Books by madelaine adelman
Battering States explores the most personal part of people's lives as they intersect with a uniqu... more Battering States explores the most personal part of people's lives as they intersect with a uniquely complex state system. The book examines how statecraft shapes domestic violence: how a state defines itself and determines what counts as a family; how a state establishes sovereignty and defends its borders; and how a state organizes its legal system and forges its economy. The ethnography includes stories from people, places, and perspectives not commonly incorporated in domestic violence studies, and, in doing so, reveals the transformation of intimate partner violence from a predictable form of marital trouble to a publicly recognized social problem.
The politics of domestic violence create novel entry points to understanding how, although women may be vulnerable to gender-based violence, they do not necessarily share the same kind of belonging to the state. This means that markers of identity and power, such as gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion and religiosity, and socio-economic and geographic location, matter when it comes to safety and pathways to justice.
The study centers on Israel, where a number of factors bring connections between the cultural politics of the state and domestic violence into stark relief: the presence of a contentious multinational and multiethnic population; competing and overlapping sets of religious and civil laws; a growing gap between the wealthy and the poor; and the dominant presence of a security state in people's everyday lives. The exact combination of these factors is unique to Israel, but they are typical of states with a diverse population in a time of globalization. In this way, the example of Israel offers insights wherever the political and personal impinge on one another.
Madelaine Adelman and Miriam Elman, co-editors
Papers by madelaine adelman
American Ethnologist, Nov 1, 2010
A Companion to Gender Studies, 2017
Teachers College Record, Aug 1, 2022
Background: Within the context of high school student clubs, the acronym “GSA” originally stood f... more Background: Within the context of high school student clubs, the acronym “GSA” originally stood for “Gay-Straight Alliance.” It described gay and straight youth working as allies to learn about themselves and each other’s lives and to navigate and address interpersonal and institutional anti-LGBTQ school policies and practices. Today, the acronym is commonly parsed by Gen Z members as “Gender-Sexuality Alliance” to better represent the presence and needs of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming students, and their cisgender allies. Purpose of Study: We inquire how students learn about themselves and others—partially, unevenly, and, at times, uneasily—as they incorporate socially resistant gender and race identity work within their GSA school clubs. Participants: Participants were cisgender ( n = 10) and transgender and nonbinary ( n = 10), racially diverse high school students in GSAs between 14 and 18 years of age. Research Design: Our analysis is grounded in critical pragmatism, a methodological integration of critical theory and pragmatism, which stems from reflexive immersion in the research context and use of empirical inquiry as a tool to acknowledge and guide transformation of entrenched anti-trans oppression in schools, noting that racism, among other forms of structural inequality, is built into schools. We analyzed the interview component of a larger mixed-methods research study conducted by the GLSEN Research Institute, which was intended to generate insight about student and advisor experiences of GSAs. Findings: Our study reveals that while GSAs can be a space for marginalized LGBTQ students to create a collective empowering identity, they can also be a space where some differences may be flattened or left out. We explore how students make visible racial and gender identity groups during GSA activities that are often erased in secondary schools. This implicitly and explicitly entails deploying identity as a challenge to a school’s heteronormative, cisnormative, and white-dominant official curriculum, although the depth or complexity of a GSA’s visibility-based education and critique may be inadequate, given available resources. Our findings demonstrate how GSA students leverage their identity as a goal when mobilizing themselves and their peers to alter a school’s norms and practices. Conclusions: Gen Z GSA students have begun to reimagine their clubs as if they were built from the ground up, with the needs of transgender students and students of color placed at their center. GSAs remain a critical but underdeveloped resource for learning how to recognize and challenge intersectional forms of interpersonal and institutional marginalization.
