Violent Intimacy: Family Harmony, State Stability, and Intimate Partner Violence in Post-Socialist China

Based on ethnographic research with victims of intimate partner violence since 2014, this book brings to the forefront women’s experiences of, negotiations about, and contestations against violence, and men’s narratives about the reasons for their violence. Using an innovative methodology - online chat groups, it foregrounds the role of history, structural inequalities, and the cultural system of power hierarchy in situating and constructing intimate partner violence. Centering on men and women’s narratives about violence, this book connects intimate partner violence with invisible structural violence - the historical, cultural, political, economic, and legal context that gives rise to and perpetuates violence against women. Through examining the ways in which women’s lives are constrained by various forms of violence, hierarchy, and inequality, this book shows that violence against women is a structural issue that is historically produced and politically and culturally engaged.

Tiantian Zheng is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York, Cortland. She has received two national book awards, and has testified before Congress, UNAIDS, and the United Nations on human trafficking and other issues, and has been a featured guest speaker on NPR, BBC, and NBC.