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International Peacekeeping
ISSN: 1353-3312 (Print) 1743-906X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/finp20
Situating Agency, Embodied Practices and Norm
Implementation in Peacekeeping Training
Georgina Holmes
To cite this article: Georgina Holmes (2018): Situating Agency, Embodied Practices
and Norm Implementation in Peacekeeping Training, International Peacekeeping, DOI:
10.1080/13533312.2018.1503934
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2018.1503934
Published online: 02 Aug 2018.
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Situating Agency, Embodied Practices and Norm
Implementation in Peacekeeping Training
Georgina Holmes
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Reading, Reading, UK
ABSTRACT
Applying a Bourdieusian feminist practice theory approach to the study of norm
implementation, this article introduces a fourth level of analysis, the embodied
subject who is expected to be governed by peacekeeping norms. It does so by
examining the training experiences of Rwandan tactical-level female military
peacekeepers deployed in mix-gender contingents to UNAMID. It is argued
that the pre-deployment training space is a field of norm contestation and
negotiation, wherein gendered peacekeeper subject positions and gendered
peacekeeping labouring practices are constructed and performed. The
research findings suggest that by partially complying with the UN’s gender
mainstreaming norms, the Rwanda Defence Force strengthens the military’s
gender protection norms and establishes the sexual division of labour of the
mission area. Trained to perform a scripted Rwandan female subject position,
some women find they are not adequately prepared for the more challenging
situations they find themselves in when working in multi-dimensional
peacekeeping operations and devise alternative, informal training practices to
better equip themselves prior to deployment. The case study draws on 65
depth-interviews with Rwandan military personnel, trainers and external
consultants and non-participatory observations of field exercises.
KEYWORDS Peacekeeping; gender; pre-deployment training; norms; international practice theory
Introduction
How do we conceptualize norm implementation in peacekeeping? How do we
account for the ways in which the implementation of institutionalized peace-
keeping norms
1
can lead to variation of practice on the ground? These are the
overarching research questions posed by scholars that seek to problematize
processes that have largely been overlooked in the norm diffusion/circulation
literature.
2
Norm implementation scholars start from the premise that
implementation is a ‘distinct process’running in parallel to international
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Georgina Holmes g.holmes@reading.ac.uk
1
Karlsrud defines peacekeeping norms as ‘norms guiding peacekeeping’(Karlsrud, Norm Change in Inter-
national Relations, 8).
2
See Björkdahl, “Promoting Norms through Peacekeeping”; Betts and Orchard, Implementation & World
Politics; Auteserre, 2014; Paddon, 2014; Paddon, this section; Karlsrud, 2015, Norm Change in Inter-
national Relations; Maertens, this section; Marion Laurence, this section.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING
https://doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2018.1503934
norm institutionalization processes.
3
Betts and Orchard describe norm
implementation as the steps required ‘to introduce’an ‘international norm’s
precepts into formal legal and policy mechanisms within the state or organ-
ization in order to routinize compliance’, wherein compliance is conceptual-
ized as an ‘act’
4
The conceptual distinction facilitates the study of variance in
norm implementation and its effects, even when the act of norm compliance
has occurred at the domestic level within the state and its security institutions
that engage in peacekeeping. This article contributes to recent theorizing of
norm implementation by introducing a fourth level of analysis, the embodied
subject who is expected to be governed by peacekeeping norms. It does so by
examining how UN gender mainstreaming norms are translated into practice
in pre-deployment training programmes for tactical-level peacekeepers in
Rwanda.
Examining norm implementation processes necessitates a different set of
research questions to those posed by norm circulation theorists. The focus
shifts away from ‘how norms spread’to ‘who operationalizes norms and
under what conditions?’Constructivists define norms as the ‘collective expec-
tations for the proper behaviour of actors with a given identity in global poli-
tics’
5
that ‘serve the purpose of guiding behaviour by providing motivations
for action’.
6
Constructivist scholars often distinguish between the level of
the international, regional and the domestic (the state) to structure their
norm diffusion/circulation models, and have recognized the influence episte-
mic communities inside the state have in determining how norms are inter-
nalized at the domestic level.
7
They have advanced understandings of how
international norms are translated, negotiated and contested to challenge
the early norm cascade models, which allocated primacy of power and
agency to western actors.
8
However, these theorists have been criticized for
failing to locate actors as central to diffusion and implementation, instead
ascribing agency to the norm itself.
9
They have also been criticized for intro-
ducing an ‘ideational bias’into theorizing norm dynamics which positions
material interests as secondary in determining what motivates actors to
perform, or to change their behaviour.
10
In contrast, norm implementation
theorists acknowledge that ideational, material and institutional factors
3
Betts and Orchard, Implementation & World Politics,4.
4
Betts and Orchard, Implementation & World Politics,2.
5
Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security,5.
6
Björkdahl, “Norms in International Relations,”15.
7
Risse and Sikkink, The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices; Acharya,
“How Ideas Spread”;“Norm Subsidiarity and Regional Orders”; Cardenas, “Norm Collision”; Betts and
Orchard, Implementation & World Politics.
8
Acharya, “How Ideas Spread”;“Norm Subsidiarity and Regional Orders”; Cardenas, “Norm Collision”; Bloo-
mfield, “Norm Antipreneurs and Theorising Resistance to Normative Change”.
9
Bucher, “Acting Abstractions.”
10
See Cardenas, “Norm Collision”; Bigo, “Pierre Bourdieu and International Relations”; Adler and Pouliot,
International Practices.
2G. HOLMES
determine how norms are implemented.
11
They infer that ‘acting persons’
12
are agentive and embodied subjects who shape norm implementation pro-
cesses. How agentive subjects engage in translating institutionalized norms
into routinized practices therefore demands greater attention. It requires a
conceptual framework that bridges the ideational-material divide, and calls
for a rethinking of what is meant by ‘internalization’and ‘socialization’–
two metaphors
13
commonly used by norm diffusion/circulation scholars to
denote the moment when a norm is accepted by a state or state institutions.
Peacekeeping training is recognized as a site wherein the UN institutiona-
lized norms that are intended to govern and discipline peacekeeper subjects
are diffused and implemented.
14
Pre-deployment training is conceptualized
frequently in the literature as a mechanism or channel through which
(liberal peace) norms, values and beliefs, as well as technical skills are trans-
ferred to peacekeepers, rather than a field of social practice wherein norms are
translated and/or negotiated, consciously or unconsciously, by embodied sub-
jects engaged in the training process. Suspending the regional and local socio-
political and economic contexts which shape peacekeeping training and
peacekeeping training spaces, this narrow conceptualization reinforces the
assumption that training trainers, standardizing training materials and
sharing good practice (with the intention of strengthening the flow of knowl-
edge from the core to the periphery) will by default enhance the capabilities of
peacekeepers, establish norm compliance and improve operational effective-
ness. Two underlying concepts in the peacekeeping training literature –
norm diffusion and peacekeeper socialization –support the constructivist
emphasis on the ability of norms to ‘change the behaviour’of peacekeeper
subjects, and in doing so reconfirm the primacy of the norm’s agency. As a
result, the agency of the peacekeeper subjects who are participants in the
training process is eclipsed.
15
In this article, I develop a feminist reading of French Sociologist Pierre
Bourdieu’s theory of social practice to examine how gender mainstreaming
norms embedded in UN DPKO/DFS policy and training discourse are oper-
ationalized by actors during a TCC military-led pre-deployment training pro-
gramme. UN gender mainstreaming norms observe that gender equality
should be systematically integrated in ‘all systems and structures, into all pol-
icies, processes and procedures’of peacekeeping, including the cultures of
institutions engaged in peacekeeping, and into the ‘ways of seeing and
11
Betts and Orchard, Implementation & World Politics, 13.
12
Bucher, “Acting Abstractions,”748.
13
Bucher, “Acting Abstractions,”748.
14
Jowell, “The Unintended Consequences of Foreign Military Assistance in Africa”; Anne Flaspöler, 2014;
Wilén, “Examining the Links between Security Sector Reform and Peacekeeping Troop Contribution
in Post-conflict States”.
15
Bucher, “Acting Abstractions,”748.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 3
doing’peacekeeping and peacebuilding.
