Political Agency, Victimhood, and Gender in Contexts of Armed Conflict: Moving beyond Dichotomies

Abstract

Abstract In this article, we nuance the relationships between political agency, victimhood, and gender during armed conflicts. Dominant narratives often spotlight individuals as either passive victims or active agents. These representations are especially pronounced for sexual violence against women in conflict, where gendered conceptions of victimhood and agency remain particularly salient. Recent scholarship challenges this dichotomized way of thinking, showing how victimhood and agency sit alongside each other. We extend this growing body of scholarship by proposing a relational conception of agency that helps us better understand exactly how victimhood and agency intersect and can even be co-constitutive. Specifically, we propose that conceptualizing agency as relational—to others, to contextual structures, to own vulnerabilities and prior victimization—is particularly well suited to overcome inadequate dichotomizations, and to illuminate the spectrum of political agency, ranging from formalized politicized spaces to more mundane forms of agency within the quotidian. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in Colombia and Uganda, we empirically tease out these complex intersections in a context of (gendered) vulnerability.