ir3001 alternative approaches to security ii

1. IR3001 Alternative Approaches to Security (II) Lecture Plan: The Question of Gender in IR Masculinity and War Critical Geopolitics Boundaries and Violence

3. Key Areas of Research for Gender Scholars in IR The study of women�s oppression on a global scale, and transnational effects Political and economic rights Health and Family planning Changes in public policy and international mechanisms: inclusion of women�s agendas women as leaders? Women as agents of social change: e.g. peace-building groups. Gender and War Is IR theory gender-biased? Supporting other agendas: race, class, developmental issues�

4. Gender Debates in Security Traditional View: gender is irrelevant to war studies Are women the victims of particular war crimes? Is their experience of security different? Elshtain: does the realist perspective suffer from hyper-masculine bias on human nature? (focus on competition and survival) Will the inclusion of women�s perspectives change this? Maculinity: are men disciplined into gender roles too? Is violence a signifier of masculinity?

5. Reardon�s Gender Perspectives Masculine Emphasis on institutions and organisations Values are competitive and exclusive Model of human relationships based on hierarchy and centralisation Feminine Emphasis on human relationships and how we behave to fulfil human needs Values are familial, nurturing and inclusive Kinship network model (diffuse, non-hierarchical)

6. Masculinity and War Enloe: Symbols of hyper-masculinity written all over the war machine? Is an ICBM a phallic symbol? Carver, Cochran and Squires: men are also the victims of patriarchy, locked into dominant roles and expectations of heroism and self-sacrifice Images of war in popular culture socialise men into thinking of violence as heroism, protection of values, society and women etc. Hooper: why is the inclusion of women in the military so controversial? Women as the victims of violence in the military Poorly performing recruits are labelled �girls� or �queers� � feminisation of failure� Being a soldier as the ultimate fulfilment of manhood? Good soldiers are good soldiers because they are not �women�?

7. Critical Geopolitics Modern Geopolitics: the study of rivalry and conflict among nation states. The division and administration of political space more widely. Critical Geopolitics: postmodern perspectives on the production of geopolitical discourse: �The writing of global space by intellectuals of statecraft� (O Tuathail) Do we need a new language for coming to terms with globalisation, the state, hierarchy, power? Borderline of IR and human geography

8. The Geopolitics of the State: John Agnew modern Western thought treats states as if they were unitary moral equivalent of human beings� But in history political power has been located on different levels The �Territorial Trap� - questions assumptions: power and sovereignty require control over territorial boundaries opposition between the domestic and the foreign in politics, i.e. different, non-ethically bound, rules of the game exist in foreign sphere The state as a discreet cultural, civilisational space Can we map political power according the boundaries of the state?

9. The Foreign Sphere: Anarchy as Othering RBJ Walker: Realist IR is a discourse of the modern state: the state secures its existence by creating a dichotomy between the �inside� and the �outside� � hierarchy of ethics? D. Campbell: the state secures its political integrity through the representation of an outside danger � othering? O Tuathail and Dalby: IR as a discipline is implicated in the reproduction of power and political economy � intellectuals �normalise� this framework? Said: production of academic discourse on the Orient that legitimised colonialism Gregory: othering produces the effects that it names � realism shapes the world in its own image?

10. Implications for security Normalisations of hierarchies of suffering: social justice is excluded from the international sphere Ways of talking about security, threats, priorities is part of �imaginative geography� Shapiro: The dehumanisation of war requires demonisation of the enemy and the rationalisation of violence (Violent Cartographies) Der Derian: Postmodern War at a distance: morally remote from the consequences of our decisions on human beings (Gulf War as a video game?) What are the alternatives?

11. Conclusions Gender in IR is marginalised Puts the question of ethics at the core of the IR agenda Dominated by Feminist approaches �Third-Worlding� Feminism: Is feminism biased to give only white Western middle class women a voice? Ties in with agendas on the politics of human emancipation Ideology underpins the production of spaces of power, hegemony, civility� The assumption of anarchy makes for moral hierarchy Are academics normalising the status quo? Can we care about �Others� as much as we do for our own? Is there such a thing as a clean, moral war?