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Published 2021-05-24

Within peace and conflict research, the study of peace has received far less scholarly attention than the study of war and violence (Gleditsch et al., 2014). Moreover, among the studies that pay particular attention to peace, a negative peace conception, which equates peace with the absence of direct violence between formerly warring parties, has generally dominated. Consequently, peace itself is underconceptualised. Existing conceptions of peace do not provide analytical tools that can systematically describe, compare, and explain how peace varies across contexts. By way of illustration, the peace in Sri Lanka is evidently different from the peace in South Africa or the peace in Cambodia, and peace in all of these contexts has also evolved in different ways over time. Postwar processes of peacebuilding and development are complex and messy, and the outcomes are both unpredictable and highly diverse. This situation has prompted recent calls for the development of new theoretical frameworks, analytical tools, and methodologies that can enable nuanced empirical analyses and assessments of peace across empirical cases (e.g., Davenport et al., 2018; Diehl, 2016; Höglund & Söderberg Kovac, 2010; Jarstad et al., 2019). This special issue, titled Exploring Varieties of Peace, responds to these calls and seeks to advance conceptual understandings as well as empirical analyses of peace that provide new insights into the ways in which peace is manifested, experienced, and understood. The special issue originates from the Varieties of Peace research programme and network, which was launched in 2017 at Umeå University, Sweden, with support from the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences.1 Several of the contributions were discussed at the Varieties of Peace Asia Conference, which was organised in Jakarta, Indonesia, October 22–24, 2019, in cooperation with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Conflict-related sexual violence has been the focus of significant international activism and policy attention. International legal norms and frameworks have evolved to recognize it as a war crime, and a representation of sexual violence as a “weapon of war” is now widely endorsed. This article examines how international norms about conflict-related sexual violence are adopted and utilized in multiple ways in the armed conflict in Kachin state in northern Myanmar. Throughout decades of civil war, international norms on sexual violence have constituted key resources for international advocacy and awareness raising by local women’s rights activists. Further, activists have drawn on international norms to effect changes in gendered relations of power within their own communities. However, international norms on sexual violence in conflict have also been effectively used as tools for ethno-nationalist identity politics, rallying support behind the armed insurgency and mobilizing women’s unpaid labor in the service of war. Thus, international norms on conflict-related sexual violence have simultaneously opened up space for women’s empowerment and political agency and reproduced gendered forms of insecurity and marginalization. Exploring these contradictions and complexities, this analysis generates novel insights into the politics of international norms in contexts of armed conflict.

Multiple armed conflicts in Myanmar have resulted in long-term, large-scale forced displacement, humanitarian crises, and immense human suffering. However, the borderlands of Myanmar’s neighboring countries have also provided political space for the mobilization of diverse forms of oppositional politics, ranging from armed resistance to human rights documentation, alternative news reporting on the situation in Myanmar, and international networking and lobbying. In particular, since the 1990s these borderlands, most notably the Thai-Myanmar border areas, have seen the emergence of a vibrant and outspoken multi-ethnic women’s movement. In this chapter, we explore how young women activists from Myanmar have been able to carve out new spaces and forms of leadership while in exile in Thailand. From its inception, the border-based women’s movement made leadership training - specifically targeting young women - a key feature. We examine the impact of these training programs in the lives of women activists, and trace how graduates of these programs have moved on to lead in ways that have created social and political change within exiled oppositional politics and diaspora communities in Thailand. We analyze how the recent return of exiled activists and oppositional groups to Myanmar reshapes the conditions for young women’s leadership, presenting formerly exiled activists with new challenges as well as new avenues for leadership. Our analysis illustrates the political potential of border-crossing in several senses. In a spatial sense, we demonstrate how the diasporic, transnational political space in Thailand enabled young women to challenge age and gender norms and hierarchies to a degree previously unimagined, making young women leaders a significant force in Burmese diasporic politics. We note the importance of international advocacy and transnational networking to the growing recognition of young women as effective leaders, understanding this as another form of border-cr

