Gendered Practices of Counterinsurgency

Citation:

Khalili, Laleh. 2011. "Gendered Practices of Counterinsurgency." Review of International Studies 37: 1471-91.

Author: Laleh Khalili

Abstract:

Current US counterinsurgency doctrine is gendered diversely in the different geographic locations where it is formulated, put in practice, and experienced. Where Iraqi and Afghan populations are subjected to counterinsurgency and its attendant development policy, spaces are made legible in gendered ways, and people are targeted – for violence or ‘nation-building’ – on the basis of gender-categorisation. Second, this gendering takes its most incendiary form in the seam of encounter between counterinsurgent foot-soldiers and the locals, where sexuality is weaponised and gender is most starkly cross-hatched with class and race. Finally, in the Metropole, new masculinities and femininities are forged in the domain of counterinsurgency policymaking: While new soldier-scholars represent a softened masculinity, counterinsurgent women increasingly become visible in policy circles, with both using ostensibly feminist justifications for their involvement.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Class, Combatants, Development, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Political Participation, Race, Sexuality, Violence Regions: MENA, Americas, North America, Asia, Middle East, South Asia Countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, United States of America

Year: 2011

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