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ID: 193486

Violations of the heart: parental harm in war and oppression / Ketola, Hanna ; Friedman, Rebekka

Friedman, Rebekka	Journal Article
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This article examines ‘parental harm’ – a harm that occurs when a parent loses or faces the threat of losing a child. We contend that the manipulation and severing of relationships between parents and children has played a central role in war and oppression across historical contexts. Parental harm has long-term and pervasive effects and results in complex legacies for carers and their communities. Despite its grave impact, there is little research within International Relations into parental harm and understanding of its effects. We conceptualise parental harm through two frames – the ‘harm of separation’ and ‘harm to the ability to parent’ – and theorise gendered dimensions of how it is perpetuated and experienced. As such, we advance feminist understandings of family as a gendered institution that shapes the conduct of war and institutionalises racialised oppression. Our conception of parental harm offers novel insights into the relationship between intimate relations, the family, and state power and practices. We illustrate our conceptual arguments through two examples: the control and manipulation of family in antebellum slavery in the United States and the targeting of Tamil children in disappearances in Sri Lanka. These examples demonstrate the pervasiveness of parental harm across contexts and forms of violence.

Key Words

War ; Family ; Gender ; State Violence ; Slavery ; Harm ;
Separation ; Disappearances

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ID: 193487

Violations of the heart: Parental harm in war and oppression : ADDENDUM / Friedman, Rebekka ; Ketola, Hanna

Friedman, Rebekka	Journal Article
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ID: 175366

Withdrawing from politics? Gender, agency and women ex-fighters in Nepal / Ketola, Hanna

Ketola, Hanna	Journal Article
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Conceptualizations of post-conflict agency have been widely debated in feminist security studies and critical international relations studies. This article distinguishes between three feminist approaches to post-conflict agency: narrative of return, representations of agency and local agency. It argues that all these approaches in distinct ways emphasize a modality of agency as resistance. To offer a more encompassing account of post-conflict agency the article engages Saba Mahmood’s (2012) critique of the modality of agency in feminist theory and her decoupling of agency from resistance. The article explores experiences of women who fought in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Nepal. It focuses on ‘withdrawing from politics’, a dynamic whereby women ex-fighters move away from party activities and the public sphere, and rearticulates this withdrawing as a location of political agency. The article argues that being an ‘ex-PLA’ emerges as a form of subjectivity that is crafted through experiencing war and encountering peacebuilding, enabling a production of heterogeneous modalities of agency in the post-conflict context. By examining these modalities, the article challenges us to rethink post-conflict agency beyond the capacity to subvert regulatory gender norms and/or discourses of liberal peace.

Key Words

Conflict ; Peacebuilding ; Gender ; Agency

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