- Email: [email protected]
Gender, Peace and Conflict
Book reviews / Political Geography 23 (2004) 213–233
231
ships of law, society, and space. The editors avoid a substantive methodological discussion of how to evaluate these interpretations or how to use the lessons learned to improve future scholarship and practice. The Legal Geographies Reader makes a compelling case for investigating the intersections of law and geography. Elucidating the concrete methodological and political implications of this investigation awaits the next volume. Philip Ashton, Robert Lake, Mark Pendras Rutgers University, Department of Geography and Program in Urban Planning and Policy Development, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA E-mail address: [email protected] doi:10.1016/S0962-6298(03)00122-7
Gender, Peace and Conflict Inger Skjelsbaek and Dan Smith (eds), Sage, London, Thousand Oaks and London, 2001, 228 pages, paperback, ISBN 0 7619 6853 This edited collection is part of the expanding body of research on gender and conflict which takes the post Cold War ‘new world dis-order’ as its starting point. The editors can draw on their own scholarship within the area of peace studies, in particular the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo PRIO (where Dan Smith is Director). Several of its contributors are practitioners with international agencies, or researchers in war-torn contexts so the volume has the potential to push beyond disciplinary parameters towards a better-developed understanding of its themes. However, this potential is only partially fulfilled. One reason for this may be that the chapters are based on an UN Expert Group meeting organised by PRIO and the UN Division for the Advancement of Women (UNDAW) in late 1996. It thus suffers from the inherent problem of converting wide-ranging seminar papers into an academic text. Moreover, on the whole, it follows the pattern of other edited volumes in this area in leaving women’s support for violent ethno-nationalism or sectarianism largely unexamined. It does, however, have the distinction of not collapsing the ‘gender’ of the title into ‘women’ throughout the text; three of its ten contributors address issues of masculinity. In their introductory chapter, Skjelsbaek and Smith pose their problematic as “When decisions are to be made about politics and peace, what role does gender play?” (p. 1). They identify the significance of the feminist critique of androcentrism within International Relations by scholars such as Boulding, Elshtain, Enloe and Tickner but there is no evident awareness of the longstanding field of feminist scholarship within other social sciences on gendered violence. This means that there they do not give themselves scope to inter-face IR notions of ‘public’ violence in the form of war with ‘private’ gendered violence e.g. within the home. Curiously, given their institutional affiliation, there is also virtually no examination of Galtungian
232
Book reviews / Political Geography 23 (2004) 213–233
discourse on peace and conflict resolution. As they themselves note, the chapters do not represent a homogenous approach, particularly in relation to the benefits of promoting women’s participation in decision-making over war and peace. This divergence is not further interrogated but the reader may feel that more editorial thematic mapping would have been appropriate. The contributors’ chapters are broadly divided between empirical and or policyrelated case-studies and broad theoretical overviews with much less empirical grounding. In the first category, Dorota Gierycz gives an account of UN Women’s Conferences which rather omits the history of heated divisions over racism, imperialism, reproductive rights and religion. Picking up the editors’ challenge, she identifies the emergence of a policy framework based on causal linkages between the political exclusion of women and the predominance of decisions involving force. She relates this to the outcomes of UN peacekeeping missions but her chapter only offers normative recommendations rather than a realistic analysis of gender constraints. The theme of ‘critical mass’ is central to Drude Dahlerup’s chapter on the Scandinavian experience but here one notes the need for more overarching thematic mapping; there is insufficient linkage of her arguments about issues of change in the body politic to the volume’s theme. For example, an analysis of gender gaps between male and female parliamentarians on actual budget decisions on military spending. Among the other chapters in this first category, Svetlana Slapsak on the Yugoslav war illuminates the crucial need for a historically-informed analysis of gendered violence, including mass rape. Case studies on Colombia and Sri Lanka inevitably appear dated in their coverage of events but provide insights into the multi-faceted impact of armed conflict on gender relations. In the second category, Dan Smith’s own chapter on ‘The Problem of Essentialism’ offers a thoughtful critique of primordial notions of monolithic identity. It makes linkages with extensive sociological literature but once again, there is a surprising lack of acknowledgement of feminist work on nationalism and identity. Inger Skjelsbaek draws on social psychology to address the question ‘Is Femininity Inherently Peaceful?’ but her conclusion appears problematic: “Simply giving women access to male-dominated areas, such as combatant status in war or political power, will not necessarily change the likelihood of war as long as the value system remains stable. However, because women can be regarded as potential bearers of peaceful thinking, it is worth experimenting with more women in power.” (p. 65) Errol Miller usefully reminds readers of other structural axes of oppression but then delves into a very broad-brush account of the origins of patriarchy which does not advance the book’s argument. Michael Salla’s critique of gendered stereotypes of ‘women as peacemaker, man as aggressor’ serves as a summarised but effective overview, and his call for a Foucauldian analysis of power in the field of peace and conflict studies is appropriate, although not exactly original. Once again, there are marked divergence between his conclusions on critical mass and those of other contributors. The cumulative effect of this collection is to substantiate the editors’ conclusion that “analysis of peace and conflict which do not include gender reflections are simply incomplete” (p. 13). As argued elsewhere (Jacobson, 2001), it can only be posi-
Book reviews / Political Geography 23 (2004) 213–233
233
tive that the issue of armed violence’s gendered impact (including on men and boys) is coming to the fore. This volume illustrates some of the major theoretical, epistemological and methodological pitfalls in the path of the project but it remains a valuable addition to the literature.
Reference Jacobson, R. (2001). ‘Conflict, peace and gender: venturing into dangerous lands’, Review Essay. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 3(1), 131–134.
