Rethinking the Man Question
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Rethinking the Man Question

Sex, Gender and Violence in International Relations

Jane L. Parpart, Doctor Marysia Zalewski, Jane L. Parpart, Marysia Zalewski

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eBook - ePub

Rethinking the Man Question

Sex, Gender and Violence in International Relations

Jane L. Parpart, Doctor Marysia Zalewski, Jane L. Parpart, Marysia Zalewski

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About This Book

The reality of international relations and its academic study are still almost entirely constituted by men. Rethinking the Man Question is a crucial investigation and reinvigoration of debates about gender and international relations. Following on from the seminal The Man Question in International Relations this book looks at the increasingly violent and 'toxic' nature of world politics post 9/11. Contributors including Raewyn Connell, Kimberley Hutchings, Cynthia Enloe, Kevin Dunn and Sandra Whitworth consider the diverse theoretical and practical implications of masculinity for international relations in the modern world. Covering theoretical issues including masculine theories of war, masculinity and the military, cyborg soldiers, post-traumatic stress disorder and white male privilege. The book also focuses on the ways in which masculinity configures world events from conscientious objection in South Africa to 'porno-nationalism' in India, from myths and heroes in Kosovo to the makings of Zimbabwe. This essential work will define the field for many years to come.

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Publisher
Zed Books
Year
2013
ISBN
9781848137721
ONE | Cognitive short cuts
KIMBERLY HUTCHINGS
Since the end of the cold war, there has been a flowering of theoretical debate about the frameworks through which contemporary international politics should be understood. This has included the narratives of ‘end of history’ and ‘clash of civilizations’, reassertions of mainstream liberal and realist paradigms in the study of international relations, and optimistic and pessimistic accounts of globalization.1 It has also included the development of feminist approaches to understanding international politics.2 Although the latter have developed in parallel with the rest, they have had little impact on the ways in which international politics is framed when it comes to the ‘big pictures’ through which we make sense of politics, both in academic debate and at a more popular level. In 1998, in the precursor to this volume, Peterson and True called for international relations theory to engage in ‘new conversations’ adequate to ‘new times’ by taking seriously feminist contributions to the field (1998: 15). Non-feminist mainstream and critical approaches to international politics have not by and large, however, been persuaded that gender has anything other than a marginal relevance for grand theories of the post-cold-war world.3
The purpose of this chapter is to examine one of the reasons for this ongoing marginalization of feminist/gender concerns. I will argue that a key reason for the ongoing invisibility of women and gender in the theoretical frames through which post-cold-war international politics is grasped is the legitimizing function of masculinity discourses within those theories. My central claim is that masculinity operates as a resource for thought in theorizing international politics. That is to say, masculinity operates as a kind of commonsense, implicit, often unconscious shorthand for processes of explanatory and normative judgement, thereby as one of the crucial ways in which our social scientific imagination is shaped and limited. I will explore how this works in two very influential but different accounts of contemporary international politics: the ‘offensive’ realism of Mearsheimer (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001) and the post-Marxist story of ‘empire/multitude’ in the work of Hardt and Negri (Empire, 2000). In conclusion, I will argue that one can hope, to paraphrase Ferguson, to loosen the hold of masculinity on meaning and life only once one has first appreciated how much intellectual work is accomplished by masculinity’s logical structure (Ferguson 1993: 29). Without the logic of masculinity, grand theorists of international politics would be required to work a great deal harder in order to persuade us of the accuracy of their diagnoses of the times.
What is ‘masculinity’ in international politics?
The concept of masculinity has always been a focus of concern for feminist international relations scholars (Zalewski 1998). In this section, my aim is to analyse the ways in which masculinity has been understood within feminist work on international relations, including work that adopts the notion of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ as a key analytical tool. I will argue that there are two predominant narratives of masculinity within this literature, which are analytically distinguishable but usually intertwined within particular feminist arguments. Crudely speaking, one of these narratives focuses attention on what masculinity is as a condition for what it does; the other focuses attention on what masculinity does as definitive of what it is. The former directs us to causal or constitutive links between the ways in which international politics is practised or theorized and the qualities associated with masculinity which can be seen as aggression, instrumental rationality or objectivity. The latter directs us to the rhetorical work of valorization, denigration and exclusion done by the formal, relational properties of masculinity as a concept, regardless of the substantive qualities in question. Compare, for instance, Tickner’s account of the constitutive role of masculinity in the understanding and conduct of world politics discussed below with the argument of Ashworth and Swatuk. They show how identification of one’s own position with masculinity and that of one’s opponents with femininity operates as a way of trumping the opposition in debates between ‘realists’ and ‘liberals’ about the nature of international politics (Tickner 1991, 1992; Ashworth and Swatuk 1998).
