Gender and Sexuality Commons^™

Book Review: Battering States: The Politics Of Domestic Violence In Israel. By Madelaine Adelman. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2017. Pp. Xiv+290. $69.95 (Cloth); $34.95 (Paper)., Amy Leisenring

Faculty Publications, Sociology

In Battering States: The Politics of Domestic Violence in Israel, anthropologist Madelaine Adelman utilizes an impressive array of ethnographic methods to examine how statecraft shapes domestic violence. Her thoughtful project is interdisciplinary in nature and analyzes when and how intimate partner violence intersects with cultural politics of the state. Her focus centers on Israel, where a number of distinctive factors make this a particularly compelling site for the type of study in which she engages: the existence of a “contentious multinational and multiethnic population,” “competing and overlapping sets of religious civil family law” (p. 2), pervasive state securitism and political …