Unruly wives in the household: Toward feminist genealogies for peace research

Feminist scholars and activists have historically been written out of peace research, despite their strong presence in the early stages of the field. In this article, we develop the concept of “wifesization” to illustrate the process through which feminist and feminized interventions have been reduced to appendages of the field, their contributions appropriated for its development but unworthy of mention as independent producers of knowledge. Wifesization has trickle-down effects, not just for knowledge production, but also for peacebuilding practice. We propose new feminist genealogies for peace research that challenge and redefine the narrow boundaries of the field, in the form of a patchwork quilt including early theorists, utopian writing, oral history, and indigenous knowledge production. Reflections draw on the authors’ engagements with several archives rich in cultures and languages of peace, not reducible to a “single story.” Recovering wifesized feminist contributions to peace research, our article offers a new way of constructing peace research canons that gives weight to long-standing, powerful, and plural feminist voices, in order to make peace scholarship more inclusive and ultimately richer

When humans become data

In this chapter, I examine what and whom we imagine to be protecting when we use the language of ethics and transparency to describe research. How does the imagination of humans as data inform different approaches to transparency and ethics in research? I draw from my experiences in negotiating about data transparency with a funding agency to reflect on how different temporalities and spaces of research and violence alike inform interpretations of our responsibilities toward research interlocutors. The goal of the chapter is to synthesize recent research to advance an alternate orientation of transparency, away from a conceptualization informed by liability or “checkbox” compliance and toward a practice of reflexive openness

Performing Security Absent the State: Encounters with a Failed Asylum Seeker in the UK

Drawing on feminist research methodologies and theory, this article re-centers critical security studies to focus on a migrant seeking an alternative form of security after his application for asylum was denied by the state. The two main objectives of this article are; first, to resituate a failed asylum seeker, Qasim, as an agent of international security as understood through his practice of seeking and obtaining security; and, second, to demonstrate a revised performative conceptualization of security through understanding the failed asylum seeker as practicing an embodied theorization of security. The encounter with Qasim shows alternative means of seeking security, which illustrates agency on the part of the migrant that exists actively outside of the state. This contests the positioning of migrants as passive victims and recognizes a way of being in the world that by necessity cannot rely on a state-based identity. Ethnographic methods, including participant observation and a narrative interview with Qasim, elucidate his practice of security and allow for the development of a theoretical conceptualization of security that remains true to a failed asylum seeker’s practice in the UK

Horizon Scan: Critical security studies for the next 50 years

Horizon Scan: Critical security studies for the next 50 year

Interviewing for research on languages and war

Many participants in conflict have experienced it through mediations of meaning between languages, and whole categories of participants have even often gone unnoticed in the study of war because of the historic ‘invisibility’ of languages and translation. Where archival methods often fall short in researching their experiences, and observational methods are infeasible, interviewing may help researchers get as close as possible to such participants’ memories—yet produces new narratives which are co-constructed between interviewer and interviewee, rather than direct access to their experiences of conflict. This chapter explores these issues by reflecting on interviews about peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina conducted for the Languages at War project in 2008–2011, through themes of narrative and memory, interview methodology, and positionality, including the boundaries of ‘military’/‘civilian’ identities

Towards climate resilient peace: an intersectional and degrowth approach

How can peace be climate resilient? How can peace and environmental sustainability be advanced simultaneously? To address these questions, I develop a new conceptual and theoretical framework for climate resilient peace through degrowth. This paper calls for stronger consideration of positive conceptualizations of peace and of intersectionality and degrowth in pursuit of peace and resilience. Not only does climate change make planetary limitations more salient, but it also highlights rising inequalities. In light of this, peace necessitates transforming societal power structures that are both driving climate change and influencing people’s experiences of climate impacts. Addressing imbalanced power structures then is key to understanding and fostering climate resilient peace. This paper conceptualizes climate resilient peace based on an intersectional understanding of positive peace, highlighting that peace depends on the negation of structural violence experienced at the intersection of political and social identities. In relation to this, I argue that a process of climate resilient peace must address underlying power structures influencing people’s experience of climate harms, and driving climate change so as to mitigate further damage. This paper demonstrates such a process through degrowth, wherein growth is no longer the central economic goal, exemplifying social and ecological means for disrupting structural violence within climate limitations. I discuss and give examples of three key degrowth processes—redistribution, reprioritized care economies, and global equity—as opportunities to foster peace in a changing climate. This framework, thus, contributes a new approach to climate resilient peace that addresses challenges of both social and environmental sustainability