16
‘Biological sex’and culturally con-
structed concepts of ‘gender’should be separated to ensure that all individ-
uals, regardless of their sex, sexuality and gender, are empowered, treated
fairly and equally and provided equal opportunities in peacekeeping
workforces.
17
I use practices as my core unit of analysis
18
to demonstrate how peace-
keepers are trained to perform gendered peacekeeping labouring practices
prior to deployment. Bourdieu’s theory of social practice and his concepts
field, habitus and capitals help identify relations of power between inter-
national, regional and domestic actors and structures at play in norm con-
testation. Though Bourdieu has been criticized for overemphasizing
structure and oversimplifying relations between the dominated and the dom-
inating in his theorizing of power,
19
feminist readings of Bourdieu located in
political studies and sociology open his theory up to the possibility of observ-
ing the agency of subordinated actors, who may work with or against the
structures, discourses and practices that govern them. Specifically, feminist
theorizing of women as both commodities and ‘capital-accumulating sub-
jects’
20
within fields of power, helps us to examine how individual peace-
keepers engage in norm contestation during the implementation process.
Focusing on the training experiences of Rwandan tactical-level female mili-
tary peacekeepers deployed in mix-gender contingents to UNAMID, the
article sets out to answer three interrelated questions: (1) How are DPKO/
DFS-embedded gender mainstreaming norms translated into routinized prac-
tices during pre-deployment training? (2) What kinds of subject positions are
female military personnel trained to enact? (3) How do female peacekeeper
trainees engage in norm implementation during the pre-deployment training
process? It is argued that the pre-deployment training space is a field of norm
contestation and negotiation, wherein gendered peacekeeper subject positions
are constructed and reproduced through the embodied performances of insti-
tutional practices. The research findings suggest that a ‘scripted’Rwandan
female peacekeeper subject position is constructed which is based on how
RDF senior officers perceive women’s use-value within a given mission.
Trained to perform this scripted subject position, some Rwandan female mili-
tary peacekeepers find they are not adequately prepared for challenging
working environments and devise alternative, informal training practices to
better equip themselves prior to deployment.
16
Joaquim and Schneiker, ““Changing Discourses, Changing Practices?,”530.
17
Zalewski, “‘I Don’t Even Know What Gender Is’,”12; Karim and Beardsley, Equal Opportunity
Peacekeeping.
18
Adler and Pouliot, International Practices,5.
19
Lovell, “Thinking Feminism with and against Bourdieu”; Skeggs, “Introducing Pierre Bourdieu’s Analysis
of Class, Gender and Sexuality”; Moi, “Appropriating Bourdieu”; Bueger and Gadinger, International Prac-
tice Theory.
20
Lovell, “Thinking Feminism with and Against Bourdieu”.
4G. HOLMES
Rwanda is an important case study for examining how UN gender main-
streaming norms are operationalized in pre-deployment training pro-
grammes. The small African state is among the ten largest contributors of
peacekeepers globally and is deploying female military peacekeepers to
complex peacekeeping missions including the UN/African Union Mission
in Darfur (UNAMID) and the UN Mission in the Republic of South Sudan
(UNMISS). Rwanda has deployed troops since 2006 and over the past five
years has contributed some 6,000 troops annually, of which 250 (4 percent)
are women.
21
Supporting international gender equality legislation, Rwanda
has begun mainstreaming gender its national security policies and architec-
ture and is recruiting more female military personnel, as outlined in its
UNSCR 1325 National Action Plan (2009).
22
The article is divided into four parts. The first part outlines how norms,
norm dynamics and agency are conceptualized in the peacekeeping training
literature. In the second, the article makes the case that the pre-deployment
training space as a field of norm negotiation and contestation wherein gen-
dered peacekeeper subject positions are constructed and performed through
embodied practices. The article then examines how UN gender mainstream-
ing norms embedded in DPKO/DFS policies and training guidance construct
women’s peacekeeping labouring practices, and illustrates how these norms
are operationalized during pre-deployment training. After analysing how a
diversity of female military personnel engage in norm implementation
during pre-deployment training, the article concludes by reflecting on the
explanatory power that a Bourdieusian feminist praxiography contributes to
the study of norm implementation processes. In conducting this analysis, I
offer a significant contribution towards understanding how peacekeeping is
gendered, and a conceptual framework to help link agency to norm
implementation. The case study draws on 65 depth-interviews with
Rwandan military personnel, trainers and external consultants, and non-par-
ticipatory observations of field exercises.
A feminist praxiography
The research strategy employed is based on the methodological approaches
located in International Practice theory (IPT) and feminist theory. A Bour-
dieusian feminist praxiography –the study of gendered logics of embodied
practices
23
–enables a different kind of analysis of norm implementation to
constructivist approaches. As Bigo argues, ‘constructivism exists only in
relation to the empirical study of practices’.
24
Social relations and institutional
21
Statistics provided by RDF Gender Desk, 9 July 2015.
22
Holmes, “Gendering the Rwanda Defence Force.”
23
Bueger and Gardinger, International Practice Theory, 80.
24
Bigo, “Pierre Bourdieu and International Relations,”234.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 5
processes are not just imbued in ‘ideas, language and discourse, they are depos-
ited in bodies and things, and practices emerge’at their confluence.
25
Practices
are intersubjectively created ‘competent’and ‘incompetent performances’
26
and ‘socially meaningful patterns of action’which are embodied, performed
and enacted by actors (subjects) who occupy social positions within a given
hierarchically structured field of power.
27
These social positions, or subject
positions, are determined by the field’s habitus –the naturalized socio-political
environment. Naturalized subject positions are ‘organized through insti-
tutional structures’(the military) and intersectional categorisations such as
class, race, gender, religion and dis/ability. Dominant actors may use subject
positions to regulate subordinated actors within the field.
28
Drawing on
Butler’s theory of performativity, feminists contend that gender is a practice,
and embodied practices are gendered.
29
Wilcox observes that Butler’s concep-
tualization of gender as a ‘repeated stylization of the body’and a ‘set of repeated
acts’aligns with the practice theorists’‘emphasis on habituated practices of the
body’.
30
Subject positions constitute socially accepted, routinized, embodied
practices performed by the subject within an institution.
31
Subjects are embo-
died, and emplaced in a specific material circumstance (the field and habitus).
However, unlike the Subject, which is fragmented and can never be fully
known, subject positions are observable. Feminist practice theory examines
how gendered, embodied practices are performed by human subjects
(actors) within the field of international relations and how the field, and the
embodied practices within this field, are experienced by these subjects.
International Practice theorists seek to ‘record and construct’practices
(praxi), rather than culture (ethno), and establish a ‘bottom-up analysis
32
of
‘patterns of action’within the field of practice. Practice theorists argue that
‘norms are important’, but they ‘should not become isolated objects of
research’. Instead, they are part of a larger practical ‘repertoire of knowledge’,
or ‘background knowledge’acquired by actors in the field.
33
A feminist theor-
etical perspective suggests that this background knowledge is informed by col-
lective and personal emotions of actors, as well as intersubjectively produced
historical practices, norms and discourses.
To ascertain how UN institutionalized norms were implemented in the
Rwanda case study, a three-fold approach
34
was established to reconstruct
25
Pouliot, 2013, 45.
26
Wilcox, 2016, 801.
27
Adler and Pouliot, International Practices,6.
28
Skeggs, “Introducing Pierre Bourdieu’s Analysis of Class, Gender and Sexuality,”24.
29
See Lovell, “Thinking Feminism with and Against Bourdieu”; Wilcox, 2016.
30
Wilcox, 2016, 795.
31
Skeggs, Formations of Class & Gender, 12.
32
Karlsrud, Norm Change in International Relations,7.
33
Bueger and Gadinger, International Practice Theory, 83.
34
Pouliot, 2013, 48; Bueger and Gadinger, International Practice Theory, 83.
6G. HOLMES
(a) training and gender mainstreaming practices (b) female peacekeeper
subject positions and (c) positions and struggles between actors in the pre-
deployment training field of practice. A mixed-methods approach was used,
combining participant observation, depth-interviews and content analysis.
Participant observation of field exercises facilitated the mapping of training
and gender mainstreaming practices in ‘realtime’.
35
Semi-structured inter-
views with actors who operate within the pre-deployment training field
were used to discover women’s training experiences; and collect training prac-
tices and background knowledge discussed with the interviewees.
