Maria Eriksson Baaz

Uppsala University | UU · Department of Government

This article seeks to move beyond the Euro/North-centrism recurrent in methodological discussions on what we may learn from the COVID-19 pandemic. Such debates often centre on uncertainty and involuntary immobility – aspects which are hardly new for many researchers. In this article, we argue that the pandemic offers an opportunity to rethink resea...

Despite the prominent attention that the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has recently garnered globally, we still know far too little about what is sexual about sexual violence, according to whom, as well as why and how this matters in our efforts to prevent and redress its harms. A growing theoretical, political, legal and ethic...

In many post-conflict states with a weak fiscal capacity, illicit domestic levies on trade remain a serious obstacle to economic development. In this paper, we explore the interplay between traders and authorities on Congo River - a key transport corridor in one of the world's poorest and most conflict-ridden countries; DR Congo. We outline a gener...

The contribution and situation of research brokers problematically tend to be shrouded in silence in most research texts. In this article we probe into the particular ethical and methodological challenges that we may encounter when working with brokers in conflict settings, drawing upon existing literature and contributions of this special issue. R...

In this paper, I reflect upon my experience of working with active military officers-cum-research brokers in research on the Congolese (DRC) armed forces. Drawing upon the traditions of autoethnography and Narrative International Relations, I recount the story of an evolving relationship between one particular military broker and myself. It highlig...

This article explores methodological challenges that arose in two perpetrator-centered research projects on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in two different armed forces contexts: the British Army, and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. We examine how the interplay between research subjects’, in this case perpetrators’ pe...

Based on comprehensive research among boat operators and navy personnel working on the Congo River (DRC), this article explores how assessments of ‘taxation’ are shaped by the interplay of legitimation and ‘officialisation’. As such, it draws upon and contributes to scholarly debates on taxpayers’ attitudes towards taxation. While boat operators re...

Wartime sexual violence is especially egregious precisely because it is a sexual form of violence that causes particular harms. Yet, curiously, and in contrast to feminist theory on sexual violence more generally, the sexual has been erased from frames of understanding in dominant accounts of wartime rape. This article places the seeming certainty...

Drawing on postcolonial theory, this article queries into the ways in which the concepts of militarism/militarization and securitization are applied to ‘African’ contexts. We highlight the selective nature of such application and probe into the potential reasons for and effects of this selectiveness, focusing on its signifying work. As we argue, th...

In contrast to most studies addressing security sector reform (SSR) in Africa, this article queries defence reform efforts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from a governmentality perspective and hones in on processes of subjectification and modes of agency among members of the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC). Based on extensive field r...

Drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with members of the Congolese military, this chapter explores conceptions of militarized masculinity, particularly in the context of sexual violence perpetrated by Congolese government forces during the protracted conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The chapter opens with a review of the fe...

The inherently unstable boundaries between military and civilian worlds have emerged as a main object of study within the field of critical military studies. This article sheds light on the (re)production of these boundaries by attending to a group that rarely features in the debates on the military/civilian divide: army wives in a ‘non-Northern’ c...

The wives of soldiers of the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC, Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo) may not be very visible, but they are an integral part of the military. They live with soldiers, and often their children, in and around military camps and deployment sites – including in the most insecure...

On behalf of the DRC Affinity Group, Maria Eriksson Baaz and Judith Verweijen present the history, underlying mechanisms and effects of never-ending military integration in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In light of the M23 rebellion and a possible new wave of integration, the authors offer precautions and recommendations for an upcoming p...

The final report of the Usalama Project presents the conclusions of 18-month field research on the national army and armed groups in the eastern DRC in three parts: an analysis of armed mobilization, focusing on the region of North and South Kivu; an examination of the FARDC; and a critical review of past and current efforts in the field of demobil...

It is by now generally agreed that government corruption is a serious impediment to economic growth. An intensive use of informal tolls and bribes on roads and waterways still prevail in several developing countries, hampering trade and economic development. On the basis of a general model of a trader travelling downstream past multiple stations an...

