Gender-Based Violence

Open-Pit Peace: The Power of Extractive Industries in Post-Conflict Transitions

Citation:

Paarlberg-Kvam, Kate. 2021.“Open-Pit Peace: The Power of Extractive Industries in Post-Conflict Transitions.” Peacebuilding 9 (3): 289-310.

Author: Kate Paarlberg-Kvam

Abstract:

Three years after the peace accord signed by the Colombian government and the country’s largest guerrilla group, the guerrillas announced a return to arms. The announcement was met with dismay, but not surprise, as the numbers of murdered ex-combatants and social leaders rise and the government’s tepid commitment to the peace process sputters and stalls. At the centre of this violence have been the extractive industries. How should peace studies make sense of the power of extractivism, often described as a key element of postconflict reconstruction around the globe? This article focuses on Colombia as a case study of the contradictions of the postliberal peace, as stated commitments to gender justice and economic redistribution are undermined by commitments to mining and biofuel profits. A decolonial feminist lens, informed by Latin American anticapitalist feminists, sheds light on these contradictions and illuminates possibilities for a transformed peace in a postneoliberal world.

Keywords: extractivism, decoloniality, peacebuilding, Colombia

Topics: Armed Conflict, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Development, Extractive Industries, Gender Mainstreaming, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Peacebuilding, Security, Sexual Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2021

Extractive Industries, Violence, and Corporate Criminality: Is There a Pathway to Global Justice?

Anna Zalik

Catherine Coumans

Marta Ruedas

December 2, 2021

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This event was co-sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Boston's Africana Studies Department; Anthropology Department; Asian Studies Department; Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance; Economics Department; History Department; The Honors College; Political Science Department; School for Global Inclusion and Social Development; Sociology Department; and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department and Human Rights Minor.

The Endurance of Women’s Mobilization During “Patriarchal Backlash”: A Case from Colombia’s Reconfiguring Armed Conflict

Citation:

Zulver, Julia Margaret. 2021. “The Endurance of Women’s Mobilization during ‘Patriarchal Backlash’: A Case from Colombia’s Reconfiguring Armed Conflict.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 23 (3): 440–62.

Author: Julia Margaret Zulver (she/her/hers)

Abstract:

Despite the signing of a peace accord between the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Government of Colombia in 2016, it is increasingly apparent that the country’s armed conflict is reconfiguring rather than abating. This is evident in the widespread targeting of social leaders with threats, violence, and death. This article focuses on the Alianza de Mujeres Tejedoras de Vida, an association of women in Putumayo who mobilized for peace and women’s rights during Colombia’s armed conflict. Since 2018, however, they have been specifically targeted by armed groups for their activism and support of the peace process. This has led to increased – and gendered – acts of violence against them. This article frames the violence that they currently face as an example of what Berry refers to as “patriarchal backlash,” a reaction to the gains that women make in their communities during war that threaten men’s hegemonic control. I argue that while the resurgence of violence represents a limitation to women’s mobilization, it is not insurmountable. Indeed, the Alianza’s ongoing mobilization can be understood as a function of the repertoires of action developed during previous moments of conflict. This article contributes to wider conversations about the durability of women’s mobilization beyond the permeable bounds of a conflict/post-conflict binary.

Keywords: women's activism, Colombia, patriarchal backlash, repertoires of action, women social leaders

Topics: Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Peace Processes, Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2021

Don’t Mention the War! International Financial Institutions and the Gendered Circuits of Violence in Post-Conflict

Citation:

True, Jacqui, and Aida A. Hozić. 2020. “Don't Mention the War! International Financial Institutions and the Gendered Circuits of Violence in Post-Conflict.” Review of International Political Economy 27 (6): 1193–1213.

Authors: Jacqui True, Aida A. Hozić

Abstract:

This paper provides a framework for explicitly linking feminist analysis of global political economy and feminist analysis of war/peace through the concept of ‘gendered circuits of violence.’ The framework connects the gendered economics of peace and war through analyses of standard policy mechanisms promoted by International Financial Institutions and International Organizations—from general debt servicing and lending in post-war recovery to microfinance programmes, extractive resource economics, taxation, budgeting and austerity in the state sector. With gendered circuits of violence as the core concept, feminist political economy analysis transgresses security-IPE-development divides. Gendered circuits of violence are manifest through bodies that are carriers of violence from war zones to areas of alleged peace; through IFIs as distributors of harm and comfort to transnational households; and in the interstitial post-conflict spaces created by remittances, care and debt. Feminist analysis reveals the imbrication of capitalist systems with the intersectional politics of gender and race, and the (re)production and diffusion of violent conflict.

