Young people across the globe willingly join the military, knowing that they may be required to k... more Young people across the globe willingly join the military, knowing that they may be required to kill, maim, and perhaps even die. Considering the starkness of this barebone condition, armed forces strive to make enlisting desirable through recruitment campaigns. While the appeal of military aspirational promises – particularly the promise of manhood – figure centrally in much critical scholarship, the detailed components of these pledges warrant closer scrutiny. This article therefore explores the aspirational promises pledged in military recruitment campaigns from the US Army and the Swedish Armed Forces. Based on a narrative analysis of video testimonials in which ‘real’ soldiers tell their enlistment stories, we lay bare the overarching story grammar made up of distinct plot points (lack, hardship, agency and growth) that comprise the aspirational promises in these campaigns. In tracing these plot points in two distinct sites, the article offers well-needed insight into how the appeal of contemporary soldiering is being constructed and how this appeal attempts to govern potential soldiers. Despite their differences, the campaigns present soldiering as a or the way to regulate and govern the self in relation to norms about what constitutes a successful, self-fulfilled or complete citizen-subject. The aspirational figures in the testimonials promise that one can redress one’s deficiencies and transcend the racialized, gendered, and classed, etc. limits one confronts in oneself and in civilian life. These soldier stories, despite their hyperreal climaxes and journeys, appear to be real and lived and theirs. Vitally, they could also be ours.
Despite the prominent attention that the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has r... more Despite the prominent attention that the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has recently garnered globally, we still know far too little about what is sexual about sexual violence, according to whom, as well as why and how this matters in our efforts to prevent and redress its harms. A growing theoretical, political, legal and ethical imperative to ask questions about the sexual part of sexual violence across both war and peace is nonetheless emerging. This article therefore turns to the accounts of male and female survivors of CRSV at the at the Refugee Law Project (RLP) in Kampala, Uganda. In our reading of their accounts, we explore how the participants understand the possible imbrication of the perpetrator's sexual desire and pleasure with the violence they inflicted, as well as how they deem such intermeshing impossible or deeply problematic in and to the gendered frames that govern how they think about the distinctions between violence and sex, as well as t...
Over the past two decades feminism has made refreshing, often radical contributions to the study ... more Over the past two decades feminism has made refreshing, often radical contributions to the study of International Relations (IR). Feminism is no longer a rare import but a well-established approach within IR, as its inclusion in the core texts and scholarly collections of the field testifies. IR students today benefit from the theoretical and empirical space opened up by feminist scholars. Since the late 1980s, feminist scholars have paved the way for serious engagement with gender and theory in a previously gender-blind and theoretically abstract IR field. Despite its increasing recognition, however, the progress of feminist international relations scholarship has been far from straightforward. In a state-centric discipline that is notorious for its lack of self-reflection, developing feminist methodologies and conducting feminist research have been major challenges. However, since all power relations are essential to feminist perspectives and to the feminist research process, femi...
Om krig och fred En introduktion till freds- och konfliktstudier Hur kan vi forsta uppkomsten och... more Om krig och fred En introduktion till freds- och konfliktstudier Hur kan vi forsta uppkomsten och konsekvenserna av dagens konflikter? Vad kan goras for att forhindra att de bryter ut? Och hur kan pagaende konflikter losas pa ett satt som skapar varaktig fred? I denna breda grundbok presenteras centrala fragestallningar och analytiska perspektiv pa krig och konflikt, konflikthantering och konfliktlosning, samt fredsbyggande och utveckling. Boken innehaller ocksa illustrativa fallanalyser – allt ifran forsta varldskriget, kriget i Afghanistan, konflikthantering i Afrika, svensk sakerhetspolitik och forsoningsprocesser i Bosnien-Hercegovina till fredsbyggande insatser i Palestina.
