Doo Uap, Doo Uap, Doo Uap

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J. Ann Tickner

We are socialized into believing that war and power politics are spheres of activity with which men have a special affinity and that their voiced in describing and prescribing for this world are therefore likely to be more authentic. The roles traditionally ascribed to women – in reproduction, in households, and even in the economy – are generally considered irrelevant to the traditional construction of the field. Ignoring women’s experiences contributes not only to their exclusion but also to a process of self-selection that results in an overwhelmingly male population both in the foreign policy world and in the academic field of international relations. (4-5)
… the marginalization of women in the arena of foreign policy-making through the kind of gender stereotyping suggests that international politics has always been a gendered activity in the modern state system. (5)
Since foreign and military policy-making has been largely conducted by men, the discipline that analyses these activities is bound to be primarily about men and masculinity. (5)
Socially constructed gender differences are based on socially sanctioned, unequal relationships between men and women that reinforce compliance with men’s stated superiority. (6)
While what it means to be a man or a woman varies across cultures and history, in most cultures gender differences signify relationships or inequality and the domination of women by men. (7)
… one could characterize most contemporary feminist scholarship in terms of the dual beliefs that gender difference has played an important and essential role in the structuring of social inequalities in much of human history and that the resulting differences in self-identification, human understandings, social status, and power relationships are unjustified. (7)
In political discourse, this becomes translated into stereotypical notions about those who inhabit the outside. Like women, foreigners are frequently portrayed as “the other”: nonwhites and tropical countries are often depicted as irrational, emotional, and unstable, characteristics that are also attributed to women. The construction of this discourse and the way in which we are taught to think about international politics closely parallel the way in which we are socialized into understanding gender differences. (9) – gender as ‘the other’
A more fundamental challenge to realism came from scholars influenced by the Marxist tradition. Motivated by a different agenda, one that emphasizes issues of equality and justice rather than issues of order and control, scholars using a variety of more radical approaches attempted to move the field away from its excessively Western focus toward a consideration of those marginalized areas of the world system that had been subject to Western colonization. (12-3)
While it is obvious that not all women are feminists, feminist theories are constructed out of the experiences of women in their many and varied circumstances, experiences that have generally been rendered invisible by most intellectual disciplines. (14)
Most contemporary feminist scholars claim that the sources of discrimination against women run much deeper than legal restraints: they are emeshed in the economic, cultural, and social structures of society and thus do not end when legal restraints are removed. Almost all feminist perspectives have been motivated by the common goal of attempting to describe and explain the sources of gender inequality, and hence women’s oppression, and to seek strategies to end them. (15)
Feminists claim that women are oppressed in a multiplicity of ways that depend on culture, class, and race as well as on gender. (15)
While Marxist feminists believe that capitalism is the source of women’s oppression, radical feminists claim that women are oppressed by the system of patriarchy that has existed under almost all modes of production. Patriarchy is institutionalized through legal and economic, as well as social and cultural institutions. (15)
Feminists in the psychoanalytic tradition look for the source of women’s oppression deep in the psyche, in gender relationships into which we are socialised from birth. (15)
Socialist feminists claim that women’s position in society is determined both by structures of production in the economy and by structures of reproduction in the household, structures that are reinforced by the early socialisation of children into gender roles. Women’s unequal status in all these structures must be eliminated for full equality to be achieved. (15-6)
Socialist feminism thus tries to understand the position of women in their multiple roles in order to find a single standpoint from which to explain their condition. Using standpoint in the sense that it has been used by Marxists, these theorists claim that those who are oppressed have a better understanding of the sources of their oppression than their oppressors. (16)
This notion of standpoint has been seriously criticized by postmodern feminists who argue that a unified representation of women across class, racial, and cultural lines is an impossibility. Just as feminists more generally have criticized existing knowledge that is grounded in the experiences of white Western males, postmodernists claim that feminists themselves are in danger of essentializing the meaning of woman when they draw exclusively on the experiences of white Western women. Postmodernists believe that a multiplicity of women’s voices must be heard lest feminism itself become one more hierarchical system of knowledge construction. (16)
Any attempt to construct feminist perspectives on international relations must take this concern of postmodernists seriously. (16)
The world of international politics is a masculine domain, how could feminist perspectives contribute anything new to its academic discourse? Many male scholars have already noted that, given our current technologies of destruction and the high degree of economic inequality and environmental degradation that now exists, we are desperately in need of changes in the way world politics is conducted. (17)
Feminist theories, which speak out of the various experiences of women – who are usually on the margins of society and interstate politics 0 can offer us some new insights on the behaviour of states and the need of individuals, particularly those one the peripheries of the international system. (18)
Feminist theories must go beyond injecting women’s experiences into different disciplines and attempt to challenge the core concepts of the disciplines themselves. Concepts central to international relations theory and practice, such as power, sovereignty, and security, have been framed in terms that we associate with masculinity. Drawing on feminist theories to examine and critique the meaning of these and other concepts fundamental to international politics could help us to reformulate these concepts in ways that might allow us to see new possibilities for solving our current insecurities. Suggesting that the personal is political, feminist scholars have brought to our attention distinctions between public and private in the domestic polity: examining these artificial boundary distinctions in the domestic polity could shed new light on international boundaries, such as those between anarchy and order, which are so fundamental to the conceptual framework of realist discourse. (18)
The construction of hierarchical binary oppositions has been central to theorizing about international relations. Distinctions between domestic and foreign, inside and outside, order and anarchy, and centre and periphery have served as important assumptions in theory construction and as organizing principles for the way we view the world. (19)
Feminists can bring to light gender hierarchies embedded in the theories and practices of world politics and allow us to see the extent to which all these systems of domination are interrelated. (19)
Thinking of security in multidimensional terms allows us to get away from prioritizing military issues, issues that have been central to the agenda of traditional international relations but that are the furthest removed from women’s experiences. (22-3)
If we were to include women’s experiences in our assumptions about the security-seeking behaviour of states, how would it change the way in which we think about national security? Given the sexual division of labour, men’s association with violence has been legitimated through war and the instruments of the state. Feminist perspectives must introduce the issue of domestic violence and analyse how the boundaries between public and private, domestic and international, political and economic, are permeable and interrelated. (23)
Like most contemporary feminists, Evelyn Fox Keller rejects this positivist view of science that imposes a coercive, hierarchical, and conformist pattern on scientific inquiry. Since most contemporary feminist scholars believe that knowledge is socially constructed, they are sceptical of finding an unmediated foundation for knowledge that realists claim is possible. Since they believe that it is language that transmits knowledge, many feminists suggest that the scholarly claims about the neutral uses of language and about objectivity must continually be questioned. (36)
When we consider security from the perspective of the individual, we find that new thinking is beginning to provide us with definitions of security that are less state-centred and less militaristic. (53)
Feminist reformulations of the meaning of security are needed to draw attention to the extent to which gender hierarchies themselves are a source of domination and thus an obstacle to a truly comprehensive definition of security. (53)
Third World women defined insecurity more broadly in terms of the structural violence associated with imperialism, militarism, racism, and sexism. Yet all agreed that security meant nothing if it was built on others’ insecurity. (54-4)
… contemporary new thinkers also include the elimination of structural violence in their definition of security. (55)

