Explaining Nationalist Violence

Abstract. Nationalism often involves risky and violent action. This has led many scholars to believe that its roots must be irrational. This attribution is ambiguous, however, because it fails to distinguish between two quite different meanings of the term ‘irrational’. In principle, nationalism can emanate either from social or from individual irrationality. Only the latter kind of irrationality is theoretically provocative, however. The hallmark of rational individual action lies in its instrumentality. Whereas many aspects of nationalism have been analysed successfully using instrumental behavioral assumptions, nationalist violence has been a significant exception. This article offers a framework for the explanation of nationalist violence in instrumental terms. It concludes by suggesting that the temptation to view nationalism as an outcome of individual irrationality should be resisted.     

Religious Nationalism and Collective Violence

Abstract. The objective of this essay is to trace relations between religion and nationalism leading to collective violence. One type of interaction involves nationalist movements seeking political dominance for movements lacking legal authority. They often resort to clandestine violence, i.e. terrorism. Although traditional religions have been reluctant to endorse such violence, when ensorsement is given it may lead to especially intense outbreaks. Much more extensive violence arises from ‘patriotism’ inculcated by established states. Religious establishments aligned with the status quo have usually found it easier to condone such use of force. Regardless of the relations between religion and nationalism in initiating violence, a major question is whether moral tenets of traditional religious bodies ultimately act as curbs on escalating violence.     

Violence against women in Ethiopia

Investigating the experience of violence against women and exploring women's coping strategies is a crucial component of re-tailoring the provision of services for victims/survivors. This article explores violence against women in the context of culture, theory of fear of violence and literature on spaces perceived to be ‘safe’ or ‘dangerous’ by women victims/survivors of violence in Ethiopia. To collect the relevant data, we conducted 14 semi-structured interviews with Ethiopian women who are victims/survivors of violence and three interviews with gender experts in Ethiopia. Our group of women suffer in ‘silence’ and confide only in friends and relatives. They did not resort to institutional support due to lack of awareness and general societal disapproval of such measures. This contrasts with claims by experts that the needs of these women are addressed using an institutional approach. Culture, migration status and lack of negotiating power in places of work are key factors when considering violence. The majority of the respondents in this study occupy both public and private spaces such as bars and homes and have experienced violence in those spaces. The social relations and subsequent offences they endured do not make spaces such as these safe. Education of both sexes, creation of awareness, sustainable resource allocation to support victims/survivors, ratification of the Maputo protocol and effective law enforcement institutions are some of the practical strategies we propose to mitigate the incidence of violence in Ethiopia.     

Rethinking Law and Violence: The Domestic Violence (Prevention) Bill in India, 2002

This essay focuses on the controversy generated by recent proposed legislation on domestic violence in India. An alternative draft bill on domestic violence prepared by the feminist legal NGO, the Lawyers’ Collective, and supported by women's groups nationally, includes a demand that victims of domestic violence (usually wives) be permitted by law to continue to occupy the domestic home, a demand that the Government bill has refused to include. This demand is theoretically informed by a politics of space. Bodies and space are linked, to the extent that each is an abstraction without the concept of the other to ground it. The feminist legal proposal challenges property‐as‐absolute‐(male) ownership by conceptualising the household as, instead, shared domestic space. The proposal does not dissimulate common sense – it is conscious of being radical, in part at least because it demystifies the ‘domestic’ as an ideological construct and offers it instead realistically and minimally as simply an alternative to destitution. The recognition that there are no support structures for dependant women outside the family (such as, for example, state‐sponsored welfare institutions), so that destitution can be both sudden and real for women of any class and circumstances, has led to the conceptualisation of a law that formulates a right to shared space as one that makes no claim to shared ownership – while at the same time questioning the other's absolute property right. Despite the limited nature of the claim it makes, this proposal has been viewed as threatening by Indian law‐makers.     

East Timorese Women Challenge Domestic Violence

Timor-Leste's struggle for independence has won it high international profile. Yet there is little known internationally about the role women played in the resistance movement and how independence has affected them. Has democratisation brought women greater freedom and rights? This article argues that some East Timorese women benefited from the construction of a new democratic state by mobilising and unifying in the political space created post-1999. East Timorese women's NGOs allied with international organisations and NGOs to form a campaign against domestic violence. This article takes a constructivist approach, analysing how international norms of women's rights and gender equality have: (1) emerged, (2) reached a tipping point, (3) cascaded and (4) been internalised in a post-conflict, democratising context.     

Senseless Violence: Liminality and Intertwining

The claim of this article is that the perpetrators of violence are “liminal” figures, being inside and yet outside of the world in which they act. It is this liminality, this existing on the border, that makes their violence senseless. Because of it, their actions can be understood in terms neither of the actual reality of their victims nor of the imagined reality that the perpetrators placed them in. Sense, here, fails, for the lack of a common frame. Liminality exists in a number of forms: economic, religious, and political—each with its potential for violence. What distinguishes political liminality is the scale of its violence. As Carl Schmitt shows, the liminal sovereign or ruler is both inside and outside the state, employing its means for violence even as he is unconstrained by its laws. I contend that this sovereign exists in a continuum with the practitioners of terrorist violence, who are also liminal figures. To analyze this liminality, I explore the intertwining between the self and the world that sets up the common frame that gives sense to actions. I then examine the causes of its breakdown.     

Australian Federalism and Domestic Violence Policy-Making

The influence of state architecture on gender policy and politics is an emergent strand of feminist research. This paper contributes to this research by undertaking a detailed case study of one specific gender policy area – domestic violence policy – in old federation Australia. Drawing on the experiences of the past decade, it confirms earlier research findings that demonstrate that under certain conditions, federal structures can influence the development of gender policy in positive ways, such as providing opportunities for ‘venue shopping’ and policy innovation. The paper engages, too, with recent research on Australian federalism and challenges the consensus about the centralised nature of the Australian federal system by demonstrating that in the area of gender policy, states and territories are more than just the implementation arms of the Commonwealth government. Sub-national governments continue to play an important and autonomous role in policy relating to women and therefore remain central sites for advancing gender equality.