Published in 2013
480 pages
Laura Sjoberg is Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Her first book Gender, Justice and the Wars in Iraq was published in 2006. She has published articles on just war theory in the International Journal of Feminist Politics, International Politics and International Studies Quarterly. Her research focuses on gender, just war theory, international security and international ethics
What is this book about?
Laura Sjoberg positions gender and gender subordination as key factors in the making and fighting of global conflict. Through the lens of gender, she examines the meaning, causes, practices, and experiences of war, building a more inclusive approach to the analysis of violent conflict between states.
Considering war at the international, state, substate, and individual levels, Sjoberg’s feminist perspective elevates a number of causal variables in war decision-making. These include structural gender inequality, cycles of gendered violence, state masculine posturing, the often overlooked role of emotion in political interactions, gendered understandings of power, and states’ mistaken perception of their own autonomy and unitary nature. Gendering Global Conflict also calls attention to understudied spaces that can be sites of war, such as the workplace, the household, and even the bedroom. Her findings show gender to be a linchpin of even the most tedious and seemingly bland tactical and logistical decisions in violent conflict. Armed with that information, Sjoberg undertakes the task of redefining and reintroducing critical readings of war’s political, economic, and humanitarian dimensions, developing the beginnings of a feminist theory of war.
