Tag: peace

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Who gains the authorship in ethnography?

In 2017, as part of preparing for a reflective ”can there be postcolonial ethnography?” – a film screening & dialogue with film maker Carmen Baltzar at Utopias of Peace event, Carmen pointed to a recent ethnographic book, in which a white female, the researcher and the book’s sole author, was describing her attempts to challenge the colonial legacies, and continuities of ethnographic research tradition, yet naming herself as the single author in the book. I remember thinking how important this critique was and decided to reflect upon my own research praxis, and ways of authoring my research.

Four years later, in 2021, few months after my research monograph Scraps of Hope in Banda Aceh was published , I am asked the same question: How come you are the sole author of this book? What about those who participated in the research team, especially since 2015, when the audio-visual elements were added into the research process, with major contributions by a team consisting of several film makers, activist/poet/researcher, assistant camera persons, several translators, and of course, people whose life stories are elaborated through short documentary videos, but also ethnographic chapters?

This question and the scholarly choices point to a number of crucial questions about authorship, recognition, and scholarly rewards. In the case of post-disaster and post-conflict scholarship on Aceh, the invisibility of local emerging scholars, and a growth of a new generation of predominantly Western scholarship on Aceh has been also academically criticised, towards which I also point out in the book – in particular, how a locally conducted and published research on multitudes of masculinities, never gains references, rather it is the synthesis article in English, written by outsiders, that gains the points, and visibility, in citation indexes.

In the book, I describe the research journey between 2012-2020 as stumbling scholarship, pointing towards incompleteness, attempts to ”do better” that are entangled with whiteness and lures of saviourism, or simply realisations of the impossibility of overcoming structures through individual choices that a researcher, with research funding based in the Global North, has at their hand.

During the research process, attempting to pay attention to structures of coloniality, neoliberal university and its demands, and simultaneously competing in academic job markets, I had chosen non-textual forms of expression (over 100 minutes of documentary videos), poetry recital and video screening events, collaborative side projects that allowed emergence of multiple authors and analysts, and walk-in screenings and lectures where the scholar gets to interact with participants  – but which does not translate into competitive citation-indexes.

Different parts of the book describe these multiple authors and analysts that have created the experience of having produced, and researched Scraps of Hope in Banda Aceh – as something more than a straightforward one-researcher endeavor, which after all, the Academy of Finland Fellowship is all about. It is a fellowship that Academy of Finland defines  as follows:

When you apply for funding for a research post as Academy Research Fellow, you apply for funding for your own salary for five years. Academy Research Fellows work on research plans that have been rated to be of a high scientific quality. They have built extensive research networks, and the funding allows them to develop their academic leadership skills and establish themselves as independent researchers in the international scientific community.

Having applied successfully for the fellowship in 2014, I made the promise of a monograph -so as to fulfill the measurement of having reached successfully the status of independent researcher of high scientific quality. The value of single authored monograph in the Finnish academic and higher education political economy equals roughly 4-5 single authored articles –  all such publications by university affiliated researchers are registered and reported annually to the Ministry of Education, and they consists of 14% of the overall university budgets. In this system, over 100 minutes, or support given to edited books supported through the research project’s non-salaried research costs, contribute 0 – this I was reminded of when attempting to register the project’s outputs into the publication database of my university. They also do not count when my credentials are reviewed next time – be it an attempt to apply for a salary rise, any openings for professorships, or even senior lectureship title, a path opened this spring for us university lecturers.

So yes, my response to those who question the single authorship in ethnography: we stumble, and we fail, until we are successful in dismantling the master’s house.

 

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“Eyes of the World” during the 16 years of the Aceh Tsunami

English version of the talk prepared for the event “Not Just Silence – Visiting Aceh Now for a Sustainable Recovery (16th Anniversary of the Aceh Tsunami)” on 26th December 2020 (check against delivery)

World’s eyes – what do we mean by it? Whose eyes are they; I am often left to wonder:

if their eyes were closed, if their eyes were wide open? did the world know you, your struggles, and your sorrows. did the world listen to you? or did they tell you the direction to take? not simply suggesting, but maybe also pushing, just a bit. did we respect your dreams or claim they were not mature enough? and who did we listen to, thinking that is the authentic voice that represents all, in your diversity?

Under the western eyes, as Chandra Mohanty wrote in the Eighties – is the process of the “eyes of the world ” or the eurocentric eye, which shapes the analysis of the realities of life around the world into a monolithic entity – without its own voice. Or actually, surely there is a voice, long enough since colonial times, for sure, but the world is too busy to notice. Or if it listens, it’s mostly as a result of of a crisis or a disaster. The problem is, one cannot always tell how these eyes interpret what they see, or moreover, what their actions become, based on what they see.