36
These
were coded using Nvivo software and relations between codes and thematic
patterns were established. Content analysis was used to ‘read’
37
practices
located in DPKO/DFS and Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) policies and train-
ing materials.
Fieldwork was undertaken at Gako Military Training Academy in Musanze
and the Ministry of Defence (MINEDEF) in Kigali, Rwanda between May
2014 and December 2015. Sixty-five semi-structured interviews were con-
ducted with male and female Rwandan military personnel, trainers and exter-
nal consultants (see table) in Kinyarwanda, English and French by the author,
two female research assistants and two translators.
Research participant Quantity
Female military personnel
Member of all-female unit in battalion currently being trained 9
Trained, awaiting deployment 15
Returned from deployment 22
RDF Trainers
Male 6
Female 1
External consultants/trainers
Male 2
Female 1
Senior staffin RDF/Ministry of Defence
Male 8
Female 1
Total 65
The analysis presented in this article is based on practices observed (ident-
ified) and recorded by the author during participant observations, formal and
informal research encounters in the pre-deployment training field, and train-
ing materials provided by the RDF. Due to restrictions on freedom of speech
in post-conflict Rwanda
38
and the closed institutional structure of the RDF,
self-censorship was evident during interviews. Research participants would
not discuss whether ethnicity affected their training experiences and this
35
Bueger and Gadinger, International Practice Theory, 83.
36
Halperin and Heath, Political Research, 258.
37
Bueger and Gadinger, International Practice Theory, 85.
38
Holmes, Women and War in Rwanda,36–40.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 7
variable is excluded from the study. Research participants were selected by
RDF staffin MINEDEF’s Peace Support Operations division and by the
Office of the Director of Gako Military Training Academy from a pool of
peacekeepers who may have been screened and briefed in advance to
ensure regularity of performance during research encounters. Several research
participants appeared to perform to an RDF institutional (public) transcript
or provided what were perceived by the author to be socially acceptable
answers for an outsider researcher.
39
Others diverged from formal narratives
and spoke at a more personal and critical level. This discrepancy helped ident-
ify the embodied practices female military personnel were expected to
perform during training vis-à-vis the practices the women chose to
perform, and facilitated reconstruction of the ‘scripted’Rwandan female
peacekeeper subject position. Triangulation identified a range of practices
and the repetition and routinization of practices,
40
as did conducting inter-
views over four field research trips, each lasting 2-3 weeks. To differentiate
between types of background knowledge and practices acquired during train-
ing, and afterwards during deployment, a comparative analysis of interview
transcripts with female peacekeepers that had not deployed and those that
had was conducted. Interviews were translated into English and transcribed
by three assistants in Rwanda and the UK, although small variations in trans-
lation occurred. Research participants consented to the interviews and are
referred to by a number, rank and role to ensure anonymity.
Norms and agency in peacekeeping training
DPKO/DFS outline three training phrases for peacekeepers: pre-deployment
training; early deployment (induction) training and ongoing training during
deployment.
41
Under General Assembly resolution A/RES/49/37 (1995),
TCCS are responsible for training uniformed personnel and since 2009 are
expected to use core pre-deployment training materials (CPTMs) produced
by DPKO/DFS and the Integrated Training Service (ITS). Theorizing how
UN institutionalized peacekeeping norms are implemented in peacekeeping
training is an emergent area of research. In the existing literature, critical
peacekeeping scholars borrow constructivist definitions of norms and norm
dynamics to explain how the politics of global governance play out in peace-
keeping training.
First generation scholars writing in the 1990s contended that peacekeepers
deployed to multi-dimensional peacekeeping operations require softer
conflict resolution skills than the conventional combatant soldier.
39
Halperin and Heath, Political Research, 259.
40
Pouliot, 2013.
41
United Nations, “United Nations Peacekeeping Resource Hub.”
8G. HOLMES
Transforming the traditional warrior peacekeeper into the ‘cosmopolitan
peacekeeper’
42
was the focus, as was improving peacekeeper interactions
with host communities to deliver protection of civilian (POC) tasks and
support mission-specific peacebuilding efforts.
43
Peacekeeping training is
conceptualized as a mechanism or channel through which to transfer UN
institutionalized human rights and protection norms in order to ‘re-socialise’
military personnel as UN peacekeepers; or to transfer technical skills to the
peacekeeper. Reflecting constructionist definitions, norms change behaviour
and ‘[re-]constitute’peacekeeper subjects.
44
They are institutionalized at the
international level, before cascading to the domestic level once the tipping
point is reached, as described in Finnemore and Sikkink’s norm life-cycle
model.
45
Norms have socialization properties and are transferred through
military education and training. Betts Featherston draws on Bourdieu’s
theory of social practice to demonstrate how training ‘produces effective
peacekeepers.’
46
A soldier’s behaviours and patterns of action are ‘product
[s] of habitus’and social positions ‘learned from within [the] military’
47
and may not be appropriate when applied in the peacekeeping mission
area, which is a different field and habitus.
48
Norms therefore set the stan-
dards for appropriate behaviour and action.
49
Where constructivist norm
diffusion theories employ the metaphors ‘internalization’and ‘socialization’
to explain how norms are accepted at the domestic level, Betts Featherston
introduces a fourth level of analysis, claiming that norms transferred via
peacekeeping training change a peacekeeper’s mindset. However, he infers
that the TCC military institution (a singular actor) is a norm-taker or
norm-resister, rather than norm-contester of the UN’s institutionalized
norms, conceptualized as stable and unambiguous.
Second generation scholars apply postcolonial theorizing of power
relations to foreground the agency of global south TCCs.
50
‘New peace-
keepers’, for example from west and east Africa, require ‘relatively heavy
external assistance and training to deploy troops to peace operations’.
51
Military elites (the new peacekeepers) profit politically and economically
42
Curran, More than Fighting for Peace?, 119.
43
Betts Featherston, 1998; Duffy, “Cultural Issues in Contemporary Peacekeeping.”
44
Björkdahl, “Norms in International Relations,”21.
45
Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998.
46
Betts Featherston, 1998, 167.
47
Betts Featherston, 1998, 167. Kats.
48
Betts Featherston, 1998, 162.
49
Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security,5.
50
Flaspöler, “Adding Peacekeepers to the Debates of Critical Liberal Peacebuilding”; Jowell, “The Unin-
tended Consequences of Foreign Military Assistance in Africa”; Wilén, “Examining the Links between
Security Sector Reform and Peacekeeping Troop Contribution in Post-conflict States.”
51
Wilén, “Examining the Links between Security Sector Reform and Peacekeeping Troop Contribution in
Post-conflict States,”4.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 9
from engaging in peacekeeping.
52
Jowell contends that African militaries are
‘adept at adopting and subverting’UN institutionalized norms, suggesting
that military elites are norm-adapters as well as norm-takers and/or norm-
resisters. Flaspöler questions whether African peacekeepers can be socialized
as ‘international peacekeepers’, as Betts Featherston presumes, and suggests
that TCCs deploy ‘hybridized’peacekeeper subjects.
53
The literature aligns
with Acharya’s norm circulation model, who evidences the agency and
power of domestic (local) actors by demonstrating how these actors ‘build
congruence’
54
between institutionalized and domestic norms during
implementation.
In parallel to this research, gender scholars are examining how UN institu-
tionalized gender mainstreaming norms are implemented in peacekeeping
training since UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (Women, Peace and
Security) was adopted in 2000. For these scholars, UN gender mainstreaming
norms are adaptive and adaptable
55
‘constitutive norms’that ‘create new
actors, interests or categories of action’and ‘give meaning to action’.
56
UN
gender mainstreaming norms can be broadened or narrowed once operatio-
nalized. When broadened, the norms set policy formation agendas and trans-
form existing organizational structures and practices. When narrowed, they
may be ‘submitted to other goals than that of gender equality’,‘fit into existing
policy frames’
57
and reproduce existing gendered institutional practices.
58
These scholars acknowledge that training curricular are already gendered
before gendered perspectives are integrated. Most empirical studies examine
how male uniformed personnel are re-socialized as peacekeepers and focus
on preventing male peacekeepers from committing Sexual Exploitation and
Abuse (SEA) by enforcing norm compliance through behavioural change.
