Feminist Interventions in Critical Peace and Conflict Studies

This book provides a feminist intervention in Peace & Conflict Studies. It demonstrates why feminist approaches matter to theories and practices of resolving conflict and building peace.

Understanding power inequalities in contexts of armed conflict and peace processes is crucial for identifying the root causes of conflict and opportunities for peaceful transformation. Feminist scholarship offers vital theoretical insights and innovative methods, which can deepen our understanding of power relations in peacebuilding. Yet, all too often feminist research receives token acknowledgement rather than sustained engagement and analysis.

This collection highlights the value of feminist analysis to contemporary Peace and Conflict Studies. Drawing on case studies from around the world - including Croatia, Myanmar, Iceland, Nepal, India, Afghanistan, and Timor-Leste ? it demonstrates why paying serious attention to feminist scholarship prompts useful insights for peacebuilding policy, practice, and scholarship.

Feminist theory, epistemology, and methodology provide a rich resource for critically analysing peacebuilding practices. In particular, the chapters highlight the value of feminist reflexivity, the contributions of a feminist corporeal analysis, and the significance of a feminist reading of core concepts in Peace and Conflict Studies ? including hybridity, the local, and the everyday.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Peacebuilding.

Introduction: Critical peace and conflict studies: feminist interventions

Laura McLeod and Maria O’Reilly

1. Mundane peace and the politics of vulnerability: a nonsolid feminist research agenda

Tarja Väyrynen

2. From power-blind binaries to the intersectionality of peace: connecting feminism and critical peace and conflict studies

Stefanie Kappler and Nicolas Lemay-Hébert

3. The ‘third gender’ in Afghanistan: a feminist account of hybridity as a gendered experience

Hannah Partis-Jennings

4. Care as everyday peacebuilding

Tiina Vaittinen, Amanda Donahoe, Rahel Kunz, Silja Bára Ómarsdóttir and Sanam Roohi

5. From expert to experiential knowledge: exploring the inclusion of local experiences in understanding violence in conflict

Rachel Julian, Berit Bliesemann de Guevara and Robin Redhead

6. Veteran masculinities and audiovisual popular music in post-conflict Croatia: a feminist aesthetic approach to the contested everyday peace

Catherine Baker

Laura McLeod is lecturer in International Politics at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research focuses on gender, feminism and security concerns in post-conflict contexts. Her current project investigates gender indicators and databases used within UN peacebuilding.

Maria O’Reilly is senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Leeds Beckett University, UK. Her research focuses on questions of gender and agency in peacebuilding contexts, and she is currently exploring experiences of female ex-combatants in Bosnia & Herzegovina.