For years, much has been said and written about sexual violence in war and peace—its conditions, causes, interpretations, inferences, outcomes, and its intersections with the political, economic, social, and cultural. Much has been written about the meaning of rape. Yet despite the increasing visibility of the topic of sexual violence, what rape is and does in peace, war, and postconflict, transitional settings still remains obscure. Holly Porter’s After Rape provides a sophisticated, refreshingly novel access point to the thick multiple layers of life after rape. How do we forgive and reconcile, rebuild community and social cohesion, after decades of violence: after such profound, political, social, and moral disruption? How do we deal with the terrible things we do to each other?

The key scholarly contribution of this book lies in the intricate, rich, empirical lens it provides for a highly-contextualized understanding of lived experiences of “a way forward after rape” (p. 220). Porter argues that sexual violence’s complexity demands a focus on “the micro” instead of the “larger picture” (p. 215). Rape and what it is and does in war and peace can only be understood through its contextual nuances, and not through a universal script or a general prescription. After Rape is countering broad-brush theoretical and normative assumptions. Porter understands and reiterates throughout the book that her Acholi-specific findings cannot be generalized without losing meaning. Gaining insights and unique knowledge takes precedence.

By exploring “the supremacy of social harmony” (p. 17) after rape as a key moral objective of reconciliation and restoration, Porter makes an intriguing and convincing case for a new understanding of reconstruction and healing after violence. Through expansive ethnographical fieldwork, focusing on the Acholi people in northern Uganda (including 187 interviews of women and interactions with nongovernmental organizations and other social actors, e.g., family and churches), the author links the recovery from sexual violence to social justice—through social harmony. In the particular Acholi context, she defines “social harmony” as an expansively lived descriptor, rather than a limited verbal one (p. 3), rooted in the zeal for “normal” relationships within one’s community. Social harmony becomes a collective social ambition, a communal ideal to strive toward—and not an individual one. Social harmony defines “normal” as “the good”—good surroundings, good existence, good relations versus “the bad” that denotes war and crisis—“the uglier side of the elephant” (p. 18). The social construction of the good through social relationships—a normative, lived everydayness, a wholesome “being with respect”—“shapes people’s conscious and unconscious choices” (p. 4). According to Porter’s field research, for the Acholi people these social processes construct and reconstruct “the good” in the life after rape. They profoundly shape the meaning of life after rape.

The book’s chapters guide the reader through the deeply relational and social content of the justice and sexual violence nexus. Most interestingly, in this unique Acholi context, is how sexuality and love are uniquely defined and connect to local and transitional justice through particular social interpretations. “What is Acholi love?” (p. 76) Porter asks. Her research positions the meaning of sex, marriage, and rape within a specific setting of social belonging. She highlights the importance and context of community, kinship, and family as part of “extended social processes” (p. 41) and defines sex as “a social practice . . . of naturalising gender hierarchies” (p. 91). As such, she articulates the understanding and lived experiences of the Acholi’s “home people” contrasted with those of outsiders, the foreigners, “the people of human rights” such as NGOs. The push and pull between the “old” and the “new/foreign” (p. 128), the local and the distant in what defines rape, crime, right- and wrongdoing—how it is understood, experienced, judged, valued, transformed—remains central in Porter’s findings. Interview comments, such as “Rape never used to be there” or “Rape as a crime as it is talked about by NGOs did not exist prior to the war” (p. 174), underscore the struggle for meanings that the Acholi people experience.

The chapters unpack the definitions of coercion and consent, punishment and moral jurisdiction, and the differing roles of social actors (family, NGOs, and churches) within an environment steeped in tradition and social relationships. This environment sits counter to the disengaged, remote Ugandan state, the “long stick [that] does not kill the snake” (p. 141), and an equally deeply distrusted global judiciary, the International Criminal Court. As such, Porter places and explores rape and the harm it creates consistently within “the space between local solutions and more distant judicial systems” (p. 30). This space—between the state, judicial institutions, and the local—is defined by deep distrust of what justice is and who or what defines and receives it. Statements such as “There is not a true choice between peace and justice” (p. 68) or “If the court was fair, I would have taken him to court” (p. 156) are clear, empirical evidence of the lack of the judicial system’s perceived legitimacy.

Porter provides the reader with a unique understanding of “rape as the social” (p. 211) and of a resistance to the commonly understood, individual victim–perpetrator binary. She allows for a look at alternative justice actors within a transitional context and at social harmony as an appropriate response and mechanism for reconciliation. She provides an intriguingly rich lens into a social and communal cleansing, hence, recovery after rape not only for the victim and the perpetrator but also for the community as a collective political and social unit—and its future. This lens is an incredibly instructive view into “extraordinary displays of both forgiveness and brutal violence” (p. 155).

Porter triangulates her interviews with the analysis of court documents, engagement with the activities of gender-based-violence working groups, discussions with men, and her participatory reflections. Her research design also benefits from local input by “a group of Acholi women from a non-research village” (p. 27). What is also critically important, however, is how Porter acknowledges her positionality as a Western scholar, looking in from the outside. With the self-aware claim that “I am a foreigner. An American foreigner” (p. 23), she articulates from very early on her efforts to recognize and understand the perennial outsiderness of the researcher. Living for a decade in Gulu as part of the community, learning the language (an ongoing process), and framing her research as an “interexperience” or what “we experience together, yet, not in the same way” (23), Porter acknowledges the eternal dilemma of the foreigner’s bias, positionality, and partiality.

After Rape is a very important and thoughtful book about a very complex issue: How do we deal with the terrible things we do to each other? This is a book for anyone interested in understanding sexual violence beyond its universal script and beyond its “monolithic representations” (p. 31). It is a must-read for anyone interested in global politics, international law, global justice, or peace and gender studies. Its empirical richness and the unique knowledge it provides is thought provoking and most illuminating.