Sexual Violence and Political Transitions: Tracing Shifting Meanings and Functions of Rape

This volume explores the meanings, nature and function of rape during political transitions, showing that high levels of sexual violence directed mainly against women and children during war-time normally do not cease or dissipate after the end of formal hostilities, and that post-conflict societies experience higher than normal to extremely high levels of sexual violence against women and children. In the process, the book proposes a theory of sexual violence during political transitions that views this form of sexual violence less as a lingering effect of the armed conflict and more as an attempt to construct the new social order as a masculine-heroic order.