Mary Hawkesworth
Domestic Violence and the Politics of Privacy is a model of feminist praxis. Kristin Kelly demonstrates how astute theoretical analysis can help illuminate limitations of current approaches to domestic violence and how attentiveness to the views of feminist activists can revise theoretical constructions of public and private spheres. Blending these theoretical and practical insights, Kelly advances a framework to expand community responses to the complexities of domestic violence.
September 2003 Choice
Kelly presents a new model for the analysis of the societal response to domestic violence... Well written and adequately referenced and indexed, the book is within the reach of most readers.
Joyce Gelb
This book seeks to place the issue of domestic violence within a framework that contests the traditional distinction between public and private life, as represented respectively by the state and family. Kristin Kelly highlights the tensions that exist between individual rights and autonomy and the relational and dependent aspects of family life. Seen from this vantage point, the private family, while capable of violence, may also be a place to retreat from public scrutiny.... This book is admirable in its effort to integrate and reconceptualize theory and practice related to domestic violence. It attempts to deconstruct existing boundaries between the public and private, finding both limitations and problems in each, and calls for a kind of new civic intervention based in community responsibility.
Paul E. Parker
Kelly has reenvisioned privacy, community, and citizenship, with potentially far-reaching and far-ranging consequences....In this ambitious book, Kelly has made important contributions by allowing us to see in more complex and realistic ways both battered women (autonomous/connected) and our incomplete responses to domestic violence (legal intervention; victim blaming).
