Don’t mention the war! International Financial Institutions and the gendered circuits of violence in post-conflict

Abstract

This paper provides a framework for explicitly linking feminist analysis of global political economy and feminist analysis of war/peace through the concept of ‘gendered circuits of violence.’ The framework connects the gendered economics of peace and war through analyses of standard policy mechanisms promoted by International Financial Institutions and International Organizations—from general debt servicing and lending in post-war recovery to microfinance programmes, extractive resource economics, taxation, budgeting and austerity in the state sector. With gendered circuits of violence as the core concept, feminist political economy analysis transgresses security-IPE-development divides. Gendered circuits of violence are manifest through bodies that are carriers of violence from war zones to areas of alleged peace; through IFIs as distributors of harm and comfort to transnational households; and in the interstitial post-conflict spaces created by remittances, care and debt. Feminist analysis reveals the imbrication of capitalist systems with the intersectional politics of gender and race, and the (re)production and diffusion of violent conflict.