‘Doing’ Security As Though Humans Matter: A Feminist Perspective on Gender and the Politics of Human Security HEIDI HUDSON*
University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa A feminist perspective can make security discourse more reflective of its own normative assumptions. In respect of an expanded human security concept, a feminist perspective highlights the dangers of masking differences under the rubric of the term ‘human’. A critical feminist perspective is geared towards addressing the politics of multiple overlapping identities. Since gender is intertwined with other identities such as race, class and nationality, the dichotomy between universalism and cultural relativism is overcome by connecting individual experiences in a particular location to wider regional and global structures and processes. An overview of a number of feminist and security-studies schools of thought reveals the extent of universalizing tendencies and gender silences within such discourses. The conceptual and political commensurability of the gender and security constructs is often overlooked. An emphasis on identity politics may thus help to clarify the ambivalence of human security as both a political project of emancipation and an analytical framework. A case is therefore made for more fluid context-based interpretations of gender in human security. In this regard it is posited that alternative feminist approaches, such as those rooted in the African context, could facilitate dialogue within and across supposedly irreconcilable standpoints. Keywords human security • gender • identity politics • Africa • feminism • interparadigm dialogue
Introduction
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HE NEW ‘MACHISMO’ heralded by the post-9/11 global war against terror threatens to drown out the progress made during the 1990s with regard to building a global normative consensus on the importance of human security. Today, more than ever, human security coexists uneasily with national security. Since the analytical potential of feminist epistemology © 2005 PRIO, www.prio.no SAGE Publications, http://sdi.sagepub.com Vol. 36(2): 155–174, DOI: 10.1177/0967010605054642
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cannot be divorced from its political and transformative value, a critical feminist perspective on the study of security, and especially human security, is crucial to overcome certain gender silences. Feminist critiques of so-called natural or depoliticized gender dichotomies within state-centric discourse1 delegitimize discriminatory practices and institutions as socio-historical constructions and ‘repoliticize’ orthodox views on security by challenging the role of the state as provider of security. Gender is intrinsic to the subject matter and politics of security. In the context of the present article, feminism refers to the area where theory and practice meet with regard to transforming the unequal power relationships between women and men. It is more than an intellectual enterprise for the creation of knowledge. It also draws on the struggles of the women’s movement and the theorizing emanating from those experiences. In this article, gender as unit of analysis is viewed as socially learned behaviour and expectations that distinguish between masculinity and femininity (Peterson & Runyan, 1993). Gender identity as social construction is malleable over time and place, thus allowing for the possibility of female emancipation (Tickner, 2002a). Thus, gender not only personifies a specific relationship of power, but also serves as a dynamic analytical and political tool by means of which gender as a unit of analysis and women and men as identity groups are used in tandem (but not interchangeably). This means that statements about femininity are necessarily also claims about masculinity, and that a challenge to our understanding of women’s security necessarily transforms our understanding of men’s security. A feminist redefinition of power in relational terms, where the survival of one depends on the well-being of the other, would not only enhance women’s security but also that of men, who are similarly threatened by the conventional gendered approach to security. For the purposes of this article, I draw mainly on the postmodern stance of feminism, with an emphasis on identity and difference. However, as can be gleaned from the preceding paragraph, there is also an undercurrent of critical theory in this feminist interpretation. In a puristic sense, this could be construed as contradicting the postmodernist underpinnings of the argument. In International Relations (IR) literature, ‘critical theory’ and ‘postmodernism’ are often used synonymously. Though not altogether correct, this is understandable, since many critical theorists are also postmodernists. As Evans & Newnham (1998: 106) point out, ‘there is clearly a sense in which all theory is critical as well as a sense in which everything which succeeds modern is postmodern’. In my view, the critical and postmodern perspectives do not differ in intention, but rather in the way they go about achieving emancipation. Feminist postmodern theorists in IR do challenge the hier1
I define discourse as the way actors and audiences generate and promote meanings and concepts and construct fields of knowledge through legitimating certain knowledge practices.
