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Surviving Sexual Violence. Liz Kelly. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988, 273pp., $45.00 cloth, 14.95 paper.
The intent of Surviving Sexual Violence is to transform our understanding of violence and to give voice to tiiose who have survived it. Liz Kelly, die author, sees her book as encompassing three observations: "that most women have experienced sexual violence in their lives; that there is a range of male behavior that women experience as abusive; and that sexual violence occurs in the context of men's power and women's resistance." Feminist sociologist Liz Kelly has previously expressed her view that naming the violence is the first step in eradicating violence against women in YlIo and Bograd's (1988) classic work, Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse.
In Chapter 1 Kelly prefaces a discussion of her research with a disclosure of her own victimization. She takes the suggestion of sociologist Shulamith Reinharz (1983) to conduct an "experiential analysis" of your research. The researcher is encouraged to focus on how the investigation impacts on extra research encounters and vice versa. Kelly discloses several forms of sexual victimization she and others have experienced, and discusses how her research evolved from diese experiences. The explication of the relationship between the researchers' own experiences and the research question and process achieves the feminist goal of reducing die distance between researcher and participant. It also reduces die degree of distance that the reader may take from this book, perhaps making some readers too uncomfortable.
Some readers already familiar with die feminist literature may feel that Kelly devotes too much space to a general discussion of sexual violence and feminist theory (Chapter 2) and to an overview of previous research on feminist works concerning sexual violence (Chapter 3). However, it is important to continuously point out the correlation between patriarchy, sexual violence, and die oppression of women. Kelly, who lives...