What is changing? This: the contradictions and predations of patriarchal imperialist capitalism, ... more What is changing? This: the contradictions and predations of patriarchal imperialist capitalism, and of the deeply racist and gendered material and symbolic order it produces, have enabled an accelerating, unrelenting, unfettered extractive stance toward the planet, its ecosystems and natural resources, and the plant and animal species and human beings that inhabit it. That stance has not only resulted in increasingly outrageous inequalities and concentrations of wealth; it has gotten us to the brink of climate catastrophe, ecosystem collapse, and a vast, literally unimaginable intensification and expansion of human immiseration and suffering. So what is changing in security (if not in security studies, critical or otherwise) is everything-from the entire context of stable planetary ecosystems that gave rise to the way our world is politically, economically and socially structured, to our understandings of those structures, and to our models and theories of what constitutes security within them, be it state security or human security. We can no longer claim to be thinking about security unless we address the model that conceives the purpose of economic activity as ever-increasing 'efficiencies' of extraction, exploitation and consumption of nature's resources, and of human labour, both paid and unpaid, for the purpose of profit-rather than, for example, conceiving the purpose of economic activity as meeting human needs for a decent and dignified life, and ensuring the sustainability of the resources and ecosystems on which life depends. Consider just these few snapshots of what that model has produced: How is it possible to talk about 'security' while ignoring them/without centring them? 862912S DI0010.1177/0967010619862912Security DialogueSalter (ed.) et al. Horizon scan-commentaries article-Commentary2019 Salter (ed.) et al. Horizon scan-commentaries References NASA Science (n.d.
How to teach about rape in war and genocide? This edited volume draws on the expertise of scholar... more How to teach about rape in war and genocide? This edited volume draws on the expertise of scholars and human rights practitioners to explore that crucial question. Across the chapters its authors address five questions: Why teach about rape in war and genocide? Who should teach and learn? What needs to be taught? How should one teach? Where and when should teaching take place? Offering guidance for teaching and discussion, this study combines research and pedagogical experience to make the volume useful not only as a pedagogical guide but also as a source that advances understanding about, and resistance against, a major atrocity that besieges human flourishing.
ABSTRACT This is a literature-reviewing and conceptualizing article introducing a Special Issue t... more ABSTRACT This is a literature-reviewing and conceptualizing article introducing a Special Issue that is addressing the broad field of ‘peacebuilding amidst violence’. We take as a point of departure that peacebuilding (as we know it) is widely failing to deliver on its promises. Moreover, the atypical nature and persistence of violence in post-war phases are further undermining the prospect of linear transition from war to peace as typically expected in peacebuilding ventures. We extend, however, our argument and claim that in spite of creative ‘turns’, the concept has exhausted its adaptive capacity, and both conceptually and empirically has few options left. We investigate the three possible, as we see it, remaining options, which all include paradigmatic changes, namely the closure of, the refusal of the failure of, and the re-enacting of, peacebuilding. Although the ‘re-enacting’ is the preferred way forward for the authors of this introductory article, it rather opens up for the ensuing articles presented in the issue than concludes of the desirability and feasibility of that path.
Despite the wide repository of knowledge about conflict-related sexual violence that now exists, ... more Despite the wide repository of knowledge about conflict-related sexual violence that now exists, there remains a lack of understanding about how victims/survivors of such violence themselves make sense of and frame their experiences in conversation with global and local discourses and with the categorisations that underpin support programmes. Such sense-making is important not only because the ways in which violence is categorised shape a victim/survivor's ability to access particular forms of recognition and support, but also because it is central in how shattered selves and worlds are remade in the aftermath of violence. Drawing on individual and group interviews conducted with refugees living in Kampala, Uganda, this article charts how framings of ‘torture’ and ‘sexual violence’ become meaningful in participants’ accounts in the (re)formation of themselves as subjects after violent victimisation. We trace how participants navigate the heteronormative societal and legal norms ...
When considering possible conversations, synergies, overlaps, similarities, conflicts, and distin... more When considering possible conversations, synergies, overlaps, similarities, conflicts, and distinctions between two subfields or “camps” (Sylvester 2010), the question of limits looms large. Where, why, and how are the limits of feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist global political economy (FGPE) currently being drawn, and to what effect? Building upon previous conversations about the relationship between FSS and FGPE, particularly as they were discussed in the Critical Perspectives section in Politics & Gender (June 2015), as well as those about FSS and FGPE more generally, I briefly touch on a few central points regarding the politics of boundary drawing and the practices of feminist research.