Disasters, we are told, are possibilities for transformative change. What we don’t know is whether these transformations were really based on the expressed needs, wants, or desires. Or perhaps, there may be some competitive forces aiming for transformation: aiming at making places, and people, change for the better: build back better.

What would happen, the poet asked,if women told the truth about their lives? The world would split open. (World’s Bell/Chakra Dunia from Debra H. Yatim’s English-language poem collection titled Of Aceh and Turning Tides: Songs for My Sisters, 2005: 29)

***

I believe, a short introduction is in order, which I have been, rightly so, asked many times over the past 16 years: why I am (still) involved in the reconstruction of Aceh, or researching the gendered impacts of the reconstruction that promises to ”build back better”?

Before the December 2004 tsunami, I was involved as a volunteer in the peace movement in Finland, mostly holding peace education workshops in schools, but the movement also acted in solidarity with Acehnese human rights defenders, organisers of events, keeping the topic of Aceh visible in the Finnish consciousness, during the early years of 2000’s

After the tsunami, I arrived in Aceh in 2006 for the first time, like so many foreigners did, as a humanitarian aid worker – working in an international NGO, but also engaging with the work of Gender Working Group (GWG) that had been established to coordinate efforts to “engender” tsunami recovery and reconstruction efforts amongst the international, national, and local organisations  – witnessing the difficulty for aid organisations to take clearly visible evidence of gender-based violence seriously.

From 2006 onwards my role has merely been as a researcher focusing on two longer research processes

  1. focusing on the Tsunami aid and the politics of the concept gender – what does it do/what the challenges were
  2. focusing on the urban lived experience of the peace amongst the residents at the margins who are aspiring to become part of the middle classes of the civilized city (kota Madani)

And finally, I have extended these research processes for a critical self-reflection in Finland: what does the claim of successful peace mediation in Aceh mean – or building a national brand for peace mediation – whose perspective the so-called success, is it?

In 2018, when documentary videos that were part of the urban ethnographic and life historical research in Banda Aceh were touring simultaneously in Aceh, and in Finland, I received a call from highest ranks of the peace mediator, questioning my critique of the success of the peace process. Asking questions about the research, it’s research methodology and data, and who in Aceh can confirm such results, suggesting also that such a display of research outcomes man hinder the sustainability of the peace itself!

This experience became a valuable added layer into the analysis of the power and hierarchy embedded in the knowledge claims made of the peace in Aceh. It also made me reflect upon the differences of spaces of deliberation of the challenges underlying in the peace process in Aceh and Finland. It seems that certain parties were narrating the results of the peace mediation, at the time, in such ways that it left very little space for alternatives. This made me, with my colleagues to reflect upon the continuum of global patriarchy embedded in the peace making and think what the consequences of that at the grassroots level – such as the streets of Banda Aceh, are.

***

The rest of my talk today consists of consists of three parts: firstly, observations made of the missed opportunities at the level of “eyes of the world” over these past 16 years as a peace activist, humanitarian aid worker, and a researcher, secondly, few words of the power and hierarchy of academic knowledge production in and on Aceh, and finally what lessons this offers for ways forward.

Missed opportunities by the “eyes of the world”

  1. Aid organisations created a separate spheres of post-conflict and post-disaster reconstruction (longer story why it happened, it was due to conflict dynamics/and armed conflict/reconstruction mandate) – it impacted the ways “solutions to women’s and men’s lives were imagined”
  2. Aid organisations that were not equipped to converse on religion and gender norms, decided to take a back seat
  3. Not many structures were sensitized to Acehnese history of women in politics, women as human rights defenders, or generally how Acehnese culture, history and Islam do not replicate Eurocentric notions of women that have to be saved
  4. This resulted either in a silence on gendered concerns, or wishing to “save the Muslim women” – and fuelling European growing islamophobia in the aftermath of 9/11
  5. Thus, both aid organisations and conservative local religious forces used Gender as a synonym for West – a tool to silence or ignore indigenous/local women’s movement
  6. within GWG – great strategies were shared what alternative Islamic concepts to use instead of gender: such considering holistic notions of justice and equality, including that of the environment
  7. Inequalities do not simply divide people according to their gender – closer understandings of reconstruction and its impacts on environment, but also how structures of inequalities are intersectional or multiple

Who emerges as expert on these matters?

