Nationalism

Citation:

Hoegaerts, Josephine. 2010. “Manoeuvring Men: Masculinity as Spatially Defined Readability at the Grandes Manoeuvres of the Belgian Army, 1882–1883.” Gender, Place & Culture 17 (2): 249–68. doi:10.1080/09663691003600330.

Author: Josephine Hoegaerts

Abstract:

This article uses the case study of the Belgian grandes manoeuvres of 1882 and 1883 to explore the ways in which self-defined ‘all male’ spaces can contribute to the study and deconstruction of historical masculinities. Using the manoeuvres of the Belgian army at the end of the nineteenth century as a theatre of (military as well as civilian) corporeal and discursive practices, the simultaneous enactment of masculinity and nation is analysed. The material spaces in which these military exercises took place are understood as contingent creators instead of passive containers of masculinity: that is, rather than as a passive background to soldiers' movements, the champ de manoeuvres appears as an active stage, aiding the construction of a gendered military identity, but also challenging dichotomous understandings of gender. Likewise, the gaze upon both landscape and soldiers by different audiences plays an active part in the story of the construction of masculinity and nation: the act of recognition, performed by male and female civilians, during and after the manoeuvres was crucial for the continuous repetition of the discourse that created and upheld notions of ‘man’ and of ‘Belgium’.

Keywords: masculinity, gender performance, military history, nation, Belgium

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Male Combatants, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Militarism, Nationalism Regions: Europe, Western Europe Countries: Belgium

Year: 2010

Citation:

Koch, Natalie. 2011. “Security and Gendered National Identity in Uzbekistan.” Gender, Place & Culture 18 (4): 499–518. 

Author: Natalie Koch

Abstract:

Contributing to the growing literature on feminist geopolitics, this article addresses the security discourses employed by the Karimov regime in Uzbekistan's post-independence nation-building process. It examines the ways in which militarism and the ‘culture of war’ are productive of gendered national identities in Uzbekistan, focusing on how the ‘protector–protected’ relationship figures prominently in the Karimov regime's anti-terrorist rhetoric. It does so through a textual analysis of the Andijon uprising and the ‘Day of Memory and Honor’ holiday. It argues that the terrorist threat has been a driving factor in the pervasive militarization of society, but that official responses to state violence in Andijon obscure alternative security concerns of the general population in Uzbekistan – and more specifically those of women. It adds to existing feminist geopolitics literature by expanding it into a new empirical context, while rejecting the assertion that a ‘geopolitical’ analysis necessarily entails a ‘global’ approach.

Keywords: feminist geopolitics, nation-building, militarism, Uzbekistan, Andijon

Topics: Gender, Women, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Nationalism, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Security, Human Security, Terrorism Regions: Asia, Central Asia Countries: Uzbekistan

Year: 2011

Citation:

Banerjee, Sikata. 2012. Muscular Nationalism: Gender, Violence, and Empire in India and Ireland, 1914-2004. Gender and Political Violence. New York: New York University Press. http://nyupress.org/books/9780814789766/.

Author: Sikata Banerjee

Abstract:

Topics: Armed Conflict, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Nationalism, Political Participation, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia, Europe, Western Europe Countries: India, Ireland

Year: 2012

Citation:

Bush, Sarah Sunn, and Amaney A. Jamal. “Anti-Americanism, Authoritarian Politics, and Attitudes about Women’s Representation: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Jordan.” International Studies Quarterly 59, no. 1 (March 1, 2015): 34–45. doi:10.1111/isqu.12139.

Authors: Sarah Sunn Bush, Amaney A. Jamal

Abstract:

A pillar of American foreign policy in the Middle East since September 11, 2001, has been promoting democracy, with particular emphasis on support for women's representation. Given high levels of anti-Americanism in the region, does foreign pressure for policy reform undermine this project? Evidence from a nationally representative survey experiment in Jordan shows that an American endorsement of women in politics has no average effect on popular support for women's representation. Instead, domestic patterns of support and opposition to autocrats determine citizens' receptivity to policy endorsements, with policy endorsements of foreign-supported reforms polarizing public opinion. Both foreign and domestic endorsements of women in politics depress support among Jordanians who oppose their regime significantly more than among Jordanians who support it.

Topics: Democracy / Democratization, Gender, Women, Governance, Quotas, Elections, Nationalism Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Jordan

Year: 2015

Citation:

Herr, Ranjoo Seodu. “Reclaiming Third World Feminism: Or Why Transnational Feminism Needs Third World Feminism.” Meridians 12, no. 1 (2014): 1–30. doi:10.2979/meridians.12.1.1.

Author: Ranjoo Seodu Herr

Abstract:

Third World and transnational feminisms have emerged in opposition to white second-wave feminists' single-pronged analyses of gender oppression that elided Third World women's multiple and complex oppressions in their various social locations. Consequently, these feminisms share two “Third World feminist” mandates: First, feminist analyses of Third World women's oppression and resistance should be historically situated; and second, Third World women's agency and voices should be respected. Despite these shared mandates, they have diverged in their proper domains of investigation, with transnational feminism concentrating on the transnational level and Third World feminism focusing on local and national contexts. Further, their respective positions regarding nation-states and nationalism have been antithetical, as leading transnational feminists have categorically rejected nation-states and nationalism as detrimental to feminism. In recent decades, transnational feminism has become the dominant feminist position on Third World women, overshadowing Third World feminism, and the dismissal of nation-states and nationalism as irrelevant to feminism has become fashionable. Against this current trend, this article argues for the relevance of nation-states and nationalism for transnational feminism and the urgency of reclaiming Third World feminism.