Claiming that militarism, sexism, and racism are interconnected, most feminists would agree that the behaviour of individuals and the domestic policies of states cannot be separated from state’s behaviour in the international system. Feminists call attention to the particular vulnerabilities of women within states, vulnerabilities that grow out of hierarchical gender relations that are also interrelated with international politics. (56)
In militarized societies women are particularly vulnerable to rape, and evidence suggests that domestic violence is higher in military families or in families that include men with prior military service. Even though most public violence is committed by men against other men, it is more often women who feel threatened in public places. Jill Radford suggests that when women feel it is unsafe to go out alone, their equal access to job opportunities is limited. (56)
Feminist theories draw our attention to another anarchy/order distinction – the boundary between a public domestic space protected, at least theoretically, by the rule of law and the private space of the family where, in many cases, no such legal protection exists. In most states domestic violence is not considered a concern of the state, and even when it is, law enforcement officials are often unwilling to get involved. Domestic assaults on women, often seen as “victim precipitated,” are not taken as seriously as criminal assaults. (57)
Feminist perspectives on security would assume that violence, whether it be in the international, national, or family realm, is interconnected. Family violence must be seen in the context of wider power relations; it occurs within a gendered society in which male power dominates at all levels. If men are traditionally seen as protectors, an important aspect of this role is protecting women against certain men. (58)
Feminist perspectives on national security take us beyond realism’s statist representations. They allow us to see that the realist view of national security is constructed out of a masculinised discourse that, while it is only a partial view of reality, is taken as universal. Women’s definitions of security are multilevel and multidimensional. Women have defined security as the absence of violence whether it be military, economic, or sexual. (66)
Feminist perspective on national security demonstrates that there are equally plausible alternative ways of conceptualising security and prescribing for its realization. They also draw our attention to examining the world from perspectives not of elite decision-makers but of those who are outside positions of power yet can present an equally plausible representation of reality. (132)

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KM Fierke, 'Human Insecurity', Critical Approaches to International Security (London: Polity, 2007) 144-166.