For example, when the AMM experts were after their return from Aceh interviewed if they had considered gender in their work (as all EU civilian crisis management missions were mandated to do in the aftermath of the UNSCR1325, their response was no – due to notion of gender as a western concept. The sad part of this is, the response reflects the ignorance of the the decades long work done in the gender and women’s study centres in both Syiah Kuala and UIN Ar-Raniry on the matter, an active scholarship on the questions of Islam, gender, and women’s empowerment

After, or simultaneous to the formal tsunami aid, the past 16 years has seen a tsunami of predominantly non-Acehnese (foreign or Indonesian) researchers, who have in English made both their careers and claims of the knowledge production of gender politics in Aceh – those who were active in GWG, since the reconstruction years and “gender budgets” have had to find other means of sustaining their livelihoods

New generation, but also Acehnology . knowledge in and on Aceh,  has emerged: where Acehnese start producing knowledge on their own terms – a great result of the support given, as part of the official reconstruction efforts, to growing new generation of scholars and researchers who continue contributing to the Acehnese higher education, and grassroots activism, in Aceh.

Further: when research reaches artists, poets, or a younger generation with a pen and paper – new perspectives emerge that create new possibilities for inclusiveness and dialogue with the ordinary people (orang kecil), who live in the shadow of reconstruction, peacebuilding, or webinar experts like ourselves gathered on this occasion.

Thus, there resides the potential for the sphere of academia to come to terms with the demands to “decolonize academia” – decentre European theories or Eurocentric understandings of the world – or practice careful analysis, as Chandra Talpande Mohanty has suggested: recognise the structures of power that distance and differentiates those who know, and those of whom we are speaking about/or we are speaking for.

Finally, what the “eyes of the world” are to do then?

Firstly, I suggest, we need to multiply pluralist voices of women – women and their struggles and concerns are also not one – but depends on their experiences of reconstruction structures

Secondly, pay attention that certain groups of uneducated and older Acehnese, who are fully aware of the gendered realities around them, and the role they can play in striving towards justice and wellbeing for all. I offer just one example of this: during my research process, encounters with an elderly ex-combatant, and Sufi healer, whose family is struggling from structural poverty and neglect in peace reconstruction efforts, offered his insights using the term ilmu bodoh (foolish knowledge, translated into English in Jauhola 2020). Essentially, this ilmu bodoh is a critical analysis of post-conflict masculinities, extractivism masculinism and political economy – comparing it with the ideology that was drawing him to join the armed struggle in the 1970’s – and witnessing the peace surrounding him to be full of disappointments, new violent dynamics and extractivist agendas. This means grounding our research perspectives in such ways that both draw from, but also contribute towards such already existing scholarship and concepts that are meaningful locally – respecting oral histories and transmission of knowledge such as ilmu bodoh suggests

Thirdly, to understand the impact and strategy of the global anti-gender movement – which is also very strong in Europe including Finland, we need to build new solidarity movements – in this movement the experiences and strategies of Aceh and Indonesia can teach the rest of the world.

 

The new Open Access book “Scraps of Hope in Banda Aceh: Gendered Urban Politics in the Aceh Peace Process” and the 14 documentary videos are freely downloadable from the Helsinki University Press website

 

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15 years of peace in Aceh: Act of ”la rêverie” for a blind justice

English version of the preface “Tindakan la rêverie untuk keadilan buta” published in Zubaidah Djohar (ed) Bisu yang Bersuara. Banda Aceh: RPuK.

Photo: Jenni-Justiina Niemi

 

Bisu Yang Bersuara (Silent gaining a voice), an important collection of herstories, will be launched colliding the 15th anniversary of the peace agreement, and Aceh peace process signed on the 15 August in 2005 in Helsinki, Finland.

And who would not recognise the famous handshake where the negotiating parties, the representatives of the Government of Indonesia, Justice and Human Rights Minister Hamid Awaludin on the left, and head of the GAM delegation, Malik Mahmud, on the right, shake the hands. This symbolic gesture is overseen by the mediator former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, witnessed by the representatives of the negotiation teams, and the team of mediator Ahtisaari, in front of the international press. The image has travelled since to symbolize both a successful peace mediation process and successful Finnish mediation skills.

As someone who has dedicated the past 15 years into understanding the gendered dynamics of the peace process, I have since been mesmerized by the photograph that went global on that day. But my focus has been in a portrait of a European woman, who sits on a chair holding flowers and staring the international media, and the cameras, with a serious face. Who is she? What story she has to tell? This 1863 painting by Erik Johan Löfgren entitled as La Rêverie – woman in a 18th century dress, depicts a portrait of an unknown woman in Paris. La rêverie translates into English as a daydream or daydreaming, a surprising activity for her in the midst of mediating an armed conflict, don’t you think?