Topics: Feminisms, Globalization, Nationalism

Year: 2014

Citation:

Musikawong, Sudarat. 2011. “Gendered Casualties: Memoirs in Activism and the Problem of Representing Violence.” Meridians 11 (2): 174–204. doi:10.2979/meridians.11.2.174.

Author: Sudarat Musikawong

Abstract:

Topics: Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Nationalism, Violence Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Thailand

Year: 2011

Citation:

Eichler, Maya. 2012. Militarizing Men: Gender, Conscription, and War in Post-Soviet Russia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 

Author: Maya Eichler

Annotation:

A state's ability to maintain mandatory conscription and wage war rests on the idea that a "real man" is one who has served in the military. Yet masculinity has no inherent ties to militarism. The link between men and the military, argues Maya Eichler, must be produced and reproduced in order to fill the ranks, engage in combat, and mobilize the population behind war. In the context of Russia's post-communist transition and the Chechen wars, men's militarization has been challenged and reinforced. Eichler uncovers the challenges by exploring widespread draft evasion and desertion, anti-draft and anti-war activism led by soldiers' mothers, and the general lack of popular support for the Chechen wars. However, the book also identifies channels through which militarized gender identities have been reproduced. Eichler's empirical and theoretical study of masculinities in international relations applies for the first time the concept of "militarized masculinity," developed by feminist IR scholars, to the case of Russia.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Gender Analysis, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Nationalism Regions: Asia, Europe Countries: Russian Federation

Year: 2012

Citation:

Hedström, Jenny. 2016. “We Did Not Realize about the Gender Issues. So, We Thought It Was a Good Idea: Gender Roles in Burmese Oppositional Struggles.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 18 (1): 61–79. doi:10.1080/14616742.2015.1005516.

Author: Jenny Hedström

Abstract:

This article explores the link between nationalism, as expressed by the Burman state and ethnic and student opposition movements, and the emergence of a multiethnic women's movement engaged in resistance activities. In focusing on women's involvement in oppositional nation-making projects, this article aims to broaden our understanding of gender and conflict by highlighting women's agency in war. Drawing on interviews carried out with founding members of the women's movement, non-state armed groups and others active in civil society, the article investigates how a gendered political consciousness arose out of dissatisfaction with women's secondary position in armed opposition groups, leading to women forming a movement, not in opposition to conflict per se but in opposition to the rejection of their militarism, in the process redefining notions of political involvement and agency. By invoking solidarity based on a gendered positioning, rather than on an ethnic identity, the women's movement resisted the dominant nation-making projects, and created a nationalism inclusive of multiethnic differences. Burmese women's multiple wartime roles thus serve to upset supposed dichotomies between militancy and peace and victim and combatant, in the process redefining the relationship between gender, nationalism and militancy.

Keywords: nationalism, Myanmar, gender, ethnicity, conflict

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnic/Communal Wars, Civil Society, Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Non-State Armed Groups, Nationalism, Political Participation Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Myanmar

Year: 2016

Citation:

Özkaleli, Umut, and Ömür Yilmaz. 2015. “‘What Was My War Like?’: Missing Pages from the Gendered History of War in Cyprus.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 17 (1): 137–56. doi:10.1080/14616742.2013.833700.

Authors: Umut Özkaleli, Ömür Yilmaz

Abstract:

This paper aims to uncover Turkish Cypriot women's war experiences and integrate that knowledge into the public discourse. We argue that the omission of women's war experiences thus far has served to sustain the mutually reinforcing alliance between patriarchy and nationalism, which we call patriarchal nationalism. Building on feminist standpoint theory, deconstruction of the official and hegemonic ‘his'tory of war poses challenges to the stronghold of patriarchy and ethnic nationalism in society by engaging women in the re-construction of history. Narratives of twenty women from different regions and backgrounds revealed common experiences that have been systematically silenced, memories that have been socially forgotten but could not be erased despite the dominant discourse that has denied their existence for decades. These experiences defy images of the ethno-national Glorious Self, protected by heroic and righteous men, and the Villainous Other. They also identify types of insecurity and victimization that have been excluded from traditional, gendered definitions of security. As these narratives contest fundamental tenets of patriarchy and nationalism, their contributions to the reconstruction of ‘reality’ and history carry prospects for the transformation of both gender and ethnic relations.

Keywords: gender, memory, war history, Cyprus, security, women's narratives

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Nationalism, Political Participation, Post-Conflict Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East, Europe Countries: Cyprus, Turkey

Year: 2015

Citation:

Väyrynen, Tarja. 2014. “Muted National Memory.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 16 (2): 218–35. doi:10.1080/14616742.2013.773155.

Author: Tarja Väyrynen

Abstract:

The encoding of female bodies as symbols of the nation is a multifaceted process where some female bodies are uplifted to represent the nation and its honour, but others are abjected. I examine in this article Finnish women who fraternized with German soldiers during the Second World War. The bodies of these women carry historical and political content that could not be reconciled with the Finnish post-war national identity narrative that sought closure. The Finnish national subject came into being through the establishment of ‘Hitler's brides’ as others, and a variety of state-initiated disciplinary mechanisms were used to silence them. The taboo of speech became a lifelong condition that was broken just before the biological deaths of these women. When the taboo was broken their corporeal representations and voices were not simple representations of a past event, but political performances and utterances which intervened in a past and present national context. I show how the agentative figure that emerged was not that of a superstite (survivor) witness with confessional tendencies but that of a parrhesiastes, the one who speaks the truth.

Keywords: abject, agency, female body, silence, trauma, war, voice

Topics: Armed Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Nationalism, Post-Conflict Regions: Europe, Nordic states, Northern Europe Countries: Finland

Year: 2014