Young people across the globe willingly join the military, knowing that they may be required to k... more Young people across the globe willingly join the military, knowing that they may be required to kill, maim, and perhaps even die. Considering the starkness of this barebone condition, armed forces strive to make enlisting desirable through recruitment campaigns. While the appeal of military aspirational promises – particularly the promise of manhood – figure centrally in much critical scholarship, the detailed components of these pledges warrant closer scrutiny. This article therefore explores the aspirational promises pledged in military recruitment campaigns from the US Army and the Swedish Armed Forces. Based on a narrative analysis of video testimonials in which ‘real’ soldiers tell their enlistment stories, we lay bare the overarching story grammar made up of distinct plot points (lack, hardship, agency and growth) that comprise the aspirational promises in these campaigns. In tracing these plot points in two distinct sites, the article offers well-needed insight into how the appeal of contemporary soldiering is being constructed and how this appeal attempts to govern potential soldiers. Despite their differences, the campaigns present soldiering as a or the way to regulate and govern the self in relation to norms about what constitutes a successful, self-fulfilled or complete citizen-subject. The aspirational figures in the testimonials promise that one can redress one’s deficiencies and transcend the racialized, gendered, and classed, etc. limits one confronts in oneself and in civilian life. These soldier stories, despite their hyperreal climaxes and journeys, appear to be real and lived and theirs. Vitally, they could also be ours.
Despite the prominent attention that the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has r... more Despite the prominent attention that the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has recently garnered globally, we still know far too little about what is sexual about sexual violence, according to whom, as well as why and how this matters in our efforts to prevent and redress its harms. A growing theoretical, political, legal and ethical imperative to ask questions about the sexual part of sexual violence across both war and peace is nonetheless emerging. This article therefore turns to the accounts of male and female survivors of CRSV at the at the Refugee Law Project (RLP) in Kampala, Uganda. In our reading of their accounts, we explore how the participants understand the possible imbrication of the perpetrator's sexual desire and pleasure with the violence they inflicted, as well as how they deem such intermeshing impossible or deeply problematic in and to the gendered frames that govern how they think about the distinctions between violence and sex, as well as t...
Over the past two decades feminism has made refreshing, often radical contributions to the study ... more Over the past two decades feminism has made refreshing, often radical contributions to the study of International Relations (IR). Feminism is no longer a rare import but a well-established approach within IR, as its inclusion in the core texts and scholarly collections of the field testifies. IR students today benefit from the theoretical and empirical space opened up by feminist scholars. Since the late 1980s, feminist scholars have paved the way for serious engagement with gender and theory in a previously gender-blind and theoretically abstract IR field. Despite its increasing recognition, however, the progress of feminist international relations scholarship has been far from straightforward. In a state-centric discipline that is notorious for its lack of self-reflection, developing feminist methodologies and conducting feminist research have been major challenges. However, since all power relations are essential to feminist perspectives and to the feminist research process, femi...
Om krig och fred En introduktion till freds- och konfliktstudier Hur kan vi forsta uppkomsten och... more Om krig och fred En introduktion till freds- och konfliktstudier Hur kan vi forsta uppkomsten och konsekvenserna av dagens konflikter? Vad kan goras for att forhindra att de bryter ut? Och hur kan pagaende konflikter losas pa ett satt som skapar varaktig fred? I denna breda grundbok presenteras centrala fragestallningar och analytiska perspektiv pa krig och konflikt, konflikthantering och konfliktlosning, samt fredsbyggande och utveckling. Boken innehaller ocksa illustrativa fallanalyser – allt ifran forsta varldskriget, kriget i Afghanistan, konflikthantering i Afrika, svensk sakerhetspolitik och forsoningsprocesser i Bosnien-Hercegovina till fredsbyggande insatser i Palestina.
