Sexual Violence during War and Peace

Abstract

This book is much inspired by Elizabeth Stanko’s questions regarding the meanings of violence. The notion that seemingly equal acts of physical violence can have a range of different meanings, consequences, and responses has led me to think about how sexual violence in so-called war and peacetimes is understood differently, and, if so, why such differentiated meaning affects the way in which society and the state respond to sexual violence. Understandings of violence shift over time, geography, and sociopolitical and cultural contexts, shaping how individuals, families, and communities make sense of their experiences. This book is a reflection of those questions, unfortunately though not an answer. However, I have taken up the task to arrive at an approximate answer to the question of what sexual violence means as a sociopolitical act in war and peacetime Peru by examining testimonies of such violence, and link these to processes of post-conflict justice