Till Örebro universitet

This article highlights the influence of emotions, affective experiences, and rumors on the construction of knowledge within research on conflict and in international politics, as well as within the research process itself. Drawing from fieldwork undertaken in a conflict zone in Myanmar, it suggests that academic knowledge production practices are informed both by the (violent) context in which research is undertaken and by the demands of the discipline to produce a scientifically accepted piece of research. It proposes that attention to emotions may facilitate strong objectivity (Harding 1992) by foregrounding the relationship between research participants, researchers, and the broader research (institutional and immediate) contexts. It introduces the term “rumors-as-affect” as a means to discuss how affective atmospheres or events in the research environments inform research. Three interview situations are presented, in which different emotional reactions are highlighted, focusing on “confusion and guilt”; “seduction”; and finally, “failure and ignorance.” These events illustrate how, in recognizing the role emotions and affective atmospheres play in research on conflict and in international politics (cf. Crawford 2014; Hutchison and Bleiker 2014; Ross 2013), researchers may begin to do justice to our representations of what is encountered in the field and how knowledge is constructed within the discipline.

Based on primary interviews conducted with women involved in the Kachin armed resistance, this paper will explore the participation of women in the armed conflict in Burma/Myanmar, highlighting how Kachin women’s reasons for supporting ethno-political organizations include (individual or collective) experiences of insecurity, oppression, poverty and gender-based violence, as well as nationalism. Initial research seems to suggest that women’s participation in or support for armed struggle stems from ideological and political reasons that are closely related to socioeconomic marginalisation and discrimination. There is thus a substantial, and important, connection between material conditions, women’s insecurity and political violence that needs to be unpacked.

This article brings together research on civil wars and militarization with feminist scholarship on the household in order to push theorization on civil wars in new directions. By introducing the concept of militarized social reproduction to capture the multiple ways in which women's everyday labour in both the household and the army underpins militarization processes, this article proposes that parastate armed conflict is enabled, at least in part, through women's everyday gendered activities. It suggests that this labour is particularly important in parastates experiencing long-term civil wars. In these settings, public funds, to the extent that they exist, are diverted from social welfare services to enable the expansion, or simply survival, of military power. Under these circumstances, the duty to reproduce both the individual soldier and the army writ-large is placed disproportionally on the shoulders of women. Several general types of this gendered labour, though interrelated, can be distinguished from one another through a typology of militarized social reproduction. This typology considers not only physical labour, but also the emotional and symbolic labour used to resource and legitimize armed conflict in non-material ways. It is therefore not only the physical effects of the labour that have consequences for the war, but also the ways in which women are called upon to symbolize and legitimize warfare. Such a focus enables important insights into the nexus formed between the everyday space of the gendered household and conflict, and furthers knowledge about the relationship of gender to different modalities of militarization.

Based on primary interviews conducted with women involved in the Kachin armed resistance movement and in Kachin women’s peace networks, this article explores the many roles women play in the armed conflict in Myanmar, highlighting how identities shaped by ethnicity, religion, gender and class influence participation in the armed struggle and inform women’s actions. This article1 will show how, in Kachin state, the reasons why women from religious- and ethnic-minority groups enlist in ethno-political organizations include experiences of oppression, a dearth of social services, poverty, gender-based violence and nationalism. In other words, these women’s participation in the armed struggle is motivated largely by political and ideological purposes closely related to their identities as members of ethnic and religious minorities. Interestingly, this also seems to inform the motivations of women who join the peace movement, and who advocate the inclusion of women in public deliberations on the conflict and for an end to the war. This means that women have expectations for what peace and security means to them, and as political agents, are able to act on their motivations if needed. This research will bring to the forefront the narratives of religious- and ethnic-minority women in Myanmar, who are typically sidelined from public discussions and state-building exercises in post-conflict settings. In doing so, it will highlight their expectations for political action and settlements, enhancing and broadening analyses of the conflict in Myanmar.