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archical dichotomies, such as domestic–international and dependency– sovereignty. Their work is therefore also transformative. Calls made recently by South African leaders to merge so-called Chapter Nine institutions set up under the country’s constitution to support democracy (Moya, 2004) reveal the extent to which the term ‘human’ is contested. The argument to merge the functions of the Public Protector, the Commission on Gender Equality and the Human Rights Commission to avoid duplication exposes the dangers of presuming the universality of human rights. This false universality reinforces the notion that affirmation of democratic values through separate institutions has become superfluous in South Africa’s case. However, international experience (e.g. in Canada) shows that in the absence of separate institutions focusing on gender, women’s participation in politics has stagnated. The implications of this case for human security are that – despite the broad and inclusive nature of the human security approach – the gender dimension tends to be overlooked, hence providing only a partial understanding of security issues. A realist national security project enforces conformity to values that are often male-defined. Feminists therefore point out that an understanding of security issues needs to be extended to include the specific security concerns of women. There is a real danger that collapsing femininity or masculinity into the term ‘human’ could conceal the gendered underpinnings of security practices. The term ‘human’ is presented as though it were gender-neutral, but very often it is an expression of the masculine. Similarly, the presentation of women as a group masks the differences within that ‘group’. The security needs of Western women and women in the developing world are different to the extent that no global sisterhood can be assumed. In response to such universalizing tendencies, African women have begun to reassert their own brands of feminism and/or womanism. If we genuinely want to make sense of gender in human security in Africa, we need to foreground the specific assumptions of uniquely African sets of feminisms and allow space for indigenous approaches to human security to evolve. Human security as a universalist tool of global governance must acknowledge differences in the degree to which the state leads or participates in the process of the protection and empowerment of individuals. The significance of location or context and the politics of identity for security are thus placed under the spotlight. In view of the above claims, the purpose of the present article is to contend that a feminist perspective can make security discourse more reflective of its own normative assumptions and political relevance. In respect of an expanded human security concept, a feminist perspective highlights the dangers of masking differences under the rubric of the term ‘human’ and works against theoretical smugness. By constantly asking whether there are different ways of looking at the world, a critical feminist perspective is
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geared towards addressing the politics of multiple overlapping identities. Since gender is intertwined with other identities such as race, class and nationality, a critical feminist perspective helps to overcome the dichotomy between universalism and cultural relativism by connecting individual experiences in a particular location to wider regional and global structures and processes. The article begins with a brief outline of the normative and political assumptions, silences and universalizing tendencies of a number of feminist and security-studies schools of thought. The aim is to suggest that including women as a category of identity within security discourse without also integrating gender as unit of analysis creates silences, which in fact reinforce the dominance of masculinist universalisms and, at the same time, impede theoretical progress within security studies. The subsequent section looks at the conceptual and political commensurability of gender and security constructs, and reminds the reader that integration does not mean uniformity. A broken or fractured holism is the best answer to avoid complacency about so-called inclusive security frameworks. In the third section, the ambivalence of human security as both a political project of emancipation and a policy agenda or analytical framework is examined against the backdrop of identity politics. A case is made for more fluid context-based interpretations of human security. On the basis of the proposition that contextualized human security practices and culturally relevant feminist responses to insecurity go hand in glove, the final part of the article examines the merits and demerits of alternative feminist approaches aimed at facilitating dialogue within and across supposedly irreconcilable standpoints.
Silences and Universalizing Tendencies in Feminism and Security Studies Since the mid-1980s, feminist challenges to the study of IR have begun to explore the role that gender plays in areas such as war, conflict and global security (see, among others, Elshtain, 1987; Enloe, 1996; Peterson & Runyan, 1993; Peterson, 1992, 2000; Sylvester, 1996, 2002; Tickner, 1992, 2001, 2002a,b,c). There is no one feminism. Feminists disagree on what constitutes women’s subordination and how to overcome it. Tong (1997) identifies a number of feminisms, such as liberal, Marxist, socialist, radical, psychoanalytic and postmodern. Feminist theories could also be categorized in terms of inequality, oppression and difference. Liberal feminists following the positivist and empiricist tradition of knowledge focus on removing legal obstacles to women’s inequality. In terms of security thinking, the aim is to address
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women’s invisibility. Radicals, Marxists and socialists have turned to patriarchy as the source of women’s oppression. Radical feminists seek fundamental social transformation rather than equity. In this regard, a feminist standpoint regards gender as constitutive. Women are different from men, and therefore their contribution to political and security thinking is also different. An emphasis on a ‘female approach’ of care and responsibility to security issues is therefore often used to justify this perspective. In the 1990s, postmodern and post-colonial perspectives became popular.2 By emphasizing multiplicity and difference among women, postmodernism has questioned radical feminism’s notion of an essentialized women’s standpoint. Postmodern feminists have persistently sought to uncover in whose interest existing theories have been constructed (Tickner, 2002c), and have strongly argued against so-called master narratives. Many feminists consider the postmodernist emphasis on difference as quite liberating for women of colour. For Third World feminists, for instance, this emphasis on difference allows them space for producing their own knowledge and recovering their own identities. Owing to the fundamental critical nature of the feminist project, its normative and political commitments are quite explicit. However, the prescriptive nature of such political commitment does raise questions about the degree to which feminism in itself represents universalizing (and by implication exclusionary) tendencies. The liberal empiricist paradigm integrates women into the mainstream security discourse without questioning the dominant scientific assumptions of positivist inquiry. Such an uncritical treatment of universalism reproduces existing meanings of what constitutes humankind. The only difference is that – through the pursuit of the norm of equality (women becoming like men) – a more inclusive but hegemonic universalism is produced. Standpoint feminism argues that ‘men’s dominating position in social life results in partial and perverse understandings, whereas women’s subjugated position provides the possibility of more complete and less perverse understandings’ (Bakker, 1997: 133). This kind of essentialist thinking evokes another form of universalism, namely binary universalism, ‘celebrating’ or romanticizing the victimhood of women. The controversial contention that women are more peaceful than men perpetuates a dichotomized universalism. In contrast, postmodern feminists emphasize fractured realities and identities and overlapping and contextually based experiences (Bakker, 1997). In my view, the prioritization of special interests over general interest helps to minimize the danger of collapsing gender identity and masculinity. Contextualized analysis forces one to move away from easy generalizations, since the nuances of power and identity politics must be taken into account. 2
African feminism as an example of non-Western or post-colonial feminism is discussed later in the article.