Yet interestingly, the word la rêverie derives from a Middle French word that carries meanings of wild speech, delirium, and rever that means ”to roam, speak wildly”. Middle French word rever is also the source of the English word rave – that is used to refer to ”to speak or shout in a way that is out of control, usually because of anger or mental illness”, but also ”to express praise and admiration for someone or something enthusiastically”.

When I had a chance to invite professor Eka Srimulyani and Donna Swita for an interview and video recording ”MoU Helsinki – Reclaiming back history” our aim was to reflect upon the role of women in peace in Aceh, and how the negotiation process had missed such acts of “la rêverie”, or raving. Yet, women’s groups are globally known for their energy and thrive towards change. Sometimes through demonstrations and revolutions, but at times through grassroot-level action in their own communities. Perhaps lesser told are those stories how peer groups can support wellbeing and provide care for each other and for oneself, and which then allows it to be extended to communities and families.

In 2018, I had the privilege to support a creative writing workshop led by Zubaidah Djohar in Lhokseumawe in North Aceh, participated by survivors of violence, of whom many had become an active part of survivor network working to prevent violence, and support the victims of gender-based violence in Aceh. Taking the first difficult steps in voicing their experiences, this group of women had a dedication: make their experiences loud, visible, not just to gain outsider recognition, but also to form a community of survivors and space to express such experiences.

This book is also a testimony of their resilience and collective action. When my own research funding came to end and funding applications for a book project failed, and I was no longer able to guarantee financial support for the writing process, the participants were not stopped. A group of people came forward and dedicated their energy and effort, in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic, to guarantee that these poems would be published. It is an example of the shortcomings and failures of outside supported initiatives, but it also beautifully illustrates where the locally owned initiative can reach, when the efforts are supported. The humble support provided to the initial writing workshop is a small raindrop in the bigger stream of volunteerism through which this book has become a reality.

I hope that this book, and the process that has allowed the emergence of this new generation of creative writers in Aceh provides both care, and wellbeing for those involved, but also those who will read this book. For higher education teachers and academic researchers, I hope that this process, and the collection can be an inspiration to think of engaged teaching, and engaged research, reciprocity, and creating space for mutual and collective learning, and sharing.

I want to congratulate you all who have made this book possible, and who, despite or regardless the lack of financial resources, strive for equality and justice fifteen years into the Aceh peace process.

 

Scraps of Hope in Banda Aceh: Gendered Urban Politics in the Aceh Peace Process will be published as a media embedded Open Access monograph in late 2020 in Pro et Contra Series of the Helsinki University Press.

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Toivon repaleet Tikkurilassa 14.-27.8.: Aceh calling – globaali punksolidaarisuus

(For English scroll down)

Maanantaina 14.8. alkaa kaksiviikkoinen työrupeamani Tikkurilan kirjaston musiikkiosastolla (1.krs, avoinna ma-pe 8-20, la-su 10-16). Yhteistyö Vantaan kirjaston musiikkiosaston ja Vantaan Muuntamon kanssa esittää Scraps of Hope/Toivon repaleet  -lyhytdokkareita jotka liittyvät kaupunkietnografiseen tutkimukseen Acehin rauhan 1.vuosikymmenestä Banda Acehin kaupungissa. Yhtensä 13 lyhytdokkaria pyörivät non-stoppina musiikkiosastolla kahden viikon ajan.

Tapahtumaan liittyy kaksi video-keskustelutilaisuutta, joista ensimmäinen ma 14.8. klo 18-20 keskittyen joulukuussa 2011 tehtyyn punkpidätykseen, sen jälkeiseen globaaliin punksolidaarisuuteen ja katupunkkareiden arkeen Banda Acehin kaupungissa.

Videokeskustelu (joka on samalla samalla banda acehilaista punk-skeneä ja konfliktinjälkeistä maskuliinisuutta käsittelevä kirjan luvun luonnos) etenee seuraavien acehilaisten punkbiisien johdattelemana: Illiza bastard, Our Wound (Luka kita), Prison of thoughts (penjara pemikiran), Cheap film (film murahan), Difference is not a war (pembedaan bukan perang), ja A.C.A.B.

Tervetuloa Tikkurilaan!

On Monday (14th August) starts my two weeks long worksession in Tikkurila. It is a collaboration with the city library and popup office of City of Vantaa, Muuntamo. Over the two weeks Scraps of Hope short documentaries, narrating stories from the first decade of peace in Aceh, Indonesia, are screened non-stop (music section, ground floor, open on weekdays 8am-8pm, Sat-Sun 10am-4pm).

