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Conditional Protection? Sex, Gender, and Discourse in UN Peacekeeping

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Abstract

How do peacekeepers operating in Haiti, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) discursively construct the local people, especially local women, and to what effect? I show a connection between peacekeepers’ representations of local people, articulated in discourse, and the gendered, often sexualized interactions and transactions in peacekeeping sites. Gender plays a central role in peacekeeper discourse. It situates the peacekeeper outside, and superior to, the chaotic, dysfunctional, feminized local. At the same time, a close reading of peacekeepers’ representations of local people disrupts idealized notions of peacekeeper masculinity as protective and benign, which still persist in peacekeeping circles, revealing it as something more vulnerable and brittle. The connection between discourse and (non)performance of peacekeeping duties is neither causal nor straightforward, but I argue that peacekeepers’ discursive constructions of locals affect how peacekeepers interpret their mandate to protect civilians: protection becomes conditional on peacekeepers’ perceptions of locals’ appearance, affect, behavior, and their ability to act out an idealized role as someone “worth” protecting. The article thus brings new insight to our understandings of gender, masculinities, and protection failures in peacekeeping.

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... Since the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in October 2000, the UN has started gendermainstreaming its mandates, albeit selectively, through the Inter-agency Taskforce on Women, Peace and Security (established by the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality [IANWGE]) and subsequent Security Council resolutions (Kreft 2017). Concurrently, scholarship, particularly feminist scholarship, has engaged critically with gendered aspects of conflict and PSO, building theoretical frameworks for the study of military masculinities (Kronsell 2012;Chinkin, Kaldor, and Yadav 2020;Duncanson 2015;Chisholm and Tidy 2017;Henry 2017;Henry 2019) and evaluating PSO policies and practice (Pruitt 2016;Higate 2007;Kronsell and Svedberg 2011;Jennings 2019). While the gendered culture in PSO is no longer controversial (Carreiras 2010), the improved understanding of gendered determinants and outcomes for both the host country and the troop and police contributing countries (TPCC) has, by and large, not been translated into greater effectiveness (Karim 2017). ...
... While the gendered culture in PSO is no longer controversial (Carreiras 2010), the improved understanding of gendered determinants and outcomes for both the host country and the troop and police contributing countries (TPCC) has, by and large, not been translated into greater effectiveness (Karim 2017). Peacekeepers' discursive construction of the local context within which they operate and specifically of the local female population has compromised the ability to fulfil the mandate to protect (Jennings 2019). While we are theorising about gender (Shepherd 2010), there is still little room for gender when theorizing inequalities as a barrier to peace (Shepherd 2017). ...
... This study provides new insights into Haitian community members' perceptions and experiences of peacekeeper-perpetrated SEA across seven locations in Haiti. It adds to our understanding of peacekeeping economies by adding the voices of the local communities to the discourse analyses from within the PSO themselves (Ferreiro 2018;Jennings 2019), thus allowing for a more sophisticated understanding of the complexities and contradictions in everyday lives in peacekeeping economies (Henry 2015a). The research has several notable strengths, including a detailed and nuanced analysis of how exploitative and abusive sexual relations occurred between local women/girls and UN peacekeepers. ...
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The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has been marred by reports of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) perpetrated against local women/girls. However, there is very limited empirical evidence on the community’s perceptions regarding these sexual interactions. Through a mixed-methods approach, this article examines community experiences and perceptions of SEA, with three prominent themes arising: peacekeepers as tourists, peacekeepers as sexual exploiters and abusers, and peacekeepers as ideal partners. Uruguayan (n = 107, 28.1 per cent) and Brazilian personnel (n = 83, 21.8 per cent) were most commonly named in SEA narratives. We explore how these perceptions of MINUSTAH peacekeepers undermine the purpose and legitimacy of UN peace support operations, and propose strategies to prevent and address peacekeeper-perpetrated SEA.
