Publication Cover
Nationalities Papers
The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity
Volume 34, 2006 - Issue 3
238
Views
4
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Original Articles

Gendered realities of life in post-conflict Kosovo: Addressing the hegemonic manFootnote*

Pages 289-304 | Published online: 20 Nov 2006
 

Notes

* I would like to thank Terrell Carver, Cynthia Enloe, Marysia Zalewski, Elissa Helms, Sasha Milicevic, Paul Higate, Rachel Ward, Nicola Pratt, and members of the audience at the Hegemonic Masculinities conference held in Manchester in April 2005 for comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper.

1. Reports on gendered roles and masculinity have been collected from the British Red Cross, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), CARE, Children's Aid Direct, MSF, Oxfam, Save the Children, and UNICEF on various research visits to Kosovo between March 2000 and July 2004.

2. The material gathered for my forthcoming monograph on gendered realities in Kosovo, Unanswered Calls from Kosovo (London: Sage, 2006).

3. For examples of the links between manhood and nationhood and more generally on gendered roles in society see C. O'Kelly and L. Carney, Men and Women in Society (London: Wadsworth, 1998); R. Crooks, Our Sexuality (London: Thomson Learning, 2005); S. Tolleson Rinehart, Gender, Consciousness and Politics (London: Routledge, 1992).

4. See, for example, M. Kuus, “European Integration in Identity Narratives in Estonia: A Quest for Security,” Journal for Peace Research, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2002, pp. 91–108; P. Drulak, ed., National and European Identities in EU Enlargement: Views from Central and Eastern Europe (Prague: Institute for International Relations, 2001).

5. J. True, Gender, Globalization, and Postsocialism: The Czech Republic after Communism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), pp. 6–15.

6. See T. Kaplan, “Female Consciousness and Collective Action,” Signs, Vol. 7, 1982, pp. 545–566; M. Kennedy, C. Lubelska, and V. Walsh, Making Connections: Women's Studies, Women's Movements, Women's Lives (London: Taylor & Francis, 1992); and E. Salas, “the Soldadera in the Mexican Revolution: War and Men's Illusions,” in H. Folwer-Salamini and M. K. Vaughn, eds, Women of the Mexican Countryside (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994), pp. 93–105.

7. See W. Brown, Manhood and Politics: A Feminist Reading of Political Theory (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988); C. Mackinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1989); and E. N. Glenn, “The Race and Gender Construction of Citizenship: From Categorical Exclusion to Stratified Citizenship,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington, August 1995.

8. This point is expertly covered by T. Carver, “Gender,” in R. Bellamy and A. Mason, eds, Political Theory and the Concept of Politics (London: Sage, 2002), pp. 169–181.

9. It should be pointed out that, although these authors do focus on men, they do not say so directly, but implicitly it could be argued that men's reality is the only reality. Although there is analysis of “men's worlds,” in the works mentioned there is no explicit recognition of the gendered workings of power.

10. J. Nagel, Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 51. For support see for example, Di Stefano, Configurations of Masculinity: A Feminist Perspective on Modern Political Theory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); J. B. Elshtain, Mediations on Modern Political Thought: Masculine/Feminine Themes from Luther to Ardent (London: Praeger, 1986); J. Hanmer, M. Hester, L. Kelly, and J. Radford, eds, Women, Violence and Male Power: Feminist Activism, Research and Practice (Buckingham, England: Open University Press, 1996); J. Hanmer, J. Radford, and E. Stanko, eds, Women, Policing and Male Violence: International Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1989); M. Zalewaski and J. Parpart, eds, The “Man” Question in International Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998); and C. Hooper, Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations and Gender Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

11. I think the best coverage of this comes from M. Kimmel, The Politics of Manhood (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996).

12. See J. Messerschmidt, Masculinities and Crime (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993).

13. True, Gender, Globalization, and Postsocialism, p. 46.

14. C. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 45.

15. Enloe continues this line of inquiry throughout her work and most particularly in The Curious Feminist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004) when discussing the positioning of women and men in Afghanistan and Iraq.

