WUNRN
LOVA - Netherlands Association for
Gender Studies & Feminist Anthropology
After our successful international conference Ethnographies of Gender and Globalization
in 2008, LOVA presents another opportunity for researchers to
come together in the city of
Conflicts are always about power. Conflicts are therefore intrinsic to all
social relationships and interactions and as such they have provided the arena
for important social science research. The scholarly attention for gender and
conflict is of a much more recent date. These concepts seem to be two sides of
the same coin as both are first and foremost about power inequalities and are
embedded in social relations and practices. The two nourish and mutually inform
each other. Gender constructions shape the way conflicts are worked out.
Conflicts confirm, construct and change notions of gender. However, as a
conceptual pair gender and conflict are still searching for theoretical ground.
As it happens, gender never operates in isolation. For an in-depth
understanding of conflicts an analysis of the intersectionality of gender,
race/ethnicity, sexuality and class is indispensible. This conference will be
an exciting platform to highlight innovative debates and theoretical approaches
of gender and conflict and to present current research. Feminist anthropology,
gender studies and ethnographic research with a gender lens are scholarly
practices par excellence
that make the interrelationship between gender and conflict comprehensible.
Conflicts have many faces. They are collective or individual, non-violent or
violent, concealed or open, sophisticated or aggressive, large or of the
smallest scale. Conflicts are manifest in intimate relations, in the workplace,
in the public and the private, in the largest war and the smallest
controversies between two people. Actors involved in conflicts vary from the
most powerful kind such as transnational organizations and nation-states to
individual women and men, families and villages. All these actors have in
common that the conflicts they create and participate in have a large impact on
themselves and everyday life. The ways conflicts are dealt with are as diverse
as their actors are: negotiation, coercion, violence, capitulation, war, silent
resistance, submission, protests and compliance. Conflicts are everywhere and
come in all sorts, but their gendered character means that the outcomes of
conflict are different for women and men, that they impact their lives in
different ways and that women and men experience conflicts differently.
This conference intends to bring together an interdisciplinary group of
scholars with the aim of deepening our theoretical knowledge about gender and
conflict. Through the presentation of case-studies and ethnographic research,
questions will be discussed such as: how are the concepts of gender and
conflict related and how does gender intersect with race, sexuality and class
in conflicts? How do gender notions construct, confirm and alter conflicts and how
in turn do conflicts inform the intersectionality of gender, race/ethnicity,
sexuality and class? How do women and men, girls and boys initiate, perceive,
deal and solve conflicts and do they do so in different ways? And, last but not
least, what can ethnography offer to the field of conflict and conflict
studies?