... Our results take this one step further by illustrating how transactional sex with peacekeepers was perceived as protective by males aged 13-17. Protection in peacekeeping settings is inherently gendered, in that peacekeepers situate themselves as outside and above the local who is feminized, dysfunctional, and disordered, exacerbating power differentials and creating the dichotomy of "protected" versus the male peacekeeper "protector" [63,72]. Within this context, protection is made to be earned rather than freely given [72] and peacekeepers have reframed the exchange of sex for goods and services as a "positive, nearly altruistic intervention" [28]. ...
... Protection in peacekeeping settings is inherently gendered, in that peacekeepers situate themselves as outside and above the local who is feminized, dysfunctional, and disordered, exacerbating power differentials and creating the dichotomy of "protected" versus the male peacekeeper "protector" [63,72]. Within this context, protection is made to be earned rather than freely given [72] and peacekeepers have reframed the exchange of sex for goods and services as a "positive, nearly altruistic intervention" [28]. These findings must also be interpreted within the context of DRC's patriarchal society where men are expected to be the providers for their families [73]. ...
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Background The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) has been marred by widespread allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) of women and girls by UN peacekeepers. There is minimal research conducted on the perceptions of communities most affected by the SEA themselves, and even less about those below the age of 18. Methods Using mixed-methods data, we examined the perceptions of adolescents aged 13–17 on how the lives of women and girls have been affected by the presence of UN peacekeepers within the DRC. SenseMaker, a mixed-methods narrative capture tool, was used to survey participants around six United Nations bases across eastern DRC. Each participant shared a story about the experiences of Congolese women and girls in relation to MONUSCO personnel and interpreted their own stories by answering a series of questions. Patterns of adolescent perspectives (aged 13–17) were analyzed in comparison to all other age groups and emerging qualitative themes were mapped onto quantitative variables. Results Quantitative data showed that adolescents were more likely, in comparison to all other age groups, to perceive interactions between peacekeepers and women/girls as being initiated by the woman/girl, that the MONUSCO personnel was perceived to be able to offer protection, and that the interactions between local women/girls and peacekeepers were sexual in nature. Three qualitative themes emerged: poverty bringing peacekeepers and women/girls together, material/financial gain through transactional sex and sex work, and support-seeking actions of affected women/girls. Conclusions Our mixed methods data illustrate the problematic finding that adolescents facing poverty may perceive SEA as protective through the monetary and material support gained. These findings contribute to the growing body of literature on peacekeeping economies and have implications for the prevention of, and response to, peacekeeper-perpetrated SEA.
... She argues that ethnographic, namely observation-data can provide researchers with additional context on the research and their own positionality in the field. Yet, according to Fujii, political science research is lacking theories on the potential of 'accidental ethnography'-by which she means observations or instances when the researcher is not conducting interviews or other forms of research (Jennings, 2019). Such moments, unlike other forms of data collection in the field, are unplanned, and emerge from the daily life around the researcher. ...
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... Second, we sound a note of caution about crude measurement of women's participation in peacemaking in the existing scholarship and practice (Paffenholz et al. 2016); it captures women's physical presence, describes their roles as signatories or negotiators and specifies whether they take up senior roles (Coomaraswamy 2015, 45), but neglects more refined measures such as how often women take the floor, how many arguments they make, and how long they speak relative to men. Third, we expose the untapped potential of quantitative analysis of discourse for the study of peace, which contributes to insights gained through qualitative study of discourse and its effects (Jennings 2019). Quantifying and understanding the gendered patterns of discourse during peacemaking can help us devise practical interventions that advance peace that works for women. ...
