Women and War in the Middle East

Transnational Perspectives

Doctor Nicola Pratt, Doctor Nadje Al-Ali, Doctor Nicola Pratt, Doctor Nadje Al-Ali

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781848138049
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Women and War in the Middle East provides a critical examination of the relationship between gender and transnationalism in the context of war, peace-building and post-conflict reconstruction in the Middle East. Critically examining the ways in which the actions of various local and transnational groups - including women's movements, diaspora communities, national governments, non-governmental actors and multilateral bodies - interact to both intentionally and inadvertantly shape the experiences of women in conflict situations, and determine the possibilities for women's participation in peace-building and (post)-conflict reconstruction, as well as the longer-term prospects for peace and security. The volume pays particular attention to the ways in which gender roles, relations and identities are constructed, negotiated and employed within transnational social and political fields in the conflict and post-conflict situations, and their particular consequences for women. Contributions focus on the two countries with the longest experiences of war and conflict in the Middle East, and which have been subject to the most prominent international interventions of recent years - that is, Iraq and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Issues addressed by contributors include the impact of gender mainstreaming measures by international agencies and NGOs upon the ability of women to participate in peace-building and post-conflict resolution; the consequences for gender relations and identities of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq; and how transnational feminist movements can most effectively support peace building and women's rights in the region. Based entirely on original empirical research. Women and War in the Middle East brings together some of the foremost scholars in the areas of feminist international relations, feminist international political economy, anthropology, sociology, history and Middle East studies.

PART I

Gendering the Neoliberal Imperial Project

ONE

Gendering Informal Economies in Iraq

V. Spike Peterson

Processes associated with neoliberal globalization have had many dramatic effects. Particularly striking is the unexpected and phenomenal growth of informal-sector activities – ‘work’, licit or illicit, that is outside of formal market transactions. How to define, document and measure informalization is controversial, and how to secure reliable data is problematic. Moreover, while scholars agree that women do the majority of informal work, current research largely ignores gender and its hierarchical politics.

Ironically, data on informalization are becoming relatively more visible in contexts of conflict and war. A growing scholarship indicates the emergence of three economies: (1) sheer survival needs motivate individuals and families to engage in ‘coping economies’ that facilitate social reproduction; (2) military objectives motivate individuals and groups to participate in ‘combat economies’ that fund and facilitate insurgent activities; and (3) as regulatory mechanisms break down, profit motives generate ‘criminal economies’ that are gendered and transnational.

While these economies overlap and interact, they entail distinctive sets of actors, motivations and activities. They are variously marked by hierarchies of culture, ethnicity/race, class, gender, sexuality and geopolitics. My larger research agenda is to develop a theoretical framing that enables us to describe and ‘map’ these economies and, in particular, illuminate how structural hierarchies (of culture, ethnicity/race, class, gender, sexuality and geopolitics) shape, and are shaped by, the specificities of these economies. The present chapter constitutes a portion of that project, narrowed to focus on gendering these economies in the context of war in Iraq, and especially the coping economy where issues of social reproduction are paramount.

Theoretical framing for the larger project draws on my book A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy: Integrating Reproductive, Productive and Virtual Economies (2003). This book attempts to demonstrate the interdependence (co-constitution) of the three (reproductive, productive and virtual) economies and to advance critical theory by illuminating the intersection of race, gender and economic inequalities (within and among states) as structural features of global political economy (GPE). For present purposes, I first draw on the book’s theoretical framing and empirical data to clarify gender as an analytical category and to ‘situate’ informalization in the context of economic globalization. I then introduce three modes of informal activity – coping, combat and criminal economies – found especially in the context of war zones. The bulk of the chapter attempts to build a picture of their operation in the particular case of Iraq. This involves a discussion of historical developments as well as contemporary dilemmas.

The analytics of a critical project

A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy moves beyond a narrow definition of economics to develop an alternative analytical framing of reproductive, productive and virtual (RPV) economies as interactive and mutually constituted.¹ I argue that a more expansive ‘RPV framing’ is necessary to address two globalization trends that affect everyday lives worldwide. The first is explosive growth in financial markets that shapes business decision-making and public policymaking. The second is dramatic growth in informal and flexible work arrangements that shapes income-generation and family well-being. While these developments are widely recognized, they are rarely analysed in relation. In contrast, the RPV framing provides a way to see licit and illicit informal activities, global production, migration flows and capital movements as interacting dimensions of transnational processes. In short, the RPV framing permits me to examine how local informal activities are connected to transnational financial flows, including the circulation of funds that affect coping, combat and criminal economies.