Keywords: critical feminist IPE, households, post-conflict, international financial institutions, gendered violence, war

Topics: Economies, War Economies, Extractive Industries, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, International Financial Institutions, International Organizations, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Race

Year: 2020

The ‘Comfort Women’ Issue and the Embedded Culture of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Japan

Citation:

Kazue, Muta. 2016. “The ‘Comfort Women’ Issue and the Embedded Culture of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Japan.” Current Sociology 64 (4): 620–36. 

Author: Muta Kazue

Abstract:

For over two decades, survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery during the Asia-Pacific War, euphemistically called comfort women (ianfu), have been demanding the Japanese government take responsibility for past atrocities to restore their dignity. They have yet to obtain a satisfactory response; indeed, their demands have frequently been met with verbal attacks from the right-wing, including influential politicians. This article seeks to identify and explain some of the reasons why the problem has remained a highly controversial, but stubbornly unresolved issue. It begins by offering a brief history of the issue and then maps out the contemporary controversy. It shows that right-wing attacks should be understood as stemming from a systemic and deeply embedded bifurcation of women in Japanese society that allows the adoration of some women to comfortably coexist with misogyny, powerful rape myths, and a porn culture. These deeply permeate many areas of society, including its courts.

Keywords: Japan, Korea, comfort women, comfort women issue, Conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence, conflict-related sexual violence, conflict-related sexual violence against women, South Korea

Topics: Gender-Based Violence, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, SV against Women, Sexuality Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: Japan, South Korea

Year: 2016

Las Violencias Sexuadas de La Guerra Civil Española: Paradigma Para Una Lectura Cultural Del Conflicto

Citation:

Joly, Maud. 2008. “Las Violencias Sexuadas de La Guerra Civil Española: Paradigma Para Una Lectura Cultural Del Conflicto.” Historia Social, no. 61 (2008): 89–107.

Author: Maud Joly

Abstract:

SPANISH ABSTRACT:

El artículo propone una lectura cultural de la Guerra Civil que tenga como objeto de estudio las violencias sexuadas dirigidas contra las mujeres republicanas. Esta aproximación se inscribe en la voluntad de superar los límites cronológicos y epistemológicos de la interpretación histórica del conflicto. Tras hacer un balance historiográfico, la reflexión se dirige a las modalidades, significados y genealogía del "saqueo del cuerpo" perpetrado durante la Guerra Civil. Más adelante se analiza la dimensión pública, espectacular y escatològica de las violencias sexuadas, entra la sumisión y la reconquista de la retaguardia. Por último, la aproximación cultural del fenómeno guerrero invita a reflexionar sobre las experiencias femeninas de la violencia de guerra.

 

ENGLISH ABSTRACT:

The article puts forward a cultural interpretation of the Civil War which covers the aspects of sexed violence suffered by Republican women. This approach arises through the wish to go beyond the chronological and epistemological limits of the historical interpretation of the conflict. After making a historiographie appraisal, the reflection goes on to tackle the modalities, meanings and genealogy of the "body looting" perpetrated during the Civil War. Then an analysis is made of the spectacular and eschatological public dimension of sexed violence, with the submission and the reconquest of the rearguard. Lastly, the cultural approach of the warrior phenomenon leads readers to a reflection on the female experiences of war violence.

Keywords: Spanish Civil War, Spain, conflict-related sexual violence, conflict-related sexual violence against women, rape

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Gender-Based Violence, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, SV against Women Regions: Europe, Western Europe Countries: Spain

Year: 2008

The Challenges of Gendering Genocide: Reflections on a Feminist Politics of Complexity

Citation:

Helms, Elissa. “The Challenges of Gendering Genocide: Reflections on a Feminist Politics of Complexity.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 22 (4): 463–69.

Author: Elissa Helms

Keywords: genocide, Bosnia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia

Annotation:

"When feminists and activists tackle the gendered dynamics of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and contemporary armed conflict, it seems safe to assume that their analyses and interventions are rooted in solidarity with the victims and survivors, in a desire to understand in order to contribute to the eradication of such violence and suffering. Yet some feminist or women-centered positions have sparked serious anxiety and anger among women war survivors and their advocates, rifts in feminist alliances, as well as disturbing political and material consequences for survivors and for the wider societies in which they live. The very collective nature of genocide and ethnicized violence makes them resistant to feminist critique – to scrutiny of the ways in which (ethno-) national collectivities create, and mask, power hierarchies within purported unity (McClintock, 1993) (...) This essay is a reflection on some of the issues and challenges for feminist scholarship and activism that emerge out of critical study of gendered war violence and the politics of collective ethnic and gender victimhood in a postwar setting" (Helms 2015, 463).