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Scholars have pinpointed that women's underrepresentation in peacemaking results in gendered outcomes that do not address women's needs and interests. Despite recent increased representation at the negotiating table, women still have a limited influence on peacemaking outcomes. We propose that differences in female and male speeches reflected in the gendered patterns in discourse during peacemaking explain how women's influence is curtailed. We examine women's speaking behavior in transitional justice debates in the post-conflict Balkans. Applying multimethod quantitative text analysis to over half a million words in multiple languages, we analyze structural and thematic speech patterns. We find that men's domination of turn-taking and the absence of topics reflecting women's needs and interests lead to a gendered outcome. The sequences of men talking after men are longer than those of women talking after women, which restricts women's deliberative space and opportunities to develop and sustain arguments that reflect their concerns. We find no evidence that women's limited influence is driven by lower deliberative quality of their speeches. This study of gendered dynamics at the microlevel of discourse identifies a novel dimension of male domination during peacemaking.
... Feminist security studies, coupled with narrative analysis and feminist discursive analysis (Shepherd 2008;Jennings 2019) ...
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“Peacebuilding” serves as a catch-all term to describe efforts by an array of international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and even agencies of foreign states to restore or construct a peaceful society in the wake-or even in the midst-of conflict. Despite this variety, practitioners consider themselves members of a global profession. In this study, Catherine Goetze investigates the genesis of peacebuilding as a professional field of expertise since the 1960s, its increasing influence, and the ways in which it reflects global power structures. Step-by- step, Goetze describes how the peacebuilding field came into being, how it defines who belongs to it and who does not, and what kind of group culture it has generated. Using an innovative and original methodology, she investigates the motivations of individuals who become peacebuilders, their professional trajectories and networks, and the “good peacebuilder” as an ideal. For many, working in peacebuilding in various ways-as an aid worker on the ground, as a lawyer at the United Nations, or as an academic in a think tank-has become not merely a livelihood but also a form of participation in world politics. As a field, peacebuilding has developed its techniques for incorporating and training new members, yet its internal politics also create the conditions of exclusion that often result in practical failures of the peacebuilding enterprise. By providing a critical account of the social mechanisms that make up the peacebuilding field, Goetze offers deep insights into the workings of Western domination and global inequalities.
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This book offers a new perspective on peace missions in intra-state wars, based on comparative field research. In theoretical terms, this book proposes a new definition of peace operation success based on two crucial elements: the (re)establishment of order and the accomplishment of the mandate. The work presents a new typology for assessing peace operations as failures, partial failures, partial successes, or successes. This focus on 'blurry' outcomes provides a clearer theoretical framework to understand what constitutes successful peace operations. It explains the different outcomes of peace operations (based on the type of success/failure) by outlining the effect(s) of the combination of the key ingredients-strategy and the type of interveners. Empirically, this book tests the saliency of the theoretical framework by examining the peace operations which took place in Somalia, Sierra Leone and Liberia. This book refutes the classification of these three cases as the 'worst' context for 'transitional politics', and demonstrates that peace operations may succeed, partially of totally, in challenging contexts, and that the diverse outcomes are better explained by the type of intervener and the strategy employed than by the type of context. This work shows that, for a peace operation in an intra-state war, the adoption of a deterrence strategy works best for re-establishing order while the involvement of a great power facilitates the accomplishment of the mandate. This book will be of much interest to students of peacekeeping, conflict resolution, civil wars, security studies and IR in general.
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Recent work on the multiplicity of masculinities within specific military contexts deploys the concept of intersectionality in order to draw attention to the hierarchies present in military organizations or to acknowledge male vulnerability in situations of war and conflict. While it is important to examine the breadth and depth of masculinity as an ideology and practice of domination, it is also important for discussions of military masculinity, and intersectionality, to be connected with the ‘originary’ black feminist project from which intersectionality was born. This may indeed reflect a more nuanced and historically attuned account of such concepts as intersectionality, but also black and double consciousness, standpoint and situated knowledges. In particular, what happens when concepts central to feminist theorizing and activism suddenly become of use for studying dominant groups such as male military men? What are our responsibilities in using these concepts in unexpected and perhaps politically questionable ways? This article looks at recent feminist theorizing on intersectionality, and several examples of the use of intersectionality in relation to masculinity and the military, and finally suggests some cautionary ways forward for rethinking militaries, masculinities, and feminist theories.
