The war in Ukraine and the prospect of renewed warfare elsewhere in Europe is rapidly shifting the security and economic landscape not only in Europe but around the world. Less visibly, it is also - like other wars before - transforming gender relations, especially as it happens at the time when existing women's rights are challenged and rolled back even in Europe and in the United States. Yet, women's and feminist perspectives allow us to see wars differently, shifting and loosening their temporal and spatial boundaries. Situated within feminist political economy of conflict and post-conflict recovery, the lecture highlights two aspects of war that are not always sufficiently recognised by scholars of international relations and international security. First, feminist political economists emphasize continuums and circuits of violence, thus questioning the usual dichotomies of war and peace, economy and security, domestic and international, public and private. Second, feminist scholars stress enduring and transformative aspects of wars, analyzing ways in which wars make and remake men, women, sexualities, and gender relations more broadly. Thus, from a feminist perspective, wars – and their aftermath – are not isolated phenomena: they are integral to the global political economy and its gendered and racial hierarchies. By looking at wars in the post-Cold War period – from the former Yugoslavia to contemporary Ukraine - the lecture will address lasting effects of wars and militarisation on gender relations, political representation, and processes of social reproduction.
This event is also part of the HEC Colloquia
Please register in order to get a seat or to receive the ZOOM link.