Sari Kouvo and Zoe Pearson (Eds.): Feminist Perspectives on Contemporary International Law: Between Resistance and Compliance?

Abstract

This collection, edited by Kouvo and Pearson, stems from a workshop held at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Onati in 2008. Published 10 years on from the events of 9/11, the collection explores the tension, ‘built into the heart of the feminist project within international law’, between resistance and compliance and reflects on the position of feminist perspectives in the post-9/11 legal context. It brings together a range of feminist international legal scholarship, providing reflections on different approaches, locations and spaces of feminist engagement with law. As with previous collections of feminist international legal scholarship, the book ‘represents a ‘‘stock-take’’ of where feminist perspectives on international law are today’. However, the chapters go further than this, in reflecting on future directions and providing thoughtful, well-researched insights into the substantive areas addressed. In the collection’s ‘concluding (or beginning) thoughts’, the editors avoid providing a summary of the book, instead drawing on the ‘postcards to the future’ written by participants at the workshop in Onati. The use of postcards as a means of imagining future feminist directions reflects the spatial themes of the book and the diverse messages and approaches of the workshop’s participants. While grappling with the tensions between resistance and compliance, the book ends on a positive note, with the images of the postcards’ messages showing possibilities for future feminist directions and journeys. The collection comprises of ten substantive chapters and is divided into three sections: focusing on issues of theory and method, current discourse around national and international security, and issues concerning conceptions of global and local justice. While the collection includes a range of different perspectives and subject matters, the themes of the collection emerge strongly throughout. In addition, each of the sections includes a helpful overview of the chapters included, written in turn