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While the inextricable link between analysis and politics in the feminist project is a given, the link between analysis and politics in the sphere of human security is hugely contested. Within and across the realist, Copenhagen and critical security schools, the debate has been dominated by contention over the analytical advantages and disadvantages of widening the security concept. Some of the more traditional realist conceptualizations (for example, Walt, 1991; Freedman, 1998) have warned that a redefinition of security could undermine the core assumptions of the field of security. Traditionalists reject widening of the security concept as a political activity that inhibits the concept’s analytical usefulness (Eriksson, 1999). However, the image of a rational and unitary state single-mindedly pursuing the goal of national security is in itself a loaded depiction. Feminist scholars have carefully reconstructed the gender-biased formation and functioning of the state and its war machine. Feminists have highlighted the way in which Rational Man’s claim on the exclusive right of citizenship is reinforced by his exclusive right to be a warrior (Grant, 1991), thus drowning out women’s role in peace and conflict. As Peterson (1992: 31) states, ‘other forms of political community have been rendered almost unthinkable’. In respect of an expanded security concept, the Copenhagen School3 – through its use of the concept ‘securitization’ as an extreme version of politicization – has been much more explicit about acknowledging the political role of security analysts than the traditionalists (Eriksson, 1999). But, far from being a radical epistemological reinterpretation, this school suffers from gender bias. What is perceived to be a fundamental broadening of the security debate is in fact an overstatement. Hansen (2000) shows how the definition of the referent object may block or severely limit the categorization of issues as security problems. Since the thinking of the Copenhagen School draws heavily on the notion of securitization and existential threats, it distinguishes between international and social security, the former dealing with matters of collective survival and the latter with issues of social justice within a particular society. The school maintains that gender belongs to social security, because it concerns individual not collective security. Women are in the discourse, but are relegated to the margins. With this argument, the dominant ‘malestream’ thinking on security is effectively maintained and universalized.4 Of the three schools, critical security studies is the most explicit about the importance of political advocacy in security discourse.5 Since individuals face numerous threats that emanate either directly or indirectly from the 3 4
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Notably Barry Buzan (1991) and Ole Wæver (Buzan, Wæver & De Wilde, 1998). In this regard, Gunhild Hoogensen & Svein Vigeland Rottem (2004) use their analysis of such work to illustrate how identity, in particular gender identity, serves to cement a broader understanding of security. See Booth (1997) and Wyn Jones (1999).
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state, Booth (1997) argues that people and not states should be the referent object of security. This school is openly prescriptive in seeking to deconstruct realism, state-centrism and militarism, replacing them with a reconstructed notion of emancipation and justice. Although there are definite epistemological and methodological areas of convergence between critical security studies and the postmodernist critical (feminist) project, there is no guarantee that gender would be routinely included as a category of analysis. The discourse of emancipation and a focus on individual human beings as referent objects do not insulate this school from the dangers of universalizing tendencies. Before examining the core assumptions and empirical context of human security, as well as why and how women are often added to security discourse without the integration of gender into the debate, it is necessary to look more closely at the complementarity of the gender and security constructs. For purposes of inter-paradigm and interdisciplinary dialogue, scholars need to recognize that ‘security’ is not the intellectual preserve of IR, nor ‘gender’ the exclusive unit of analysis of feminist scholarship.
