Gendering Military Sacrifice: A Feminist Comparative Analysis

Citation:

Åse, Cecilia, and Maria Wendt, eds. 2019. Gendering Military Sacrifice: A Feminist Comparative Analysis. London: Routledge.

Authors: Cecilia Åse, Maria Wendt

Annotation:

Summary:
This book offers a feminist analysis of military sacrifice and reveals the importance of a gender perspective in understanding the idea of honourable death.
 
In present-day security discourses, traditional masculinised obligations to die for the homeland and its women and children are challenged and renegotiated. Working from a critical feminist perspective, this book examines the political and societal justifications for sacrifice in wars motivated by human rights and an international responsibility to protect. With original empirical research from six European countries, the volume demonstrates how gendered and nationalistic representations saturate contemporary notions of sacrifice and legitimate military violence. A key argument is that a gender perspective is necessary in order to understand, and to oppose, the idea of the honourable military death. Bringing together a wide range of materials – including public debates, rituals, monuments and artwork – to analyse the justifications for soldiers’ deaths in the Afghanistan war (2002–14), the analysis challenges methodological nationalism. The authors develop a feminist comparative methodology and engage in cross-country and transdisciplinary analysis. This innovative approach generates new understandings of the ways in which both the idealisation and the political contestation of military violence depend on gendered national narratives.
 
This book will be of much interest to students of gender studies, critical military studies, security studies and International Relations. (Summary from Taylor & Francis)
 
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction
Cecilia Åse
 
2. Comparison as Feminist Method
Cecilia Åse and Maria Wendt
 
3. The Politics of War Rituals
Maria Wendt
 
4. The New National War Monuments
Vron Ware
 
5. Artistic Interventions
Redi Koobak
 
6. Debating Deaths
Hanne Martinek
 
7. Gendered Grief
Cecilia Åse, Monica Quirico, and Maria Wendt
 
8. Conclusion
Cecilia Åse and Maria Wendt

Topics: Armed Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Nationalism, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia, Europe Countries: Afghanistan

Year: 2019

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