Laura Sjoberg

Women, Peace, and Security as Argument and Tension

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Today’s piece for our symposium on Governing the Feminist Peace is from Laura Sjoberg. Laura is Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and Kloppenburg Official Fellow and Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Exeter College, Oxford. Her research addresses issues of gender and security, with focus on politically violent women, feminist war theorising, sexuality in global politics, and political methodology. She teaches, consults, and lectures on gender in global politics, and on international security. Previous posts in the symposium can be found here, here, here and here.

Governing the Feminist Peace is an amazing book that I continue to learn from each time I read it – it is careful, deep, comprehensive, well-reasoned, complex and contingent. It provides a compelling account of the diversity and vitality of feminist efforts to seek peace locally, nationally, and internationally, showing that a wide variety of academics, activists, and policy-makers, even when they disagree, have a commitment to looking to make the world a better place through some form of gender analysis and/or gender advocacy. Across its pages are hundreds of examples of governments, international organizations, NGOs, volunteers, and scholars doing gender work in the security arena, presented in a way that does not discount these efforts’ imperfections but fills even a cynic like me who critiques and discards the feminist peace with optimism about the impressive level of commitment to gender equality, peace, and the future. These accounts are written in impressive detail by Paul Kirby and Laura J. Shepherd, who both individually and together are easily the world’s leading experts on Women, Peace, and Security – something that the detailed and clear engagement with different facets, levels, and geographies of the feminist peace shows and confirms.

 It is for this vitality that Kirby and Shepherd suggest that we “forget WPS” (p.206). While that seems contradictory, the book does an excellent job of suggesting that the problem is not “the feminist peace” as such but the idea that Women, Peace, and Security is or could be one coherent ‘agenda’ instead of multiple fellow travelers with tensions. As the authors explain, “we seek to give up on the concept of ‘the WPS agenda’ as a singular political project or vision and instead apprehend and engage with the agenda always as a plural object of knowledge and practice” (p.206-207). On an optimistic day, this makes me think there might be a place in advocacy for the “feminist peace” for even a pessimist like me; other days, it still reads like a better, clearer description of either WPS or the feminist peace than ones I have read before.

Though my work has always been orthogonal to the WPS agenda, the work in Governing the Feminist Peace both articulates some of my critiques of the agenda better than I could have and frames them as too simple. Where I would find WPS’ failures, Kirby and Shepherd find its complexities and potentials. That is why, while this book is full of rich and interesting information, I find myself most engaged with the conclusion. It articulates, outlines, and engages the “fundamental tensions” that structure what Kirby and Shepherd identify as the (multiple) policy ecosystem(s) of the feminist peace. They find six fundamental tensions, and outline each in turn.

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(Im)Possibly Queer International Feminisms

/ Pablo K / Leave a comment

Wehrmacht DragWe’ve previously mentioned the 2013 International Feminist Journal of Politics annual conference – on the topic of ‘(Im)Possibly Queer International Feminisms’. It turns out that there is extra reason to trumpet its existence: our very own Rahul Rao (author these excellent posts) will be one of the conference keynotes, alongside such others as Lisa Duggan (NYU), Jon Binnie (Manchester Met), Vivienne Jabri (Kings), V. Spike Peterson (Arizona), Laura Sjoberg (Florida), Rosalind Galt, Akshay Khanna, and Louiza Odysseos (all Sussex)! A lot of other exciting papers will be on display, some of which I’ll be associated with. And there’s also a pre-conference workshop on Queer, Feminist and Social Media Praxis. Clearly not an occasion to miss.

The full call is as follows:

(Im)possibly Queer International Feminisms

The 2nd Annual IFjP Conference
May 17-19, 2013
University of Sussex, Brighton, England

The aim of this conference is to serve as a forum for developing and discussing papers that IFjP hopes to publish.  These can be on the conference theme or on any other feminist IR-related questions.

Feminists taught us that the personal is political.  International Relations feminists taught us that the personal is international.  And contemporary Queer Scholars are teaching us that the international is queer.  While sometimes considered in isolation, these insights are connected in complex and sometimes contradictory ways. This conference seeks to bring together scholars and practitioners to critically consider the limits and possibilities of thinking, doing, and being in relation to various assemblages composed of queer(s), international(s), and feminism(s).

Questions we hope to consider include:  Who or what is/are (im)possibly queer, (im)possibly international, (im)possibly feminist, separately and in combination?  What makes assemblages of queer(s), international(s) and feminism(s) possible or impossible?  Are such assemblages desirable – for whom and for what reasons?  What might these assemblages make possible or impossible, especially for the theory and practice of global politics?

We are interested in papers and panels that explore these questions through theoretical and/or practical perspectives, be they interdisciplinary or located within the discipline of International Relations.

Sub-themes include (Im)Possibly Queer/International/Feminist:

  • Heteronormativities/Homonormativities/Homonationalisms
  • Embodiments/Occupations/Economies/Circulations
  • Temporalities/‘Successes’/‘Failures’
  • Emotions/Desires/Psycho-socialities
  • Technologies/Methodologies/Knowledges/Epistemologies
  • Spaces/Places/Borders/(Trans)positionings
  • States/Sovereignties/Subjectivities
  • Crossings/Migrations/Trans(gressions)
  • (In)Securities

We invite submissions for individual papers or pre-constituted panels on any topic pertaining to the conference theme and sub-themes. We also welcome papers and panels that consider any other feminist IR-related questions.

Any inquiries should be addressed to the conference coordinator, Joanna Wood, at cait@sussex.ac.uk

Abstracts should be no more than 250 words.

Deadline for submissions: January 31, 2013

We will, however, confirm acceptance of submissions before the deadline if we receive abstracts early.  Early submission is therefore recommended.

Please submit your abstract here.

Feminist Fatigues; Or, What Can Feminism Be in International Relations?

/ Pablo K / 2 Comments

What is feminist IR and what does it do? Not a new question, by any means, but one worth mulling over in light of Laura Sjoberg’s attempts to make the case, or just plain describe, feminist IR across several posts at The Duck Of Minerva, spurred on by some less than charitable peer reviews. The complaints, and the responses alternating between outright hostility, condescension and general bemusement, happily confirm critical (European) prejudices. The American mainstream doesn’t think something counts as a knowledge practice unless it can be co-opted into a regression analysis, and lacks what would pass as an undergraduate understanding of feminism elsewhere.

So far, so self-satisfying. Educational-cum-critical interventions of this kind clearly do have their place. As Joe put it to me, marginal and critical perspectives (no less than others) require constant re-inscription and repetition. Different students, different times, different world-historical events: all call for a re-engagement through our preferred lenses, which is how we absorb and become committed to them. It’s not enough for people to just be referred back to de Beauvoir or Enloe.

That said, these are also acts of performance. As Sjoberg herself notes, the conversation repeats itself. Repeats on itself, even. You Just Don’t Understand. Like an algorithmic inter-paradigm debate. The steps are as obvious and stale now as they were decades ago. Feminists are humourless; feminism is inherently a negative critique; there is no place for men in feminism; feminism isn’t really IR, even if it has some purpose somewhere;  feminism is obtuse; feminists lack research projects and cumulative understanding. A stack of intellectual veneers on one big trope of man-hating idealist sex-phobic anti-rationalist frigidity.

So why doesn’t the conversation ever seem to go anywhere? Continue reading →