Putting Feminism to Work

This book explores the place of feminism and uptake of trauma in contemporary work against sexual violence. Egan presents a refreshing alternative position on arguments about the co-optation or erasure of feminism within institutionalized, professionalized services for sexual assault victims. Using original research on Australian sexual assault services, Putting Feminism to Work effectively illustrates how feminist concepts and ideas have become routinized in contemporary services and enacted in daily practices with survivors and communities. The book engages with, yet resists, the notion that feminist engagement with knowledge (trauma) based in psychiatry and clinical psychology is incompatible with feminism or inevitably reduces sexual violence to a problem of individual healing. Indeed Egan argues that the productive ways practitioners integrate neurobiological understandings of trauma into their work suggests rich possibilities for reintroducing a non-essentialist biology of the body into feminist theories of sexual violence.
Scholars, students and practitioners working in the fields of violence against women, sociology, women's and gender studies, health, social work and policy studies, as well as the emerging field of sociologically informed trauma studies, will find this book of interest.

Bridges a gap between academically orientated feminist theoretical work and the work of feminists that takes place in applied settings Provides an alternative thesis to the dominant feminist position on the institutionalisation and mainstreaming of feminist work on sexual violence Addresses the relationship between trauma and gendered violence

Autorentext

Suzanne Egan is currently a Research Associate at the University of Sydney, Australia, and formerly undertook violence prevention research in the NGO sector.

Klappentext

This work brings the insights of practice and theory together to understand how sexual assault services think about and use feminist knowledges. In illuminating the intertwined and complex lived relationships between 'bodies, emotions, and institutions' to enhance our responses to those who have experienced sexual assault, Egan does indeed put feminism to work with rigour and passion.
JaneMaree Maher, Professor, Centre for Women's Studies & Gender Research, Sociology, Monash University

Egan illustrates how frontline workers, service providers, academics and policy makers working in sexual assault, have utilised feminist knowledges so successfully that this knowledge is now taken for granted. This is a beautifully written, inspiring book thatinterweaving biography, history and meticulous researchgenerated many 'a ha' moments
Jane Mears, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University Thisbook explores the place of feminism and uptake of trauma in contemporary work against sexual violence. Egan presents a refreshing alternative position on arguments about the co-optation or erasure of feminism within institutionalized, professionalized services for sexual assault victims. Using original research on Australian sexual assault services, this book illustrates how feminist concepts and ideas have become routinized in contemporary services and enacted in daily practices with survivors and communities. It engages with, yet resists, the notion that feminist engagement with knowledge (trauma) based in psychiatry and clinical psychology is incompatible with feminism or inevitably reduces sexual violence to a problem of individual healing. Egan argues that the productive ways practitioners integrate neurobiological understandings of trauma into their work suggests rich possibilities for reintroducing a non-essentialist biology of the body into feminist theories of sexual violence. Scholars, students and practitioners working in the fields of violence against women, sociology, women's and gender studies, health, social work and policy studies, as well as the emerging field of sociologically informed trauma studies, will find this book of interest.

Suzanne Egan is currently a Research Associate at the University of Sydney, Australia, and formerly undertook violence prevention research in the NGO sector.

Inhalt
1.Introduction.- 2. Rape: from 'normal' adult sexuality to gendered power and violence.- 3. Sexual assault as trauma: Producing trauma as a feminist knowledge/practice.- 4. From the incest taboo to the 'adult survivor': The production of child sexual assault as a feminist issue.- 5. Trauma and the adult survivor.- 6. Male victims, institutional abuse and 'trauma informed care'.- 7. Conclusion.