| 1. |
- Eriksson Baaz, Maria, 1971-, et al.
(author)
-
The Complexity of Violence : A critical analysis of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
- 2010
-
Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This report, the first in Sida’s gender-based violence series, draws on an original case study, including extensive interviews with members of thearmed forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). By critically exploring and convincingly challenging existing stereotypes and narratives about sexual violence in conflict settings, the authors reveal the need for a nuanced understanding of SGBV, including its invisible victims. Their analysis transcends reductionist explanations that separate SGBV from other forms of violence that afflict war-torn societies, and haunt post-war contexts. They thus provide invaluable insights into the complex circumstances in which SGBV occurs.
|
|
| 2. |
- Eriksson Baaz, Maria, 1971, et al.
(author)
-
WHORES, MEN, AND OTHER MISFITS: UNDOING ‘FEMINIZATION’ IN THE ARMED FORCES IN THE DRC
- 2011
-
In: African Affairs. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1468-2621 .- 0001-9909. ; African Affairs Advance Access published August 5:2011, s. 1-23
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The global attention focused on sexual violence in the DRC has not only contributed to an image of the Congolese army as a vestige of pre-modern barbarism, populated by rapists, and bearing no resemblance to the world of modern armies; it has also shaped gender and defence reform initiatives. These initiatives have become synonymous with combating sexual violence, reflecting an assumption that the gendered dynamics of the army are already known. Crucial questions such as the ‘feminization’ of the armed forces are consequently neglected. Based on in-depth interviews with soldiers in the Congolese armed forces, this article analyses the discursive strategies male soldiers employ in relation to the feminization of the army. In the light of the need to reform the military and military masculinities, the article discusses how globalized discourses and practices render the Congolese military a highly globalized sphere. It also highlights the particular and local ways in which military identities are produced through gender, and concludes that a simple inclusion of women in the armed forces in order to render men less violent might not have the pacifying effect intended.
|
|
| 3. |
- Eriksson Baaz, Maria, 1971, et al.
(author)
-
Why Do Soldiers Rape? Masculinity, Violence, and Sexuality in the Armed Forces in the Congo (DRC)
- 2009
-
In: International Studies Quarterly. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1468-2478 .- 0020-8833. ; 53:2
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This article explores the ways soldiers in the Congo speak about the massive amount of rape committed by the armed forces in the recent war in the DRC. It focuses on the reasons that the soldiers give to why rape occurs. It discusses how the soldiers distinguish between ‘‘lust rapes’’ and ‘‘evil rapes’’ and argues that their explanations of rape must be understood in relation to notions of different (impossible) masculinities. Ultimately, through reading the soldiers’ words, we can glimpse the logics—arguably informed by the increasingly globalized context of soldiering—through which rape becomes possible, and even ‘‘normalized’’ in particular warscapes.
|
|
| 4. |
- Eriksson Baaz, Maria, 1971, et al.
(author)
-
Fearless Fighters and Submissive Wives: Negotiating Identity among Women Soldiers in the Congo (DRC)
- 2013
-
In: Armed forces and society. - 0095-327X .- 1556-0848. ; 39:4, s. 711-739
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This article addresses an underreported aspect of contemporary warring in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): the experiences of women soldiers and officers in the Congolese national armed forces (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo [FARDC]). It thus addresses an empirical gap in scholarly and policy knowledge about female soldiers in national armies on the African continent, and the DRC in particular. Based on original interviews, the article explores the way female soldiers in the FARDC understand their identities as “women soldiers” and offers new insight into women soldiers’ role and responsibilities in the widespread violence committed against civilians in the DRC. Moreover, it explores how their understanding of themselves as “women soldiers” both challenges and confirms familiar notions of the army as a masculine sphere. Such insight is important for better understanding the gendered makeup of the military and for contributing to a knowledge base for Security Sector Reform in this violent (post)conflict setting.
|
|
| 5. |
|
|
| 6. |
|
|
| 7. |
- Eriksson Baaz, Maria, 1971, et al.
