Gender and Conflict

Embodiments, Discourses and Symbolic Practices

Georg Frerks, Annelou Ypeij, Annelou Ypeij, Georg Frerks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781409464853
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317130802
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Through an in-depth analysis of the multifaceted manifestations of gender and conflict, this book shows how cognition and behaviour, agency and victimization, are gendered beyond the popular stereotypes. Conflict not only reconfirms social hierarchies and power relations, but also motivates people to transgress cultural boundaries and redefine their self-images and identities. The contributions are a mix of classical ethnography, performance studies and embodiment studies, showing 'emotions and feelings' often denied in scientific social research. Strong in their constructivist approach and unorthodox in theory, the articles touch upon the dynamic relation between the discourses, embodiments and symbolic practices that constitute the gendered world of conflict. The localities and research sites vary from institutional settings such as a school, rebel movements, public toilets and the military to more artistic domains of gendered conflicts such as prison theatre classes and the capoeira ring. At the same time, these conflicts and domains appropriate wider discourses and practices of a global nature, demonstrating the globalised and institutionalised nature of the nexus gender-conflict. A first set of chapters deals with 'breaking the gender taboos' and renegotiating the stereotypical gender roles - masculinities or femininities - during conflict. A second set of chapters focuses more explicitly on the bodily experience of conflict either physically of symbolically, while the last set straddle body and narrative. The inductive quality of the work leads to unexpected insights and does give access to worlds that are new, and often surprising and unconventional.

Chapter 1
Rethinking Gender and Conflict: Discourses, Embodiments and Symbolic Practices

Georg Frerks, Reinhilde Sotiria König and Annelou Ypeij

Approaching Conflict

Conflicts are essentially about incompatible goals and interests between two or more parties and are therefore intrinsic to all social relations and interactions. As such conflict in and of itself is not exceptional, and the different manifestations of conflict have provided the arena for important social science research. Conflicts are resolved by peaceful methods or end in armed or violent confrontation. The latter result has become a matter of concern in both academic and policy circles, and efforts are made continuously to prevent it or stop it by both peaceful and coercive means.

There is lively debate on how to explain the emergence of violent conflict and how best to deal with its causes and manifestations. In that connection, it has become rare for contemporary armed conflicts to comprise an international confrontation between two state actors with their armed forces. In contrast, current wars are mostly fought inside countries, between different groups or between such groups and the state, and are now commonly referred to as intrastate wars, having different origins and dynamics from the earlier predominant interstate wars. This implies that problems emanating from society itself are seen as the primary causes of contemporary intrastate wars. Misrule, identity-based state patronage, exclusion, mismanagement of scarce natural resources, underdevelopment, violations of human rights – all are examples of these problematic aspects of state–society relations and prevailing forms of governance propelling conflict in many parts of the world. Next to violent interstate and intrastate conflicts, there are intergroup or interpersonal conflicts that may or may not involve violence and are usually located at subnational, community, intra-institutional or family level.

Gender and Conflict

During the last decades, gender issues have become increasingly an explicit part of the conflict equation and there is a growing body of knowledge and literature dealing with the nexus between gender and contemporary conflict. This literature is often policy driven and motivated by the question of how to intervene in conflict situations without losing track of their gender dimensions, often with the explicit aim to mitigate or bring to an end the horrendous sexual and gender-based violence against women that characterises much current conflict. But there is also a prominent feeling that a more intensive involvement of women in conflict management may help to better prevent and resolve conflicts.

In the context of gender and conflict we subscribe to Galtung’s seminal distinction (1990) between direct violence, structural violence and cultural violence. Apart from the more obvious issue of direct violence against women (and men), structural violence (inequitable gender relations, poverty) and cultural violence (discriminatory attitudes, norms and institutions) seem to be highly relevant for dealing with the nexus between gender and conflict.

Propelled, among others, by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, the themes discussed in current policy debates are warfare, gender-based violence, sexual violence, peace building, transitional justice and social movements. Because the focus in such debates is often on male perpetrators on the one hand, and female victims, soldiers’ wives and mothers, and peace builders on the other, stereotypical images tend to arise and dominate much of this work. Male casualties are often accepted as a logical, almost natural, if not heroic, consequence of conflict and warfare, while female and infant casualties are socially and culturally problematised, and the violent behaviour of female combatants conveniently overlooked or ignored.

