Book review: Woman Abuse in Rural Places
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/02697580211046749 |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| Author | Susan Dewey |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Book reviews
Walter S DeKeseredy
Woman Abuse in Rural Places
New York, USA: Routledge, 162 pp 2021, ISBN 9781003009290 (e-book).
Reviewed by: Susan Dewey, The University of Alabama, USA (scdewey@ua.edu)
DOI: 10.1177/02697580211046749
Walter DeKeseredy is a world leader in scholarship on violence against rural women and the field
is so fortunate to have this wonderful new addition to the literature as part of the Routledge Studies
in Rural Criminology series. DeKeseredy’s book, which features five chapters, offers a tremendous
contribution to knowledge on violence against women in its collection and analysis of existing
research. Chapter 1 offers a co mprehensive introduction to c urrent controversies surroun ding
studies of violence against rural women. DeKeseredy explains that his preference for the term
‘woman abuse’, as opposed to the more commonly used gender-neutral term ‘intimate partner
violence’, relates to the former’s recognition of the significant and multifaceted nature of gendered
disparities that create and sustain violence against women. He acknowledges the powerful role of
language in shaping knowledge production, particularly as the neoliberal university increasingly
pressures researchers to couch their investigations in the gender-neutral language and approaches
preferred by federal funders. The result, DeKeseredy argues, silences radical feminist understand-
ings of patriarchy as the root cause of violence against women.
Chapter 2 analyzes different types of abuse that rural women experience globally by uniting and
analyzing research studies from throughout the world. It also discusses cultural and sociopolitical
factors that researchers variously regard as facilitating rural woman abuse and thoughtfully
engages with delegitimized rural hegemonic masculinity due to the rise of corporate agriculture.
Chapter 3 reviews the current state of theoretical knowledge about interpersonal violence against
rural women which, like rural criminology more generally, remains undertheorized. Nonetheless,
DeKeseredy explores how researchers have applied approaches such as relative deprivation, inter-
sectionality, and cultural criminology to studies in this field.
Chapter 4 examines the crimes of the powerful in rural places and raises particularly interesting
connections between the feminization of poverty and women’s vulnerability to white-collar/corporate
crime. DeKeseredy provides examples of this violence in the form of the sexual harassment, healthrisks,
and labor abuses rural(and migrant) women suffer so that corporate agriculture can provide grocery store
shoppers with cheap chicken, fruit, and vegetables that resemble plastic both in taste and appearance
more than healthy farm-raised food. He also engages with feminist and Marxist theories of state crim e to
examine rural women’s exclusion from leadership in politics, business, and labor movements.
Chapter 5 tackles the question of what is to be done about woman abuse in rural places.
DeKeseredy offers a range of potential solutions rooted in contemporary scholarship. He suggests
International Review of Victimology
2022, Vol. 28(1) 134–137
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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