Exploring the Complementarity of Gender and Security While the constructs of gender and security are both analytically and politically compatible, the issue of their relationship is complicated by the fact that gender is not the only factor interacting with security. The interface of gender with class, ethnicity, race, nationality and sexuality leads to an intricate network of inequalities that change over time and differ depending on the context. Fragmentation (difference) therefore becomes the twin of integration (universalized sameness) – a necessary evil that has to be engaged with theoretically and practically. Integration Conceived holistically as the end goal or ultimate human condition, the concept of security binds together all processes and levels – so much so that Buzan (1991: 363) states that ‘attempts to treat security as if it was confined to any single level or any single sector invite serious distortions of understanding’. Buzan (1991) furthermore argues that security plays a mediating role between the extremes of (absolute) power and (absolute) peace. The logic of security implies high levels of interdependence; security can thus play an instrumental role in the enhancement of values other than military ones. First, the integrative potential of gender as a tool of security analysis is
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facilitated by the transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of feminist scholarship. Second, gender as the unit of analysis promotes integration across levels and dimensions. A feminist perspective extends the general arguments about the nature of society to the realm of security and reminds us that comprehensive security can only be achieved if the relations of domination and submission in all walks of life are eliminated and gender justice is achieved. While gender may not always be the most important factor, if taken as the unit of analysis in the security discourse it reveals a complex and fluctuating mix of interlinked gendered knowledge constructions and practices within all the sectors of security and at all levels (e.g. gender and globalization, patriarchy and militarism, structural violence and physical violence). Since feminists challenge the politics of boundary construction (e.g. the false dichotomies of public and private spheres), they are by definition against a level-of-analysis framework on the grounds that such an approach mystifies analysis and reinforces divisions of power. Third, an emphasis on the gender implications of security promotes an awareness of the dynamic interplay between theory and practice as embodied by the dialectical relationship between women’s political practice in the transnational peace and women’s movements and feminism as an academic enterprise. In terms of normative or political commitment, there also exists commonality between the concepts of security (in its critical usage) and gender. Both possess important profile-raising qualities. Both the human security and the feminist discourse operate according to the ethos of highlighting the importance of marginalized issues, while at the same time exposing vested interests. The zero-sum power discourse of neorealism is the target of both critical security thinkers and radical feminists. Fragmentation The unavoidable tension between integration and disintegration mirrors the universalizing and relativizing strains underpinning the argument that a broadened human security framework faces the danger of holding up a false holism. The fact that women and men are equally – albeit differently – affected by organized violence must be highlighted, and the complex, multifaceted and ambivalent roles played by women and men during times of war and peace must be engaged with to avoid the perpetuation of incomplete understandings. The debate about security, gender and HIV and AIDS serves as illustration. For women and girls, the interrelated nature of the problem is more salient, since their susceptibility to the disease is linked to their socio-cultural, biological, economic and political subordination within broader society. In the case of South Africa, where the debate has been highly politicized, neither
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the government nor the majority of civil society stakeholders have given serious consideration to gender. Failure to link women’s rights and human rights is a core reason for the politicization of issues of mother-to-child transfer and the availability of antiretroviral drugs to all pregnant women. Women’s place in the HIV and AIDS discourse in South Africa has been a classic case of the ‘women as the vessel’ argument (Msimang, 2003), where the unfairness of not helping pregnant women to save their babies’ lives was the actual focus. Turf wars between government and nongovernmental organizations about who should set the agenda often overshadowed the plight of poor, young black women diagnosed with HIV and AIDS. Complacency about the ‘wholeness’ of the human security discourse thus risks overlooking the fact that certain human rights might be undermined for particular power interests. Holism as an intellectual framework may present a closure if unity or harmony is elevated at the expense of difference. It would be more appropriate to describe such attempts at broadening security as a ‘fractious holism’ (Runyan, 1992) wherein interdependence does not necessarily imply equality and stability. Greater sensitivity towards conceptual commensurability could thus facilitate dialogue across traditional divides. Such awareness, however, should also be imbued with a sense of realism, namely that contradiction is part and parcel of this process. The dynamics of universalist and particularist tendencies are no better illustrated than in the human security discourse.