With other feminists I argue (1992, 2005) that gender is not merely an empirical category of male–female sex difference, but an analytical category of masculine–feminine difference and hierarchy that constitutes a governing code. The claim here is that gender pervades language and meaning systems, ‘ordering’ how we think (and hence shaping how we act) by privileging that which is associated with masculinity over that which is associated with femininity. Stated differently, devalorization of the feminine pervades language and culture, with systemic effects on how we ‘take for granted’ (normalize and effectively naturalize) the devaluation of all feminized bodies, identities and activities (Peterson, 2007). In short, and notwithstanding romanticism, feminization constitutes devalorization. In particular, feminization is a ‘way of thinking’ that devalorizes not only women but also racially, culturally and economically marginalized men, as well as work that is deemed unskilled, menial and ‘merely’ reproductive. This devaluation is simultaneously manifested in cultural and economic terms; for example, no matter what skills are involved, feminized jobs have little status and are poorly paid. The key point is that multiple hierarchies are linked and ideologically ‘naturalized’ in so far as whatever is denigrated in each hierarchy is characterized as feminine. The feminist orientation I advocate, then, is neither simply about male–female relations nor limited to promoting the status of ‘women’. Its transformative potential lies in subverting all hierarchies that rely on devalorization of ‘the feminine’ to naturalize exploitation and domination.²

While the RPV framing is more specific to rewriting global political economy, a second analytical innovation – ‘triad analytics’ – is applicable to social relations more generally. To facilitate a shift from the binary tendencies of conventional framing, triad analytics posits identities (subjectivity, self-formation, desires), meaning systems (symbols, discourse, ideologies) and social practices/institutions (actions, social structures) as co-constituting dimensions of social reality. These are of course inseparable in practice, but analytically specifying their interaction affords additional ‘order’ for systematic investigation of social relations.

Stated simply, the triad insists on integrating ‘who we are’, ‘how we think’ and ‘what we do.’ It rejects oppositional framing in favour of understanding the symbolic (concepts/discourse/‘thinking’) and concrete (action/practice/‘doing’) relationally, and insists that these are equally inextricable from emotional/affective/psychological dimensions, processes of subject-formation, and the complex politics these entail. It is especially important to take identities – and our investments in them – seriously when we are analysing conditions of conflict and war. I deploy the triad throughout this chapter to draw attention to the interaction of identities, ways of thinking and activities.

Economic globalization is shaped by the dominance of neoliberal policies promoted primarily by geopolitical elites in the interest of powerful states and the inter- and transnational institutions they effectively control. Deregulation has permitted the hyper-mobility of (‘foot-loose’) capital, induced phenomenal growth in licit and illicit financial transactions, and increased the power of private capital interests. Liberalization is selectively implemented: powerful states engage in protectionism while imposing ‘free trade’ on less powerful economies. Privatization has entailed loss of nationalized industries in developing economies and a decrease in public-sector employment and provision of social services worldwide. The results of restructuring are complex, uneven and controversial. While economic growth is the objective and has been realized in some areas and sectors, evidence increasingly suggests expanding inequalities, indeed a polarization, of resources within and between countries. Of particular relevance to this chapter, neoliberal policies are linked to explosive growth in informal activities and unregulated global financial transactions. This growth affects social reproduction and gender relations worldwide, as well as illicit activities and their transnational criminal networks.

The reproductive economy of the RPV framing is typically neglected in conventional accounts that remain preoccupied with waged/commodified labour, formal market exchange and publicsphere activities.³ This economy involves essential social reproduction and informal economic activities; the latter merge with flexibilization that is so prominent a feature of economic restructuring. I include the reproductive economy in my analytical framing because the productive and virtual economies depend on it in non-trivial ways (e.g. to produce appropriately socialized workers and desiring consumers; to provide socially necessary but not socialized welfare and caretaking) and the extent and value of its informal feminized labour are staggering in scale and increasing worldwide. This growth and its ambiguous relationship to the formal economy raise important theoretical and practical/political issues.

