Terrorism

Citation:

Young, Kim A., Robert T. Greenbaum, and Noah C. Dormady. 2017. “Sex, Gender, and Disasters: Experimental Evidence on the Decision to Invest in Resilience.” International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 24: 439–50.

Authors: Kim A. Young, Robert T. Greenbaum, Noah C. Dormady

Abstract:

Increasing sensitivity to terrorism, economic volatility, frequent and severe natural disasters, and infrastructure disruptions has intensified interest in resilience, the ability to withstand or recover from catastrophe. The growing research on disaster preparedness and recovery policies have been aggregate-level analyses focusing on communities, organizations, or the physical environments. Absent from this literature is an exploration of the role of individual decision-makers in determining the resilience strategies of firms, even though the hardiness of business is crucial to maintaining robust local, regional, and global economies. To address this, our research uses a randomized controlled experimental design to examine whether biological sex or gender diversity might lead to decision-making that improves investments in resilience to calamitous events. We study decisions related to a core resilience strategy, investment in inventories, across professional manager and student subject pools. We find that although females perceive a higher probability of a catastrophic event, male and female subjects do not make different investment decisions when faced with uncertainty and risk. Importantly, a gender construct capturing congruence with feminine personality attributes does correspond with increased resilience investment and is driven by differences between managers and students. Increased gender diversity in decision-making bodies may serve to improve economic resilience of firms and other organizations.

Keywords: gender, Economic resilience, Experimental economics, Disasters, Decision-making, Middle-market

Topics: Economies, Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Infrastructure, Terrorism

Year: 2017

Citation:

Munro, Brenna. 2016. “Locating ‘Queer’ in Contemporary Writing of Love and War in Nigeria.” Research in African Literatures 47 (2): 121–38.

Author: Brenna Munro

Abstract:

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Child Soldiers, Gender, Men, Boys, LGBTQ, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-state armed groups, Race, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, SV against men, Terrorism Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Nigeria

Year: 2016

Citation:

Berry, Kim. 2003. “The Symbolic Use of Afghan Women in the War on Terror.” Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 27 (2): 137-160. 

Author: Kim Berry

Abstract:

This article analyzes the critical omissions and misrepresentations that accompanied the Bush administration claims that the war on terror waged in Afghanistan was "also a fight for the rights and dignity of women." The article incorporates the insights of Afghan and U.S. analysts, activists, and journalists, along with feminist theorists of Islam and the politics of representation, in order to problematize this characterization of a liberatory U.S. military action. Without such critical analysis, the article argues that we run the risk of using Afghan women as symbols and pawns in a geopolitical conflict, thereby muting their diverse needs and interests and foreclosing the possibility of contributing to the realization of their self-defined priorities and aspirations.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Occupation, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Men, Gendered Power Relations, Religion, Rights, Women's Rights, Security, Human Security, Terrorism Regions: Americas, North America, Asia, South Asia Countries: Afghanistan, United States of America

Year: 2003

Citation:

Third, Amanda. 2014. Gender and the Political: Deconstructing the Female Terrorist. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Author: Amanda Third

Abstract:

The female terrorist circulates within contemporary Western culture as an object of fascination and heightened concern. Gender and the Political analyses cultural constructions of the female terrorist, arguing that she operates as a limit case of both feminine and feminist agency. Drawing on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, this book demonstrates that the development of the discourse on terrorism evolves in parallel with, and in response to, radical feminism in the US in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Situated at the borderlines between sexuality, threat and abjection, Amanda Third argues that the figure of the female terrorist compels a reexamination of the project of radical politics and the limits of modernity. (WorldCat)

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

1. Conceptualizing terrorism

2. Constructing the terrorist : the threat from within

3. Feminist terrorists and terrorist feminists : the crosswiring of feminism with terrorism

4. Terrorist time : terrorism's disruption of modernity

5. Conjuring the apocalypse : radical feminism, apocalyptic temporality and the society for cutting up men

6. Abjecting whiteness : "the movement", radical feminism, genocide

7. Nuclear terrorists : Patricia Hearst and the (feminist) terrorist family

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Femininity/ies, Terrorism Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2014

Citation:

Chertoff, Emily. 2017. “Prosecuting Gender-Based Persecution: the Islamic State at the ICC." Yale Law Journal 126 (4): 1050-117.

Author: Emily Chertoff

Abstract:

Reports suggest that Islamic State, the terrorist "caliphate," has enslaved and brutalized thousands of women from the Yazidi ethnic minority of Syria and Northern Iraq. International criminal law has a name for what Islamic State has done to these women: gender-based persecution. This crime, which appears in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has only been charged once, and unsuccessfully, in the Court's two decades of existence. The case of the Yazidi women presents a promising opportunity to charge it again--and, potentially, to shift the lately unpromising trajectory of the Court, which has been weakened in recent months by a wave of defections by former member states. This Note uses heretofore unexamined jurisprudence of the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber to elaborate--element by element--how the Prosecutor of the Court could charge gender-based persecution against members of Islamic State. I argue that the prosecution of Islamic State would not just vindicate the rights of Yazidi survivors of Islamic State violence. It would help to consolidate an international norm against gender-based persecution in armed conflict--a norm that, until now, international law has only incompletely realized. This Note argues that only by prosecuting the crime of gender-based persecution can international criminal law cognize violence, like the attacks on Yazidi women, that is motivated not just by race, ethnicity, or gender, but by the victims' intersecting gender and ethnic or racial identities. I conclude by reflecting on the role that a series of prosecutions against perpetrators of gender-based persecution might have in restoring the legitimacy of the ailing ICC.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnicity, Women, Gender-Based Violence, International Law, International Criminal Law, Justice, International Tribunals & Special Courts, Race, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Sexual Slavery, Terrorism, Violence Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq, Syria

Year: 2017

Citation:

Chevrette, Roberta, and Lisa C. Braverman. 2013. “Brothers, Fathers, Terrorists: Masculine Assemblages in Glenn Beck’s Rhetoric of US-Israel Unity Post-9/11.” Feminist Formations 25 (2): 81–106.

