Reconceptualizing Advocacy through the Women, Peace and Security Agenda: Embodiment, Relationality, and Power

Abstract

Abstract This article critically examines the embodied and relational politics of networked advocacy in the case of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in the United Kingdom. Moving beyond liberal framings that position WPS advocacy as an attempt to overcome gender exclusion from peace and security policymaking, this article is concerned instead with the gendered, racialized, and classed logics and hierarchies (re)produced through the practice of WPS advocacy. Toward this end, this article conceptualizes advocacy as an embodied, relational practice where WPS meanings are shaped, power is negotiated, and individuals are interpolated into subject positions. This conceptual claim is substantiated through an initial, exploratory analysis of interviews conducted with UK NGO professionals and government officials. Examining the figures of the “critical friends” and the “shouty NGOs,” I demonstrate how modes of advocating for WPS are ascribed and inscribed to certain bodies, which, in turn, reproduce power relations that affect the possibilities of the agenda. By reconceptualizing advocacy, the article contributes not only to WPS scholarship on civil society and advocacy but to wider debates within international political sociology around embodiment, relationality, and power. Additionally, it contributes empirically by highlighting how NGOs advocate for the WPS agenda.