Human Security: From Theory to Practice? In line with the thinking of critical security studies, a critical human security approach serves as a counter to the selfish pursuit of state or elite security. People become the primary referent of security. The main point is to understand security comprehensively and holistically in terms of the real-life, everyday experiences of human beings and their complex social and economic relations as these are embedded within global structures. It therefore becomes imperative to view security in terms of patterns of systemic inclusion and exclusion of people (Thomas, 2002). The twin goals of protection and empowerment (‘freedom from fear’ and ‘freedom from want’; United Nations Commission on Human Security, 2003) thus represent the core principles of ensuring survival, meeting basic needs (protecting livelihood) and safeguarding the human dignity of the most vulnerable groups in society. In this way, emphasis shifts from a security dilemma of states to a survival dilemma of people. Although the relationship between individuals and collectivities is central to the discourse of human security (especially in the context of globaliza-
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tion), most definitions of human security do not clearly distinguish between human security for individuals and human security for groups. It is usually assumed that the well-being of one is dependent on the security of the other. Questions about the nature of the collectivity are nothing new, whether they refer to ‘the claims of obligation to fellow citizens of a political association’, ‘the claims of obligation to the remainder of humanity’ (Walker, 1992: 187), or otherwise. But how one defines political community (in a statist or cosmopolitan sense) has a bearing on the extent to which alternative formulations of political identity are allowed to interact with the mainstream discourse on security. Western IR theories traditionally tend to render class, cultural, racial and gender differences invisible, which leads to a situation of ‘particulars masquerading as universals’ (Walker, 1992: 188). Those who control access to knowledge treat religion, race and nationality as foundations for ‘self-reproducing political communities’ (Hansen, 2000: 299), while gender identity is curiously treated as separate. Yet, in practice, genderbased security threats are often inseparable from other threats. If conceptualized as being about individuals, gender loses its sting as an analytical tool. A gender-sensitive concept of human security must therefore link women’s everyday experiences with broader regional and global political processes and structures. Ideally, human security should first and foremost be a critical project aimed at interrogating the sources of people’s insecurity, along with the role of the state and other global governance structures in this regard.6 Its ethos of progressive values makes it a politically effective tool, both to promote collective action and to be used as an analytical research concept. The human security concept straddles a large number of disciplines, and it has pushed IR out of its disciplinary isolation and away from its inward-looking preoccupation with military security within the subdiscipline of security studies. It has also promoted the integration of binary oppositions, such as between the interstate and the intrastate realms. The normative-ideological orientation imbues the concept with fluidity, to the extent that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Commission on Human Security use it as a policy agenda and countries such as Norway and Canada have adopted the human security doctrine as a set of values informing foreign policy and state interest. But how can human security be operationalized? Criticism regarding implementation of a vaguely conceptualized normative framework has come from both critical and conservative circles. Human security as a concept is often criticized for being a security theory of everything and nothing (Paris, 2001). Several authors have suggested ways of overcoming this problem (see, for instance, Knudsen, 2001; Liotta, 2002; Suhrke, 1999; Thomas & Tow, 6
See also McDonald (2002).
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2002). The problem with such suggestions, however, is that narrowing in practice often implies human security frameworks being co-opted into statist conceptualizations of risk, thus watering down the emancipatory potential of the concept (Bellamy & McDonald, 2002). While those who want to see human security as an alternative to state security and those who view human and state security as complementary continue to battle it out, it does appear as though pragmatism is beginning to win the day. The contemporary wisdom, represented by the report of the United Nations Commission on Human Security (2003), accepts security between states as a necessary condition for the security of people, but is also conscious of the fact that individuals require protection from the arbitrary power of the state. While human security requires strong and stable institutions, a high degree of human security may also shed legitimacy on governments. Human security thus complements state security by providing a more comprehensive emphasis on human development, human rights and the role of non-state actors. This, in my view, is a marriage of convenience – but not necessarily one that needs to be rejected in a self-conscious moralistic way. For the sake of meaningful implementation, human security should not be reified. A paradigm shift achieved through incremental consensus-building could, in the long run, mean a reversal of ends and means. The challenge lies in the way in which state security is transformed from an end to a means of promoting human security. Like it or not, the state remains the political actor with the largest capacity to mobilize resources. In order to achieve this conceptually and practically, scholars of security should first draw out more forcefully the tension between the universalist and particularist underpinnings of the concept and concretize analysis by means of contextualized case studies. Second, the politics of the struggle to eliminate injustice needs to tactically reposition itself in relation to the demands of the politics of transition. In such a context, research on the institutional design of new alliances between state and civil society in support of the same goals of human security would not only improve service delivery (meeting basic needs) but could also work towards redefining the nature of security politics. Difference is often neglected for the sake of building common understanding regarding human security. Thus, the UNDP report of 1994 affirms the emphasis on human security as being universal, global and indivisible. As an extension of the logic that the security of states is interrelated, human security claims that the security of people in one part of the world depends on the security of people elsewhere. However, evidence also points to the fact that security in one area depends on insecurity in another, as the ripple effects of homeland security measures after 9/11 are felt across the globe. Hence, one can rightfully ask whether what is intended in the UNDP report is truly uni-
