Gender/Violence in a Gendered/Violent World

Abstract

Since the beginning of feminist work in International Relations 25 years ago (e.g. Tickner 1988; Brown 1988; Goetz 1988), scholarship that addresses the question of gender and violence in global politics has proliferated, and become increasingly diverse. At once, this is a cause for both celebration and reflection. It is a cause for celebration because the strong international research community interested in these issues demonstrates that gender issues have come a long way from being unrecognisable in IR (Tickner 1992). At the same time, the very proliferation of research that signifies vibrancy is a cause for reflection � what and where is research on gender/violence in IR? In looking for the different ways that these books recognise gender and violence, I use the construction gender/violence both to suggest the inseparability of gender and violence (where gender is always and everywhere violent, and violence is always and everywhere gendered) and to look to see what the books have to say about gender/violence in global politics. Specifically, I read these four books interested in what they have to say (and what thinking they inspire) about this question in two different ways. First, I was interested in the questions they raise (and puzzle pieces they provide) regarding the relationship between gender and violence in a gendered/violent world � what do we know so far and what do we have yet to learn? Second, I read them as a sampling of the substantive diversity of work on gender and violence in the international arena. Like these books, much of the work on gender and violence shares a political interest in revealing and redressing sex and/or gender subordination in global politics. Often, however, that political commitment is the only (or one of few) commonalities between diverse research agendas exploring gender and violence. Work