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In 2013, a UN investigation declared sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) ‘the most significant risk to UN peacekeeping missions’. The exploitation and abuse of women and children by peacekeepers, aid workers, private contractors and other interveners has become ubiquitous to peace operations, ranging from rape to transactional sex, sex trafficking, prostitution and pornography. This article investigates the causes of SEA by interveners, and the development of policy responses undertaken by the UN and the international humanitarian community to prevent and ensure accountability for SEA. We argue that use of the umbrella term ‘SEA’, while helpful in distinguishing such behaviour from other forms of abuse, obscures the significant differences in the form, function and causes of the behaviours that fall under it, and we develop an account of the dominant forms SEA takes, based on survivor testimony, in order to better understand why policy responses have been ineffective. Our analysis of global policies around SEA demonstrates that it is dealt with as a discrete form of misbehaviour that occurs on an individual level and can be addressed through largely information-based training processes that inform personnel of its prohibition but fail to engage them in discussions of the local, international, normative, systemic and structural factors that give rise to it. We identify the structural and bureaucratic pressures that have contributed to the narrowing of approach regarding SEA to focus on individual compliance rather than the more complex set of factors at play, and which have undermined the effectiveness of policies globally.
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Emotions underpin how political communities are formed and function. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in times of trauma. The emotions associated with suffering caused by war, terrorism, natural disasters, fam- ine and poverty can play a pivotal role in shaping communities and orien- tating their politics. But until recently the political roles of emotions have received only scant attention. This book contributes to burgeoning literatures on emotions and inter- national relations by investigating how “affective communities” emerge after trauma. Drawing on several case studies and an unusually broad set of interdisciplinary sources, the book examines the role played by rep- resentations – from media images to historical narratives and political speeches. Representations of traumatic events are crucial, the book argues, because they generate socially embedded emotional meanings, which, in turn, enable direct victims and distant witnesses to share the injury – as well as the associated loss – in a manner that af rms a particular notion of collective identity. While ensuing political orders often re-establish old patterns, traumatic events can also generate new “emotional cultures” that genuinely transform national and transnational communities.
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Masculinities in conflict-affected and peacebuilding contexts have generally speaking been under-researched. Much of the existing research focuses relatively narrowly on men and their ‘violences’, especially that of combatants. Conceptually, much of the policy debate has revolved around either men’s ‘innate’ propensity to violence or relatively simplistic uses of frameworks such as hegemonic, military/militarized, or ‘hyper’-masculinities. These discourses have often been reinforced and reproduced without relating them to their respective local historical, political, and socio-economic contexts. In academic circles, the discussion is more advanced and progressive, but this has yet to filter through to on-the-ground work. Considering the overwhelming role men play in producing and reproducing conflict-related and other forms of violence, a better understanding of the links between masculinities and violence – as well as non-violence – should be central to examining gender, conflict, and peace. Nonetheless, currently a large part of masculinities are side-lined in research, such as those of non-combatants or displaced persons, the associated challenges of ‘thwarted masculinities’, or the positive agency of peacebuilders. Non-heterosexual masculinities also are largely invisible. Based on recent multi-country field research, we aim to highlight some of the under-researched issues revolving around conflict-affected masculinities while also discussing some conceptual challenges arising as a result. Our two key arguments are that the notion of ‘hegemonic masculinities’ in conflict-affected situations needs to be re-examined and re-articulated in more nuanced ways, and that the scope of studying masculinities in these situations needs to be broadened to go beyond merely examining the violences of men.