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnic/Communal Wars, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gender-Based Violence, Genocide, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Rape, SV against Women Regions: Europe, Balkans Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina

Year: 2015

Performativity, Precarity and Sexual Politics

Citation:

Butler, Judith. 2009. “Performativity, Precarity and Sexual Politics.” AIBR. Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana 4 (3): i-xiii.

Author: Judith Butler

Abstract:

Gender performativity is one of the core concepts in Judith Butler’s work. In this paper Butler re-examines this term and completes it with the idea of precarity, by making a reference to those who are exposed to injury, violence and displacement, those who are in risk of not being qualified as a subject of recognition, There are issues that constantly arise in the nation-states, such as claiming a right when there is not a right to claim, or being forced to follow certain norms in order to change these norms. This is particularly relevant in the sexual policies that are shaped within the nation-states.

Keywords: performativity, precariety, sexual policies, post-structuralism

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, Sexual Violence, Violence

Year: 2009

The Crucible of Sexual Violence: Militarized Masculinities and the Abjection of Life in Post-Crisis, Neoliberal South Korea

Citation:

Park, Youme. 2016. “The Crucible of Sexual Violence: Militarized Masculinities and the Abjection of Life in Post-Crisis, Neoliberal South Korea.” Feminist Studies 42 (1): 17-40.

Author: Youme Park

Abstract:

This paper explores the ways the “civil” society of Post-Crisis, neoliberal South Korea is constituted by a type of militarized masculinity that normalizes and even legitimates sexual violence. When the movie version of the best selling novel, The Crucible, written by Gong, Ji-Young, was released in the fall of 2011, it created a public outcry against the case of sexual molestation of handicapped children by their teachers and school administrators. On September 24 of the same year, a sexual assault inflicted upon a female high school student by a US soldier ignited a mass protest against what many perceive to be an insult against Korea’s national sovereignty. By exploring these two moments of cultural crises, I argue that in a militarized society like South Korea, 1) violence is routinized and normalized (while exoticized and sensationalized at the same time) when it is imagined in sexual terms, 2) sexual violence is naturalized when it is folded into masculine and militarized power, 3) militarism justifies its absolute power to adjudicate who to kill and to let live by resorting to the idealized form of masculinity that is based on the conflation of brutality with immortality, and finally, 4) a public outrage against sexual brutality can be easily co-opted into the reformist rhetoric that argues for a more benevolent form of patriarchy or neocolonial domination unless such outrage is accompanied by a thorough rejection of domination (and brutality) as an idealized form of political power and life itself.

Topics: Civil Society, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Masculinism, Patriarchy, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Militarization, Sexual Violence, Violence Countries: South Korea

Year: 2016

Social and Cultural Determinants of the Spread of HIV/AIDS, STIs and Gender Based Violence in High Risk Areas: A Case of Road Construction Sites in Tanzania

Citation:

Jeckoniah, John Nshimba. 2018. “Social and Cultural Determinants of the Spread of HIV/AIDS, STIs and Gender Based Violence in High Risk Areas: A Case of Road Construction Sites in Tanzania.” International Journal of Development and Sustainability 7 (7): 2187–203.

Author: John Nshimba Jeckoniah

Abstract:

High mobility of sexually active population continues to be a risky factor for the spread of STIs and HIV, both in the source and destination sites. This paper analyses the social and cultural determinants for the spread of STIs and HIV along road construction sites which harbour a number of migrant workers from rural and urban areas. The study adopted a cross-sectional study design, using a structured questionnaire for respondents, a checklist for key informants and a guide for focus group discussants. A total of 308 respondents, including eighteen key informants and 20 focus group discussions were involved. Descriptive statistical analysis was employed for quantitative data whereas ethnographic content analysis was used for qualitative data. It was found that the level of knowledge about HIV/AIDS, how the disease spreads and the prevention methods was generally high. However, a corresponding change in sexual behavioural response was low. Many respondents still practise risky sexual behaviour, have many sexual partners and are inconsistent in using condoms. Some misconception about HIV/AIDS spread were also found. Also, there are many incidences of gender based violence which are under reported. Social and cultural factors responsible for the spread of HIV/AIDS include low risk perception and marital instability. It is recommended to the government and NGOs to involve and support local organizations for capacity building against HIV.

Keywords: social determinants, HIV, AIDS, STI, gender based violence, Tanzania

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Migration, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, Health, HIV/AIDS, Sexual Violence, Violence Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Tanzania

Year: 2018

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