(author)
-
Knowing Masculinities in Armed Conflict?: Reflections from Research in the Democratic Republic of Congo
- 2018
-
In: The Oxford handbook of gender and conflict / edited by Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Naomi Cahn, Dina Francesca Haynes and Nahla Valji.. - Oxford : Oxford University Press. - 9780199300983 ; , s. 532-545
-
Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with members of the Congolese military, this chapter explores conceptions of militarized masculinity, particularly in the context of sexual violence perpetrated by Congolese government forces during the protracted conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The chapter opens with a review of the feminist research regarding the interconnectedness of gender, militarization, and war, comparing these theories with the conceptions of masculinity articulated by Congolese soldiers. While portions of the interviews were consistent with prevailing research framings, the chapter documents various points of dissonance. These include differences in the articulation of what characteristics make one a “good soldier”; the recurring articulations of vulnerability and failure; and a perception of rape as the action of an emasculated man. The chapter concludes with the authors’ reflection on their experience carrying out their research and the ethics of research in a post-colonial context.
|
|
| 8. |
- Stern, Maria, 1966, et al.
(author)
-
Curious erasures: the sexual in wartime sexual violence
- 2018
-
In: International feminist journal of politics. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1461-6742 .- 1468-4470. ; 20:3, s. 295-314
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Wartime sexual violence is especially egregious precisely because it is a sexual form of violence that causes particular harms. Yet, curiously, and in contrast to feminist theory on sexual violence more generally, the sexual has been erased from frames of understanding in dominant accounts of wartime rape. This article places the seeming certainty that “wartime rape is not about sex (it’s about power/violence)” under critical scrutiny and poses questions about the stakes of the erasure of the sexual in explanations of conflict-related sexual violence. It argues that the particular urgency that accompanies this erasure reflects the workings of familiar distinctions between war and peace, as well as efforts to clearly recognize violence and separate it from sex. Erasing the sexual from accounts of wartime rape thus ultimately reinscribes the normal and the exceptional as separate, and reproduces a reductive notion of heterosexual masculine sex (in peacetime) that is ontologically different from the violence of war.
|
|
| 9. |
- Stern, Maria, 1966, et al.
(author)
-
Feminist fatigue(s): reflections on feminism and familiar fables of militarisation
- 2009
-
In: Review of International Studies. ; 35:03, s. 611-630
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this article we critically consider the idea that feminism has performatively failed within the discipline of International Relations. One aspect of this failure relates to the production of sexgender through feminism which we suggest is partly responsible for a weariness inflecting feminist scholarship, in particular as a critical theoretical resource. We reflect on this weariness in the context of the study and practice of international politics – arenas still reaping the potent benefits of the virile political energies reverberating since 9/11. To illustrate our arguments we re-count a familiar feminist fable of militarisation – a story which we use to exemplify how the production of feminist IR is ‘set’ up to ‘fail’. In so doing we clarify our depiction of feminism as seemingly haunted by its inherent paradoxes as well as explaining why it matters to discuss feminism within the locale of the academic study of international politics. We conclude with a consideration of the grammar of temporality that delimits representations of feminism and move to recast feminist failure as aporetic and concomitantly implicated in the process of intervening politically.
|
|
| 10. |
- Eriksson Baaz, Maria, 1971-, et al.
(author)
-
Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? : Perceptions, Prescriptions, Problems in the Congo and Beyond
- 2013
-
Book (peer-reviewed)abstract
- All too often in conflict situations, rape is referred to as a 'weapon of war', a term presented as self-explanatory through its implied storyline of gender and warring. In this provocative but much-needed book, Eriksson Baaz and Stern challenge the dominant understandings of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings. Reading with and against feminist analyses of the interconnections between gender, warring, violence and militarization, the authors address many of the thorny issues inherent in the arrival of sexual violence on the global security agenda. Based on original fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as research material from other conflict zones, Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? challenges the recent prominence given to sexual violence, bravely highlighting various problems with isolating sexual violence from other violence in war. A much-anticipated book by two acknowledged experts in the field, on an issue that has become an increasingly important security, legal and gender topic.
|
|