This paper examines insurgent citizenship practices employed by activists in the exiled Burmese women's movement from the 1990s and onwards. Consisting of political exiles, refugees and ethnic insurgents, this movement has successfully used the transnational, transitory space of the borderlands to constitute its participants as political subjects with legitimate claims to rights, citizenship and leadership. Drawing on interviews, this analysis interrogates women's activism through the lens of insurgent citizenship practices. Thus, how have Burmese women's activists claimed rights and lived citizenship in exile? Three main strategies are examined: firstly, women activists have positioned themselves as political actors and authorities through involvement in governance and humanitarian aid delivery in refugee camps. Secondly, they have claimed rights and political subjectivity through engagement with international norms, networks and arenas. Thirdly, they have claimed citizenship and political influence in oppositional nation-making projects through engaging with and negotiating ethno-nationalist armed struggles. The analysis highlights the multifaceted nature of women's insurgent citizenship practices, showing how they navigate multiple marginalized subject positions, direct their rights claims towards multiple governing authorities, and enact multiple political communities.

The initiation of political reforms and a peace process in Myanmar has fundamentally altered the conditions for Burmese diasporic politics, and diaspora groups that have mobilized in Myanmar’s neighbouring countries are beginning to return. This article explores how return to Myanmar is debated within the Burmese women’s movement, a significant and internationally renowned segment of the Burmese diaspora. Does return represent the fulfilment of diasporic dreams; a pragmatic choice in response to less than ideal circumstances; or a threat to the very identity and the feminist politics of the women’s movement? Contrasting these competing perspectives, the analysis offers insights into the ongoing negotiations and difficult choices involved in return, and reveals the process of return as highly conflictual and contentious. In particular, the analysis sheds light on the gendered dimensions of diaspora activism and return, demonstrating how opportunities for women's activism are challenged, debated and reshaped in relation to return.

Millions of people in Asia live in refugee camps. Given this, what are the opportunities for political participation for refugees living in camps? This chapter addresses this question through an analysis of two refugee camp situations in Asia, in Thailand and Bangladesh. It examines how government policies, humanitarian aid practices, and forms of refugee mobilization and organization shape refugees' opportunities for political participation in these two contexts. The analysis of the cases demonstrates that while refugee camps are sites for repression and control, they can also become sites of resistance and political mobilization.

Sverige betraktas ofta, av andra liksom av sig själv, som ett av världens mest jämställda länder och hamnar också alltid i toppen av FN:s och OECD:s jämställdhetsrankingar. Sedan mitten av nittiotalet har jämställdhetsintegrering varit den officiella strategin för det svenska jämställdhetsarbetet, men trots detta startas det fortfarande projekt för att komma igång med detta arbete. I denna artikel problematiseras det svenska jämställdhetsarbetet mot bakgrund av politikens förändrade styrformer där marknadsstyrning i hög utsträckning kommit att dominera det offentliga och där «den rätta kunskapen» allt mer har kommit att ersätta politiska intressemotsättningar. Syftet är att utforska vad som händer med jämställdhetspolitikens innehåll när den inordnas i marknadsbaserade former för styrning och detta görs genom att studera jämställdhetskonsulters arbete. Det empiriska materialet består av elva telefonintervjuer med jämställdhetskonsulter, samt en genomgång av ett tjugotal konsultföretags hemsidor. Intervjuerna fokuserar hur intervjupersonerna upplevde arbetet som konsult; deras drivkrafter, motiv och argument; samt hur de såg på arbetets effekter, möjligheter och begränsningar. Materialet har analyserats med inspiration av governmentalityanalys och med ett särskilt fokus på hur jämställdhetskonsultens position samt jämställdhetsbegreppets betydelse konstrueras.

This chapter explores how violence against women is represented and approached in humanitarian aid to refugees. Drawing on an analysis of key humanitarian policy texts and case studies of efforts to address violence in refugee camps in Thailand and Bangladesh, the analysis demonstrates that a representation of violence against women as an expression of the 'underdevelopment' of refugee communities has gained prominence in humanitarian policy and practice. Consequently, changing the cultural norms and practices of refugees as to 'develop' them is seen as the main solution. However, this chapter shows that this approach has generated conflicts and resistance, and sometimes obstructed rather than advanced struggles for refugee women's rights.