What is changing? This: the contradictions and predations of patriarchal imperialist capitalism, ... more What is changing? This: the contradictions and predations of patriarchal imperialist capitalism, and of the deeply racist and gendered material and symbolic order it produces, have enabled an accelerating, unrelenting, unfettered extractive stance toward the planet, its ecosystems and natural resources, and the plant and animal species and human beings that inhabit it. That stance has not only resulted in increasingly outrageous inequalities and concentrations of wealth; it has gotten us to the brink of climate catastrophe, ecosystem collapse, and a vast, literally unimaginable intensification and expansion of human immiseration and suffering. So what is changing in security (if not in security studies, critical or otherwise) is everything-from the entire context of stable planetary ecosystems that gave rise to the way our world is politically, economically and socially structured, to our understandings of those structures, and to our models and theories of what constitutes security within them, be it state security or human security. We can no longer claim to be thinking about security unless we address the model that conceives the purpose of economic activity as ever-increasing 'efficiencies' of extraction, exploitation and consumption of nature's resources, and of human labour, both paid and unpaid, for the purpose of profit-rather than, for example, conceiving the purpose of economic activity as meeting human needs for a decent and dignified life, and ensuring the sustainability of the resources and ecosystems on which life depends. Consider just these few snapshots of what that model has produced: How is it possible to talk about 'security' while ignoring them/without centring them? 862912S DI0010.1177/0967010619862912Security DialogueSalter (ed.) et al. Horizon scan-commentaries article-Commentary2019 Salter (ed.) et al. Horizon scan-commentaries References NASA Science (n.d.
How to teach about rape in war and genocide? This edited volume draws on the expertise of scholar... more How to teach about rape in war and genocide? This edited volume draws on the expertise of scholars and human rights practitioners to explore that crucial question. Across the chapters its authors address five questions: Why teach about rape in war and genocide? Who should teach and learn? What needs to be taught? How should one teach? Where and when should teaching take place? Offering guidance for teaching and discussion, this study combines research and pedagogical experience to make the volume useful not only as a pedagogical guide but also as a source that advances understanding about, and resistance against, a major atrocity that besieges human flourishing.
ABSTRACT This is a literature-reviewing and conceptualizing article introducing a Special Issue t... more ABSTRACT This is a literature-reviewing and conceptualizing article introducing a Special Issue that is addressing the broad field of ‘peacebuilding amidst violence’. We take as a point of departure that peacebuilding (as we know it) is widely failing to deliver on its promises. Moreover, the atypical nature and persistence of violence in post-war phases are further undermining the prospect of linear transition from war to peace as typically expected in peacebuilding ventures. We extend, however, our argument and claim that in spite of creative ‘turns’, the concept has exhausted its adaptive capacity, and both conceptually and empirically has few options left. We investigate the three possible, as we see it, remaining options, which all include paradigmatic changes, namely the closure of, the refusal of the failure of, and the re-enacting of, peacebuilding. Although the ‘re-enacting’ is the preferred way forward for the authors of this introductory article, it rather opens up for the ensuing articles presented in the issue than concludes of the desirability and feasibility of that path.
Despite the wide repository of knowledge about conflict-related sexual violence that now exists, ... more Despite the wide repository of knowledge about conflict-related sexual violence that now exists, there remains a lack of understanding about how victims/survivors of such violence themselves make sense of and frame their experiences in conversation with global and local discourses and with the categorisations that underpin support programmes. Such sense-making is important not only because the ways in which violence is categorised shape a victim/survivor's ability to access particular forms of recognition and support, but also because it is central in how shattered selves and worlds are remade in the aftermath of violence. Drawing on individual and group interviews conducted with refugees living in Kampala, Uganda, this article charts how framings of ‘torture’ and ‘sexual violence’ become meaningful in participants’ accounts in the (re)formation of themselves as subjects after violent victimisation. We trace how participants navigate the heteronormative societal and legal norms ...
When considering possible conversations, synergies, overlaps, similarities, conflicts, and distin... more When considering possible conversations, synergies, overlaps, similarities, conflicts, and distinctions between two subfields or “camps” (Sylvester 2010), the question of limits looms large. Where, why, and how are the limits of feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist global political economy (FGPE) currently being drawn, and to what effect? Building upon previous conversations about the relationship between FSS and FGPE, particularly as they were discussed in the Critical Perspectives section in Politics & Gender (June 2015), as well as those about FSS and FGPE more generally, I briefly touch on a few central points regarding the politics of boundary drawing and the practices of feminist research.
