Senior lecturer Annica Kronsell (Dept of Political Science, Lund University):
Gender, Sex and the Postnational Defense
Tuesday 1 November 2011, 2pm to 4pm
University main building (Fabianinkatu 33) lecture room 3
The lecture explores the post-national defense and its gender implications. A characteristic of the post-national defense is that less attention is paid to the defense of the territory and more to the security situation outside its borders, often in cooperation with other states. It is exemplified with Sweden and the EU as empirical cases. The main research question is how gender aspects and UN SCR 1325 has influenced the way that the post-national defense organizes its practices and the policies pursued? A feminist constructivist institutional approach is the theoretical base for the analysis. Gender has been mainstreamed in post-national military practice but at the same time re-interpreted as meaning women, often also women in distant places. The lecture also shows how militaries have used (hetero)sexuality as an important resource in combat effectiveness. This is a challenge for the post-national defense that engages in peace tasks because military organizations have the use of weapons and violence as its core professional skill. Furthermore, this military training has been tightly connected with masculinity. When gender is equated with women it becomes difficult to raise issues about masculinity, violence and sexuality, an equally important aspect in a gender analysis of the post-national defense.
The lecture is organized by research project from Department of Political and Economic Studies: Gender Perspectives on Civil-Military Relations in Changing Security Environment (GENCIMIL).
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