I organise two video-talks (14th/21st at 6pm) )at the library and one longer session on the overall book project at popup office Muuntamo (Sat 26th Aug 10am-2pm).

The first one on 14th at 6pm focuses on the punk arrest of December 2011, global punk solidarity in its aftermath and everyday lives of the Tsunami Museum street punk community. Video talk unfolds in the order of the punk songs:

Illiza bastard, Our Wound (Luka kita), Prison of thoughts (penjara pemikiran), Cheap film (film murahan), Difference is not a war (pembedaan bukan perang), ja A.C.A.B.

Join me in Tikkurila!

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Etnografisesta kaupunkitutkimuksesta etnografisesti Tikkurilassa

Tässä ensimmäinen postaus Tikkurilasta, jossa työskentelen seuraavat viikot (14.-27.8.) yhteistyössä Tikkurilan kirjaston musiikki-osaston ja Vantaan Muuntamon kanssa. 

Näillä kaupunkitilaan sijoitetuilla työpäivillä on tarkoitus tuoda etnografista, ja feminististä, politiikantutkimusta lähemmäs elettyä ja koettua arkea. Työskentelytapa sopii minulle, sillä olenhan samaan tapaan tehnyt töitä Banda Acehin kaupungissa viimeisten 11 vuoden ajan tutkiessani Suomessa tutuksi tulleen Acehin rauhansopimuksen elettyä ja koettua arkea. Kaupunkitilassa työskentely, hengailu, keskustelu ja kirjoittaminen ovat olleet osa tutkijanarkea.

Aikataulutettuja tapahtumia on seuraavasti:

Lyhytdokumenttielokuvia (yht. kesto 94 min) 14.-27. elokuuta
Tikkurilan kirjaston aukioloaikoina, musiikkiosasto (1.krs)

Keskustelutilaisuudet:
Ma 14.8. klo 18-20
Aceh calling – globaali punksolidaarisuus

Ma 21.8. klo 18-20
Kenen rauha? Aktivisti Zubaidah Djoharin runoja Acehin rauhasta

La 26. elokuuta klo 10-16
Elävä kirja: tapaa tutkija työssään
Muuntamo, Tikkurilan tori, Asematie 3b
Esitykset ja keskustelu: 10-12, 12-14, 14-16

Lisätietoa lyhytdokumenteista ja etnografisesta kaupunkitutkimuksesta

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22 December – On motherhood, populist nationalism and peace-time body politics of political economy

22 December 1928 – forgotten day of women’s activism

Hari Ibu, mother’s day, celebrated today in Indonesia has an intriguing, yet often forgotten, feminist history. Originally the day was chosen to commemorate the First Congress of Women held in 1928 in Mataram just few months after the historic Youth Congress that is considered as one of the culmination point for demands for decolonialization and formation of Indonesian nationalism.

The women’s congress focused on questions of right to education, child marriage, divorce and secular marriage law, but also Western influence on women. During the authoritarian presidency of Suharto also known as the ‘New Order’ turned the day into  Hari Ibu (Mother’s day), with the focus on state ideology on motherhood (state ibuisme), being a good wife and mother. The day has been since celebrated through competitions and quizzes that test women’s abilities to be good mothers and wives.

Scraps of Hope video ‘MoU Helsinki – Reclaiming back History’ is a reflection of the gendered impacts of the Aceh peace process, sexual politics and focus on morality of women, but it also importantly, brings back to the peace table (video is shot at the location of signing of the peace settlement in Finland) the discussion on exploitative peace time political economy and gendered impacts of natural disasters. It provides an alternative vision for the celebration of Hari Ibu in ways that reclaims back the history and addresses some of the most burning questions on economic justice and wellbeing.

Populist reclaiming of history – the case of Cut Meutia and new banknotes

Indonesian government has released new banknotes on Monday. New 100,000, 50,000, 20,000, 10,000, 5,000, 2,000 and 1,000 Rupiah banknotes feature an interesting selection of historic figures, nationalists, and civilian and military participants in anti-colonial movement: president Sukarno, prime minister and signatory of proclamation of independence Mohammad Hatta, the last prime minister Djuanda Kartawidjaja (after whom the post was abolished allowing greater powers for the president), member of Volksraad (Dutch East Indie’s Parliament) and preparatory committee for Indonesian independence Sam Ratulangi, Papuan pro-Indonesia politician Frans Kaisepo, politician and chairperson of Nahdlatul Ulama Idham Chalid, member of Volksraad and advocate of plantation labour rights Mohammad Hoesni Thamrin, politician I Gusti Ketut Pudja, colonel of Indonesian national revolution TB Simatupang, founder of socialist Indies party Tjipto Mangunkusumo, professor (rural technology) Herman Johannes and last but not least, Acehnese female military commander Cut/Tjut Meutia (1870-1910) who fought in the war against the Dutch.