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United Nations policy forbids its peacekeepers and other personnel from engaging in transactional sex (the exchange of money, favors, or gifts for sex), but we find the behavior to be very common in our survey of Liberian women. Using satellite imagery and GPS locators, we randomly selected 1,381 households and randomly sampled 475 women between the ages of eighteen and thirty. Using an iPod in private to preserve the anonymity of their responses, these women answered sensitive questions about their sexual histories. More than half of them had engaged in transactional sex, a large majority of them (more than 75 percent) with UN personnel. We estimate that each additional battalion of UN peacekeepers caused a significant increase in a woman's probability of engaging in her first transactional sex. Our findings raise the concern that the private actions of UN personnel in the field may set back the UN's broader gender-equality and economic development goals, and raise broader questions about compliance with international norms.
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As of 31 August 2013 there were 15 United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations deployed across the world, consisting of 115,582 personnel.1 UN peacekeepers have done much to contribute to peace and security in many conflict-affected states. These peacekeeping operations are increasingly multidimensional, requiring UN military contingents to engage in activities that necessitate interaction with and close proximity to civilian populations of UN mission host states, including women and children.2 Since the 1990s, the contributions made by UN peacekeepers have been marred by numerous allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by UN peacekeepers, including allegations of serious crimes, such as rape, forced prostitution, ‘rape disguised as prostitution’,3 sexual abuse of children, trafficking and other forms of sexual violence.4 SEA by UN peacekeepers is not only morally reprehensible, it violates the relationship of trust between peacekeepers and the civilian populations they have been sent to protect. Moreover, the continued incidence of SEA by UN peacekeepers,5 and impunity for such, discredits UN operations and undermines the values the organisation seeks to promote.
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Feminist international legal scholarship is conventionally aimed at addressing the androcentric bias of international law. Its starting point, therefore, is that women have been and continue to be excluded from international law vis-à-vis both its emancipatory and protective potential. As Elisabeth Evatt states in her foreword to Hilary Charlesworth and Christine Chinkin’s seminal treatise, The Boundaries of International Law, international law ‘shows little concern for women, their interests and their special vulnerabilities’.1 However, in light of the proliferation of international laws, policies and programmes addressing conflict-related sexual violence over the course of the last two decades, this chapter seeks to add nuance to this claim. More specifically and towards this end, this chapter explores the silencing of male ‘victimhood’2 within mainstream international sexual violence discourse.
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This article explores practices of writing deployed in an attempt (sometimes futile) to mitigate and interrogate the relationship between researcher and informant across the unequal relations of power, economic disparities, and cultural divides – factors that create a partial and committed position for the author. In the process, and through the lens of an ethnographic study of sexual-affective economies in contemporary Cuba, storytelling emerges as a method and methodology for International Relations that facilitates (re)presentation of interviews that are unstructured, contingent, and difficult. Storytelling as a method and methodology reveals the multiplicity, contingency, and uncertainty of the research process, questioning the incitements to detachment and objectivity on which IR methodologies are built. Thus, narrative writing proves invaluable for expressing how the international acts on bodies (and vice versa), and for relating personal experiences of repression and resistance, joy and pain, in an international frame. Far from a merely stylistic choice, storytelling bears real ethical and political implications – for the research produced and for the individual subjects implicated in its production. Along the way, practices of writing themselves come to the fore, as academic conventions fall away and stories surface. Storytelling itself thus elaborates on the possibilities inherent in more creative, less structured, and more interpretive writing across the field of international politics.
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Cambodia, Somalia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Haiti, Sierra Leone—all have been the subjecct of interventions by armed UN units sent to stabilise societies riven by political and ethnic antagonism. Apart from anecdotal reportage, little is known or has been investigated about how local inhabitants in these and other cities interact with and respond to peacekeepers in their midst. Most studies of post-conflict situations focus on political elites, the demobilisation of armed groups and the question of whether externally determined criteria for state reconstruction have been met. In Peace Operations Seen From Below, Béatrice Pouligny argues that much of what is being re- built in societies emerging from war – or in some cases what is continuing to be destroyed – often lies in the ‘ordinary’ daily lives of both local populations and the staff of UN missions. These on-the-ground realities are often overlooked by outsiders, yet they may prove to be as important as political negotiations at the ‘centre’, debates in the UN Security Council or hearings before an International Criminal Court. Central to Pouligny’s study is the key role played by local interlocutors. Her close analysis of several UN interventions, based on first hand observation of how local people intermingle with UN soldiery and civilians, sheds light on a neglected but crucial dimension of international peace enforcement.