Book Review on Feminist Methodologies for International Relations edited by Brooke Ackerly, Maria... more Book Review on Feminist Methodologies for International Relations edited by Brooke Ackerly, Maria Stern, and Jacqui True
Sexual violence against men is an under-theorised and under-noticed topic, though it is becoming ... more Sexual violence against men is an under-theorised and under-noticed topic, though it is becoming increasingly apparent that this form of violence is widespread. Yet despite emerging evidence documenting its incidence, especially in conflict and post-conflict zones, efforts to understand its causes and develop strategies to reduce it are hampered by a dearth of theoretical engagement. One of the reasons that might explain its empirical invisibility and theoretical vacuity is its complicated relationship with sexual violence against women. The latter is evident empirically, theoretically, and politically, but the relationship between these violences conjures a range of complex and controversial questions about the ways they might be different, and why and how these differences matter.
Sexual violence against men is an under-theorised and under-noticed topic, though it is becoming ... more Sexual violence against men is an under-theorised and under-noticed topic, though it is becoming increasingly apparent that this form of violence is widespread. Yet despite emerging evidence documenting its incidence, especially in conflict and post-conflict zones, efforts to understand its causes and develop strategies to reduce it are hampered by a dearth of theoretical engagement. One of the reasons that might explain its empirical invisibility and theoretical vacuity is its complicated relationship with sexual violence against women. The latter is evident empirically, theoretically, and politically, but the relationship between these violences conjures a range of complex and controversial questions about the ways they might be different, and why and how these differences matter.
It is the case that sexual violence (when noticed at all) has historically been understood to happen largely, if not only, to women, allegedly because of their gender and their ensuing place in gender orders. This begs important questions regarding the impact of increasing knowledge about sexual violence against men, including the impact on resources, on understandings about, and experiences of masculinity, and whether the idea and practice of gender hierarchy is outdated. This book engages this diverse set of questions and offers fresh analysis on the incidences of sexual violence against men using both new and existing data. Additionally, the authors pay close attention to some of the controversial debates in the context of sexual violence against men, revisiting and asking new questions about the vexed issue of masculinities and related theories of gender hierarchy.
The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sex, gender, masculinities, corporeality, violence, and global politics, as well as to practitioners and activists.
Young people across the globe willingly join the military, knowing that they may be required to k... more Young people across the globe willingly join the military, knowing that they may be required to kill, maim, and perhaps even die. Considering the starkness of this barebone condition, armed forces strive to make enlisting desirable through recruitment campaigns. While the appeal of military aspirational promises – particularly the promise of manhood – figure centrally in much critical scholarship, the detailed components of these pledges warrant closer scrutiny. This article therefore explores the aspirational promises pledged in military recruitment campaigns from the US Army and the Swedish Armed Forces. Based on a narrative analysis of video testimonials in which ‘real’ soldiers tell their enlistment stories, we lay bare the overarching story grammar made up of distinct plot points (lack, hardship, agency and growth) that comprise the aspirational promises in these campaigns. In tracing these plot points in two distinct sites, the article offers well-needed insight into how the appeal of contemporary soldiering is being constructed and how this appeal attempts to govern potential soldiers. Despite their differences, the campaigns present soldiering as a or the way to regulate and govern the self in relation to norms about what constitutes a successful, self-fulfilled or complete citizen-subject. The aspirational figures in the testimonials promise that one can redress one’s deficiencies and transcend the racialized, gendered, and classed, etc. limits one confronts in oneself and in civilian life. These soldier stories, despite their hyperreal climaxes and journeys, appear to be real and lived and theirs. Vitally, they could also be ours.
Despite the prominent attention that the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has r... more Despite the prominent attention that the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has recently garnered globally, we still know far too little about what is sexual about sexual violence, according to whom, as well as why and how this matters in our efforts to prevent and redress its harms. A growing theoretical, political, legal and ethical imperative to ask questions about the sexual part of sexual violence across both war and peace is nonetheless emerging. This article therefore turns to the accounts of male and female survivors of CRSV at the at the Refugee Law Project (RLP) in Kampala, Uganda. In our reading of their accounts, we explore how the participants understand the possible imbrication of the perpetrator's sexual desire and pleasure with the violence they inflicted, as well as how they deem such intermeshing impossible or deeply problematic in and to the gendered frames that govern how they think about the distinctions between violence and sex, as well as t...