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versal or simply Eurocentric values in disguise. Similarly, signs of binary universalism (‘us versus them’) are evident in the way distinctions are made between chronic insecurity in marginalized regions such as Africa and a ‘state of security’ in affluent societies. Convergence of perspectives on human security in a regional context thus becomes significant to the extent that it not only supports a global consensusbuilding but also, and primarily, enhances indigenous solutions to human insecurity. Structures such as the African Union (AU), the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the new Peace and Security Council are beginning to speak the same language. The African Human Security Initiative (AHSI) is a network of seven African nongovernmental research organizations that have come together to benchmark the performance of eight African governments in promoting human security in the area of political governance (i.e. human rights, democracy and governance, civil society engagement, small arms and light weapons, peacekeeping and conflict resolution, anti-corruption, and terrorism and organized crime).7 In terms of operationalization, the AHSI adopts a modified statist approach in which individual (local) and international security is viewed as being dependent upon national security. The project emphasizes a traditional levels-of-analysis approach, the importance of universalist provisions of human rights in international legal practice, and the role of civil society (Cilliers, 2004). At first glance, this appears to be just another statist attempt to subvert a radical reformulation of security. However, political choice is informed not only by morality, but also by circumstance. While the framework for human security is universal or global, the operationalization is contextualized. The choice of a traditional option combined with an acknowledgement of individuals and communities as active participants in matters of security mitigates the initial aversion to this framework. As Cilliers (2004: 11) states, ‘the security of the individual is no longer defined exclusively within the realm of states and as a consequence of national security’. The traditional causal link between state and human security is thus reconceptualized. The ‘special circumstances’ thesis furthermore strengthens the choice of framework. The fact that Africa’s security and developmental problems are largely linked to the lack of state institutionalization (weak states) does not serve as justification for replacing regime security with human security, but underlines the saliency of taking a fresh look at state security in the context of altered notions of sovereignty. After all, the peer-review mechanism of NEPAD is predicated upon the notion that governance requires African leaders to move away from archaic notions of state power. This is a major challenge, particularly in view of the continent’s rather 7
Other components include economic governance and management, corporate governance and socioeconomic governance.
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ambivalent relationship with civil society. NEPAD recognizes the importance of enhancing the role of women in social and economic development. Although gender training and the needs of women in relation to the rights of children are mentioned, and reference is made to the 2003 Draft Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women (AHSI, 2004), there is little evidence of real engagement with gender inequalities. Women’s concerns as victims of human rights abuse are added but not integrated, which thereby extends the notion that human security is essentially masculine in its inclusivity. So has the argument come full circle? Are we back to endorsing an unqualified reification of state security? Yes, if one ignores the contextualized responses of women to peace and conflict on the continent and the ways in which ‘gender’ is conceptualized in the context of African feminisms. Yes, if one overlooks the fact that gender is but one of many identities. I argue to the contrary. While the proposed framework for human security in Africa is not revolutionary, it is nevertheless significant in that it raises important points about the role of identity and difference and drives home the claim that contextualized responses to human security and contextualized feminist responses to insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
Feminist Alternatives: From Relativism to Relevance Liberal, Marxist and socialist feminist scholars oppose postmodern feminism since it denies the liberal promise of progress as well as the theories of patriarchy, racism and capitalism. Many feminists also argue that the scepticism of postmodernists about all forms of knowledge and their refusal to speak of women as an undifferentiated category encourage political fragmentation, cultural relativism and a weakening of the feminist emancipatory agenda (Tickner, 2002c). A case against an approach based upon all kinds of identity differences could thus be built on two arguments. First, basic human security needs are common to all people. A human security discourse that propagates interdimensional and multilevel linkages cannot technically be reserved for one group alone. What binds women from developed and developing world perspectives together is their common victimhood. The entrenchment of male domination, it is argued, is hardly unique to any one culture. Second, there is a danger that if the human security discourse focuses too much on variety across time, place and culture, it could produce multiple grand narratives, that is, new orthodoxies or universalisms condoning oppressive practices. A theory of human security for Africa runs the risk of being subverted in the same way as the study of development became a study of Third World difference impeding modernization.
