Investigating the unsolved murder of a female law student and the pervasive violence against Guatemalan women that drives migration. Part memoir and part forensic investigation, Textures of Terror is a gripping first-person story of women, violence, and migration out of Guatemala—and how the United States is implicated. Accompanying Jorge Velásquez in a years-long search for answers after the brutal murder of his daughter Claudina Isabel, Victoria Sanford explores what it means to seek justice in "postconflict" countries where violence never ended. Through this father's determined struggle and other stories of justice denied, Textures of Terror offers a deeper understanding of US policies in Latin America and their ripple effect on migration. Sanford offers an up-close appraisal of the inner workings of the Guatemalan criminal justice system and how it maintains inequality, patriarchy, and impunity. Presenting the stories of other women who have suffered at the hands of strangers, intimate partners, and the security forces, this work reveals the deeply gendered nature of power and violence in Guatemala.

Reports from war zones often note the obscene victimization of women, who are frequently raped, tortured, beaten, and pressed into sexual servitude. Yet this reign of terror against women not only occurs during exceptional moments of social collapse, but during peacetime too. As this powerful book argues, violence against women should be understood as a systemic problem - one for which the state must be held accountable. The twelve essays in Gender Violence in Peace and War present a continuum of cases where the state enables violence against women - from state-sponsored torture to lax prosecution of sexual assault. Some contributors uncover buried histories of state violence against women throughout the twentieth century, in locations as diverse as Ireland, Indonesia, and Guatemala. Others spotlight ongoing struggles to define the state's role in preventing gendered violence, from domestic abuse policies in the Russian Federation to anti-trafficking laws in the United States. Bringing together cutting-edge research from political science, history, gender studies, anthropology, and legal studies, this collection offers a comparative analysis of how the state facilitates, legitimates, and perpetuates gender violence worldwide. The contributors also offer vital insights into how states might adequately protect women's rights in peacetime, as well as how to intervene when a state declares war on its female citizens.

"With this book, anthropology takes its place in the world: breaking innovative ground, creating new sensibilities, offering academic inspiration to a crisis."--Carolyn Nordstrom, professor of anthropology, University of Notre Dame "Engaged Observer includes rich ethnographic insights into the personal and social aspects of suffering and represents a significant contribution to debates on anthropological ethics and the place of advocacy in scholarship."--Richard A. Wilson, author of The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa "This engaging and compelling volume uses a wide range of case studies to suggest ways that anthropologists and other types of observers can be politically, emotionally, and personally engaged with the work they carry out."--Lynn Stephen, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, University of Oregon Anthropology has long been associated with an ethos of "engagement." The field's core methods and practices involve long-term interpersonal contact between researchers and their study participants, giving major research topics in the field a distinctively human face. Can research findings be authentic and objective? Are anthropologists able to use their data to aid the participants of their study, and is that aid always welcome? In Engaged Observer, Victoria Sanford and Asale Angel-Ajani bring together an international array of scholars who have been embedded in some of the most conflict-ridden and dangerous zones in the world to reflect the role and responsibility of anthropological inquiry. They explore issues of truth and objectivity, the role of the academic, the politics of memory, and the impact of race, gender, and social position on the research process. Through ethnographic case studies, they offer models for conducting engaged research and illustrate the contradictions and challenges of doing so. Victoria Sanford is an associate professor of anthropology at Lehman College, City University of New York. Asale Angel-Ajani is and assistant professor in the Gallatin School at New York University.