Authors: Roberta Chevrette, Lisa C. Braverman

Abstract:

Through rhetorical analysis of Glenn Beck's keynote at the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) Summit in Washington, D.C., and his subsequent "Restoring Courage" rally in Israel, this article examines the construction of a gendered and militarized "state of emergency" in which Israel and the United States stand together as brothers against their enemies in the modern era. In this discursive and political formation, Israel is constructed as a site of perpetual persecution, while anxieties about US global dominance are (mis)placed within its borders. This constructed emergency generalizes the nuances of Palestinian and Israeli experiences, while homogenizing Palestinians into a gendered and racialized terrorist Other. Offering a theorization of masculine assemblages, the authors analyze how, in the post-9/11 security state, the unification of US-Israeli interests is articulated through multiple interlocking discourses of masculinity. Through careful deconstruction of the masculine assemblages that bind together this epistemological and geo-political formation, this analysis contributes to postcolonial and transnational feminist theorizing by exploring how men embody and construct the nation-state, how discourses of race, religion, and nation assemble together through the concept of masculinity, and how these assemblages provoke states of emergency and impetuses for action.

Keywords: Beck, Glenn, Evangelical Christian Right, foreign policy, Israel, masculine assemblage, terrorist

Topics: Armed Conflict, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Race, Religion, Terrorism Regions: Africa, MENA, Americas, North America, Asia, Middle East Countries: Israel, United States of America

Year: 2013

Citation:

Ferber, Abby L., and Michael S. Kimmel. 2008. “The Gendered Face of Terrorism.” Sociology Compass 2: 870–87.

Authors: Abby L. Ferber, Michael S. Kimmel

Abstract:

What does sociology have to contribute to our understanding of terrorism? As scholars of gender and the Far Right, we believe that we have much to offer the current debates. In this article, we focus both on contemporary cases of terrorism, the attacks of September 11 and the Oklahoma City bombing, and terrorist movements as gendered: as enactments of masculinity. In particular, we focus on the contemporary white supremacist movement, the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat faced by the USA. We suggest that the ideology and organization of many terrorist groups are saturated with gendered meanings, both as the analytic prism through which they view their situation, and also as a means of political mobilization.

Topics: Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Race, Terrorism Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2008

Citation:

Philipose, Liz. 2007. “The Politics of Pain and the Uses of Torture.” Signs 32 (4): 1047-71.

Author: Liz Philipose

Annotation:

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Race, Religion, Sexual Violence, SV against men, Terrorism Regions: Africa, MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq

Year: 2007

Citation:

Holt, Maria. 2010. “The Unlikely Terrorist: Women and Islamic Resistance in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories.” Critical Studies on Terrorism 3 (3): 365–82.

Author: Maria Holt

Abstract:

Islamic resistance groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories have been accused of using terrorist tactics to achieve their aims. Although some critics suggest that such groups may also have hijacked the democratic agenda in ways that disadvantage women, their supporters claim that they are promoting a model of modernity that is empowering women. This article examines the reasons why some Lebanese Shi’i and Palestinian women support the resistance against Israeli invasion and occupation that is justified in terms of religion. Far from seeing the actions of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories as acts of terrorism, many women welcome the resistance as it brings dignity and meaning to their lives and enhances feelings of national identification.

Keywords: women, islamic resistance, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, modernity, female martyr, Hamas, Hizbullah

Topics: Gender, Women, Religion, Terrorism, Violence Regions: Africa, MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Lebanon, Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 2010

Citation:

Anker, Elisabeth. 2012. “Feminist Theory and the Failures of Post-9/11 Freedom.” Politics & Gender 8 (02): 207–15. doi:10.1017/S1743923X12000177.

Author: Elisabeth Anker

Abstract:

After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, freedom was the dominant term used to describe the United States in national political discourse. It was articulated as sovereign power, unencumbered agency, and military triumph. “Freedom” eventually animated global violence, becoming a justification for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as for substantial increases in state surveillance. A significant body of feminist scholarship has interrogated the discourse of post-9/11 freedom, examining how the call to “free the women of Afghanistan and Iraq” legitimated the push for war (Bhattacharrya 2008; Marso 2007; Mohanty 2008). For these scholars, “freedom” transformed feminist concerns into tools of militarism and imperialism, while worsening living conditions of women across the globe. In this essay, I also examine the discourse of post-9/11 freedom from a feminist perspective, but I ask a different question: How can feminist political theory critique the discourse of American freedom and challenge its trajectory of sovereign and violent state power? In other words, I examine the discourse of Americans upholding their own freedom, rather than their quest to free others, and insist that feminist theoretical arguments are directly relevant to post-9/11 problematics.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Feminisms, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Nationalism, Terrorism Regions: MENA, Americas, North America, Asia, Middle East, South Asia Countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, United States of America

Year: 2012