59
The studies draw on constructivist norm cascade models to show (1) why
UN institutionalized gender mainstreaming norms should be implemented
through peacekeeping training; (2) the implications for peacekeeping cultures
if TCC military institutions resist norm change. As in Betts Featherstone’s
analysis, men are products of their domestic military institution’s habitus;
are taught to behave as hypermasculine warriors and should be resocialised
52
Beswick, “The Risks of African Military Capacity Building”; Wilén, “Examining the Links between Security
Sector Reform and Peacekeeping Troop Contribution in Post-conflict States,”4.
53
Flaspöler, “Adding Peacekeepers to the Debates of Critical Liberal Peacebuilding.”
54
Betts and Orchard, Implementation & World Politics,7.
55
Joachim and Schneiker, 2012, 529; Krook and True, “Rethinking the Life Cycles of International Norms.”
56
Borkdahl, 2002, 16.
57
Joaquim and Schneiker, “Changing Discourses, Changing Practices?,”530.
58
Carreiras, Gender and the Military.
59
See Whitworth, Men, Militarism, and UN Peacekeeping; Mackay, “Mainstreaming Gender in United
Nations Peacekeeping Training”; Lyytikäinen, “Gender Training for Peacekeepers”; Laplonge, “The
Absence of Masculinity in Gender Training for UN Peacekeepers”; Carson, “Pre-deployment ‘Gender’
Training and the Lack Thereof for Australian Peacekeepers.”
10 G. HOLMES
as ‘gender sensitive’, morally virtuous, ‘good’peacekeepers.
60
Effective gender
training ‘enlightens’men to the failings of their domestic military habitus.
61
How female peacekeepers are trained to work in mixed-gender contingents
is underexplored, in part due to the prevailing assumption that women natu-
rally possess the softer skills required of the cosmopolitan peacekeeper.
62
Hei-
neken argues that ‘the embodiment of hegemonic masculinities’and ‘the
hyper-masculine peacekeeping environment’undermine South African
women’s ability to ‘function as equals in peacekeeping’.
63
Pre-deployment
training provides an opportunity for military elites to resist UN gender main-
streaming norms and reinforce domestic gender protection norms.
64
Women
are the vulnerable sex to be protected by men against other(ed) predatory
men, and are a ‘gendered security risk’
65
that weakens a deployed battalion’s
capacity. Women receive the same training as men, but are considered an
anomaly in peacekeeping because they cannot embody the peacekeeper mas-
culinity expected of military personnel, a conclusion shared by Sion in her
analysis of Dutch pre-deployment training.
66
These structural limitations
prevent women from enhancing operational effectiveness.
Several shared understandings about norm implementation processes may
be deduced from this literature review. First, norm implementation constitu-
tes a different process to norm institutionalization, although implementation
and diffusion are used interchangeably. Norms are primarily complied with or
rejected, but seldom negotiated. Second, agency and power is assigned to mili-
tary institutions/military elites (the norm-takers, norm-resisters, and norm-
adaptors), but not to subordinate peacekeeper subjects. In Betts Featherston’s
analysis, as in the gendered analyses, tactical-level peacekeepers who are
expected to be governed by UN institutionalized norms, or who are under-
stood to be governed by the TCC military institutional norms and practices,
are passive receivers and conveyors of norms, whose mindsets can be manipu-
lated and changed. Linguistically, the metaphors ‘internalization’,‘socializa-
tion’, and ‘assimulation’
67
suggest that norms have agency,
68
can penetrate
the peacekeeper subject or persuade him/her to behave or think differently.
If norms are correctly implemented by the TCC military, ‘automatic norm
60
See Higate and Henry, Insecure Spaces; Whitworth, Men, Militarism, and UN Peacekeeping; Duncanson,
“Forces for Good?”; Bevan and MacKenzie, “‘Cowboy’Policing versus ‘the Softer Stuff’.”
61
Laplonge, “The Absence of Masculinity in Gender Training for UN Peacekeepers”; Carson, “Pre-deploy-
ment ‘Gender’Training and the Lack Thereof for Australian Peacekeepers.”
62
Carreiras, Gender and the Military; Holmes, “Gender, Peacekeeping and the Commonwealth”; Karim and
Beardsley, Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping.
63
Heineken, 2015, 241.
64
Karim and Beardsley, Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping.
65
Heineken, 2015, 247.
66
Sion, “Peacekeeping and the Gender Regime.”
67
Heineken, 2015, 244.
68
Bucher, “Acting Abstractions.”
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 11
adoption’and acceptance
69
(internalization) will occur and change the subor-
dinate peacekeeper’s subjectivity. This neglects the underlying, everyday
‘agential processes’
70
that determine how subordinate, lower-ranking male
and female military personnel participate in norm implementation.
Third, practices matter in norm implementation. Scholars recognize that a
relationship exists between norms and practices, and infer the centrality of
practices in implementing norms, but there is considerable variety in how
practices are understood and employed in the literature. Carson suggests
that training is a practice.
71
Others foreground institutional practices (rules
and processes) and ‘peacekeeping practices’.
72
Gender scholars observe that
gender is a practice, and highlight how naturalized gendered power relations
are reproduced during peacekeeping training.
73
However, institutional (train-
ing) practices are created and controlled by military elites.
Fourth, material factors determining how and why UN institutionalized
norms are implemented is of secondary importance to ideational factors,
even though scholars acknowledge that military elites are self-interested
and seek to accrue, in Bourdieusean terms, social and symbolic capital
which can be converted into material capital. The conviction that ideas
change peacekeeper subjectivities eclipses the lived reality that peacekeepers
are classed, raced and gendered labouring bodies and material resources
(commodities) supplied by the TCC military to the UN. Gender scholars
have long vocalized concern that the instrumentalist argument, which empha-
sises the unique ways women enhance peacekeeping by introducing gender
sensitivity into military tasks and into interactions with host country commu-
nities, has overshadowed the rights-based argument for including women in
peacekeeping workforces.
74
They challenge assumptions that the operational
value of women is dependent on their sex-difference; caution against counting
women and essentialising women as peaceful and non-threatening.
75
Pruitt
observes that ‘[w]omen are being marketed, and women’s abilities are
framed to convince …current decision-makers of the utility of their abilities
69
Bucher, “Acting Abstractions,”749.
70
Bucher, “Acting abstractions,”749.
71
Carson, “Pre-deployment ‘Gender’Training and the Lack Thereof for Australian Peacekeepers.”
72
Flaspöler, 2015; Jowell, “The Unintended Consequences of Foreign Military Assistance in Africa”; Wilén,
“Examining the Links between Security Sector Reform and Peacekeeping Troop Contribution in Post-
conflict States.”
73
MacKay, “Mainstreaming Gender in United Nations Peacekeeping Training”; Sion, “Peacekeeping and the
Gender Regime”; Laplonge, 2016; Carson, “Pre-deployment ‘Gender’Training and the Lack Thereof for
Australian Peacekeepers.”
74
See Bridges and Horsfall, 2008; Jennings, “Women’s Participation in UN Peacekeeping Operations”; Kron-
sell, Gender, Sex and the Postnational Defense; Simic, “Increasing Women’s Presence in Peacekeeping
Operations”; Gizelis and Olsson, Gender, Peace and Security; Karim and Beardsley, Equal Opportunity
Peacekeeping.
75
See Sion, “Peacekeeping and the Gender Regime”; Heathcote and Otto, Rethinking Peacekeeping, Gender
Equality and Collective Security; Simic, “Increasing Women’s Presence in Peacekeeping Operations”;
Beardsley and Karim, “Female Peacekeepers and Gender Balancing”; Pruitt, The Women in Blue
Helmets; Karim and Beardsley, Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping.
12 G. HOLMES
and knowledge, or to legitimise’institutional practices’.
76
Crawford and Mac-
donald suggest that gender mainstreaming is a UN-led demand-driven
response to ‘past mission failures’, rather than a supply-driven response of
TCCs.
77
The appropriation of Bourdieu’s theory of social practice to explain how
domestic norms are supplanted and gendered peacekeeper subjects trans-
formed overlooks how gendered peacekeeping labouring practices are con-
structed during the training encounter. Peacekeepers are not just
commodities, they are also capital accumulating subjects
78
who bring their
own ideational and material interests to peacekeeping missions,
79
as well as
to peacekeeping training. Therefore, the act of norm compliance, non-compli-
ance or partial compliance, which occurs during the norm implementation
process, carries transactional value both for the TCC and the individual
peacekeeper.
