The material basis of gender-based violence and its circuits

Our Professor in Global Politics Denisa Kostovicova, together with Dr Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, Research Fellow in Civil Society and Conflict Research Group in the LSE Department of International Development, and Dr Marsha Henry, Senior Visiting Fellow in the LSE Department of Gender Studies, have co-authored a chapter in the newly-published book, War Economy: Gendered Circuits of Violence and Capital, edited by Aida A Hozić and Jacqui True.

War Economy: Gendered Circuits of Violence and Capital examines the war economy from feminist perspectives, bringing fresh thinking in the context of heightened geopolitical tensions. It challenges the common understanding of war economy as a state‑driven, top‑down project necessitated by a conflictual international order. It introduces the concept of gendered circuits of violence – different types of violence across space and time – to conceptually and empirically link crises and wars through flows of capital, bodies, weapons, and militarised technologies. It deals with real‑world conflicts, including in Gaza and Russia/Ukraine as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iran, Liberia, and Mexico. With increasing calls for the development of a war economy, especially in Europe, and broad acceptance that the global political economy is rapidly being primed for war, this book’s feminist political economy analysis and alternatives are vital and urgent.

Bringing into dialogue the continuum of violence and circuits of violence perspectives, the chapter co-authored by Professor Kostovicova, Dr Bojicic-Dzelilovic, and Dr Henry provides a structural explanation of post-conflict gender-based violence against women.

Abstract

"Homing in on the political economy of post-conflict transition, [this chapter] argues that the intersections between local and global dynamics and between formal and informal actors in post-conflict society account for a material basis of enduring violence against women. This argument challenges the existing scholarship and questions the conceptual separation of the global and local and of the formal and informal processes of post-war political and economic transition and of their protagonists. The analysis of femicide and other forms of gender-based violence against women in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina demonstrates how women’s marginalised socio-economic position increases their vulnerability to male dominance and violence, while attesting to the gendered nature of the post-war politico-economic transitions. This argument is examined empirically with reference to the cumulative effects of the interrelated dynamics of economic governance failures, neoliberal transition, informality and criminal economy in the aftermath of war."