Gender, Agency and Political Violence

Abstract

Considering the conditions, maintenance and interpretation of political violence, the authors analyze the multiple ways in which acts (and perpetrators) of violence, strategies of resistance and efforts at conflict resolution are gendered. Specifically, they engage with the constitution of gendered subjects and gendered agents in a range of different contexts of violence and conclude that acts of violence have varying degrees of legitimacy, dependent on context. They show that political violence is not the exclusive preserve of non-state actors, but that individuals, resistance movements, paramilitaries and state (or state-sponsored) organisations perpetrate violence in pursuit of political objectives.