The 1.000 Rupiah banknote with Cut Meutia has caused debate in Aceh. Not because Cut Meutia is only the third Acehnese national hero to be featured in the Indonesian banknotes after Teuku Umar and Cut Nyak Dhien a couple who fought against the Dutch. Or that it was the lowest nomination given to a woman in the group of eleven men. Instead, Acehnese legislative assembly member Asrizal H Ansnawi (PAN) has questioned the right of the Bank of Indonesia for picturing Cut Meutia without Islamic headscarf and asked the banks in Aceh not to circulate the new banknote in Aceh.

Few days into this request, a number of emerging Acehnese scholars such as Raisa Kamila and  Herman Syah have responded to this demand. In their response to this attempt to ‘reclaim history’ they illustrate that from the sources available (photographs, illustrations and narrations in books), Cut Meutia in fact did not wear a headscarf and like many of the female military commanders and elites of her time, her dress did not consist of what is these days considered as ‘traditional’ Acehnese, or modest Islamic, dress.

Raisa Kamila further suggests, that the case of the banknote is a continuation of a longer Acehnese and Indonesian history in which the female body becomes the battleground for politics and violence, but a one that is not controlled by women: Gerwani women were stripped in 1965 in search of communist tattoos, Chinese women were raped during the Jakarta riots in 1998 and women were shaved and publicly paraded in the streets of Banda Aceh in 2001 when the legislation on Islamic dress code was brought up in Jakarta.

Reprint of the talks held at the First Congress of Women of 1928:

Susan Blackburn (2008) The First Indonesian Women’s Congress of 1928. Monash Asia Institute

-“- (2007) Kongres Perempuan Pertama. KITLV-Jakarta.

Read my earlier analysis (Jauhola 2010) of the celebration of Hari Ibu and gendered uses of national emblem Garuda, bird-like creature.

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Turning the gaze at European post-war project

Edit: on 8 Nov 2016 added first paragraph which was not part of the original written talk but improvised on spot
Keynote on Gender and Conflicts at Power Structures, Conflict Resolution and Social Justice Symposium 13-14 October 2016 EU-India Social Science and Humanities Platform (EqUIP) – please check against delivery.

Before I move on to my prepared talk, I want to add: although I am now located in Gender Studies at the University of Helsinki I have not studied a single module/course of so called Western-campus-taught Gender/Women’s Studies. Rather, the induction to me was Indian feminists and women’s organisations that I got to know when I lived in India 1999-2001. I want to raise this point here in the context of the discussion started at this symposium earlier today of the need to decolonialize academia. I want to encourage you all with this example: we can actually do quite a lot ourselves by reaching out to “alternative archives”. This learning process has been very informative for me and I can see traces of that in my research, and teaching.

—

At this particular moment in time, being one of the European keynote speakers at this event, is particularly painful, but I would also say extremely important: turning the gaze towards Europe, Europeaness and the potential violence that these ideas entail.

The painfulness stems from the inability of European leaders or European public, along with their global partners to deal humanely the catastrophes that have been unfolding in front of our eyes for years now. Ironically, the European Union (EU) was awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize “for over six decades [having] contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe” and how this contribution is in stark contrast with the realities of post-war European project, such, as

1. Crises that has been unfolding in Syria for too long – the recent broken cessation of hostilities agreement, attacks on humanitarian aid convoys, hospitals and life line services – it truly breaks my heart participating and negotiating the principles and ACTIONS to be taken in the development of the Finnish 3rd National Action Plan on the implementation of UNSCR1325 – when at the same time, so little hope is visible for Syrians in and outside of Syria

2. Building the fortress Europe, and resulting as a crisis of humanity – the inability to address the catastrophe on the shores of the European union in particular related to migration policies and the return to national self-interests and reinforcing the European Union’s external border with a severe humanitarian cost.

3. Gendered Political Economy: Cedaw committee’s reports on Greece in particular, are alarming: the aftershocks of the 2008 financial crises, especially in the Eurozone, that are felt as new structural forms of gender violence: austerity measures that have brought along with them new forms of gender conservatism and discrimination – measures that have been at the heart of the demands of the troika of IMF, European Central Bank and European commission have been at the forefront – making demands to cut social and health services (major employment sector for women) – but also new restrictions to women’s rights such as sexual and reproductive rights as the recent cases from Spain, and Poland, illustrate

4. Growth of populist right wing politics, Islamophobia and racism and violence that takes form – just to give you a few examples from Finland – campaigns to “close borders” and “protect white Finnish women from brown men” entering Finland as asylum seekers from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and other countries in crises.

