Feminist Geopolitics Revisited: Body Counts in Iraq*

*The author would like to thank Karen Dias and Jennifer Blecha for their editorial work and intellectual inspiration for this article as well as the speaker series that preceded it. The Department of Geography at the University of Minnesota generously supported a series of discussions on feminist geography that gave life to this article. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers, as well as to Bruce Braun, Alison Mountz, and Sara Koopman for their insights and comments on earlier versions of the talk and manuscript.

Abstract

Feminist geography and political geography still represent two solitudes within the discipline. While increased traffic between these different parts of the discipline points to a degree of intellectual engagement, there remains a paucity of feminist thought in political geography. This article examines recent scholarship on feminist political geography, with a view to applying its insights to the struggles to protest and end political violence. The concept of feminist geopolitics is employed and recast, both as a bridging concept between feminist and political geography and as an analytical approach that has political valence in the context of the war in Iraq. Feminist geopolitics is revisited in this article, but remains a critical analytic in relation to body counts and other casualties in war zones.

Key Words:

• feminist geography
• feminist geopolitics
• Iraq
• political geography
• violence

Notes

¹By liberal, I refer to the model of rights derived from seventeenth-century political thought that focuses on the rights accorded to individuals as well as the obligations individuals owe society and the state (Kofman 2003). Critics of liberalism question the scale at which rights are borne (i.e., that of the individual), and highlight group or communal rights (Isin and Wood 1999) or deconstruct political community as pre-given (Mouffe 1992).

²A more explicitly feminist geopolitical analysis of the torture, humiliation, and feminization of male prisoners of war by U.S. soldiers and private contractors in Abu Ghraib prison remains to be done (for a start, see Gregory 2004b).

³This line of argument might be refuted by questioning the authority to employ violence: Hussein mercilessly killed many Iraqis through his state apparatus, but the United States illegally (under international law) invaded another country and is performing the same unacceptable, fatal behavior without the authority of the state behind it.

⁴Interestingly, the project is an extension of a similar effort in Afghanistan, led by Professor Marc Herold who has produced the most comprehensive record of civilian deaths in the war there from October 2001 to the present. The Iraq Body Count is a nonprofit organization and database, available at http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ (last accessed October 2006).

⁵The Iraq Body Count project aims to promote public understanding, engagement, and support for the human dimension in wars by providing a reliable and up-to-date documentation of civilian casualties in the event of a U.S.-led war in 2003 in the country. The duty of recorder falls particularly heavily on the ordinary citizens of those states whose military forces cause the deaths. In the current crisis, this responsibility must be borne predominantly by citizens of the United States and the United Kingdom.

⁶The methods used to approximate this death toll are based on public health research techniques in developing countries where census data are often unavailable. Dr. Les Roberts of John Hopkins University and his colleagues (2004) employed a clustering technique whereby thirty-three neighborhoods were randomly selected, then the thirty households closest to a selected point were interviewed. Households were asked about births and deaths that had occurred since 1 January 2002. Their deductions about the number of deaths caused by the war were then made by comparing the aggregate death rates before and after 18 March 2003. A large range of deaths is offered, from 8,000 to 194,000, but the central and most likely value is 98,000. Not all of these deaths are attributable directly to the violence in Iraq, but roughly 60 percent is said to be the result of the violence. Fallujah was originally selected as one of the clusters, but due to disproportionate fighting and death in that city, the researchers omitted it from their analysis. This study is noteworthy for the unusual scrutiny of academic methods employed.

⁷See http://icasualties.org/oif/ for Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, but also http://www.centcom.mil/ for the US Central Command site and http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/index.html for CNN's coverage. The Iraq Coalition Casualty Count maintains that its site is superior to that of the U. S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, as well as CNN's site with photos. Few of these sites are straightforward in their political message. Some are outraged at the deaths, others are informational, yet others are clearly antiwar. On 20 November 2004, the number of U.S. military deaths recorded was 1,221, as counted by the Iraq Coalition Casuality Count, with several more deaths among other nationalities.

⁸I refer here to the deaths of U.S. and British soldiers in Iraq.

*The author would like to thank Karen Dias and Jennifer Blecha for their editorial work and intellectual inspiration for this article as well as the speaker series that preceded it. The Department of Geography at the University of Minnesota generously supported a series of discussions on feminist geography that gave life to this article. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers, as well as to Bruce Braun, Alison Mountz, and Sara Koopman for their insights and comments on earlier versions of the talk and manuscript.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Hyndman

Associate Professor of Geography