The notion of “leaky” female bodies has long rationalized the exclusion of women from military se... more The notion of “leaky” female bodies has long rationalized the exclusion of women from military service. Yet, in an attempt to bolster enlistments by appealing to women, the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) embarked on a marketing strategy that aims to break with gender stereotypes in order to fill its ranks. Most notably, in a 2018 recruitment campaign, an SAF billboard posed the question “Can I have my period in the field?” This article probes how the leaky female body is mobilized in SAF marketing campaigns and outreach activities. While remarkable for their commitment to gender parity, we aver that there is more going on in these campaigns that seemingly render women's bodies normal and unproblematic as military bodies than a move toward gender equality. The representations of female soldiering bodies that emerge reproduce a familiar form of militarism that promotes the necessity of a battle-ready military corps that is predictable, and poised for warring. Moreover, these explicitly feminist SAF campaigns also beckon with the possibility of becoming that transcends the bodily limitations of sex/gender in civilian as well as military life, in war as well as in peace—to become perhaps something/someone/somewhere else that only military service can offer.
Despite the prominent attention that the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has r... more Despite the prominent attention that the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has recently garnered globally, we still know far too little about what is sexual about sexual violence, according to whom, as well as why and how this matters in our efforts to prevent and redress its harms. A growing theoretical, political, legal and ethical imperative to ask questions about the sexual part of sexual violence across both war and peace is nonetheless emerging. This article therefore turns to the accounts of male and female survivors of CRSV at the at the Refugee Law Project (RLP) in Kampala, Uganda. In our reading of their accounts, we explore how the participants understand the possible imbrication of the perpetrator's sexual desire and pleasure with the violence they inflicted, as well as how they deem such intermeshing impossible or deeply problematic in and to the gendered frames that govern how they think about the distinctions between violence and sex, as well as themselves as sexual, social, embodied subjects. Read together, these conflicted and conflicting testimonies offer a vantage point from which to rethink some of the reductive truisms that persist in dominant policy-friendly accounts of wartime sexual violence—namely that such violence is about power and not about ‘sex’. The participants’ accounts thus urge us, as scholars and policy advocates, to resist reducing the multi-layered experiences of victim/survivors of sexual violence to fit into the palatable narratives of victimhood that prevail in humanitarian, juridical and policy spaces.
Marysia Zalewski's work has taught us, as a collective of feminist scholars, to be cautious of ne... more Marysia Zalewski's work has taught us, as a collective of feminist scholars, to be cautious of neat instruction manuals and coherently set out plans of action; of claims to sure knowledge about danger, violence, and its subjects and remedies; of the fanfare of grand arrivals; and of the quieter staking of ground that has been seemingly won. Zalewski has persistently reminded us in different ways that we/she does ‘not even know what gender is or does’. Far from a flippant response to the emptiness of gender mainstreaming policies, this seemingly simple statement instead serves as a glaring post-it note on the margins of our texts about International Relations theory, feminism, sex/gender and violence— both those that we read, as well as those that we write. However, this lesson is often forgotten in our rush to understand and establish gendered harms as valid and important, and to seek their redress. Gleaning insights from Zalewski's work, this article critically considers possible responses to the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. Its aim is not to delve into a discussion of the politics or effects of the Peace Prize as such, but to instead use the 2018 Peace Prize as a marker—a moment to consider the possibility for critique in relation to sexual violence.
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It is the case that sexual violence (when noticed at all) has historically been understood to happen largely, if not only, to women, allegedly because of their gender and their ensuing place in gender orders. This begs important questions regarding the impact of increasing knowledge about sexual violence against men, including the impact on resources, on understandings about, and experiences of masculinity, and whether the idea and practice of gender hierarchy is outdated. This book engages this diverse set of questions and offers fresh analysis on the incidences of sexual violence against men using both new and existing data. Additionally, the authors pay close attention to some of the controversial debates in the context of sexual violence against men, revisiting and asking new questions about the vexed issue of masculinities and related theories of gender hierarchy.
The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sex, gender, masculinities, corporeality, violence, and global politics, as well as to practitioners and activists.