In Myanmar, the notion that local conflicts can be halted by addressing economic rather than political grievances guides ceasefire agreements with non-state armed actors and informs regional efforts on economic development in troubled conflict areas.However, these economic development efforts are evolving alongside deeply held communal concerns about the intentions and effects of investments in areas previously controlled by ethnic minority armed actors. In this context, the Chinese government’s flagship development project in Myanmar,the Myitsone Dam in Kachin State, became a rallying point for communal protest. This led the Myanmar government to halt work on the project in 2011. Currently, Myanmar is coming under immense pressure from the Chinese government to resume work on the Myitsone dam. At the same time, however, a strong social movement is actively opposing the dam project. This has resulted in increased military tension along the two countries’ shared border.This illustrates that investments in economic infrastructure projects, while ostensibly aimed at increasing stability through economic concessions and regional development, may instead increase tension and insecurity.

Women are, literally and figuratively, on the frontlines of the many conflicts raging in Myanmar, but are prevented from participating in the peace process in any substantial way. This year I have travelled around Myanmar meeting women from ethnic minority and majority communities to understand why they aren’t included, and what issues and insecurities they encounter. This is what they told me.

Excluding women in Myanmar from equal and meaningful participation in the transition to peace could prevent it from ever being achieved, Jenny Hedström writes

This article brings into conversation feminist political economy with critical studies in peace and conflict to examine how Myanmar’s transition is experienced though everyday gendered sites and with what consequences for women living in rural areas of the country, where lives are shaped as much by the actuality as the possibility of violence. The everyday is where these insecurities are felt, feared and negotiated. To illustrate this, I draw on the experiences of Agnes, a woman growing up within the context of prolonged conflict in rural Myanmar.  I demonstrate how Agnes’s home, and her bodily labour and vulnerability, is at the locus of a gendered political economy (re)produced both within the home and at the national level. I show how the transition has for women like Agnes resulted in a continuation of insecurity, challenging the legitimacy of Myanmar’s neoliberal reform initiatives as a meaningful pathway towards sustainable peace and security. 

This case study describes the negotiations and processes undertaken by the women who had the foresight and the courage to establish Myanmar's first multi-ethnic women's movement. In particular, it details the steps and processes undertaken by the founders of the Burmese Women's Union (BWU), resulting in the establishment of an umbrella group, the Women's League of Burma (WLB), under which the women's movement has since been structured.

By 1988, dissatisfaction with the military regime had reached a tipping point in the general population, culminating in nationwide demonstrations that were brutally put down by the junta. Following the military crackdown on internal opposition, thousands of Burmese fled to the borders of Myanmar. There, the opposition re-emerged and reformed , primarily on the borders with Thailand. An increasing number of women began to put forward claims for political recognition.

The BWU was the first multi-ethnic women's organization to appear on the border. The organization has attempted to promote a collective Burmese identity based on gender rather than on a minority ethnic nationalism. Significantly, the BWU's staff and members include not only women from different minority ethnic groups, but also women who are Burman (Myanmar's majority group) and therefore share the same ethnicity of the military regime.

Tensions between Burman and minority groups are high as the military regime promotes a policy of ‘Burmanization’, entailing the oppression of ethnic minority groups and the forced use of the Burmese language, customs and religion. Some even accuse the regime of advocating ethnic cleansing. Despite this, the BWU has, through the consultations and negotiations leading up to the first multi-ethnic women’s movement in contemporary Myanmar’s history, managed to foster a sense of solidarity between women from both Burman and ethnic minority backgrounds, culminating in the establishment of the WLB.

This case study describes the negotiations and processes undertaken by the women who had the foresight and the courage to establish Myanmar’s first multi-ethnic women’s movement. In particular, it details the steps and processes undertaken by the founders of the Burmese Women’s Union (BWU), resulting in the establishment of an umbrella group, the Women’s League of Burma (WLB), under which the women’s movement has since been structured.