Beyond the Stereotypes

In this context, a finer-grained and less biased analysis of the nexus between gender and conflict is warranted to break through such facile stereotypes of gender (cf. Moser and Clark 2001). One first step is to acknowledge the highly variegated roles both men and women play in conflict beyond the stereotypical images generally portrayed in the media and war propaganda. Many publications over the last decades have contributed to recognition of this variety by, for example, highlighting the role of women and girls as female combatants (see i.a. Bouta, Frerks and Bannon 2005; Brett and Specht 2004; Grant de Pauw 1998; McKay and Mazurana 2004) or as peace negotiators (Banerjee 2008; Potter 2008; Naraghi Anderlini 2000). As a second step, several publications have highlighted the constructed nature of women’s identities and roles, and the associated perceptions, thereby deconstructing the discursive images that have been produced of women (and men) in war. This literature has a long pedigree and revolves around masculinities and femininities, and the gendered nature of war itself (Boulding 1988; Enloe 1988; Myrttinen 2003; Segal 2008). Part of this work problematises hegemonic and violent masculinities and shows how under conditions of war and conflict such masculinities may come under stress and emasculate (Dolan 2002). On the other hand, one may witness the emergence of militarised and masculinised forms of femininity, once women take part in warfare. This literature discusses the impact of patriarchy and analyses the role of hegemonic, violent masculinities as compared to other gender forms and possibilities, often in an effort to effect changes in the direction of more equitable and peaceful gender relationships. A third body of literature has looked at the institutional and political aspects of gender, including how gender norms pervade society and how these are embedded in particular institutional settings, such as the army, the corporate sector and sports (Connell 2002).

Feminist Debates

All the above issues have created an energetic debate in feminist circles. Emmanuel (2004: 18–22) distinguishes four basic feminist positions: an early form that essentialises women’s ‘natural’ roles and cherishes the difference between men and women; a liberal form that strives for equality (‘the right to fight’); a radical form that rejects female participation in war completely, as a patriarchal, masculine endeavour; and a ‘Third World’ variant that relates women’s participation in violence to emancipatory liberation movements and anti-colonial struggles. Here the gender struggle has become subservient to the larger goal of liberation and freedom. In largely a similar vein, Eager (2008) examines liberal feminism, difference feminism, radical feminism, Marxist feminism and postmodern feminism. All these different feminisms have their own ontologies and epistemologies in understanding and perceiving the world as gendered, and constructing knowledge about gender identities and relations.

The chapters in our book cannot simply be boxed into one of these feminisms, tending to focus on the perhaps less obvious and more subtle forms of gendered conflicts and conflicts of genders as experienced in women’s and men’s everyday lives. By offering an in-depth analysis of the multifaceted manifestations of gender and conflict and aiming at a better understanding of its dynamics, complexities, nuances, symbols, discourses and practices, the chapters verge towards a constructivist stance. The authors share an in-depth engagement and most of them use an ethnographic approach. The chapters show how, even in the context of significant power differentials, cognition and behaviour, agency and victimisation are gendered in a way that goes beyond the popular stereotypes. Conflict not only produces and reconfirms social hierarchies and power relations, but it also motivates people to transgress cultural boundaries and reconsider their self-images and identity constructions. All authors stress these aspects with vigour. Their insights and writings bring the people, groups, individuals involved in conflicts close to the reader.

Methodology: Ethnographic Orientation

Conflicts, and more so violent encounters are increasingly colouring field research. This book is an example of ‘doing research’ in a contested and contentious world. Its chapters are based on detailed historical and literature research, and/or in-depth, largely anthropological fieldwork. This sets the work apart from the policy-oriented literature that often has a more general or generalising touch and a lesser focus on detail in human behaviour. In executing this type of field research, the researchers have confronted particular challenges. How can one gain access to conflict zones or highly charged and tense environments that are characterised by suspicion and mistrust? How can one approach combatants who fear reprisals or punishment? How does one deal with insider versus outsider issues in militarised settings and what is the positionality of the researcher under such conditions? What are the risks and dangers, not only for the researcher, but also for counterparts, assistants, respondents and informants (cf. Nordstrom and Robben 1995)?

In this book, the empirical studies are closely related to interpretative anthropology and its ethnographic methodology. Ethnographic research uses meticulous descriptions as a method to interpret human behaviour and the related symbols. It explores contexts (historical, social, political, economic), next to vivid testimonies and interpretation of images, situations, bodies, symbols and signs. This process enables the researcher to produce rich, thick and detailed texts, which are characteristic for critical, symbolic and interpretative anthropology (Conquergood 2002; Fabian 1990, 1999; Geertz 1973; Nencel 2005).

