Violence touches women's lives in countless ways and, as Kathleen Staudt deftly demonstrates, women also resist. They resist in their everyday lives through individual actions that take tremendous courage and by creating collective responses that are infused with creativity and tireless commitment. Media attention focuses predominantly on the instances of violence, rather than on women's resistance and collective action. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of Ciudad Juárez, where between 1993 and 2003 more than 370 women and girls were found raped and murdered. From that period forward, an additional 30 women and girls were also killed annually. Staudt chronicles the efforts of the mothers of the murdered women and girls, who persisted in their activism despite lack of response from public officials and the criminal justice system. She analyzes how their collective action and political strategies expanded to include human rights and antiviolence groups, cultural workers, university students and faculty, law enforcement, and media on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

I begin where many reviews end, namely, with my recommendation that anyone who wants to better understand issues related to violence again women, collective action, criminal justice, urban politics, human rights, or globalization should read Violence and Activism and the Border. Staudt offers a rich, detailed, and nuanced analysis that places “the border at the center,” rather than at “the periphery, the edge, and the frontier” as is found in many media accounts of the U.S.-Mexico border (p. 82). Her “border-grounded framework,” which she describes in the first chapter, offers a “roadmap” to the multiple actors who have a stake in ending violence against women, as well as the processes that shaped antiviolence activism (p. 24). They include “external constituencies” (women's and human rights groups, political parties, and media); “internal stakeholders” (politicians, federal government's budgetary incentives, and “women's machinery”); and “binational responsiveness” (p. 25). Binational responses include zero tolerance of violence against women, early police intervention, law enforcement, and transnational human rights and related governance structures (p. 25).

In Chapter 2, Staudt provides an overview of the different cultural explanations for “femicide” along the U.S.-Mexico border. She challenges the view that violence against women can be explained primarily as a result of a particular culture's view of women, and highlights the ways that “a neocolonial global economy” contributes to “changes in gender power relations,” thus precipitating “selective male backlash as a desperate and flawed strategy to regain power” (p. 49). In Chapter 3, the author draws on data from multiple methods, including surveys and capacitación workshops, to provide insight into women's views about violence and its proposed solutions. She explains her decision to collaborate with FEMAP [Federación Mexicana de Asociaciones], which is an influential nongovernmental organization (NGO) with a large volunteer base and a long history of work in health clinics, hospitals, and diverse neighborhoods. The talleres de capacitación (capacity-building workshops) were designed by FEMAP organizer and Program Director Graciela de la Rosa (p. 53). Staudt's long-term commitment to activist scholarship is well demonstrated in the discussion of her collaboration with FEMAP and her creative use of the capacitación workshops to better understand the experiences, fears, and political analyses of women living in Ciudad Juárez.

Throughout the book, Staudt describes the rapes and murders as “femicide,” which was the term used by local activists to frame the violence against women along the border. Antiviolence activists also described the murder victims as the “assassinated” (p. x). In Chapter 4, she discusses how the framing shifted from “femicide” to “violence against women” as the business elite worked to cleanse the negative image of Ciudad Juárez brought on by international media attention to the murders. This chapter lays out the international network of activists who mobilized to put pressure on the Mexican government and local law enforcement, and explains how the Mexican government attempted to co-op the movement by bringing “activists and selected grieving mothers into its fold through appointments and/or stipends, aggravating the tensions surrounding representation” (pp. 92–93).

Chapter 5 shifts from the previous chapter's primary focus on NGOs and their efforts to bring attention to the violence on the border in order to consider the government's response. For the most part, the government's weak “political will” and ineffective law enforcement “trivialized and normalized” violence against women (p. 114). Activists on both sides of the border and those located within transnational human rights groups combined with insider professionals to successfully improve governmental responses to the violence. However, Staudt concludes, governors “have hardly begun to make violence against women a priority,” and “[t]he federal government could do far more to stimulate and subsidize changes at state and local levels” (p. 141). Without “energetic reforms,” she argues, “the male protection racket that has long characterized gendered criminal justice institutions in Mexico and elsewhere in the world” many more women will be killed and “injured in crimes that could be prevented” (p. 141).

In the final chapter, Staudt returns to discuss her conceptual framework, which highlights the significance of globalization and neoliberalism, law enforcement, culture, and institutional response. Her nuanced analysis includes sensitivity to the interplay of neoliberal globalization and the cultural context. Although misogyny and other forms of male power over women are not unique to Mexico, she notes that “Mexican myths about female betrayal and rage … morphed into a national hegemony and added an ugly legitimizing zest to male rage” (p. 144). The latter half of the chapter concentrates on the solutions developed in conversation and participation with women activists and other constituencies interested in ending violence on the border and beyond. In this section, the author stresses the need for “a binational umbrella for cooperation around human rights and security” (p. 146). She recognizes that “binational human rights–oriented law enforcement will be a costly strategy” but “should be complemented with cost-effective strategies to elevate wages, thereby putting resources and choices in people's hands” (pp. 148–49).

Violence and Activism at the Border is a testament to the power of interdisciplinary activist scholarship, research designed within an activist campaign and for an activist goal. Staudt's commitment to antiviolence work along the border has a long history. She worked closely with antiviolence activists while serving as the director of the Center for Civic Engagement at the University of Texas at El Paso and as a member of the binational Coalition Against Violence Toward Women and Families at the U.S.-Mexico Border. Her research grew out of this activism. She explains that she “went back and forth, from participant observation and activism to scientific research, with insights from each approval tested, developed, and advanced from the other” (p. xii). She applied this interdisciplinary perspective to her everyday activist engagements and, from this praxis, developed a deep understanding of the many factors that shaped the violence along the border and different forms of resistance. Her interdisciplinary framework acknowledges the importance of popular culture, including art, music, and drama for “democratic change toward social justice” (p. 157).

By placing academic and activist knowledges in dialogue with one another, Staudt enhances our understanding of the complex interplay of social movement dynamics and the role of the state in the context of neoliberal economic globalization. Her approach also deepens the praxis of movements designed to promote social justice along the U.S.-Mexico border and beyond.