This entry focuses on women's situation in refugee camps for Rohingya refugees located in Eastern Bangladesh. It describes the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, and their situation as refugees in Bangladesh. In particular, the entry interrogates how humanitarian aid agencies work to address gender inequality and gender violence in the refugee camps. In humanitarian aid practice, violence against Rohingya women is primarily represented and approached as a symptom of religious and cultural backwardness that needs to be addressed through the modernization of refugee subjectivities, attitudes and beliefs. As this entry demonstrates, such approaches have generated conflicts and resistance from refugees, and sometimes obstructed rather than advanced struggles for refugee women's rights.

Refugee camps are frequently perceived as spaces of emergency and exception. However, they are also spaces where millions of people live their everyday lives, sometimes for extended periods of time. As such, refugee camps are political spaces where struggles over the right to influence life in the camps and shape how they are governed are continuously ongoing. In this context, what are the opportunities for political participation for refugees living in camps? How and to what extent are refugees able to carve out political space where they can engage with and affect their lives and their situations? This paper addresses these questions through an analysis of refugee camps in Thailand. Drawing on Foucauldian analytics, the analysis demonstrates how key strategies employed to govern refugees, namely spatial confinement and development interventions are also creatively subverted by refugees and appropriated as bases for resistance and political mobilization. The article provides new insights into the relationship between power and resistance, demonstrating how specific technologies of governance create opportunities for subversion, reinterpretation, and appropriation.

Contributing to ongoing debates about what happens when feminism is institutionalized in global governance, this article examines how gender equality is given meaning and applied in humanitarian aid to refugees, and what the implications are with regard to the production of subjectivities and their positioning in relations of power. Drawing on Foucauldian and postcolonial feminist perspectives, the analysis identifies two main representations of what it means to promote gender equality in refugee situations. Gender equality is represented as a means to aid effectiveness through the strategic mobilization of refugee women’s participation, and as a project of development, involving the transformation of “traditional” or “backward” refugee cultures into modern societies. The subject positions that are produced categorically cast refugees as either passive or problematic subjects who need to be rescued, protected, assisted, activated, controlled and reformed through humanitarian interventions, while humanitarian workers are positioned as rational administrators and progressive agents of social transformation. In effect, gender equality is used to sustain power asymmetries in refugee situations and to reproduce global hierarchies., Originally included in thesis in manuscript form

In humanitarian aid to refugees, participatory and community-based approaches are today strongly emphasized as the path towards more efficient protection and assistance. Participation and community mobilization are particularly constructed as a vehicle for the promotion of gender equality. This paper explores how participatory and community-based approaches are used in efforts to promote gender equality in humanitarian aid to Burmese refugees in Thailand and Bangladesh. Refugees in Bangladesh, especially women, are problematized as passive and dependent due to their alleged lack of 'community spirit' and participation. In contrast, the political activism of refugee leaders and women's organizations in Thailand is represented as problematic, illegitimate and unruly. While refugees in Bangladesh do not participate enough, it appears that the refugees in Thailand participate too much. Drawing on interviews with humanitarian workers, this paper examines this paradox through a governmentality perspective, draws out the meanings attached to the concept of participation in humanitarian policy and practice and shows how participation is employed in the government of refugees.

Conflict-related sexual violence has been the focus of significant international activism and policy attention. International legal norms and frameworks have evolved to recognize it as a war crime, and a representation of sexual violence as a “weapon of war” is now widely endorsed. This paper examines how international norms about conflict-related sexual violence are adopted and utilized in multiple ways in the armed conflict in Kachin state in Northern Myanmar. Throughout decades of civil war, international norms on sexual violence have constituted key resources for international advocacy and awareness raising by local women activists. Further, women activists have drawn on international norms to effect changes in gendered relations of power within their own communities. However, international norms on sexual violence in conflict have also been effectively used as tools for ethno-nationalist identity politics, rallying support behind the armed insurgency and mobilizing women’s unpaid labour in the service of war. Thus, international norms on conflict-related sexual violence has simultaneously opened up space for women’s empowerment and political agency, andreproduced gendered forms of insecurity and marginalization. Exploring these contradictions and complexities, the analysis sheds light on the multiple political uses and effects of international norms in armed conflict.