16. Z. Norkus, “Max Weber on Nations and Nationalism,” Canadian Journal of Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2004, pp. 261–263.

17. M. Layoun, “Telling Spaces: Palestinian Women and the Engendering of National Narratives,” in A. Parker, M. Russo, D. Sommer, and P. Yaeger, eds, Nationalisms and Sexualities (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 410–411.

18. T. Carver, “Gender,” in R. Bellamy and A. Mason, eds, Political Theory and the Concept of Politics (London: Sage, 2002), p. 296.

19. D. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 223.

20. R. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 68.

21. Ibid., pp. 68–71.

22. Ibid., p. 69.

23. Ibid., p. 70.

24. Ibid., p. 82.

25. See, for example, M. Adams, The Great Adventure: Male Desire and the Coming of World War I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); J. Gardiner, ed., Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); M. Kimmel, The Gendered Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); and S. Whitehead, Men and Masculinities: Key Themes and New Directions (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 2002).

26. To further reinforce this point see Enloe The Curious Feminist (Berkley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 86–88; J. Nagel, American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 251; M. Green, The Adventurous Male: Chapters in the History of the White Male Min (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), pp. 101–113; and also G. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 181.

27. P. Theroux, Sunrise with Seamonsters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985), p. 309.

28. Hooper, Manly States, pp. 20, 45, 87; supported by the much earlier work by M. Gerzon, A Choice of Heroes: The Changing Faces of American Manhood (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982), p. 5.

29. Again I am particularly drawing from T. Carver, Gender Is Not a Synonym for Women (London: Lynne Rienner, 1996); Bederman, Manliness and Civilization; and Connell, Masculinities.

30. O. Sasson-Levy, “Constructing Identities at the Margins,” Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 3, 2002, pp. 368–369.

31. Nagel, American Indian Ethnic Renewal, p. 252.

32. G. Mosse, Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 7.

33. Ibid., pp. 11, 104, 201.

34. See Connell, Masculinities; and J. Grant and P. Tancred, “A Feminist Perspective on State Bureaucracy,” in A. J. Mills and P. Tancred, eds, Gendering Organizational Analysis (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992).

35. Although this is still a controversial point, made originally by Nagel in American Indian Ethnic Renewal and responded to by many, it has yet, in my view, to be affectively argued against.

36. All names of interviewees have been changed. This interview took place in Pejë in April 2001.

37. Besnik worked as a translator for the OSCE and it was during a trip to Podujevo, his home town, that this discussion was recorded in April 2001.

38. This account comes from the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, UNMIK Police Mission Headquarters (MHQ) Pristina, 12 August 2001.

39. Interview, June 2001.

40. Yuval-Davis and Anthias's points are: As biological producers of members of ethnic collectivities; As reproducers of the normative boundaries of ethnic/national groups [by enacting proper feminine behaviour]; As participating centrally in the ideological reproduction of the collectivity and as transmitters of its culture; As signifiers of ethnic/national differences; and as participants in national, economic, political and military struggles. For their full comments see N. Yuval-Davis and F. Anthias, Women-Nation-State (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 7–8.

41. R. Ward, “It's Not Just Tea and Buns: Women and Pro-Union Politics in Northern Ireland,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol. 6, No. 4, 2004, pp. 494–506.

42. Ibid., p. 497.

43. Ibid., p. 501. Although Ward is speaking specifically of activities that took place in Northern Ireland, similar activities occurred in the Kosovar case.

44. Further details and evidence of these marches in and around Pristina can be found in J. Munn, “Political Realism and the Story of Kosovo/Kosovo: A Merger of Two New Taylorian Solitudes,” International Journal, Vol. 59, No. 1, 2003, pp. 303–325.

