IR3001 Alternative Approaches to Security II

1
IR3001 Alternative Approaches to Security (II)

• Lecture Plan
• The Question of Gender in IR
• Masculinity and War
• Critical Geopolitics
• Boundaries and Violence

2
Gender Definitions

• Zalewskis definition of Gender
• Gender refers to the socially and culturally
  constructed categories of masculinity and
  femininity
• Reardons 2 main tenets of Feminism
• men and women are of equal value and this
  equality should recognised by all societies
• women throughout the world suffer from
  sex-based discrimination
• But Gender does not apply to womens issues
  onlyNew studies on Masculinity!

3
Key Areas of Research for Gender Scholars in IR

• The study of womens oppression on a global
  scale, and transnational effects
• Political and economic rights
• Health and Family planning
• Changes in public policy and international
  mechanisms
• inclusion of womens agendas
• women as leaders?
• Women as agents of social change e.g.
  peace-building groups.
• Gender and War
• Is IR theory gender-biased?
• Supporting other agendas race, class,
  developmental issues

4
Gender Debates in Security

• Traditional View gender is irrelevant to war
  studies
• Are women the victims of particular war crimes?
  Is their experience of security different?
• Elshtain does the realist perspective suffer
  from hyper-masculine bias on human nature? (focus
  on competition and survival)
• Will the inclusion of womens perspectives change
  this?
• Maculinity are men disciplined into gender roles
  too? Is violence a signifier of masculinity?

5
Reardons Gender Perspectives

• Masculine
• Emphasis on institutions and organisations
• Values are competitive and exclusive
• Model of human relationships based on hierarchy
  and centralisation

• Feminine
• Emphasis on human relationships and how we behave
  to fulfil human needs
• Values are familial, nurturing and inclusive
• Kinship network model (diffuse, non-hierarchical)

6
Masculinity and War

• Enloe Symbols of hyper-masculinity written all
  over the war machine? Is an ICBM a phallic
  symbol?
• Carver, Cochran and Squires men are also the
  victims of patriarchy, locked into dominant roles
  and expectations of heroism and self-sacrifice
• Images of war in popular culture socialise men
  into thinking of violence as heroism, protection
  of values, society and women etc.
• Hooper why is the inclusion of women in the
  military so controversial?
• Women as the victims of violence in the military
• Poorly performing recruits are labelled girls
  or queers feminisation of failure
• Being a soldier as the ultimate fulfilment of
  manhood? Good soldiers are good soldiers because
  they are not women?

7
Critical Geopolitics

• Modern Geopolitics the study of rivalry and
  conflict among nation states. The division and
  administration of political space more widely.
• Critical Geopolitics postmodern perspectives on
  the production of geopolitical discourse
• The writing of global space by intellectuals of
  statecraft (O Tuathail)
• Do we need a new language for coming to terms
  with globalisation, the state, hierarchy, power?
• Borderline of IR and human geography

8
The Geopolitics of the State John Agnew

• modern Western thought treats states as if they
  were unitary moral equivalent of human beings
  But in history political power has been located
  on different levels
• The Territorial Trap - questions assumptions
• power and sovereignty require control over
  territorial boundaries
• opposition between the domestic and the foreign
  in politics, i.e. different, non-ethically bound,
  rules of the game exist in foreign sphere
• The state as a discreet cultural, civilisational
  space
• Can we map political power according the
  boundaries of the state?

9
The Foreign Sphere Anarchy as Othering

• RBJ Walker Realist IR is a discourse of the
  modern state the state secures its existence by
  creating a dichotomy between the inside and the
  outside hierarchy of ethics?
• D. Campbell the state secures its political
  integrity through the representation of an
  outside danger othering?
• O Tuathail and Dalby IR as a discipline is
  implicated in the reproduction of power and
  political economy intellectuals normalise
  this framework?
• Said production of academic discourse on the
  Orient that legitimised colonialism
• Gregory othering produces the effects that it
  names realism shapes the world in its own image?

10
Implications for security

• Normalisations of hierarchies of suffering
  social justice is excluded from the international
  sphere
• Ways of talking about security, threats,
  priorities is part of imaginative geography
• Shapiro The dehumanisation of war requires
  demonisation of the enemy and the rationalisation
  of violence (Violent Cartographies)
• Der Derian Postmodern War at a distance morally
  remote from the consequences of our decisions on
  human beings (Gulf War as a video game?)
• What are the alternatives?

11
Conclusions

• Gender in IR is marginalised
• Puts the question of ethics at the core of the IR
  agenda
• Dominated by Feminist approaches
• Third-Worlding Feminism Is feminism biased to
  give only white Western middle class women a
  voice?
• Ties in with agendas on the politics of human
  emancipation

• Ideology underpins the production of spaces of
  power, hegemony, civility
• The assumption of anarchy makes for moral
  hierarchy
• Are academics normalising the status quo?
• Can we care about Others as much as we do for
  our own?
• Is there such a thing as a clean, moral war?