Taken together, the ideational bias in the existing peacekeeping training lit-
erature foregrounds structure over socially embedded agency and relations of
power
80
in the material training space, and hinders analysis of how a diversity
of raced, classed, sexed and gendered peacekeeper subjects engage in norm
implementation.
Conceptualizing pre-deployment training
The pre-deployment training space is a field of practice and a site of norm
contestation, negotiation and implementation. Actors (subjects) that engage
in pre-deployment training are located within a field and both shape and
are shaped by the field’s gendered logic of practice (habitus)
81
The field is a
hybrid space in which TCC military actors and external actors from training
institutes, other militaries and UN subsidiary bodies (UN Women, DPKO/
DFS) engage in curriculum design and delivery and contribute to operationa-
lizing UN norms. Norms are contested, adapted, rejected or accepted by the
TCC military during ‘frictional encounters’with external agents, as they nego-
tiate training content and practice. Informing norm localization processes,
frictional encounters can be productive and may not necessarily lead to the
outright rejection of a norm.
82
Yet, since dominant control over the operatio-
nalization of norms lies with the TCC military, ‘norm subsidiarity’,defined by
Acharya as ‘a process whereby local actors create rules [and practices] …to
preserve their autonomy from dominance …[and] abuse by more powerful
76
Pruitt, The Women in Blue Helmets, 78.
77
Crawford and Macdonald, “Establishing a Marketplace of Women in Peacekeeping.”
78
Lovell, “Thinking feminism with and against Bourdieu,”20.
79
Higate and Henry, 2008.
80
Bucher, “Acting Abstractions,”754.
81
Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, 30.
82
Björkdahl and Höglund, “Precarious Peace,”290.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 13
central actors’,
83
may occur concurrently. For instance, TCC senior military
leaders may reject UN gender mainstreaming norms if they perceive that
the military institution’s established gender regime is threatened. Thus, UN
institutionalized norms are adapted by TCC-military senior leaders and trai-
ners (internal norm brokers) and external consultants (external norm
brokers) to make them ‘workable and practical’in more than one local
context –the TCC military and the peacekeeping operation.
84
Whether a
UN institutionalized norm is accepted and complied with, or adapted and
partially complied with, depends on whether TCC military elites conceive
they will profit symbolically and materially from its implementation.
Constructing gendered peacekeeper subject positions
The pre-deployment training space is a militarized field of power, as well as an
educational field of practice wherein subject positions are constructed and
negotiated during transfers of knowledge between educators and learners.
Through military education and training, male and female personnel are
assigned (pre-)constructed subject positions, which they must learn to
perform in accordance with the logic of appropriateness within the fields in
which they will operate.
85
Informed by historical, gendered military practices
and patterns of action, the training curriculum ‘establishes hierarchical
relations between different forms of knowledge’and ‘generates a network of
subject positions in relation to these hierarchies’.
86
For the TCC military, pre-deployment training does not necessarily aim to
transform the mindset (consciousness)of subordinate peacekeepers if raising
awareness of the military habitus has the potential to disrupt the military’s
existing power relations. Instead, the aim is to ensure that deployed peace-
keeper subjects perform peacekeeping practices to the standardized level of
competence required –either by the UN or by the TCC. Accepted norms,
then, do not need to be internalized by the peacekeeper subject, but they do
need to be implemented and ‘incorporated’into the routinized, embodied
practices that peacekeeper subjects perform.
Subject positions are constructed according to institutionally and socially
recognized (often dialectical) categorisations and sub-categorisations, such
as ‘man’/‘woman’,‘masculine’/‘feminine’,‘heterosexual’/‘homosexual’,
‘black’/‘white’. They are performed repetitively overtime according to the
military institution’s accepted norms, practices and discourses,
87
leading to
the creation of what I call ‘scripted’peacekeeper subject positions. How
83
Acharya, “Norm Subsidiarity and Regional Orders.”
84
Acharya, “Norm Subsidiarity and Regional Orders,”1.
85
Skeggs, Formations of Class & Gender,2.
86
Skeggs, Formations of Class & Gender, 61.
87
Skeggs, Formations of Class & Gender, 12.
14 G. HOLMES
gendered scripted peacekeeper subject positions are constructed is determined
by a peacekeeper’s perceived use-value. Here, I borrow from the Marxist idea
that labouring bodies carry value within a given labour market
88
and are
‘bearers of capital value’
89
for powerful elites. As gender scholars contend,
the instrumentalist argument for women’s integration into peacekeeping
assumes that militarized women’s bodies, and the proscribed feminine
subject positions military women are expected to perform when undertaking
gendered labouring practices, have particular functions in peacekeeping oper-
ations and acquire value because they are considered to improve operational
effectiveness. Peacekeepers are resources (assets) and commodities which
TCCs rent out to the UN in exchange for material and symbolic capital
(such as international prestige and military experience). If scripted peace-
keeper subject positions are performed competently, the TCC may accrue
more symbolic and material capital. Therefore, gendered labouring practices
peacekeepers are expected to perform are taught and rehearsed during pre-
deployment training. Routinized embodied practices performed during train-
ing encourage men and women to accept their place within the sexual division
of labour of the pre-deployment training space and within the hierarchical
structures of both the TCC military and the deployed battalion.
90
Once operationalized, an accepted norm may no longer be an ideal model
of behaviour (performance), since a plurality of relational embodied prac-
tices
91
influence how the norm is implemented during the pedagogic encoun-
ter. This plurality of practices create ‘norms-in-practice’enacted by trainees
during pre-deployment training and once deployed. As Krook and True
contend, constitutive norms are ‘norms in process’.
92
Implementing norms
and putting them into practice (incorporating
93
them into embodied prac-
tices) cannot completely stabilize a norm, since how practices are performed
is dependent on the subject, who may perform them competently or incom-
petently. Whether embodied practices are perceived to be competently per-
formed will vary according to the different perspectives of the actors within
the field. An external consultant may judge that a peacekeeper trainer or trai-
nees’performance is incompetent, while a senior military staffmember may
presume otherwise, or vice-versa. Bourdieu’s theory of practice and his sug-
gestion that the habitus of the pre-deployment training field changes accord-
ing to the actors operating within it reminds us of the temporality of norm
implementation processes. Norms-in-practice, then, are continually nego-
tiated by the subjects engaged in norm implementation. Yet, the repetition
88
Spivak, “The Scattered Speculations on the Question of Value,”3.
89
Lovell, “Thinking Feminism with and against Bourdieu,”24.
90
Skeggs, Formations of Class & Gender, 48.
91
Bigo, “Pierre Bourdieu and International Relations,”233.
92
Krook and True, “Rethinking the Life Cycles of International Norms,”110.
93
de Sardan, Real Governance and Practical Norms in Sub-Saharan Africa,1.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 15
and routinization of embodied practices stabilizes implemented norms, albeit
precariously.
DPKO/DFS embedded gender mainstreaming norms
The use-value of tactical-level female military peacekeepers is described in
DPKO/DFS’s‘Gender Policy for UN Peacekeeping’(2010) and the ‘Guide-
lines for Integrating a Gender Perspective into the work of the UN Military
in Peacekeeping Operations’(2010). DPKO/DFS adopt an integrationist
(and instrumentalist) approach to gender mainstreaming by emphasising
increasing the proportion of female military personnel to deliver specific
tasks, and incorporating a gender perspective into established workstreams.
This includes applying a gender perspective to tactical-level PoC and law
enforcement activities; disarmament, reintegration and security sector
reform (DDR/SSR) programmes and Civil–Military (CIMIC) operations
aligned to peacebuilding mission objectives. Female military peacekeepers
are valued for educating and empowering local women and engaging with
perceived vulnerable groups when delivering capacity building projects
(currently Quick Impact projects).
