY 10019

607-539-6856
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www.StopFamilyViolence.org
the people's voice for family peace
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