Blackwell Reference Online

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Rape attracted limited attention across the social sciences and humanities until it emerged as a key issue for feminists in the early 1970s. Most scholarship on the subject dates from this time, with the highest concentration appearing during the 1970s and 1980s. The first sociological study – Menachim Amir's Patterns in Forcible Rape (1971) – addressed the victimology of rape. But it, along with most previous work, was subjected to intense feminist critique, including in Susan Brownmiller's prescient Against Our Will (1975), which, in “giving rape its history,” explored rape two decades before it became widely recognized. Rape was relatively invisible in feminist, policy, and research agendas during the 1990s outside the context of war/conflict. As we enter the twenty-first century, shoots of renewed interest are evident with a series of books and major research reports addressing theory ( Cahill 2001 ), reporting and belief ( Jordan 2004 ), rape in diverse contexts ( Barstow 2002 ), and prevalence and attrition ( Kelly et al. 2005 ). Defining sexual violence and rape continues to vex social scientists, legal scholars, and practitioners, as debates about the boundary between consent and non-consent remain unresolved. The undisputed criminal status of rape lends the definitional issue a strong legal component, made more complex by the presence internationally of at least three ... log in or subscribe to read full text