DPKO/DFS also interpret UN gender mainstreaming norms as transfor-
mative and capable of changing the habitus of peacekeeping workforces
and modes of operation (practices) within military, police and civilian com-
ponents and across multidimensional teams, so that female personnel are
equal partners in decision-making at all levels. Within the DPKO/DFS
policy discourse, there exists a contradiction in how gender should be prac-
ticed. Women’s labouring peacekeeping practices are dependent on a close
alignment of biological sex and gender, and women are expected to
perform as ‘female peacekeepers’to deliver specific mission objectives. Yet,
DPKO/DFS also support the conscious separation of biological sex and
gender to facilitate fair and equal treatment of all staff.
To support implementation of these embedded gender mainstreaming
norms, the UN gender directive stipulates that all pre-deployment training
modules should ‘cover the role and rationale of work for gender equality
and the empowerment of women in peacekeeping contexts.’
94
However, the
2009 CPTMs foreground an integrationist approach to gender mainstream-
ing, incorporating gender perspectives into existing mission objectives.
CPTM Unit 3 (Women, Peace and Security), and CPTM Unit 2 (cultural
diversity) only briefly conceptualize gender equality in peacekeeping work-
forces.
95
Good practice examples demonstrating how gender mainstreaming
can facilitate gender equality within peacekeeping contingents are absent.
94
United Nations, “Core Predeployment Training Materials,”16.
95
United Nations, “Core Predeployment Training Materials,”2, 47.
16 G. HOLMES
This content was extended in the 2017 CPTMS, as Lucile Maertens observes
of the CPTM on environmental issues.
96
Module Two (Women, Peace and
Security) affords greater attention to gendered power structures within peace-
keeping, although how TCCs use these training materials is yet to be
determined.
Pre-deployment training in Rwanda
The proceeding case study illustrates how DPKO/DFS embedded gender
mainstreaming norms become implemented in the Rwandan pre-deployment
training programme for mixed-gender battalions. Overall, the RDF accepts
DPKO/DFS integrationist gender mainstreaming norms and rejects transfor-
mative gender mainstreaming norms.
Norm contestation and negotiation
The RDF trained three battalions concurrently at Gako Military Academy.
Battalions comprised 800 personnel, with one all-female unit of 10–20 per-
sonnel.
97
During the three-month pre-deployment training programme, bat-
talions spent two weeks in the classroom and six engaged in field exercises.
There was ongoing, ad hoc input from external consultants, primarily the
US-funded agency ACOTA and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP)
who provided technical advice on setting up practical exercises or occasional
training for officers on communication, negotiation and conflict resolution.
At the time of the field research, ACOTA consultants (who were US ex-
military men) did not design or deliver battalion classroom-based training,
but did not regard integrating gender into practical exercises a priority,
98
suggesting there was no conflict of interest between ACOTA consultants
and the RDF.
Since RDF trainers delivered classroom-based modules, DPKO/DFS
embedded gender mainstreaming norms were operationalized by internal
norm brokers rather than external norm brokers (consultants). RDF trainers
did not use the CPTM curriculum, nor mainstream gender issues across the
training programme, as recommended by DPKO/DFS. They selected
elements of the older SGMTs,
99
which presented a narrower, integrationist
reading of gender mainstreaming. These older training materials were used
in conjunction with modules developed by the African Union and the RDF
itself. Thus, the training materials informed a hybridized curriculum, where
RDF values and ethics were promoted in the context of teaching military
96
Lucile Maertens, this section.
97
Senior officer 1, interview with the author, 28 May 2014.
98
Brigadier General, interview with the author, 10 June 2014.
99
I thank Anne Flaspöler for this observation.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 17
personnel UN/AU modes of operation, as well as the RDF’s own modes of
operation practiced within Rwandan base camps. According to the male trai-
ners, the hybridized curriculum and relatable domestic examples helped trai-
nees understand theoretical concepts such as ‘gender based violence’(GBV).
While this hybridized approach can be seen as productive, the limited content
selection facilitated partial compliance of UN gender mainstreaming norms.
The RDF only incorporated a gender dimension when teaching modules
on preventing SEA, peacekeeper discipline and performance; cultural diver-
sity and PoC. All modules, including the gender module, were taught by
RDF officers, rather than in-house gender experts. In interviews, these
officers indicated that the UN’s more transformative gender agenda was irre-
levant for preparing peacekeepers for deployment. Modules were taught
didactically as 30-45 minute-long lectures by trainers using powerpoint
slides to all 800 military personnel in the battalion mess. As an RDF
Gender Desk staffmember explained, emphasis was placed on ensuring dis-
cipline among male troops.
100
Training objectives specified that the Rwandan
male peacekeeper should understand that gender is socially constructed, know
the concepts SEA and ‘GBV’and understand the different ways conflict affects
men, women and children.
101
Rejection of the UN’s transformative gender mainstreaming norms also
took effect through norm subsidiarity and in the subtle operationalization
of the RDF’s formal (codified and visible) and informal (invisible) gender
rules that established the gendered logic of practice of Rwandan base camps
within UNAMID and the pre-deployment training space. In Sudan, the
RDF’s gender protection norms policing the sexual division of labour repro-
duced stereotypes that ‘portrayed women as incapable of providing protec-
tion’.
102
Tactical-level female military peacekeepers who only received
TCC-led pre-deployment training worked solely within the Rwandan military
base camp unless they were told to visit IDP camps. As in Heinecken and
Sion’s analyses, women were excluded from performing certain security prac-
tices and were confined to ‘safe spaces’and ‘safe tasks’.
103
They did not join
male Rwandan military peacekeepers on short-duration day patrols unless
it was known in advance that female military peacekeepers were required,
104
and they were not allowed to participate in night patrols or long-duration
patrols. None of the female peacekeepers interviewed engaged in DDR/SSR
programmes, which were not UNAMID priorities. Four women engaged in
intelligence gathering, but most who worked with local populations outside
100
Female major, interview with the author, 4 June 2014.
101
Female peacekeeper 6, interview with author, 9 June 2015.
102
Pruitt, The Women in Blue Helmets, 74.
103
Karim and Beardsley, Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping, 37.
104
Female peacekeeper 18, interview with the author, 13 June 2015; Female peacekeeper 16, interview
with the author, 10 June 2010.
18 G. HOLMES
the base camp supported empowerment and education projects and discussed
human rights, HIV/AIDs awareness and reproductive health with Sudanese
women.
In the 40km² training compound, a simulated mission area incorporating
three base camps was constructed. The gender order of the UNAMID-
Rwandan base camp was reproduced in the simulated mission area: first, in
the ordering of the peacekeeping training space itself, which was designed
by the RDF, and second in the ordering of training practices in accordance
with mission objectives. According to a former Director of Gako Military
Training Academy, the simulated base camps were organized identically to
Rwanda’s base camps in the conflict zone to ensure RDF military personnel
experienced the closest they could to mission life.
105
RDF policy and practice
dictated that the all-female unit’s tent and bathroom facilities were located
next to the officers’accommodation.
106
These embodied practices reveal the
subtle ways in which a network of gendered and classed subject positions is
created. Although sexual abuse and harassment should be prevented, the
spatial zoning of the simulated base camp positioned all Rwandan women
as potential victims requiring protection, but also agents who needed to be
vigilant of personal security threats; educated, middle-class Rwandan male
senior officers were positioned as their protectors, while lower-ranking, (pre-
dominantly) working class Rwandan male soldiers were potential aggressors
and thus subordinate to male senior officers.
Constructing the Rwandan female peacekeeper subject position
As in most militaries, male and female personnel train together to form a
cohesive team. Though the Rwandan male peacekeeper subject was fore-
grounded in the classroom, women were expected to perform gendered
labouring practices during field exercises. Task-orientated
107
field exercises,
designed to test peacekeepers on knowledge learnt in the classroom
108
and
rehearse peacekeeping labouring practices, addressed gender in narrow
terms. During a half-day participant observation, the battalion was presented
with two scenarios. In the first, warring factions had set up roadblocks, were
conducting ambushes and hindering peacekeepers from reaching IDP camps
and isolated, dehydrated Sudanese women. In the second, the battalion
encountered IDP demonstrations near the Rwandan base camp. Nine out
of the 10 women in the battalion executed basic military tasks within the
base camp and one woman, a captain, was an intelligence analyst. In the
first scenario, female military personnel performed as the scripted Rwandan
105
Brig. Gen., interview with the author, 29 May 2014.
106
Female peacekeeper 23, interview with the author, 5 June 2014.