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Anthropological interest in new subjects of research and contemporary knowledge practices has turned ethnographic attention to a wide ranging variety of professional fields. Among these the encounter with international development has perhaps been longer and more intimate than any of the others. Anthropologists have drawn critical attention to the interfaces and social effects of development’s discursive regimes but, oddly enough, have paid scant attention to knowledge producers themselves, despite anthropologists being among them. This is the focus of this volume. It concerns the construction and transmission of knowledge about global poverty and its reduction but is equally interested in the social life of development professionals, in the capacity of ideas to mediate relationships, in networks of experts and communities of aid workers, and in the dilemmas of maintaining professional identities. Going well beyond obsolete debates about ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ anthropology, the book examines the transformations that occur as social scientific concepts and practices cross and re-cross the boundary between anthropological and policy making knowledge.
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It is commonly argued that international peace interventions will work better and more empathetically if the prevailing separation between international interveners and local people is lessened. However, I argue that, outside the microeconomic interactions and transactional relationships that comprise the peacekeeping economy, peacekeeping is characterized by bypassing – intentional circumvention – or simple exclusion of the local. Drawing on fieldwork in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I argue that the rules and regulations, norms and architecture of UN peacekeeping all favour and are actively disposed to bypass or exclude. Accordingly, insofar as lessening the separation between internationals and locals is necessary to enable more effective and, ideally, empathetic peacekeeping, what is needed is systemic change that runs counter to the – mostly deliberate – policies that have been enacted to effectuate and retain this very separation over the past decade or more. The likelihood of such change is small.
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This collection aims to think critically about agency and explore the relationship between agency and coercion in greater depth. In academic, activist, and policy circles alike, feminist work has re-focused attention onto women as agents rather than as passive victims of overwhelming structures of male institutional power, or less capable of exercising agency by virtue of their class, race, gender or culture. These broadly positive moves are not without risks. Most notably, they can encourage a triumphalist disregard for constraints through an exclusive emphasis on 'discovering' agency even in the least favourable situations, thereby obscuring domination, inequality, and subordination. So how does bringing agency and coercion into closer interplay impact our understanding of the two? How might the stories of feminist agency change if we locate agency and coercion on the same intellectual frame? What would it mean to disrupt the existing constellation of ideas accompanying agency so as to include coercion, subordination and oppression alongside ideas of freedom, autonomy, and independence? How do we theoretically negotiate agency and coercion in conditions of deep inequality? This collection thinks through these questions in a range of regional, intellectual, ethical and political contexts.
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In the aftermath of the Sierra Leone civil war, demobilized militia soldiers have become an attractive resource to private security companies. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, this article traces the outsourcing of security at American military bases in Iraq to Sierra Leonean ex-militias, facilitated by a British security company and the Sierra Leone government. In doing so, the article contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate on the privatization of security by offering a “local” ethnographically informed perspective on the micro-dynamics of “global” security. It is argued that the supply of global security depends on a form of local immobility: on a population that is “stuck”, yet constantly on the move to seize opportunities for survival and recognition. Structured by a chronological account of the recruitment, deployment, and deportation of Sierra Leonean ex-militias, the article discusses how these former militia soldiers experience being reduced to mere bodies rather than recognized labourers. It concludes that notions of race and slavery are employed by the ex-militias to make sense of their predicaments, but most notably as a moral response to the unequal relationships in which they find themselves embedded, in the context of security outsourcing in a global economy.
