This book critically examines the last few decades of discussion around sex and violence in the media, on social media, in the courtroom and through legislation. The discursive struggles over what constitutes "sexual violence", "victims" and "offenders" is normally determined through narratives: a selective ordering of events and participants. Centrally, the book investigates the social processes involved in the telling of stories of rape and its political implications. From a multidisciplinary feminist perspective, this volume explores what narratives about sexual violence are deemed legitimate at this historical juncture. This volume brings together feminist scholars working in a wide variety of disciplines including law, legal studies, history, gender studies, ethnology, media, criminology and social work from across the globe. Through situated empirical work, these scholars seek to understand currents movements between the criminal justice system and the cultural imagination.

Taking a cross-cultural perspective, this book explores how privatization and globalization impact contemporary feminist and social justice approaches to public responsibility. Feminist legal theorists have long problematized divisions between the private and the political, an issue with growing importance in a time when the welfare state is under threat in many parts of the world and private markets and corporations transcend national boundaries. Because vulnerability analysis emphasizes our interdependency within social institutions and the need for public responsibility for our shared vulnerability, it can highlight how neoliberal policies commodify human necessities, channeling unprofitable social relationships, such as caretaking, away from public responsibility and into the individual private family. This book uses comparative analyses to examine how these dynamics manifest across different legal cultures. By highlighting similarities and differences in legal responses to vulnerability, this book provides important insights and arguments against the privatization of social need and for a more responsive state.

Taking a cross-cultural perspective, this book explores how privatization and globalization impact contemporary feminist and social justice approaches to public responsibility. Feminist legal theorists have long problematized divisions between the private and the political, an issue with growing importance in a time when the welfare state is under threat in many parts of the world and private markets and corporations transcend national boundaries. Because vulnerability analysis emphasizes our interdependency within social institutions and the need for public responsibility for our shared vulnerability, it can highlight how neoliberal policies commodify human necessities, channeling unprofitable social relationships, such as caretaking, away from public responsibility and into the individual private family. This book uses comparative analyses to examine how these dynamics manifest across different legal cultures. By highlighting similarities and differences in legal responses to vulnerability, this book provides important insights and arguments against the privatization of social need and for a more responsive state.