Global Agenda for Social Justice 2
Madelaine Adelman and Miriam Elman, co-editors
Violence against women, Oct 1, 2016
We have been conducting research on, teaching about, and advocating against domestic violence and... more We have been conducting research on, teaching about, and advocating against domestic violence and other forms of gender violence for a combined total of more than 60 years. Not surprisingly, we have observed significant shifts in how we understand domestic violence and its relationship to other forms of violence and inequality, how we configure and implement our teaching objectives, and the place of the study of domestic violence within higher education. Our courses on domestic violence are now taught as a regular part of the curriculum in our respective academic homes: Madelaine Adelman is an anthropologist in a social research and interdisciplinary justice studies faculty, and Donna Coker is a legal scholar with a background in social work who is part of a law school faculty. We teach about domestic violence because we want to ensure that our students, whether they already are or may become parents, voters, or frontline workers such as law enforcement officers, lawyers, social movement activists, and social service agency staff (Wies & Haldane, 2011), understand “that social inequalities are not ‘natural,’ but rather are the result of . . . policies and social practices” (Coker, 2016, 1434), and “gain knowledge of and empathy for the constrained ‘choices’ facing battered women, understand the frequent disjuncture between ‘leaving’ and safety, and close the gap between cultural perceptions and lived realities” (Adelman, Rosenberg, & Hobart, 2016, p. 1451). We teach about domestic violence because, frankly, we are weary of mainstream accounts that continue to blame “bad apples” rather than a society that devalues women’s lives, discern between “good” deserving women and “bad” ones undeserving of public support, and fail to address root causes of this phenomenon in effective, inclusive, and progressive ways. We hope our students can draw on decades of individual and community-based organizing against domestic violence to inform their responses to this entrenched social problem. This special issue grew out of an invited roundtable titled “Structural Inequality and Violence Against Women” at the Law & Society Association annual meetings held in San Francisco in 2011, when colleagues exchanged classroom experiences and
Social & Legal Studies, 2018
LGBTQ Issues in Education: Advancing a Research Agenda, 2015
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1300 J134v08n03_03, Oct 13, 2008
ABSTRACT A political economy of domestic violence situates domestic violence within cultural-hist... more ABSTRACT A political economy of domestic violence situates domestic violence within cultural-historical context to reveal the intersection between domestic violence and (1) the organization of the polity, (2) the arrangement of the economy, and (3) the dominant familial ideology expressed normatively through state policies. The combination of these components makes visible the articulation between domestic violence and an often invisible set of conditions in US society–structural inequality as shaped by ‘family values’ and the logic of state-economy relations. The analysis of the political economy of battering as it intersects with poverty and globalization highlights the contours of “the battering state.”
Journal of Poverty, 2006
... Extending this framework, a white female student explained that it is difficult to intervene ... more ... Extending this framework, a white female student explained that it is difficult to intervene when A friend say[s] an anti-LGBT remark because you feel uncomfortable but don't want to offend the friend's belief. Not wishing to challenge a ... Madelaine Adelman and Kathryn Woods ...
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Books by madelaine adelman
The politics of domestic violence create novel entry points to understanding how, although women may be vulnerable to gender-based violence, they do not necessarily share the same kind of belonging to the state. This means that markers of identity and power, such as gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion and religiosity, and socio-economic and geographic location, matter when it comes to safety and pathways to justice.
The study centers on Israel, where a number of factors bring connections between the cultural politics of the state and domestic violence into stark relief: the presence of a contentious multinational and multiethnic population; competing and overlapping sets of religious and civil laws; a growing gap between the wealthy and the poor; and the dominant presence of a security state in people's everyday lives. The exact combination of these factors is unique to Israel, but they are typical of states with a diverse population in a time of globalization. In this way, the example of Israel offers insights wherever the political and personal impinge on one another.
Papers by madelaine adelman
The politics of domestic violence create novel entry points to understanding how, although women may be vulnerable to gender-based violence, they do not necessarily share the same kind of belonging to the state. This means that markers of identity and power, such as gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion and religiosity, and socio-economic and geographic location, matter when it comes to safety and pathways to justice.
The study centers on Israel, where a number of factors bring connections between the cultural politics of the state and domestic violence into stark relief: the presence of a contentious multinational and multiethnic population; competing and overlapping sets of religious and civil laws; a growing gap between the wealthy and the poor; and the dominant presence of a security state in people's everyday lives. The exact combination of these factors is unique to Israel, but they are typical of states with a diverse population in a time of globalization. In this way, the example of Israel offers insights wherever the political and personal impinge on one another.