By 1988, dissatisfaction with the military regime had reached a tipping point in the general population, culminating in nation-wide demonstrations that were brutally put down by the junta. Following the military crackdown on internal opposition, thousands of Burmese fled to the borders of Myanmar. There, the opposition re-emerged and re-formed, primarily on the borders with Thailand. An increasing number of women began to put forward claims for political recognition.

The BWU was the first multi-ethnic women’s organization to appear on the border. The organization has attempted to promote a collective Burmese identity based on gender rather than on a minority ethnic nationalism. Significantly, the BWU’s staff and members include not only women from different minority ethnic groups, but also women who are Burman (Myanmar’s majority group) and therefore share the same ethnicity of the military regime.

Tensions between Burman and minority groups are high as the military regime promotes a policy of ‘Burmanization’, entailing the oppression of ethnic minority groups and the forced use of the Burmese language, customs and religion. Some even accuse the regime of advocating ethnic cleansing. Despite this, the BWU has, through the consultations and negotiations leading up to the first multi-ethnic women’s movement in contemporary Myanmar’s history, managed to foster a sense of solidarity between women from both Burman and ethnic minority backgrounds, culminating in the establishment of the WLB.

Applying a feminist political economy analysis of the Kachin military movement, this article will be mapping women's involvement in the armed uprising since the outbreak of the conflict in 1961, demonstrating the centrality of gender relations for the war. Using primary data, this article will show how the household provides essential support to the Kachin war effort in the shape of emotional, physical and material labour, thus underscoring the critical role played by women in maintaining the conflict. Examining the relationship between narratives of gendered insecurity in the community and notions of militarized duty, this article will argue that the Kachin armed forces have employed gendered notions of security and duty to legitimize and sustain the conflict. The importance of normative gender relations for providing labour and emotional and material support for the conflict will then be examined, showing how the household is situated as the nucleus of the armed revolution. The findings in this article thus reveal a need to take into account the relationship between the household and the armed conflict, arguing that the household is a site inseparably linked to nationalistic objectives, underpinning the economic and ideological structures of military movements. Interventions aiming at resolving the conflict in Kachin must therefore consider the importance of gender relations in upholding the political-economy infrastructure of the military movement.

This article explores the link between nationalism, as expressed by the Burman state and ethnic and student opposition movements, and the emergence of a multiethnic women's movement engaged in resistance activities. In focusing on women's involvement in oppositional nation-making projects, this article aims to broaden our understanding of gender and conflict by highlighting women's agency in war. Drawing on interviews carried out with founding members of the women's movement, non-state armed groups and others active in civil society, the article investigates how a gendered political consciousness arose out of dissatisfaction with women's secondary position in armed opposition groups, leading to women forming a movement, not in opposition to conflict per se but in opposition to the rejection of their militarism, in the process redefining notions of political involvement and agency. By invoking solidarity based on a gendered positioning, rather than on an ethnic identity, the women's movement resisted the dominant nation-making projects, and created a nationalism inclusive of multiethnic differences. Burmese women's multiple wartime roles thus serve to upset supposed dichotomies between militancy and peace and victim and combatant, in the process redefining the relationship between gender, nationalism and militancy.

Introduction: "Since the unanimous adoption of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security in 2000, international consensus has been built around the need to involve women in peace processes in order for peace building to be sustainable, democratic and inclusive. This policy framework now includes five resolutions adopted by the Security Council to promote and protect the rights of women in conflict and post-conflict situations. The recent 7-point action plan released by the United Nation?s Secretary General in 2010 reafirmed the importance of mainstreaming a gender perspective throughout all aspects of the peace building process, and identiied several substantive points of action to increase gender responsiveness... Despite this, women in Burma are effectively excluded from participating in the negotiations for peace. Less than a handful of women have been part of the offcial talks held between the State and the armed groups, and none of the 12 preliminary ceasefire agreements reviewed for this report includes any references to gender or women. The expertise of local women?s groups in peacemaking and trust building efforts has gone unnoticed, and concerns raised by women are being sidelined. The interest by the dominant funders of the Burmese peace building initiatives, the international community, in advocating for the increased participation of women or for the mainstreaming of gender responsiveness has been, at best, inadequate. This is a worrisome development which requires action from both international and local actors as the continued exclusion of women risks undermining the legitimacy of the entire process."