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On the other hand, though, any unitary approach is bound to exclude certain groupings. Neither Africa as a continent nor African women as an identity group represent a monolithic category of analysis. The plurality of experiences, diverse levels of development, and tension between a globalized human rights culture and a multiplicity of ethno-religious cultures testify to the difficulty of formulating a blanket theory. Western feminists often treat Third World women as a uniformly oppressed group – by definition religious, family-oriented, conservative, illiterate and domestic – on whose behalf so-called enlightened feminists must speak. Some of the political agendas of feminists also clash outright with Koranic injunctions regarding the role of women in society and may, in fact, exacerbate African women’s insecurity through repressive forms of neopatriarchy (Tickner, 2002a). The extent of women’s insecurity on the African continent combined with the enormous challenges for the transformation of mainstream security discourse push to the foreground the question of whether Africans should develop their own ‘indigenous’ theory and practice of human security. The case for this is not simple. And, furthermore, should a so-called African approach to security be more or less gender-sensitive than approaches elsewhere given the pervasive impact of traditional cultural practices? Charges of postmodernist cultural relativism, on the one hand, and neouniversalism in the form of a plurality of totalizing discourses, on the other, represent two extremes on a continuum. The challenge, in my view, is to find an alternative between these two extremes – an approach that is culturally relevant but not relativistic or deterministic. Several feminists have suggested alternatives to the universalism–relativism dichotomy. Yuval-Davis (cited by Tickner, 2002a), for instance, proposes the practice of ‘transversal politics’, a kind of coalition politics or politics of mutual support. Sylvester (2002) proposes ‘empathetic cooperation’ as a feminist methodology for mitigating the closures presented by the essentialist tendencies of standpoint feminism and the relativism of an overemphasis on difference within feminist postmodernism. Between these epistemologies, borders are porous, so much so that ‘conversations’ could lead to cooperative or negotiated reinterpretations of knowledge and power. Fractured holism or synthesis of difference and disadvantage can be achieved through recognizing difference as a tool within a bigger process of emancipation. An awareness of diversity is essential to an explanation of how and why systems of domination originate and are kept in place, but this does not nullify the universal fact that forms of oppression do exist across space and time. As Tickner (2001: 136) warns, ‘if feminism becomes paralyzed by women not being able to speak for others, then it will only reinforce the legitimacy of men’s knowledge as universal knowledge’. Thus, by not absolutizing difference, but rather treating it as part of an emancipatory
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process, it becomes possible to expose ‘the norm against which some people seem different and to see the ways in which institutions construct and utilize difference to justify and enforce exclusions’ (Cock & Bernstein, 1998: 23). A contextualized human security discourse for Africa may then be feasible if it is used to expose, for instance, North–South inequalities and the North’s tendency to equate difference with being inferior. Group and/or individual differences are relational. Hence, differences are never absolute and overlap with sameness. Instead of seeing ontology and epistemology as separate (relativism) or equating ontology and epistemology (determinism), the focus should be on shifting from hierarchical to relational thinking. Marchand & Runyan (2000) highlight three interdependent dimensions of relational thinking that could facilitate conversations among diverse theoretical viewpoints. These include understanding the practices and structures of the world ‘out there’ (what we do); understanding the ideologies and paradigms we use to think about this world (how we think); and understanding the subjective agency of the self and the collective identities that we bring to this analysis (who we are). In a sense, one can describe relational thinking as a cobweb within which several hierarchies of power sit uncomfortably together. When applied to the domain of human security, relational thinking first allows one to move beyond abstraction, by introducing subjectivity (individual-level understandings) to the human security debate. Second, it sensitizes one to the specific gendered representations of human security. Lastly, it reveals the gendered power dimensions of human security and drives home the fact that inequalities in this area simultaneously reflect inequality in global power relations. In view of my qualified support of postmodernism, it is argued that it becomes imperative to recognize the risks associated with both approaches and to engage head on with the contradictions generated as a result of cooperation among discourses. As a result of such engagement, hybrid identities (Ling, 2002) are created. This mixing of subjectivities is demonstrated by the fact that feminist criticism against Western feminism comes from many circles: that is, not only from developing world, African or Asian women, but also from Western women who – on the basis of religion, race or class – feel excluded from the lily-white middle-class discourse. Third Wave feminism of the 1990s introduced issues of multiple oppressions into its analyses in order to get beyond essentialist generalizations about women. Three aspects characterize post-colonial feminism as a school of thought: namely, a critique of the Western colonialist discourse of exclusion through false universalism; an emphasis on rich but complex multiple identities as a result of cultural hybridity; and a cautious retention of the importance of a unified political identity (Hughes, 2002). Theoretically, this school comes closest to what the author terms an authentic synthesis of divergent stances.