Human security

- notion that underdevelopment is dangerous in so far as it correlates and coexists with violent conflict. (144)

Human security was first popularized by the UN Development Programme and was a response to an observation after the end of the Cold War that in today's conflicts civilians are often the victims and even the primary targets of violence.

- e.g. child soldiers, refugees, rape (145)

The concept of human security and its themes

- sustainable development (environmental protection)

- human development

--- the safety of individuals is key to global security (145)

other three different themes:

- human rights and the rule of law -> individuals have a basic right to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'

- the safety of peoples -> secure the moral and legal rights of non-combatants in war, assist in building the peace and preventing future conflict, and improve the basic living conditions of refugees.

- sustainable development, including economic, social and environmental rights -> the strategic objective is to alleviate poverty to redistribute wealth and to encourage participatory governance. (146)

A Critical Concept?

Human security emphasizes meeting basic material needs as well as preserving human dignity, which includes meaningful participation in a community.

Although states are not the focus, they are not unimportant. They should play a crucial role in creating and maintaining structures of authority and responsibility that contribute to human security. However, in a globalising world, they can't always implement international obligations because they lack control within their borders and have inadequate institutional capacity and resources.

This is exacerbated by the proliferation of non-state actors, such as international arms dealers, non-state paramilitaries, international crime and terrorism.

Buzan recognizes that the state is 'a necessary condition for individual security because without the state it is not clear what other agency is o act on behalf individuals. (Top-Down approach)

Arguably, this misses the point. As Williams point out, societal security refers to the process by which society is securitized and acquires an identity, which may be linked to processes of state securitization. (Bottom-Up approach) (148)

Human security has been a key concept of NGOs and others who are interested in actually transforming global economic structures. (150)

Development and security

Development and security used to be largely separate areas of study and practice. Development studies addressed questions of global inequality and poverty. Security studies focused on conflict and war. (150)

The critical Marxist literature on development is premised on the idea that globalization is not a new phenomenon. The underdevelopment of the South has gone hand in hand with the development of the North in a capitalist world economy.

Critics of European imperialism in the early part of the twentieth century, and not least Lenin, argued that capitalism was fuelled by the need to expand in search of profit. Imperialism was a manifestation of this global expansion in pursuit of wealth. (151)

Immanuel Wallerstein's (1974) World System Theory provided a framework for understanding the relationship between the development of the industrial core, the underdevelopment of a periphery, which provided raw materials, and a semi-periphery, which produced luxury goods and provided a buffer against revolutionary transformation. (151)

It wasn't that the South was undeveloped, but rather that it had been deliberately underdeveloped within a global relationship. (151)

This discourse of underdevelopment has largely disappeared since the 1980s and particularly since the end of the Cold War. In its place, a neo-liberal agenda, which promotes the free market, the universal legitimacy of private economic power and individual choice within the marketplace, has emerged. (152)

In contrast to economic assumptions that globalization is delivering economic growth for all, free market liberalization since the 1980s had accelerated the widening of this gap. (152)

Security

The conflicts related in some cases to the failure of states to consolidate their authority over an area which may have been exacerbated by the loss of superpower funding as the Cold War ended. Failed states and, along with them, conflict proliferated in the 1990s. (153)

The victims in these conflicts are overwhelmingly citizens, rather than the representatives of recognizable state armies.

The global downsizing of armies following the end of the Cold War created a large pool of private mercenaries and an expanding role for them, and the privatisation of security, under the auspices of corporate actors or Western states (Musah in Milliken 2003:166-9)

The outbreak of new wars has corresponded with an increasing emphasis in the academic literature and in political discourse on the idea that liberal democracies don't fight with one another. (153)

Empires and imperial states have repeatedly deployed force against states and populations in the periphery in the service of the project of extending European rule and institutions to the rest of the world. (154)

Liberal governance as a solution

Liberal discourses of development and democracy have focused on individual states, ignoring the embeddedness of these states in historical relations that are global.