This chapter introduces readers to women’s activism within the context of conflict. Drawing on feminist literature and case studies detailing women’s activism, we show how an awareness of unequal gender dynamics in the context of conflict has propelled women from diverse backgrounds and with different aims to collaborate. We use the example of a multiethnic women’s movement in Myanmar to illustrate how both the rejection of, as well as support for, war can be understood as manifestations of feminist activism.  Structural and systematic gender inequalities have compelled a cross-section of actors, sharing similar objectives but differing in their approaches, to challenge militarized patriarchal institutions and norms. This suggests that under some circumstances, women-led pacifist activism and armed resistance co-exist, warranting further research on this topic. We therefore urge feminist research on women’s activism to expand their research agenda to analyse under what circumstances and in what ways women-led coalitions for peace and in armed resistance add to, rather than detract from each other’s aims and objectives. 

This article explores the gendered dynamics of Myanmar’s post-war economic reforms through an analysis of women’s experiences of development in Kayah (Karenni) state. In Myanmar, ceasefires and a reduction of armed violence combined with state-driven economic liberalization reforms are conditioned by, but also contribute to remake, gendered relations of power, privilege and marginalization. While new land legislation and development projects have contributed to loss of land and livelihoods among rural populations in general, our study demonstrates that women living in conflict-affected border areas are disproportionally affected. Drawing on interviews and participant observation, we show how this is directly related to an overarching gendered politi- cal economy defined by legacies of conflict, discrimination and uneven processes of development, which positions women as particularly vulnerable to new forms of inse- curity, dispossession and depletion generated by post-war economic transformations. We argue that the political and economic legacies of war in the state has produced a gendered division of labor that positions women as responsible for unpaid and under- paid informal and social reproductive labor, weakens women’s access to land, and results in physical, material, and emotional depletion. Through this focus, our study adds to research on development and economic restructuring in post-war contexts in general, and to emergent scholarship on Myanmar’s economic reforms in particular.

Conflict-related sexual violence has been the focus of significant international activism and policy attention. International legal norms and frameworks have evolved to recognize it as a war crime, and a representation of sexual violence as a “weapon of war” is now widely endorsed. This paper examines how international norms about conflict-related sexual violence are adopted and utilized in multiple ways in the armed conflict in Kachin state in Northern Myanmar. Throughout decades of civil war, international norms on sexual violence have constituted key resources for international advocacy and awareness raising by local women activists. Further, women activists have drawn on international norms to effect changes in gendered relations of power within their own communities. However, international norms on sexual violence in conflict have also been effectively used as tools for ethno-nationalist identity politics, rallying support behind the armed insurgency and mobilizing women’s unpaid labour in the service of war. Thus, international norms on conflict-related sexual violence has simultaneously opened up space for women’s empowerment and political agency, andreproduced gendered forms of insecurity and marginalization. Exploring these contradictions and complexities, the analysis sheds light on the multiple political uses and effects of international norms in armed conflict.

What does it mean to do research imbued with a feminist commitment to justice in contexts of long-lasting conflicts? Drawing on the authors’ experience of researching everyday peace in conflict-affected parts of Myanmar, this paper explores issues around trust, obligation, and ethics arising from the relationship between researcher, research brokers, and research participants. Taking the form of a conversation between the principal researcher (an academic from and based in the Global North) and the research-broker (an activist from and based in the Global South), we together reflect on what obligations a commitment to feminist struggles impose on research and how, and in what ways, previous relationships affect research ethics and the production of knowledge. We suggest that intimacy and trust can generate new knowledge about gender and war and aid a feminist research practice attentive to positionality, power, and ethics, particularly in communities with lasting experiences of war-time trauma and insecurity.