The contributors to this book achieve a sense of dense writing by using the technique of in-depth analysis (Hesse-Biber 2007) and come close to the classical ‘thick description’ of Geertz (1973) and his followers. The contributions are a mix of classical ethnography, performance studies and embodiment studies, frequently motivated by sheer engagement, activism and involvement in the field. They show ‘emotions and feelings’ often denied in social scientific research. Doing ethnographic research, getting to know the land and people, building up relations and collecting data, is a process in which feelings are fully involved, both with the researcher and the people encountered in the field. As Nencel argues, feeling in fieldwork is receiving and perceiving emotions that are evoked and embodied (2005: 347).

The authors use a mix of methods such as interviews, observations, participation, contextual analysis, discourse analysis, interpretation and reflection. They take elements of symbolic anthropology and describe performances, rites and symbolic actions, often incorporating themselves in the text. Being reflective is another trait of Geertz’s legacy and the ‘literary turn’ in anthropology, and was an important starting point for many feminist researchers. Next to the phenomenological and embodied dimension of the texts, the authors’ acknowledgment of the epistemological aspects of their studies is exceedingly present.

The chapters are strong in their constructivist approach without being orthodox in theory. In one way or the other, implicitly or explicitly, they are written around three conceptual pillars: discourses, embodiments and symbolic practices.

Theorising around Three Pillars

The conflicts covered by these chapters vary, from internationally prominent conflicts such as on the Korean peninsula, or between Israel and Palestine, to typical intrastate conflicts such as in Sri Lanka and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Still others relate to subnational or localised conflicts, for example in a Nairobi ghetto, or to particular micro-arenas or -settings.

Correspondingly, the localities and research sites dealt with in the book vary from institutional settings such as a school, a prison, rebel movements, public toilets and the military, to more artistic domains of gendered conflicts such as theatre classes and the ‘capoeira’ ring. These conflicts, localities and domains cannot be fully understood in isolation, as they form part of more globalised settings with their appropriation of wider notions, discourses and practices. Whether they concern the international graffiti language in girls’ toilets, the transnational discourses and practices regarding justice that inspire local grassroots organisations, or the embodied experiences of violence, all chapters deal, in one way or the other, with the wider world. Thereby they demonstrate the globalised and institutionalised nature of the nexus between gender and conflict.

Having said that, the different conflicts and localities that the cases represent do not lend themselves to an easy categorisation. We therefore do not group them by type of conflict or along a spectre of a micro–macro approach. We feel that the different types of conflicts and levels are co-constituting and co-producing each other, and are intertwined both cognitively and in terms of manifest behaviour.

The theoretical framework that binds the chapters together is based on the dynamic relation between the discourses, embodiments and symbolic practices described. Below, we shall introduce these three pillars around which we have positioned this book conceptually in some larger detail, and then briefly situate the authors of the different chapters within those discussions. Though not every actor pays attention to each of these pillars to the same degree or level of explicitness, the pillars nonetheless play a role in nearly all chapters and form thereby an underlying structure of the analysis. In some chapters this structure remains fairly implicit but can be discerned in the way the empirical narrative develops, while in others there is a more explicit reference to the notions and forms of analysis embodied in the pillars.

Performative Discourses

We use the notion of discourse here as a system of representation that attributes meaning and frames how we understand and act upon the world around us. Already by its very definition, it is obvious that ‘gender’ is socially and discursively constructed. Gender norms are discursively framed, and determine and show how gendered identities, roles and behaviours are constituted and deemed socially appropriate for men and women. Gender is also implicated in the way ideologies and institutions work and how the latter are ‘gendering’ everyday life. ‘Conflict as constructed discourse’ has likewise been conceptualised as one significant way of representing and framing conflict among others. Both conflict and peace are discursively legitimised and contested. Groups use discourse in the articulation of political grievances against the state, for mobilising support for armed struggles and legitimising these in the eyes of the wider public and international audiences. Through discourse they (re-)interpret the past, define the image of the enemy, and reshape social identities and boundaries. Peace operations by donors and NGO activities are subject to discursive manufacturing and contestation as well. Jabri (1996) has put the ‘discursive structuration and legitimation of war’ and the idea of ‘exclusionary discourse’ firmly on the agenda of conflict studies. We also note Apter’s edited volume on the legitimisation of violence (1997) and the idea of ‘violent imaginaries’ coined by Schmidt and Schröder (2001). Bhatia shows us how the ‘politics of naming’ works, and ‘how words were seen to be of equal power to bombs’ by movements and governments (2005: 6). Therefore, conflict is as much a battle between competing discourses as a fight between armed groups. It is as much carried out verbally as physically, in the media as on the battlefield. Discourse determines ‘which conflict’ and ‘whose conflict’, and ‘which peace’ and ‘whose peace’ we are talking about.

