Anthropologists have a long history of studying violence and conflict
(Fortune 1939; Gillin 1934; Gluckman 1955, 1963; Hadlock 1947; Malinowski
1959; Skinner 1911; Williams 1941). Early scholars examined
acts of violence as defined by warfare, cultural ethos, conflicts over material
resources, or cultural rituals related to rites of passage, such as genital
cutting, nosebleeding, and forced scarification (Boddy 1982; Harrington
1968; Hayes 1975; Herdt 1982; Otterbein 1999; Rafti 1979; Singer and
Desole 1967). Acts of gender-based violence, however, such as rape, domestic
violence, and human trafficking were left largely undertheorized.
Thus, forms of gender-based violence were not identified as cultural phenomena
in most societies until the 1970s.