2018 Enloe Award Essay Winner and Runner Up
Winner: Cleared for investment? The intersections of transnational capital, gender, and race in the production of sexual violence and internal displacement in Colombia’s armed conflict
ABSTRACT
Investigating the nexus of transnational capital, gender, and race, I argue that sexual violence and internal displacement tacitly serve the interest of transnational corporations (TNCs). Drawing on extensive ethnographic research in war-torn regions in Colombia, I elucidate how violence is deeply intertwined in the globalization of neoliberal capitalism and operates by exploiting and instrumentalizing constructions of gender and race that are articulated through colonial legacies and further dehumanize the “Other.” The focus on intersectional power relations advances a critical understanding of the political economy of armed conflict. First, it reveals how local and global (economic) actors are entrenched in exacerbating local forms of domination that produce sexual violence and internal displacement through a particular political economy of masculinity and neoliberal forms of expansion and exploitation. Beyond that, both forms of violence are not only the product of colonial, capitalist, and gendered structures and ideas but also serve to re-entrench these power relations between dominant and subaltern groups. I conceptualize this relationship as the “coloniality of violence.” It constitutes a shared space for violent forms of domination and appropriation that facilitates capital accumulation, and it may further foster a relation of structural oppression in “post-conflict” Colombia.
Author Julia Sachseder
Runner Up: Caught between art and science: the Women, Peace and Security agenda in United Nations mediation narratives
ABSTRACT
The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has not yet had a large or lasting impact on United Nations (UN)-brokered peace processes. I argue that we can understand the challenges to incorporating the WPS agenda by examining the changes that UN mediation has undergone in the post-Cold War era. UN mediation has moved from being seen as a diplomatic art to being seen as a professionalized science. Narratives about mediation as an “art” or as a “science” have distinct implications for how the UN has incorporated the WPS agenda in mediation. To examine these narratives, I adopt Wibben’s feminist narrative approach. I analyze texts including UN guidance documents on mediation, notes from participant observation of training sessions on mediation and gender, and 37 interviews with UN mediation personnel. I find that the narrative of mediation as a science constructs a linear process with little room for complexity. In doing so, it depoliticizes gender relations and constrains the participation of women. The narrative of mediation as an art privileges experience, consent, and trusting relationships. Including women and gender issues appears risky because it endangers consent. Meanwhile, building trust may rely upon excluding certain groups of people. These findings contribute to our understanding of how institutional contexts affect the implementation of the WPS agenda.
Author Catriona Standfield