Gender Agency And Political Violence

Considering the conditions, maintenance and interpretation of political violence, the authors analyze the multiple ways in which acts (and perpetrators) of violence, strategies of resistance and efforts at conflict resolution are gendered. Specifically, they engage with the constitution of gendered subjects and gendered agents in a range of different contexts of violence and conclude that acts of violence have varying degrees of legitimacy, dependent on context.

They show that political violence is not the exclusive preserve of non-state actors, but that individuals, resistance movements, paramilitaries and state (or state-sponsored) organisations perpetrate violence in pursuit of political objectives. Review: 'Gender, agency and political violence is a thought-provoking contribution to feminist debates around issues of political violence, agency/resistance and conflict resolution...The volume is an invaluable contribution to existing scholarship, providing both new empirical insights and novel methods for understanding the gendered nature of violence, both in its perpetration and subsequent (re)interpretations.' - Maria O'Reilly, King's College London, Peacebuilding