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This book suggests a new explanation for why international peace interventions often fail to reach their full potential. Based on several years of ethnographic research in conflict zones around the world, it demonstrates that everyday elements - such as the expatriates' social habits and usual approaches to understanding their areas of operation-strongly influence peacebuilding effectiveness. Individuals from all over the world and all walks of life share numerous practices, habits, and narratives when they serve as interveners in conflict zones. These common attitudes and actions enable foreign peacebuilders to function in the field, but they also result in unintended consequences that thwart international efforts. Certain expatriates follow alternative modes of thinking and acting, often with notable results, but they remain in the minority. Through an in-depth analysis of the interveners' everyday life and work, this book proposes innovative ways to better help host populations build a sustainable peace. © Séverine Autesserre 2014 and David Lewis / Reuters / Corbis.
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This article introduces and justifies the concept of the peacekeeping economy. The peacekeeping economy refers to economic activity that either would not occur, or would occur at a much lower scale and pay-rate, without the international presence. In particular, the concern is with the formal and informal economic activity that directly links the international presence with the local individual. The approach thus foregrounds empirical research that relies on sources missing from most work on peacekeeping and peacebuilding, such as sex workers; domestic workers; security guards; drivers; service workers; others in the informal sector; subcontracted workers; and UN national staff—in addition to international personnel and local elites. The article argues that this approach allows certain aspects of peacekeeping missions to be observed that would not otherwise be seen: the practice and politics of the ‘everyday life’ of those involved in a peacekeeping mission, and those living with and alongside these missions. The article also introduces the various contributions to this special issue in light of some of the most pertinent themes and issues raised by the peacekeeping economy approach.
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This paper takes an ethnographic approach to illuminate everyday interactions relating to physical intimacy and emotional support in Goma’s ‘market of intervention’. It offers insights into the heterogeneity and complexity of gender identities in the context of protracted war and humanitarian intervention. Conceptualized as a contact zone, the market of intervention illustrates processes of encounter and distancing in Goma’s urban space. In particular, the paper offers concrete perspectives on the ambivalent practice of transactional sex and examines it in terms of a conflict between morality and materiality that shapes and (re)configures local gender relations. Taking the issue of love and sex seriously allows one to hone in on processes of profound societal change that challenge constructed and contested notions of femininity and masculinity.
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In this article, young people’s hypermasculine performances of gender in a Danish institution for young offenders are analyzed. Through the ethnographic method of detailed observations of two situations of young people, one male and one female, entering an institution for young offenders, it is demonstrated that hypermasculinity is created as a collective frame of meaning creating both possibilities and restraints in concrete situations. Hypermasculinity is often discussed in relation to criminality as an intensification of hegemonic understandings of what constitutes a “real man” and thus as part of male offender’s identity formation. In this article, the relational analysis shows that hypermasculinity is not alone to be understood as the expression of the individual young person’s performances but rather as the dominating institutional frame guiding all gender performances. The observed hypermasculine frame comprises notions of a real man based on performances of overt sexuality, the willingness to commit violence, and the limitation of subversive performances.
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For almost ten years, the West African country of Guinea-Bissau has been subject to security sector reform as part of international peacebuilding interventions. As in other peacebuilding and peacekeeping interventions elsewhere, ‘Global North’-borne perceptions, interpretations, images, and normative structures (‘peacebuilding mindsets’) have dominated the reform. They have been discursively reproduced in Guinea-Bissau’s ‘peacebuilding economy’, encompassing spaces such as specific restaurants, hotels, recreation sites etc. Such ‘neutral’ venues or ‘uncommitted spaces’ have facilitated informal exchanges between discordant international organizations and actors, but contributed to the exclusion of local actors and voices. The article argues that the peacebuilding economy contributes both to the reproduction of ‘Global North’ patterns of perception and interpretation, and to the failure of peacebuilding initiatives. This is unsurprising considering that both locals and internationals engaged in the peacebuilding arena may benefit from job and rent opportunities in supposedly better designed follow-up projects.