As mentioned above, it is rare to find feminist work on international relations that operates with only one of the above accounts of masculinity; in most cases they are combined.4 For instance, if we look at pioneering feminist arguments such as those of Cohn (1989), Elshtain (1995 [1987]), Enloe (1989) and Tickner (1991, 1992), then we find that the analysis of masculinity appears in both guises. In her analysis of the discourses of nuclear defence intellectuals, Cohn identifies masculinity with a specific set of attributes, which are shown to be efficacious for the kind of reasoning necessary for thinking about operating weapons of mass destruction (Cohn 1989: 115–19). She also points, however, to the ways in which masculinity operates as a marker of value across its association with qualities that are by no means consistent with one another (strategic rationality, God-like powers of creation, risk taking). Regardless of its substantive association in any given instance, masculinity is always valued; and its value is associated with the denigration and exclusion of the feminine (ibid.: 121). Similarly, Elshtain’s argument elaborates a set of masculine qualities that, along with their feminine counterparts, sustain the social institution of war and demonstrates how the same value hierarchy, in which masculinity trumps femininity, subsists across different aspects of masculinity in different contexts (Elshtain 1995 [1987]: 194–225).
From a feminist point of view, masculinity poses a problem in two different ways. It is a problem insofar as masculine identities have concrete effects, for instance in the perpetuation of nuclear deterrence and war. In addition, masculinity is a problem because it incorporates a hierarchical logic of exclusion of women and the feminine. What remains unclear is the relation between the two problems: does the hierarchical logic of exclusion depend on the nature of masculine identity or does the efficacy of masculine identity depend on the hierarchical logic of exclusion? Cohn, for example, points to the ways in which using ordinary speech, as opposed to technical acronyms, was dismissed and denigrated as feminine by defence intellectuals (Cohn 1989: 128). But is technical speech masculine as such; or is it masculinized as an uncontentious way of signalling its positive value?
Tickner and Enloe address a broader canvas than Cohn and Elshtain in their work on feminism and international relations. In their contributions to the literature, they deal with issues of nation-states, nationalism, diplomacy, international political economy, and international relations theory and methodology, as well as war and militarism. Again, however, the engagement with masculinity in their work moves between masculinity as a particular form of substantive identity, with real effects on the theory and practice of international relations, and masculinity as a mode of hierarchical exclusion of the feminine. In Tickner’s well-known interrogation of Morgenthau’s international relations theory, we are offered an account of how these two narratives of masculinity are interrelated, so that what masculinity does, to the world in general and women in particular, appears to depend on what masculinity is: ‘I have suggested that Morgenthau’s attempt to construct an objective, universal theory of international relations is rooted in assumptions about human nature and morality that, in modern Western culture, are associated with masculinity’ (Tickner 1991: 32).
Tickner’s critique of Morgenthau focuses attention on the link between particular masculine qualities and modes of theorizing international politics. Sovereign individuality, objectivity, instrumental rationality and ‘power over’ are argued to be implicit within models of masculinity entrenched in the Western tradition. This leads to the shaping of the principles applied to making sense of the international realm. The ways in which these principles exclude the feminine is grounded in their substantive meaning, which excludes feminine qualities associated with relationality, contextualism, emotion and ‘power to’ (ibid.: 29–32). These alternative feminine qualities provide the ground for Tickner to articulate an alternative feminist set of principles for understanding international politics which provide a corrective to Morgenthau’s masculine bias (ibid.: 37). Elsewhere, Tickner argues that masculine gender identity is crucial to how international politics is practised as well as how it is understood, though she is also careful to note that the category of ‘masculinity’ is neither trans-culturally nor transhistorically stable and certainly cannot be identified with men in general (1992: 6).