46. For experiences in other national contexts see O. Sasson-Levy, “Constructing Identities at the Margins,” Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 3, 2002, pp. 357–383; and also J. Karlin “The Gender of Nationalism: Competing Masculinities in Meiji Japan,” Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2002, pp. 41–47; T. Mayer, “From Zero to Hero: Masculinity in Jewish Nationalism,” in T. Mayer, ed., Gender Ironies of Nationalism (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 283–308.

47. These figures are available at the UNMIK HQ and copies are held at UNMIK Police headquarters in Pristina. UNMIK Police in cooperation with the OSCE instituted a police academy (the Kosovo Police Service School) in 1999, taking its first students in October 1999.

48. Information was valid as of July 2004 and obtained from the International Civilian Police (CIVPOL) office of the UNMIK Police HQ, Pristina.

49. Full analysis on these debates can be found in J. Munn, “Intervention and Collective Justice in the Post-Westphalian System,” in R. Norman and A. Moseley, eds, Human Rights and Military Intervention (Basingstoke, England: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 185–210.

50. Nagel, Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality, p. 168.

51. Ibid., p. 193.

52. Yuval-Davis and Anthias, Women-Nation-State.

53. Ibid. Also Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases.

54. N. Yuval-Davis, “Gender and Nation,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 16, No. 4, 1993, p. 627.

55. Abbreviated and abridged from Othello (IV. ii. 84–92).

56. Mosse, Image of Man, p. 98.

57. Ibid., p. 101.

58. Ibid., p. 109.

59. J. Mertus, “Women in the Service of National Identity,” Hastings Women's Law Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1994, p. 5.

60. S. Brownmiller, “Making Female Bodies the Battlefield,” in A. Stiglmayer, ed., Mass Rape: The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), p. 181.

61. M. Morris, “By Force of Arms: Rape, War, and Military Culture,” Duke Law Journal, Vol. 45, 1994, p. 651.

62. J. Mertus, Internal Displacement in Kosovo: The Impact of Women and Children: A Field Report Assessing the Emergency and Making Recommendations on an Effective Humanitarian Response (New York: Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, 1998).

63. J. El-Bushra and E. P. Lopes, “The Gender of Armed Conflict,” Development and Conflict: The Gender Dimensions (Oxford: Oxfam, 2004).

64. OSCE Mission in Kosovo, Centres for Social Work in Kosovo, report, 20 February 2003, <http://www.osce.org/kosovo>.

65. Interview in Pristina with members of both the Mother Theresa Society and the OSCE in June 2003.

66. Interview in Pristina with a member of the Mother Theresa Society in June 2003.

67. Same interviewee within the Mother Theresa Society in June 2003.

68. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases, 1990, p. 56.

69. Ibid. For a more in-depth analysis on feminist curiosity when it comes to all things militarised and the impact these attitudes with culture have on women (and discussed at a lesser degree on men) see Enloe, The Curious Feminist, pp. 14, 69, 102, 113, 157.

70. See E. Anderson, In the Game: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005)

71. G. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 34.

72. Interview in Pristina in June 2004.

73. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, pp. 127–128.

74. See C. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases; Hooper, Manly States; and Mayer, “From Zero to Hero,” for lengthy discussion and examples of more ethnographic and illustrative points.

75. This and other similar terms of hatred could be seen on houses across Kosovo during and directly following the conflict. “Shiptar” is a term that Albanians have used (sometimes to distinguish between Albanians in Albania and those living outside in other territories); however, it was a form of verbal abuse from Serbs.

76. This interview took place following an emotively charged memorial service for a murdered priest-monk near Klina. Shortly after this interview members of the local community were arrested on charges of aiding the rape of eight Albanian women in 1999 and eight months later convicted of these crimes as well as the murder of 13 Albanian orphaned children, the youngest of which was only seven months old.

77. Alluding to Enloe's Curious Feminist.

78. Interview in June 2001 held in the University of Pristina, emphasis added.

79. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases, p. 64.

80. Ibid., p. 132.

Log in via your institution

Log in to Taylor & Francis Online

There are no offers available at the current time.

Related Research

People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.

Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.

Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.