Politicization of Sexual Violence: From Abolitionism to Peacekeeping

Asst Prof Carol Harrington

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., Mar 28, 2013 - Political Science - 250 pages

In the 1990s, feminist scholars on the politics of rape experienced a sudden surge of interest in their, until then, marginal field. Why was the 1990s the right time for rape to become an international security problem? Furthermore, why suddenly in the 1990s did rape become problematized as an international issue not just by the feminist fringes of protest movements but also by intergovernmental bureaucracies?

To explore these questions, Carol Harrington traces the historical change in the politicization of rape as an international problem and explains how early international women's organizations gained expert authority on rape by drawing on abolitionist rhetoric of bodily integrity. She discusses why they abandoned their politicization of rape in the inter-war period and why rape only reappeared as an international security question requiring gender expertise on trauma after the Cold War.

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• Documenting Sexual Violence as a Problem of Individual Freedom: 11
• Unspeakable Outrages and Expertise on Womens Problems: 31
• Atrocity Propaganda International Organizations and the Science of Peace: 51
• Silence on Sexual Violence? World War II and the United Nations Womens Bureaucracy: 73
• Pathologizing Unfreedom Western Cold War Models of Human Rights and Public Mental Health: 97
• The Medicalization of Peacekeeping and Government of Sexual and Genderbased Violence: 121
• Gender Experts and Gender Police Policing the Peacekeepers and Empowering Women?: 145
• Knowledge and Techniques for Governing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse SEA: 169
• Conclusion: 195

About the author

Lecturer, School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Politicization of Sexual Violence: From Abolitionism to Peacekeeping; Gender in a Global/Local World
• Author: Asst Prof Carol Harrington
• Contributors: Professor Pauline Gardiner Barber, Professor Marianne H Marchand, Professor Jane Parpart
• Edition: revised
• Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2013
• ISBN: 1409499634, 9781409499633
• Length: 250 pages
• Subjects: Political Science / General