5. Sexual politics of peace/post-war reconstruction through images of ‘good and respectable women’: Inability to address history of gendered violence in conflicts internally – I use here 1) the case of “German brides” in Finland, and the demonization of Finnish women who fraternized with German soldiers, and 2) how post-war reconstruction in the aftermath of WWII/Finnish Lapland has meant several decades long oppression of the only indigenous people – Sámi people – in the whole of European Union. 

In the words of Skolt Same activist, theatre director Pauliina Feodoroff: Skolt Sáme world ended after the 1930’s. We Skolt Sámi in three post-Second World War countries of Russia, Finland, Norway live in the spatiality and temporality of apocalypse. Hydropower, nuclear weapons, forced displacements of villages in the name of development, mining activity and cultural change accelerated by wars and displacement have been total: fast and extremely fatal, encompassing all spheres of life. Another Sámi feminist scholar Rauna Kuokkanen (Kuokaanen 2007, Knobblock and Kuokkanen 2015) has suggested that indigenizing the Finnish postwar history writing reaquires mourning of loss and victimhood, without which it is impossible to visualize the future and reabuild oneself and reconstruct the debate in Sámi terms: deal with the question of settler colonialism, conflict between indigenous and post-war recovery market economies, and indigenous political agency.

Let’s have a pause here.

Afore mentioned crises are all taking place simultaneously with another set of global agenda making, i.e. the UN Security Council Resolution 1325, and the consequent 7 other resolutions adopted between 2008 and 2015 also known as women/gender, peace and security agenda.

A recent International Affairs journal’s special issue (March 2016) dedicated to the theme made the following observations:

– WPS agenda is not uniform, in theory, concept or practice

– WPS/UNSCR1325 agenda is most successful at a policy document and resolution level – but not as being translated into various fields of ‘practice’

– Although celebrated as a comprehensive agenda to address gendered conflicts, peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction processes, the implementation, and planning for National Action Plans by the member states has been selective: giving stronger focus on violence prevention and protection (from gender and sexual violence) than on women’s participation in peace and security governance.

– Narrowing down the agenda has ambiguous/paranoid political implications: there is a clear need to focus on conflict related sexual violence, however, losing the focus on participation risks losing the critical significance of articulating women as agents of change in conflict and post-conflict environments AS both right-bearers and rights-protectors

– The focus purely on the conflict-related sexual violence closes the feminist scholar’s observation of the ‘continuum of violence’ – in fact, the peace processes, peace settlements can be dangerous fruits for new forms of gendered discrimination in legal, political and economic spheres.

– Special issue editors Laura Shepherd and Paul Kirby make suggestions: an alternative would be to making the links between sexualized violence and participation visible: and in fact pay attention to how sexualized and gender-based violence inhibits women’s (or more widely those subjectification to Gender-based violence) participation in formal and informal politics. Secondly, it would require acknowledgement that WPS agenda cannot be advocated and implemented without more comprehensive focus on reparation and development, connecting protection and prevention of violence to the questions of rule of law, economic, political, social rights and holistic wellbeing

Furthermore,

– Focus on the UNSCR1325, or implementation is on foreign policy oriented, and UNSCR1325 has therefore become a tool for country-branding

– In the case of Finland, this has led into a severe construction of a myth of “achieved gender equality” – that can be experts elsewhere through gender knowhow and expertism – which remains completely unable to tackle domestic intersections of gender with other social inequalities and oppressions, or the aforementioned crises

– in advocating implementation of UNSCR1325 through peace mediation, humanitarian assistance at the same time when the government has in fact cut down its development aid budget, made several revisions that harden the policies towards refugees and asylum seekers and have allowed continuous growth of neo-nazi, racist movements that not only pose verbal but also physical threat to those opposing them.

I suppose the big (research) questions that I have in mind while wanting to juxtapose these parallel phenomena and political processes, is the following:

1. what happens to the feminist and gender theorising and/or activism on peace & conflicts when they become institutionalized into regional, or state-focused foreign policy agenda – that may become handmaidens or essential part of nationalist, populist, and racist agendas?

2. Following from that, is the following question: What new feminist conceptual and analytical tools do we need to study the lack of policy coherence between interior, migration/refugee, humanitarian, development, trade (arms trade in particular), allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of the linkages, often silenced, between policy agendas – that have gendered effects.