Gender identities, roles and behaviours are subject to discursive contestation and struggle in society and therefore to dynamics of change. The history of women’s emancipation and the different feminist waves is testimony to the struggles and resistance against deeply embedded patriarchal notions about women’s roles and positions. It also shows how gendered stereotypes are still being used discursively by those who defend the gendered status quo in attempts to delegitimise women’s actions to effect change.

It is important to realise that discourse does not operate solely at an abstract level, as ‘representations’ or ‘discourse reduced to discourses’ (Fairclough 2005: 58). On the contrary, discourse constitutes ‘power to define’ and is translated into concrete social actions. In this book, the authors go beyond discourse as ‘text only’: they focus on the effects of discourse in practice. Hence, we take a central interest in the ‘performative’ capacity of discourse, or put simply: ‘How do we do things with words?’ and ‘What do words do to us?’ Similarly, discourses as a system of representation can also be manifested in forms of embodiment. Here, we see again how discourses, embodiments and practices are all closely related.

Recent developments in discourse analysis have linked the concept explicitly to social action. Fairclough (2005) demonstrates how discourses, narratives and imaginaries help constitute and consolidate economic and political systems, including their ‘institutional materiality’. His critical discourse analysis highlights the performative aspect of discourse and the power it engenders. It enables us to see ‘what discourse does’, or as Jones and Norris have properly called it, ‘discourse as action’. The latter authors promote ‘mediated discourse analysis’ and stress that ‘the relationship between discourse and action is dynamic and contingent and located at a nexus of social practices, social identities and social goals’ (2005: 9). People mix discourse and other cultural tools in response to their immediate circumstances. Mediated discourse analysis sees discourse as ‘cycling’ through social actions: verbal and textual tools working their way into practices, material objects, and the built environment in which we interact (Jones and Norris 2005: 9). These approaches invite us to look at how actors use and deal with discourse, while avoiding ‘discourse fetishism’ by bringing in actors’ agency and linking it to practices, bodies and the material world.

Bodies, Experiences and Feelings

Most chapters in this book refer implicitly or explicitly to the body and diverse forms of embodiments. This is not only due to the fact that the theme of this book, gender and conflict, has a strong embodied dimension as violent acts are often inflicted upon bodies. It also has to do with the growing theoretical attention for the body. While in feminist scholarship the body and embodiment theory have always been important, in social sciences and humanities in general, the body is increasingly being theorised. This can be perceived as a response to the linguistic approaches of discourse and representation that have been overly influential from the 1970s onwards (Shilling 2003 [1993]; Turner 2008 [1984]; Csordas 1999). The chapters of this book that deal explicitly with the body can be viewed as part of what some analysts call the corporeal turn in social theory (Shilling 2003 [1993]: 203).

Feminist scholarship received an important impetus with the conceptualisation of the gender–...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Rethinking Gender and Conflict: Discourses, Embodiments and Symbolic Practices
• 2 Oral Histories of Gender in Flux: Challenging Popular Perceptions about the State of Gender in South Kivu, Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
• 3 Making Uncertain Manhood: Masculinities, Embodiment and Agency among Male Hamas Youth
• 4 Women’s Violence and Gender Relations in the Israeli Defence Forces
• 5 Between Agency and Subjugation: Female LTTE Combatants in the Sri Lankan Conflict and Post-war Situation
• 6 Fighting over a Public Toilet: Masculinities, Class and Violence in a Nairobi Ghetto
• 7 ‘The Colonized Bodies of Our Women…’: Imaginative and Material Terrains of US Military Entertainment on the Fringes of South Korea
• 8 The Prisoner’s Body: Violence, Desire and Masculinities in a Nicaraguan Prison Theatre Group
• 9 ‘Being Carried Out’: Women’s Bodies and Masculinity Inside and Outside the Capoeira Ring
• 10 ‘You Could Be Surprised How Sweet and Caring Some Guys Are’: Girls’ Writings about Sexuality, Romance and Conflict
• 11 Just Words under the Wall: A Peace-building Experience in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
• Index