107
RDF trainer 2, interview with the author, 5 June 2014.
108
RDF trainer 1, interview with the author, 11 December 2014.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 19
female peacekeeper and tasks were assigned according to their gender.
Process-orientated role-plays included teaching local women and girls
about gender equality; searching a poor woman’s house, rebuilding houses
and giving IDPs water. In Rwanda, homosexuality is not illegal, though a stra-
tegic silence around LGBT rights in the military and broader society exists.
The scripted Rwandan female peacekeeper subject position RDF women
rehearsed was implicitly heterosexual, while role-plays focused on responding
to women and girl survivors of rape, rather than men and boys. Due to their
low rank, the women did not make decisions about managing convoys and
ambushes. Peacekeepers were not required to negotiate with female comba-
tants during the patrol exercise because, according to senior RDF staff,it
was ‘rare to find women in ambushes in Darfur’.
109
All the women interviewed self-identified as gender-neutral peacekeepers.
Yet, two-thirds spoke of performing a ‘female peacekeeper’subject position.
One major remarked,
If I deploy as a female peacekeeper, I’m playing two roles because there are
some roles I can play that a men can’t play. I interact with female victims,
but [a male peacekeeper] will not be able to gather information [from local
women], so I’m both a peacekeeper and a female peacekeeper.
110
Asked whether she was a peacekeeper or a female peacekeeper, a corporal (a
radio operator) responded:
Both. Sometimes I act as a peacekeeper and other times as a female peace-
keeper. For example, like those [issues] of gender. Sometimes we go and
meet women and they ask us to give them things like bread, water, milk
etc. If they see you are a woman, they come to you instead of men. So in
that situation, I act as a female peacekeeper, although I am a peacekeeper
in all other categories.
111
As in the field exercises, the constructed gendered peacekeeping labouring
practices rehearsed aligned to the instrumentalist approach to integrating
women. One private commented:
The female peacekeeper must console women who have just been raped and
teach gender to the population. She must have empathy to console and to
teach gender in Darfur. I will teach them about the gender factor and teach
them [women] how to protect themselves. And I’ll teach them to love the
military.
112
Women interviewed understood ‘being disciplined’as performing as liber-
ated and empowered, modern Rwandan women and Rwanda ambassadors:
109
Senior RDF staff8, interview with author, 7 June 2014.
110
Female peacekeeper 7, interview with the author, 9 June 2015.
111
Female peacekeeper 8, interview with the author, 6 June 2015.
112
Female peacekeeper 27, interview with the author, 6 June 2014.
20 G. HOLMES
The first value of a peacekeeper is discipline because we follow the guidelines
and rules we are given by our leaders …We are there representing our
country so if you fail to perform well, it seems like your country is not dis-
ciplining you effectively, and it’s [regarded as] a shame [on you and your
country].
113
This construction borrowed from the socially recognizable dialectic category
of male/female peacekeeper, and a second, raced and class-based dialectic
category distinguishing developed, empowered Rwandan women from
underdeveloped, disempowered Sudanese women-victims. Here, the UN
constructed use-value of female military peacekeepers aligned with the
RPF government’s constructed use-value of military women as peace-
builders in post-conflict Rwanda.
114
Building congruence between domestic
and DPKO/DFS embedded gender mainstreaming norms, the RDF-con-
structed scripted Rwandan female peacekeeper performs as educator (diffu-
ser) of Rwandan norms and practices –notably related to conflict resolution
and post-conflict development. As one trainee remarked, she will take Suda-
nese women ‘out of violence and teach them the benefits of unity and
reconciliation, and teach them how to get out of ethnic conflict’.
115
Women were also required to perform as the bearer of traditional
Rwandan culture. All women interviewed wore traditional dress during cul-
tural exchanges with other military contingents or local populations. One
female peacekeeper returnee managed the dance troupe and organized
rehearsals.
116
Fewer men engaged in these gendered embodied practices.
Within UNAMID, Rwandan female military personnel were expected to
perform two subject positions: the gender-neutral peacekeeper engaged in
tactical-level military tasks within the base-camp; and the disciplined
Rwandan female peacekeeper who promotes (RPF-sanctioned) traditional
Rwandan culture and modern values.
The acceptance of the UN’s integrationist gender mainstreaming norms
appeared to more closely align to the RDF’s informal gender norms;
helped to stabilize the RDF’s gender protection norms, and could be
more easily translated into ‘norms-in-practice’in the two local contexts
within which tactical-level military personnel were required to operate:
the UNAMID mission area, and the TCC military. Partially complying
with DPKO/DFS embedded gender mainstreaming norms, the RDF
increased the commodity-value of their female peacekeepers to accrue
more symbolic capital once they deployed, without disrupting the military’s
gender order.
113
Female peacekeeper 29, interview with the author, 7 June 2014.
114
Holmes, “Gendering the Rwanda Defence Force”; Holmes, “Gender and the Military in Post-Genocide
Rwanda.”
115
Female peacekeeper 27.
116
Female peacekeeper 11, interview with the author, 10 June 2015.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 21
How female peacekeepers engage in norm implementation
Female military personnel are not just commodities, but capital accumulating
subjects that bring their own ideational and material interests to peacekeeping
training. All the women interviewed regarded pre-deployment training as a
strategic investment. Yet, when asked whether they felt the pre-deployment
training equipped them to perform peacekeeping labouring practices compe-
tently, the women responded in diverse ways, depending on their position
within the military; how much capital they had access to, and the background
knowledge they brought to the training.
Many women –notably lower-ranking and younger privates –felt
confident they were equipped with the skills required to deploy to
UNAMID, although they often spoke about tactical-level military tasks,
rather than the soft skills required for PoC tasks. It was assumed that the back-
ground knowledge women acquired growing up in post-conflict Rwanda
would enable them to engage effectively with traumatized people in the
mission, and many spoke passionately about assisting Sudanese women. A
2nd lieutenant explained,
The RDF, we have experience. For example, the genocide in our country –we
saw many things. This made us able to help other countries overcome their war
problems’.
117
Women preparing to deploy also presumed they could communicate easily
with Sudanese women, despite their different cultures, religions (all research
participants self-identified as Christian), education, age, ability or personal
circumstance:
Private For example, she has been raped. She can’t talk to a man but she
feels free to talk to me.
Interviewer Have you been specifically trained on how to talk to a woman
that has experienced conflict-related sexual violence?
Private I have not received that training, but as a person I can imagine
what it must be like to speak to her …What is happening in
Darfur is almost the same as what happened in Rwanda
because they kill each other and [the women and children] are
left as widows and orphans. So I really pity them because I
know what they are going through and I feel I should counsel
them.
118
For these women, implementing RDF-accepted integrationist gender
mainstreaming norms may have carried enough transactional value and
they did not request changes to existing training practices. Many performed
the scripted Rwanda female peacekeeper subject position in interviews,
117
Female peacekeeper 41, interview with the author, 18 November 2015.
118
Female peacekeeper 29.
22 G. HOLMES
although it was difficult to ascertain whether performing the scripted subject
position was deemed safer than speaking off-script, given their subordinate
positions in the military.
Senior, degree-educated officers in their late twenties and thirties who had
not deployed demonstrated greater awareness of transformative approaches
to gender mainstreaming –perhaps background knowledge acquired
through their military/political elite networks. These middle-class women,
some of whom spoke passionately about the importance of gender equality,
felt the training on gender issues was too short, lacked depth about how
conflict affected men and women
119
and focused on good behaviour (norm
compliance), rather than on equal opportunity peacekeeping. One female
captain requested training on how to ‘better implement a gender perspective
into the conduct of operations’, in intelligence analysis, and wanted to learn
how ‘gender could be integrated into decision-making’. She believed more
complicated scenarios taught in smaller classes would teach peacekeepers
how to ‘handle problems and execute decisions well’.
120
These women used their educational and social capital to develop alterna-
tive (informal) training practices to source knowledge about the mission and
peacekeeping labouring practices they would be required to perform. Practices
included talking to previously deployed colleagues; reading training manuals;
undertaking self-directed learning and conducting internet searches. The
captain and leader of the all-female unit from the battalion trained in 2014
who had a BA degree in international politics, in discussion with her subor-
dinates, organized nightly tutorials which took place in their tent, providing
the women space to reflect on the day’s learning. This initiative added to
the captain’s burden of labour suggesting that some female peacekeepers’
‘second-shift’, or additional, voluntary work,
121
commenced prior to
deployment.