Teaching about rape in war and genocide does not fit neatly within the conventional disciplinary boundaries that typically govern curricula and teacher training. The challenge, then, is how to teach in ways that take advantage of disciplinary expertise while still understanding that every disciplinary approach has shortcomings and none will be suff...

The importance of teaching about rape in war and genocide is intensified because that atrocity has become a strategy used intentionally by combatants to harm individuals and destroy communities. These utterly destructive atrocities cannot be curbed or prevented unless people are educated about them. Teaching about rape in war and genocide definitel...

The importance of teaching about rape in war and genocide is intensiied because that atrocity has become a strategy used intentionally by combatants to harm individuals and destroy communities. hese utterly destructive atrocities cannot be curbed or prevented unless people are educated about them. Teaching about rape in war and genocide deinitely n...

Teaching about rape in war and genocide does not fit neatly within the conventional disciplinary boundaries that typically govern curricula and teacher training. The challenge, then, is how to teach in ways that take advantage of disciplinary expertise while still understanding that every disciplinary approach has shortcomings and none will be suff...

International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Licence. Further details regarding permitted usage can be found at http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Print and ebook editions of this work are available to purchase from Zed Books (www.zedbooks.co.uk).

Based on extensive field research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), this article elucidates the logics, processes and readings surrounding certain ‘extra-military’ practices enacted by the Congolese army, namely the processing of various types of disputes between civilians. Exceeding the boundaries of the domain of ‘public securit...

In early 2012, Congolese army deserters formed the M23 rebel movement. This article analyses the insurgency and other armed group activity in the eastern DRC in the light of the politics of rebel-military integration. It argues that military integration processes have fuelled militarization in three main ways. First, by creating incentive structure...

This article addresses an underreported aspect of contemporary warring in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): the experiences of women soldiers and officers in the Congolese national armed forces (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo [FARDC]). It thus addresses an empirical gap in scholarly and policy knowledge about female sold...

The Mother of Armies is Not Yet Dead By unearthing a range of punitive and restorative practices enacted outside the military justice system, this article problematizes dominant representations of “near total impunity” in the Congolese armed forces. It explores the mechanisms and logics underlying both “formal” and “informal” justice practices, as...

By unearthing a range of punitive and restorative practices enacted outside the military justice system, this article problematizes dominant representations of “near total impunity” in the Congolese armed forces. It explores the mechanisms and logics underlying both “formal” and “informal” justice practices, as well as how these practices are “read...

International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Licence. Further details regarding permitted usage can be found at http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Print and ebook editions of this work are available to purchase from Zed Books (www.zedbooks.co.uk).

Based on original interview material, this article addresses the organization of unofficial economic activities within the Congolese (Democratic Republic of the Congo) police force. In contrast to dominant assumptions in security sector reform discourses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in which property violations tend to be portrayed as d...

The global attention focused on sexual violence in the DRC has not only contributed to an image of the Congolese army as a vestige of pre-modern barbarism, populated by rapists, and bearing no resemblance to the world of modern armies; it has also shaped gender and defence reform initiatives. These initiatives have become synonymous with combating...

This article explores the ways soldiers in the Congo speak about the massive amount of rape committed by the armed forces in the recent war in the DRC. It focuses on the reasons that the soldiers give to why rape occurs. It discusses how the soldiers distinguish between “lust rapes” and “evil rapes” and argues that their explanations of rape must b...

During the last years the DRC has made itself known in the world for terrible acts of violence committed by armed men – militia and the regular army – against the civilian population. The voices of the soldiers and combatants have so far been absent in the accounts of this violence. This silence is problematic, both because it makes it harder to un...

The article deals with the question of culture and cultural analysis and it explores, more specifically, the texts of alternative- and post-development writers where the cultural turn is particularly evident. Cultural analysis is, in these texts, primarily employed to oppose the Eurocentrism of development. Development is presented as a particular...