Informal activities and international developments

Defining informal activities is controversial, but at a minimum we can distinguish them from ‘formal’ activities that are the focus of conventional economic accounts, where not only exchanges of money but also labour regulation and regulatory institutions are presupposed (e.g. waged labour, industrialized production, corporate business). In contrast, informal activities range from domestic/socially necessary and voluntary ‘work’, where cash is rarely exchanged and ‘regulatory authorities’ are absent (e.g. child-rearing, housekeeping, neighbourhood projects), to secondary, ‘shadow’ and ‘irregular’ activities where some form of enterprise and payment is expected but regulation is either difficult to enforce or intentionally avoided/evaded (e.g. petty trade, home-based production, street vending, sex work, drug dealing, arms trading).

Informal activities span a wide range of activities and blur conventional boundaries separating public and private, licit and illicit, production and reproduction, national and international. This heterogeneity complicates the already significant challenge of identifying and measuring what by definition escapes documentation and in practice involves hard-to-quantify activities and effects.

Analysts note that global restructuring has dramatically increased the volume, value, extent and socio-political significance of informalization. Recent measures indicate that informal activities constitute more than one-half of all economic output and equal 75 per cent of the gross domestic product of some countries. Hence, informal activities have tremendous economic impact. They also matter politically due to the quandaries of documentation, measurement and policymaking they pose.

In sum, phenomenal growth in informalization profoundly complicates conventional ways of understanding economics, the legal status of various economic transactions, and the societal implications of reducing formal regulation of economic activities. A general observation is that the power of governments, presumably serving public/societal interests, is being ceded to the power of market authorities, presumably serving the interests of private capital. Informalization is not simply and wholly ‘negative’; as indicated below, it may afford the only means of survival in desperate conditions. But there are undeniable social costs of informalization: society loses when unregulated activities thwart tax collection and decrease public revenues; when inaccurate accounts of work and production generate misguided policies; when unregulated work practices pose safety, health and environmental risks; and when criminal activities threaten the security and stability of social order. We clearly need adequate analyses of informalization and, especially, how it affects social reproduction, upon which all else – daily survival, production, consumption, war-making and peace-building – depends.

An emerging literature facilitates research in two ways. First, it suggests new questions and concerns regarding linkages between informalization and its social and economic effects (e.g. linking illicit trade in drugs or arms with military strategies and outcomes). Second, it provides crucial empirical data regarding informal activities: who are the key players (e.g. traffickers, conflict entrepreneurs); what are the motivations for, practices of, and profits generated by informal activities (e.g. from family survival to business gains, street vending to transnational smuggling, meagre earnings to corporate windfalls); and how are these activities enabled and/or constrained by national and transnational policies and laws (e.g. regulating flows of information, people, arms or currencies)?

In so far as today’s wars are more often intra- than inter-national, the acquisition of resources for conflict is not simply a matter of governmental authorization and its presumably ‘legal’ funding. Many combatants finance their activities through informal sectors, licit and illicit, and especially partnerships with armed groups, arms suppliers, organized crime, corrupt governments and corporations, many of which operate transnationally. Hence, analysts are attempting to track licit and illicit economic activities and resource flows to make better sense of the causes, conduct and consequences of conflicts, and to identify more effectively regulatory and legal policies that will promote societal well-being.

In sum, the emerging literature argues for closer attention to ‘shadow’ or underground economies because they provide supplies and financing for conflict activities (Kaldor, 2001; Ballentine and Sherman, 2003; Jung, 2003; Arnson and Zartman, 2005); to the blurring of licit–illicit boundaries in so far as criminal, corporate and corrupt governmental interests converge (Ruggiero, 2000; Duffield, 2001; Naylor, 2002; Andreas, 2005); and to regional and systemic conditions that shape local conflicts and longer-term prospects for social stability (Le Billon et al., 2002; Pugh and Cooper, 2004). The last point is especially salient in terms of transnational actors and processes in the context of the Middle East.

This literature also illuminates a disturbing development in global dynami...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Women and War in the Middle East: Transnational Perspectives
• Part I: Gendering the Neoliberal Imperial Project
• Part II: Revisiting Transnational Women’s Activism in the Context of Conflict, Post-conflict Reconstruction and Peace-building
• Part III: Gender, Citizenship and Post-conflict Reconstruction
• Conclusion: Gendering War and Transnationalism in the Middle East
• About the Contributors
• Index