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As hybrid manifestations, African feminisms8 acknowledge their connections with international feminism but demarcate a specific African feminism with specific needs and goals arising out of the concrete realities of African women’s lives. Their point of departure is to address oppressions simultaneously, and in that context gender is but one unit of analysis that sometimes has to subject itself to the universal bond between men and women against racism and imperialism. One of the most prominent African feminist alternatives is the notion of ‘womanism’, on the basis that this better accommodates African women’s reality and identity and the dynamics of empowerment. The concept emphasizes cultural contextualization, the centrality of the family and the importance of cooperation with men (Kolawole, 2002). Through their emphasis on contextualized universalism (an oxymoron, some would argue!), African feminisms have helped to clarify the link between strategic gender needs that are feminist in nature and practical or tactical women’s needs grounded in women’s everyday experiences. Women’s interests need not always coincide with gender interests. A feminist agenda that seeks to achieve such a complete shift of consciousness runs the risk of becoming counterproductive. In Africa, in particular, where women’s organizations are relatively strong and feminist movements relatively weak and where feminism is severely stereotyped, the scope of insecurity of women and the continent as a whole necessitates a more flexible interaction between these two causally related categories. In terms of the idea of feminist relational thinking outlined above, the notion of ‘locationality’ is useful in that it conceptualizes ‘who we are and where we come from’ in a material and nonmaterial sense as a matter of both culture, history and geography and values, ideology and spirituality. Relevance within society is the key to ensuring that gender theory gains legitimacy within security discourse. In practice, this means that women must be seen as subjects or agents of change rather than victims (Tickner, 2001, 2002a). In lieu of emphasizing shared ontologies as women or victims, one should rather talk of a shared political agenda seeking to promote protection and empowerment through a range of perspectives. To illustrate, African women’s responses to the aim of mainstreaming gender in the peace and security discourse in Africa reflect a multidimensional, but not necessarily a feminist approach to implementing AU commitments. Contrary to the general feminist aversion to a levels-ofanalysis approach, Juma (2003) suggests that women’s empowerment in Africa in terms of peace and security must focus on different levels. At the international level, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 must be adapted to the AU provisions and NEPAD principles of gender mainstreaming. At the continental level, the focus is essentially institutional, concentrating on efforts to integrate gender into the structures and processes of the Peace and 8
The journal Agenda has recently devoted three editions to the topic of African feminisms.
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Security Council, the African Standby Force and the Panel of the Wise. At the state level, a gender perspective on human security includes, among other things, the creation of a gender-sensitive justice system, attention to the specific health-related needs of women as a result of conflict, and increased participation by women in national decisionmaking structures and postconflict reconstruction.9
Conclusion Broad-school security thinking has offered only a partial understanding of human security through its neglect of women’s pervasive insecurity. By drawing on a feminist conceptualization of security in relational or collaborative terms, human security analysts can avoid complacency. One example of how human security scholars can mediate between human and state security is to integrate their critique of the silences in the security discourse with a reconstruction of the role of the state in promoting human security in an era of globalization. As such, a critical analysis entails problematizing or bringing the state back into the analysis of security and asking how the practices of the penetrated state have responded to global human security issues related to gender and other forms of identity. Reflectivist critique and conceptualization of human security by feminists and critical security analysts has done what no other theory of security (and IR) did before: it has made the discipline self-aware and forced – although with obliqueness at times – the discourse outside the confines of mere problem-solving and into the realm of engaging with power. The acid test for such endeavours is whether they can use critical insights into issues of domination and subordination to penetrate statist discourse, not to subvert the state but to imbue it with a sense of critical realism. Without the study of power and an understanding of the process of political construction, security becomes depoliticized and decontextualized. It is still too early to make definitive conclusions about the African human security dilemma, but it is hoped that culturally relevant versions of feminism will be less threatening to African men and that that will facilitate greater engagement of mainstream scholars on the continent with gender and women’s security issues. Getting the schools of security to confront the normative underpinnings of their scholarship may facilitate the closing of 9
A report of the AHSI revealed that of the eight countries (Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda) reviewed in terms of commitments to civil society engagement, only South Africa and – to a lesser extent – Uganda have translated their commitments into concrete actions (M’boge & Gbaydee Doe, 2004). Commitments to the status of women have been slow to realize. Cultural inertia, ignorance and poverty first need to be overcome.
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the gap between security theory and practice. In this way, security analysts would become more conscious of their role as agenda-setters and would begin to take responsibility for the practical implications of their perspectives. After all, the goal of inter-paradigm dialogue is not greater synergy between alternative and mainstream discourse, but rather to create a fractured whole that – when synthesized – is richer and more authentic than the sum of its constituent parts. Now that is theoretical progress. * Heidi Hudson is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Current research activities include a National Research Foundation-funded project on globalization and security in South Africa. Her most recent articles have focused on gender, the globalization of violence and privatized peacekeeping; contestation over HIV and AIDS, gender and security in post-apartheid South Africa; changing notions of political community; and the impact of globalization on foreign policymaking in Africa.
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