It is these times that set up a test for Europe, or European states as “promoters of ideas and values” – juxtaposition that is made in comparison to focus on military and economic power. Normative power Europe is in crises, if it cannot deliver the same normative basis of human rights, humanity and principles of wellbeing to people who are being subjected to right-wing politics, guarding and closing borders.

Thirdly, it is necessary to ask the fundamental question of the discriminative threat of the wording in Lisbon Treaty that establishes the aim of the European Union to “to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples”. Who counts as ’its peoples’? Who is left out from this notion of European well-being? Using sociologist Gurminder Bhambra’s words: ”such social theorists of European crisis fail to address the colonial histories of Europe. This failure enables to dismiss Europe’s postcolonial & multicultural present” (Bhambra 2015)

Finally, these questions, the divide between the “policy talk” and “implementation” and increasing definition of concepts and terminology to serve specific groups and their entitlements in the face of crises that are global, and that require global, not nationalistic solutions. How do we translate them into theoretical-methodological discussions that go beyond ‘discourse’ as texts and speeches and focus on structures, and embodied materiality. What is the real gendered cost of the fortress Europe, or any other attempt to construct post-war/conflict states and identities – and how should we address them?

Non-Linked References

Bhambra, Gurminder K.. 2015. Whither Europe?. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 18(2), 187-202. 

Knobblock, Ina and Kuokkanen,Rauna ‘Decolonizing feminism in the North: a conversation with Rauna Kuokkanen’, NORA—Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 23: 4, 2015, pp. 275–81.

Kuokkanen, Rauna ‘Saamelaiset ja kolonialismin vaikutukset nykypäivänä’, in Joel Kuortti, Mikko Lehtonen and Olli Löytty, eds, Kolonialismin jäljet: keskustat, periferiat ja Suomi (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2007).

Image credits: Cristiano Salgado, Expresso, Portugal

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What are we mainstreaming when we mainstream gender?

Gender mainstreaming has become one of the most important policy tools for promoting gender equality and women’s rights globally. Even Security Council, in its resolutions to promote gender equality and women’s rights in peacebuilding, calls for action through gender mainstreaming (UNSCR 1325, 1888, 1889, 1960, 2106, 2122, 2422). Resolutions also specifically request gender expertise, gender analysis, and gender-sensitive training to ensure capabilities for implementing gender mainstreaming.

Since the formal acknowledgement of gender mainstreaming principle in 1995 at the Fourth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing,  I’ve had number of roles as a) an advocate for the integration of gender equality policies in Finnish development cooperation and overall Finnish government policies b) gender trainer in European civilian and military crisis management operation and UN military observer pre-departure trainings, c) evaluator of the effectiveness of the gender mainstreaming programme in post-conflict statebuilding context of Bosnia-Herzegovina; and d) gender advisor of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

During those years, however, I was getting more and more troubled that concepts such as ‘gender mainstreaming’ or ‘gender equality’, or ‘women’s empowerment’ are political concepts: they carry meanings that are results of negotiation processes, although when turned into policy advocacy or tools, they often appear as neutral and natural.

From 2005 onwards, when I began my PhD studies, instead of asking how well gender mainstreaming is implemented, I became more interested in understanding what gender mainstreaming does. Thus, rather than seeing gender mainstreaming as something that has been already been set in stone, i.e. we always already know what it is, my research aimed at arguing, illustrating with the examples from Aceh, Indonesia, that it is an active process of negotiating norms: gender norms, but also importantly other norms, such as nationalism, religious identity, class, socio-economic status, sexuality and so on.

Here are the slides of a lecture I gave on gender mainstreaming on 28 September 2016 at the Gender, Conflicts and Security in a Globalised World course organised by Valpuri, Faculty of Social Sciences Gender Studies Teaching Basket at the University of Helsinki.

 

My 2010 PhD thesis (International Politics, University of Aberystwyth, Wales) ‘Becoming Better ‘Men’ and ‘Women’: Negotiating Normativity through Gender Mainstreaming in Post-Tsunami Reconstruction initiatives in Aceh, Indonesia was funded by European Community Marie Curie Host Fellowship for Early Stage Researchers Training, 2006-2009 and Academy of Finland funded project ‘Gendered Agency in Conflict: Gender Sensitive Approach to Development and Conflict Management Practices’, 2007-2010.

An edited version was published in 2013 by Routledge as Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Indonesia: Negotiating Normativity through Gender Mainstreaming Initiatives in Aceh.