In her essay ‘Nationalism and masculinity’, Enloe suggests the masculine experiences of and responses to oppression have dominated the ideologies and strategies of national liberation struggles. This means that substantive characteristics of masculinity explain, at least in part, the fact that outcomes of struggles for national liberation do not tend to produce a different kind of state, either as an international actor or in terms of domestic gender policies (1989: 64). At the same time, she also demonstrates how the meaning of masculinity is essentially invested in the denigration and exclusion of the feminine. Therefore, on Enloe’s account, it is impossible to disentangle substantive qualities associated with nationalist masculinity from the imperative to keep the feminine at bay; but the nature of the link still remains a puzzle. Does keeping the feminine at bay necessarily correlate to particular qualities and modes of behaviour and to particular sorts of outcomes in international politics; or are substantive qualities or behaviours irrelevant except insofar as they are endowed with a masculine or feminine meaning? Either way, Enloe points to the difficulty, even for women freedom fighters, of being dissociated from the feminine and the effects of exclusion on women in emergent nation-states who find themselves, after the wars of liberation, being once more confined to the private sphere (ibid.: 44–5, 63).
In common with most feminist scholars, Cohn, Elshtain, Tickner and Enloe do not think of gender in simplistically causal terms. Nevertheless, each of them argues that masculinity and the theory and practice of international politics are in some sense mutually constitutive. In all cases, this mutual constitution is tied up with commonalities between qualities, modes of behaviour and norms associated with masculinity, and with the theory or practice of international politics. The standards governing what it means to be a man are also identified as governing, at least in part, the practices of nuclear defence, war, theorizing and practising international politics, and struggles for national liberation. At the same time, however, this picture is complicated by the fact that, even though the norms of masculinity are treated as invariable in terms of their exclusionary effects, they are variable in their content. The highly rational, technologically skilled nuclear intellectual (unemotional, rational, calculating) discussed by Cohn is a very different archetype from the ‘just warrior’ (chivalrous, protective) presented in Elshtain’s work. Thus, the continuum of masculine qualities appears not only to be flexible but also to contain significant tensions between different elements, for instance risk-taking and rationality or discipline.
One response of feminist international relations scholars to the difficulties involved in theorizing the link between masculinity and the theory and practice of international politics is to make use of the notion of ‘hegemonic masculinity’, pioneered by R. W. Connell5 (Connell 1995; Tickner 1992; Zalewski and Parpart 1998; Hooper 2001; Cohn and Enloe 2003; Whitworth 2004). Connell suggests that ‘hegemonic masculinity’, a type of culturally dominant masculinity distinguished from other subordinated masculinities, is a socially constructed cultural ideal. It does not correspond to the actual personality of most men; however, it sustains patriarchal authority and legitimizes a patriarchal political and social order. Thus hegemonic masculinity is sustained through maintaining pre-eminence over various subordinated and devalued masculinities, such as homosexuality, along with its dominance in relation to various devalued femininities (Tickner 1992: 6).
Many feminist international relations scholars find the notion of hegemonic masculinity useful because it allows an account of the mutually constitutive link between masculinity and international politics, which operates at two levels. On the one hand, the shifting characteristics of hegemonic masculinity are seen to correspond to shifts in the challenges raised by practices of international politics such as war, trade and diplomacy. On the other hand, the inculcation of these characteristics in international actors can be explained by the way in which the idea of masculinity embeds hierarchies of value that permit discrimination between different masculinities, while maintaining a clear logic of denigration and exclusion in relation to the feminine. Hooper, for instance, argues that the requirements of economic restructuring in the global political economy produce struggles between different masculinities for hegemony, in particular between those of warrior masculinity and the masculinity of the rational, bourgeois individual (Hooper 2001: 221–3). The idea of hegemonic masculinity can also explain how the meaning of warrior masculinity becomes stretched to encompass new kinds of qualities needed by the modern war machine or extends its meaning beyond war-related activities as a label for a new kind of global traveller, the ‘road warrior’ international businessman, forever hooked up to his computer or BlackBerry (Niva 1998; Barrett 2001; Der Derian 2002).
Nevertheless, it is not clear that the puzzles we have already raised as to the nature of the link between what masculinity is and what it does are resolved by the concept of hegemonic masculinity. On the one hand, substantive qualities and characteristics are posited as fundamental to the workings of international politics. On the other hand, the ways in which masculinity operates, as a means through which values are embedded, are posited as key to how any particular set of qualities and characteristics becomes identified as hegemonic or subordinate or as incommensurate with masculinity altogether. If the effects of masculinity are rooted in what it is, then the task of the feminist theorist must be to identify and challenge the particular form taken by hegemonic masculinity within world politics in any given context. If what masculinity is is rooted in what it does, then it is not any particular ...

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