Cultural Contestation: Heritage, Ethnicity and the Role of Government, 2018
The chapter draws on my past research on the gender dynamics of a 27- year ethnically constructed... more The chapter draws on my past research on the gender dynamics of a 27- year ethnically constructed armed conflict in South-east region of Bangladesh, the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). This contribution shifts the original analysis to the role Bangladeshi government plays in identity construction leading to conflict between the Bengalese and the Jummos. I argue that exclusive expressions of Bengali culture leads to violent conflict, whilst the South Asian government plays a misogynist role in the process, furthering violence even in the post-accord situation in the CHT. The chapter analyses the role of different governments in the construction of the conflict between the Bengali and Jumma people in a supposedly secular state. By focusing on the process of state-assimilation of people from ethnic background other than Bengalese, I demonstrate that the role of different governments in resolving the age-old conflict over cultural heritage and ethnicity in Bangladesh is highly misogynist and cynical. Instead of appreciating the cultural contestations and various national identities in the state, the governments in Bangladesh, I argue, had taken disparaging mechanism to heritage of other ethnicities which continued up until today, creating spheres for nationalist conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts that needs a situated resolution.
Much of the discussion on the role of governments in the processes of contestations in the CHT has so far been over-generalized. Humayun Azad (2000), as one of few, has suggested that when we analyse the ongoing conflict in the CHT we ought to keep all intersectional events, contestations, and betrayals of politicians and governments aiding civic-nationalist politics in mind. Yet, the stress of his analysis was on civic nationalism. He paid little attention to the heritage contestation, and the role that the Bangladeshi government played in shaping the symbolic landscape. In this chapter, I revisit the conflict and examine the role of Bangladeshi government in identity construction and the ensuing cultural contestation. I show, in addition to the gendered phenomenon of nationalism, how ‘culture’ and heritage, as part of a symbolic landscape to which the Bengali and Jumma communities give meanings through historical narratives, give rise to heavy forms of contestation: namely widespread violence in the CHT.
A nation’s past and its socio-political and historical context are important for understanding ho... more A nation’s past and its socio-political and historical context are important for understanding how nations get involved in conflict, how ‘others’ are constructed within a nation-state, and how national struggles and armed conflict become gendered in the post-colonial situation in the global south. This paper includes a discussion of the socio-political and historical context, and the history of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Drawing on the intersectional and post-structuralist theoretical framework discussed in my thesis, I aim to provide a contextual discussion here in which the discursive ways in which the rooting of armed conflict in the CHT was made possible become apparent. This paper is a chapter in progress for my thesis, entitled 'gender and armed conflict: the case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh', and I do not claim the accuracy of my analysis.
A book review of Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire, and Maria Tamboukou (Eds.): Doing Narrative Resea... more A book review of Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire, and Maria Tamboukou (Eds.): Doing Narrative Research. Los Angeles / London / New Delhi / Singapore / Washington DC: Sage 2013. 270 pp. Paperback GBP 27.99, ISBN 9781446252666 In DIEGESIS 3.1 (2014)
This is a study of the gendered aspects of armed conflict. It explores gender relations between m... more This is a study of the gendered aspects of armed conflict. It explores gender relations between men and women and demonstrates how different groups of women and men experience, participate in and respond to ethnically-constructed armed conflict in southeast Bangladesh. It examines in which ways and to what extent their experiences in the conflict have been gendered. It is also a narrative about people’s longing to belong, and an attempt to understand the gendered embodiments of nationalism in a post-colonial location in the global south, Bangladesh.