Ruth Jacobson, Bradford University, Bradford, West Yorkshire BD7 1DP, UK E-mail address: [email protected] doi:10.1016/S0962-6298(03)00123-9
231
ships of law, society, and space. The editors avoid a substantive methodological discussion of how to evaluate these interpretations or how to use the lessons learned to improve future scholarship and practice. The Legal Geographies Reader makes a compelling case for investigating the intersections of law and geography. Elucidating the concrete methodological and political implications of this investigation awaits the next volume. Philip Ashton, Robert Lake, Mark Pendras Rutgers University, Department of Geography and Program in Urban Planning and Policy Development, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA E-mail address: [email protected] doi:10.1016/S0962-6298(03)00122-7
Gender, Peace and Conflict Inger Skjelsbaek and Dan Smith (eds), Sage, London, Thousand Oaks and London, 2001, 228 pages, paperback, ISBN 0 7619 6853 This edited collection is part of the expanding body of research on gender and conflict which takes the post Cold War ‘new world dis-order’ as its starting point. The editors can draw on their own scholarship within the area of peace studies, in particular the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo PRIO (where Dan Smith is Director). Several of its contributors are practitioners with international agencies, or researchers in war-torn contexts so the volume has the potential to push beyond disciplinary parameters towards a better-developed understanding of its themes. However, this potential is only partially fulfilled. One reason for this may be that the chapters are based on an UN Expert Group meeting organised by PRIO and the UN Division for the Advancement of Women (UNDAW) in late 1996. It thus suffers from the inherent problem of converting wide-ranging seminar papers into an academic text. Moreover, on the whole, it follows the pattern of other edited volumes in this area in leaving women’s support for violent ethno-nationalism or sectarianism largely unexamined. It does, however, have the distinction of not collapsing the ‘gender’ of the title into ‘women’ throughout the text; three of its ten contributors address issues of masculinity. In their introductory chapter, Skjelsbaek and Smith pose their problematic as “When decisions are to be made about politics and peace, what role does gender play?” (p. 1). They identify the significance of the feminist critique of androcentrism within International Relations by scholars such as Boulding, Elshtain, Enloe and Tickner but there is no evident awareness of the longstanding field of feminist scholarship within other social sciences on gendered violence. This means that there they do not give themselves scope to inter-face IR notions of ‘public’ violence in the form of war with ‘private’ gendered violence e.g. within the home. Curiously, given their institutional affiliation, there is also virtually no examination of Galtungian
232
Book reviews / Political Geography 23 (2004) 213–233
discourse on peace and conflict resolution. As they themselves note, the chapters do not represent a homogenous approach, particularly in relation to the benefits of promoting women’s participation in decision-making over war and peace. This divergence is not further interrogated but the reader may feel that more editorial thematic mapping would have been appropriate. The contributors’ chapters are broadly divided between empirical and or policyrelated case-studies and broad theoretical overviews with much less empirical grounding. In the first category, Dorota Gierycz gives an account of UN Women’s Conferences which rather omits the history of heated divisions over racism, imperialism, reproductive rights and religion. Picking up the editors’ challenge, she identifies the emergence of a policy framework based on causal linkages between the political exclusion of women and the predominance of decisions involving force. She relates this to the outcomes of UN peacekeeping missions but her chapter only offers normative recommendations rather than a realistic analysis of gender constraints. The theme of ‘critical mass’ is central to Drude Dahlerup’s chapter on the Scandinavian experience but here one notes the need for more overarching thematic mapping; there is insufficient linkage of her arguments about issues of change in the body politic to the volume’s theme. For example, an analysis of gender gaps between male and female parliamentarians on actual budget decisions on military spending. Among the other chapters in this first category, Svetlana Slapsak on the Yugoslav war illuminates the crucial need for a historically-informed analysis of gendered violence, including mass rape. Case studies on Colombia and Sri Lanka inevitably appear dated in their coverage of events but provide insights into the multi-faceted impact of armed conflict on gender relations. In the second category, Dan Smith’s own chapter on ‘The Problem of Essentialism’ offers a thoughtful critique of primordial notions of monolithic identity. It makes linkages with extensive sociological literature but once again, there is a surprising lack of acknowledgement of feminist work on nationalism and identity. Inger Skjelsbaek draws on social psychology to address the question ‘Is Femininity Inherently Peaceful?’ but her conclusion appears problematic: “Simply giving women access to male-dominated areas, such as combatant status in war or political power, will not necessarily change the likelihood of war as long as the value system remains stable. However, because women can be regarded as potential bearers of peaceful thinking, it is worth experimenting with more women in power.” (p. 65) Errol Miller usefully reminds readers of other structural axes of oppression but then delves into a very broad-brush account of the origins of patriarchy which does not advance the book’s argument. Michael Salla’s critique of gendered stereotypes of ‘women as peacemaker, man as aggressor’ serves as a summarised but effective overview, and his call for a Foucauldian analysis of power in the field of peace and conflict studies is appropriate, although not exactly original. Once again, there are marked divergence between his conclusions on critical mass and those of other contributors. The cumulative effect of this collection is to substantiate the editors’ conclusion that “analysis of peace and conflict which do not include gender reflections are simply incomplete” (p. 13). As argued elsewhere (Jacobson, 2001), it can only be posi-
Book reviews / Political Geography 23 (2004) 213–233
233
tive that the issue of armed violence’s gendered impact (including on men and boys) is coming to the fore. This volume illustrates some of the major theoretical, epistemological and methodological pitfalls in the path of the project but it remains a valuable addition to the literature.
Reference Jacobson, R. (2001). ‘Conflict, peace and gender: venturing into dangerous lands’, Review Essay. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 3(1), 131–134.
Ruth Jacobson, Bradford University, Bradford, West Yorkshire BD7 1DP, UK E-mail address: [email protected] doi:10.1016/S0962-6298(03)00123-9