Mark Duffield (2001) provides a critical analysis of the relationship between security and development, which has increasingly been addressed within a liberal governance model. (154)

Development discourse has changed from an emphasis on supporting pro-Western Southern elites through aid to the transformation of entire societies. In the first half of the 1990s, the international community was very focused on humanitarian intervention in different conflict areas. (155)

The change, since the mid-1990s, is Duffield (2001:11) argues, one of policy rather than in the nature of the conflict. The reason for the change of policy is the conclusion that underdevelopment is dangerous and is a source of conflict. This conclusion, which is an extension of the liberal model, does not locate underdevelopment or 'failed states' in an unjust global system which has emerged along with a capitalist world economy and a history of imperialism. The liberal governance model internalizes the causes of conflict and political instability. (155)

Duffield examines human security as part of a Foucauldian strategy of biopolitics, whereby a strategic complex of global actors and governing agencies, through a newly formed public-private relationship, shape and control civil population. (156)

A Critical analysis

Development and security discourses reinforced a liberal agenda of transforming entire societies into liberal democracies. This agenda is problematic for two reasons.

1^st: as it represents a new regime of power, albeit ‘softer’ than the old imperialist regime, Marxists view human security as a repackaging of liberal humanitarianism, with its routine failure to address underlying social causes.

2^nd: the discourse failed to problematize the role of historical global relations in the production of ‘failed states’.  (156)

The liberal model locates the problem of human insecurity in the failure of individual states to proceed along the pathway to successful statehood.

The dependency model locates the problem in historical and global relations that continue to constrain or underdevelop large parts of the world. (157)

In the liberal model, democracy is an ideal type, towards which all states should want to progress. The failure of certain states establishes the problem of human insecurity as arising from the lack of stateness and prescribes a response, that is, reconstructing the state as a liberal democracy.

The liberal model fails to hitoricize processes of state-making or to recognize local and global processes that have contributed to the construction of different types of state. (157)

The critical methodological potential of human security lies not in bringing an ideal model of democracy and political order to the ‘problem’ of failed states, but in an analysis of these processes of construction at different levels and how they intersect. (159)

The shift from the modernization and development theories of the 1950s and 1960s to the democratization theories of the 1980s and 1990s is one of emphasis, from the state as the centre of social control to ‘advocating and supporting the construction of conformist civil societies as supposedly autonomous spaces of individual freedom and association’. (160-161)

What is missing from these logics, Bilgin and Morton argue, is any question about the processes by which these states become ‘weak’ while others become strong. They never ask the question of who has failed the ‘failed state’?

Claims about ‘failed states’ do not reflect on the power-knowledge relationship. (161)

The problem relates to a lack of clarity regarding the language employed and a failure to recognize the relationship between the use of categories and the practices that emerge as a result. (161)

Jenny Edkins (2000, 2005) problematizes the conceptualization of famine as a natural disaster for which no one is to blame, and asks a question about ‘who might be responsible for a famine, rather than what caused it’. (162)

Famine as a natural disaster produces victims who need welfare provision or aid, rather than agents with a political voice. These victims then become subject to administrative mechanisms of food distribution and aid. This process depoliticizes famine and constitutes it as a site for intervention and control. (163)

Edkins: Starvation is no more ‘natural’ than suffocation: it is no more a shortage of food than the latter is a shortage of air. (163)

By demonstrating the parallels between mass starvation and genocide, Edkins politicizes the former, showing that it is often a product of human intentionality, through a series of small acts, rather than a natural disaster. This introduces an element of human responsibility and agency in the construction of human insecurity. (163)

Arguably, both famine and genocide involve two levels of intentionality. The first is the intentionality of the political groups that produce the catastrophe. The second is the intentionality of the international community in responding – or not responding 0 to the human catastrophe. (164)

A more critical approach to the concept of human security would place less emphasis on ‘fixing’ the meaning of categories and instead explore the conceptual worlds that have given rise to various forms of insecurity. This requires problematizing the liberal assumptions underlying the concept, in order to prise open a more critical space for asking questions about the meaning of political community and the processes by which human security might more effectively be constructed. (166)