Despite these educational investment strategies, which evidence the mili-
tary women’s creative agency, the capacity of female peacekeepers to
implement transformative DPKO/DFS embedded gender mainstreaming
norms within the mission area was ‘constrained by the capital value’
122
they represented for the RDF. This can be seen in the responses of women
who had returned from UNAMID and their perspectives differed depending
on their deployment. Low-ranking women who worked only in their pro-
fessional military trades within the base camp or mission headquarters con-
sidered the pre-deployment training adequate. Women who worked outside
the Rwandan base camp in multicultural teams observed gender inequalities
within the peacekeeping workforce and talked more about the need for
119
Female peacekeeper 29.
120
Female peacekeeper 23.
121
Pruitt, The Women in Blue Helmets, 12.
122
Lovell, “Thinking Feminism with and against Bourdieu,”22.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 23
transformative gender mainstreaming initiatives. However, among these
women, pre-deployment training was a site where only integrationist
gender mainstreaming norms should be implemented, and women focused
on discussing how training could better prepare them for mission-specific
tasks. Women who worked directly with the local population in challenging
contexts considered the training inadequate. These women, who engaged in
complex protection duties or worked in isolated teams outside the
Rwandan base camp, rejected the idea that soft skills such as communication,
negotiation and empathy were feminine traits. Dealing with local people who
were traumatized was the primary issue discussed. A degree educated major
who had deployed to UNAMID as a liaison officer, felt that training peace-
keepers to follow a short protocol for assisting rape survivors did not
prepare them for prolonged engagements with survivors over several hours.
Referring to the pre-deployment training schedule, she remarked:
All these things were helpful. But when I encountered gender based violence it
was not easy …When I was on the ground and reached the [IDP] camp, you
find this person who was raped for two or three hours and the people
[around her] don’t want to communicate, they don’t care about what hap-
pened. So you take care of her. You don’t go alone, you go with military obser-
vers and there must be a female there, the police –they must be female. So you
get this person, you put her in touch with the NGOs, you take her to hospital,
but you need to spend three or four hours with her.
123
One private required techniques on having ‘conversations with local
people in order to find out where the problem is and how they really
live’.
124
The Liaison Officer wanted information on the ‘psychological
impact’CRSV has on survivors.
125
In parallel with requests for deeper
context on gender issues and soft skills, several women wanted more
mission-specific scenarios and interactive role-plays for PoC activities. A
2nd lieutenant was critical of the limitations of translating classroom-
taught gender theories (which she believed the women did not always under-
stand) during field exercises:
We study [gender issues] theoretically, but in the mission area, when we start
putting [theory] into practice there are challenges. In trainings, my mate acts as
a refugee and I act as I’m going to help her. But that is like theatre –you can’t
grasp [the reality] well.
126
Several returned peacekeepers wanted to out-perform the scripted Rwandan
female peacekeeper subject position, believing as one lieutenant explained,
‘if women perform their tasks well they will give us more challenging and
123
Female peacekeeper 2, interview with the author, 3 June 2014.
124
Female peacekeeper 11.
125
Female peacekeeper 2.
126
Female peacekeeper 4, interview with the author, 11 December 2015.
24 G. HOLMES
good tasks, like the ones of men’.
127
Like the junior women who had not
deployed, these women saw implementing RDF-accepted integrationist
gender mainstreaming norms as a strategic investment.
Conclusion
Applying a Bourdieusian feminist praxiography, this article has introduced a
fourth level of analysis to norm implementation, the embodied subject who is
expected to be governed by peacekeeping norms. A feminist reading of Bour-
dieu’s theory of social practice, with its insistence that subordinated men and
women are capital-bearing objects and capital accumulating subjects,
enhances the study of norm implementation by demonstrating how these sub-
jects are both compelled and choose to engage in norm implementation. In
doing so, the conceptual framework helps to bridge the ideational-material
divide found in the norm diffusion/circulation literature. Indeed, Bourdieu
regarded rationalist and constructivist paradigms as ‘incomplete pictures’
and sought a synthesis that would not ‘reduce the logic of practice to either
instrumental rationality or structural determinism’, nor ‘reify abstract con-
cepts’such as norms.
128
Bourdieu’s inference of the field and habitus’mutability depending on the
actors operating within them, reminds us of the temporality of norm
implementation processes. Norms are continually negotiated by the embodied
subjects engaged in norm implementation. Yet, as Betts and Orchard observe,
there has to be some kind of settling process in order for norms to exist.
129
In
Rwanda, settling occurred via the routinization and repetition of embodied
gendered peacekeeping labouring practices performed by peacekeeper trai-
ners and trainees across successive training programmes.
The article also enhances understanding of how through variance in norm
implementation, TCCs contribute to sustaining or transforming the gender
regimes of peacekeeping operations. As has been observed in other peace-
keeping contexts,
130
the RDF partially complied with UN gender mainstream-
ing norms by foregrounding an integrationist approach, rather than a
combined integrationist/transformative approach. This partial compliance
allowed male military elites to strengthen the RDF’s institutional gender pro-
tection norms. Explaining how the gendered labouring practices female
peacekeepers are expected to perform in the mission are constructed prior
to their deployment, the present study fills an important gap in the existing
literature. The study demonstrates how militarized gender protection
127
Female peacekeeper 16.
128
Pouliot and Mérand, “Bourdieu’s Concepts,”31.
129
Betts and Orchard, Implementation & World Politics, 14.
130
Carreiras, Gender and the Military; Pruitt, The Women in Blue Helmets; Karim and Beardsley, Equal Oppor-
tunity Peacekeeping.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 25
norms are reproduced and stabilized, and how women become relegated to
perceived safe spaces and safe tasks in peacekeeping operations. Female
peacekeepers, like male peacekeepers, require more training and support in
handling difficult situations involving traumatized populations. Senior mili-
tary women with more educational and social capital devised alternative
(informal) training practices to better equip themselves for deployment
and, in one recorded instance, their unit. Yet, women were constrained by
the training field’s hierarchical structure and this contributed to their margin-
alization in UNAMID.
In many ways Rwanda presents a unique case, given the authoritarian
government’s instrumental use of gender mainstreaming to reconstitute the
post-conflict state.
131
However, the case study illustrates how norm
implementation processes in peacekeeping training can take effect. Given
that Bourdieu argues that no one field is the same, the conceptual framework
developed in this article can facilitate comparative analyses to investigate how
agency is linked to norm implementation processes in different peacekeeping
contexts.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the European Workshops in Inter-
national Studies, ‘Norms and Practices of Peace Operations: Evolution and Contesta-
tion’, Cardiff, 7-9 June 2017. The author would like to thank Dominik Zaum, Corinne
Heaven, Andreas Behnke, Sarah Von Billerbeck, Katia Coleman, Nina Wilén, John
Karlsrud, Kseniya Oksamytna, Lucile Maertens, Emily Paddon Rhoads and Marion
Laurence for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. The author would also
like to thank the British Academy/Leverhulme (Small Research Grant: Ref
SG131357) and the Leverhulme Trust (ECF-2015-418) for funding this research;
Ilaria Buscaglia, RDF personnel who assisted in coordinating the field research, and
the interviewees who agreed to take part in the project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
The author would also like to thank the British Academy/Leverhulme (Small Research
Grant: Ref SG131357) and the Leverhulme Trust (ECF-2015-418) for funding this
research; Ilaria Buscaglia, RDF personnel who assisted in coordinating the field
research, and the interviewees who agreed to take part in the project.
131
Burnet, Genocide Lives within US; Holmes, “Gender and the Military in Post-Genocide Rwanda.”
26 G. HOLMES
Notes on Contributor
Dr Georgina Holmes is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department
of Politics and International Relations, University of Reading. Her research explores
the development of gender mainstreaming as a policy frame in global governance and
peacekeeping, norm implementation dynamics, gender and Security Sector Reform,
and the training and deployment of male and female uniformed peacekeepers. She
is the author of Women and War in Rwanda: Genocide, Media and the Represen-
tation of Genocide (2013, I.B. Tauris).
ORCID
Georgina Holmes http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7077-9799
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