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Based on research studies conducted in the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia in 2006, 2012 and 2013, this article argues that peacekeepers’ everyday experiences reflect a series of contradictory identities and performances with regard to nation, work and gender. Peacekeepers straddle paradoxical worlds simultaneously and manage oppositional demands and obligations, although it is often assumed that they inhabit peacekeeping economies in homogenous ways. Importantly, the experiences provide opportunities for peacekeepers to invest in, accumulate and deploy military capital; to consolidate their military identities; and to favourably and tactically position themselves as deserving and useful subjects within the peacekeeping landscape.
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This book rethinks security theory from a feminist perspective – uniquely, it engages feminism, security, and strategic studies to provide a distinct feminist approach to security studies. The volume explicitly works toward an opening up of security studies that would allow for feminist (and other) narratives to be recognized and taken seriously as security narratives. To make this possible, it presents a feminist reading of security studies that aims to invigorate the debate and radicalize critical security studies. Since feminism is a political project, and security studies are, at their base, about particular visions of the political and their attendant institutions, this is of necessity a political intervention. The book works through and beyond security studies to explore possible spaces where an opening of security, necessary to make way for feminist insights, can take place. While it develops and illustrates a feminist narrative approach to security, it is also intended as an intervention that challenges the politics of security and the meanings for security legitimized in existing practices. This book provides develops a comprehensive framework for the emerging field of feminist security studies and will be of great interest to students and scholars of feminist IR, critical security studies, gender studies and IR and security studies in general.
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Young's essay draws attention to practices of citizenship that can arise under a government at war and explores the logic of the masculine role of protector. A government at war, which Young calls a "security regime," protects its members in an overly aggressive fashion from external dangers as well as from internal dissension. A state acting as a security regime, however, threatens to undermine democratic practice by expecting uncritical obedience and submissiveness from its population. This role toward its citizens is analogous to the role a protective family patriarch plays toward the women and children of his family. Young argues that, even from a protective government, what adult citizens want instead are relationships that respect their autonomy and equality.
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Hegemonic masculinity was introduced as a concept which, due to its understanding of gender as dynamic and relational, and of power as consent, could explain both the persistence of male power and the potential for social change. Yet, when hegemonic masculinity is applied in empirical cases, it is most often used to demonstrate the way in which hegemonic masculinity shifts and adopts new practices in order to enable some men to retain power over others. This is especially so in feminist International Relations, particularly studies of military masculinities, where shifts toward “softer” military masculinities such as the “tough and tender” soldier-scholar demonstrate to many feminists merely the “flexibility of the machinery of rule.” In this article, I challenge the pessimism of these accounts of military masculinity. My particular contribution is to build on an emergent and underdeveloped strand of Connell’s work on hegemonic masculinity: how change might be theorized. I argue that hegemonic masculinity remains a useful concept, but that the process through which “hegemony may fail” requires rethinking. I make this argument by exploring and working through empirical material on military masculinities, drawing on both my own research and critical analysis of the literature.
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Observations of daily life are the bread and butter of ethnography but rarely feature as data in other kinds of work. Could non-ethnographic studies also benefit from such observations? If so, how? This article proposes ‘accidental ethnography’ as a method that field researchers can use to gain better understanding of the research context and their own social positioning within that context. Accidental ethnography involves paying systematic attention to the unplanned moments that take place outside an interview, survey, or other structured methods. In these moments the researcher might hear a surprising story or notice an everyday scene she had previously overlooked. The importance of these observations lies not in what they tell us about the particular, but rather what they suggest about the larger political and social world in which they (and the researcher) are embedded. The paper illustrates the argument by presenting five stories from the author’s experiences conducting research on local violence in Rwanda, Bosnia, the US, and elsewhere.