The concepts of gender and ethnicity are integral to much feminist research in the field of conflict and peace studies, which has looked at the transformations of conflict, interrogating the power relations between women and men, and addressed, more recently, the added symbolic meaning and representation of gendered violence in conflict. However, studies have focused either on the ‘material reality’ or on the symbolic aspects of gender and ethnicity, and have rarely focused on the situated and contested aspects of gender relations between women and men in historically specific armed conflict. This thesis moves beyond a structural assessment of conflict and avoids a gender versus culture analysis; its aim is to develop a more nuanced understanding of the lived experiences of different groups of women and men in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). The research offers a three-level investigation: it looks at whether and how structural inequalities contribute to the making of the armed conflict and gendered violence; it provides a discursive analysis of narratives of sexual violence against women; and it offers an intersectional analysis of the lived experiences of women and men in the nationalist movement and armed conflict. The study considers the spatial, material, relational and changeable aspects of the nationalist movement and armed conflict to reveal that the experiences of different groups of women and men have been gendered in heterogeneous ways.
The research demonstrates that the conflict in the CHT is a highly gendered phenomenon, yet ‘situated’ so that women and men, and Bengali and Jumma people, experience the conflict in different ways. Economic exploitation and state assimilation of the Jumma people are obvious factors in the making of the conflict; however, the phenomena of gendered violence and the subjectivity of Jumma women to sexual violence during and after the armed conflict are not merely the effects of male supremacy or the international politics of militarisation. What the Jumma women experience in the conflict is much more complex. Their lived experiences are informed by their ethnicity, nationality, culture and gender. Likewise, the responses of the Jummos and civilian Bengalese are informed by: their political goals, collective sentiment and sense of belonging; nationalist ideologies, political values and practices; a longing to demonstrate a difference and a culturally distinctive identity; performing chosen and appropriate roles; and the desire and ability to negotiate with shifting lifestyles, embodying their experience of the material situation, and the repetitions of daily life in a changing society. It is the contestations of all these factors, which illustrate the complexity of the phenomenon of gendered violence and the gendered aspects of the conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
This study recognises that the state, as a momentous social actor, contributes to the making of the nationalist projects and ensuing conflict with gendered violence. But the women and men living the conflict are agents in their own lives, and never victims per se. The findings are based on my ethnographic fieldwork, narrative interviews with Jumma women and men, semi-structured interviews with Bengali women, men, mediators and actors, and library research on the topic. Meanings in this research are co-constructed between me as a feminist researcher and my interviewees, and do not necessarily reflect any general ‘truths’.
This case draws on the methodology of a doctoral research that examines the gendered aspects of t... more This case draws on the methodology of a doctoral research that examines the gendered aspects of the ethnically constructed armed conflict in southeast Bangladesh and explores the lived gendered experiences of indigenous women and men. Three key aspects of the research methodology are discussed in this paper. I emphasise that intersectionality and narrative methodology are most helpful in doing empirical research on ethnically constructed conflict, and I explain how participants were engaged by the use of a critical anti-oppressive approach. The paper addresses questions such as which methodology is appropriate for conducting research on gendered aspects of ethno-nationalist conflict, and what are the ethical considerations and challenges for carrying out research on other cultures in a situation involving conflict.
Gender is not a simple concept and feminists have theorised the concept of gender from various st... more Gender is not a simple concept and feminists have theorised the concept of gender from various stand points. Whilst some argued that gender is a form of power, others have argued that ‘it is a complex phenomenon’. In most studies on gender relations between women and men researchers tend to take on either material or symbolic feminist approach to gender. Whilst structural and material feminists suggest that gender should be seen as a system of power and in relation to male domination and economic constructions of gender that results in women’s subordinate position, discursive feminists looked at cultural and social constructions of gender and suggest that gender is constructed through and by discourse within which the network of power relations operates. This paper argues for an approach which allows us for analysing gender at a level that neither dismisses the arguments that found in the structural and material feminism, nor place the discursive and cultural approaches to gender at the centre. I suggest that we consider the ontological basis of gender, and we should interrogate the differences in explanations between structural and discursive feminism. We need an approach that is informed by both materialist and discursive feminist scholarships, but which does not ‘put one over the other’ (Anthias, 2001:378). I argue, with Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis (2002), that we need to use a ‘situated’ feminist standpoint which would allow us to grasp the specific social, political and economic processes involved in each historical instance as important for any investigation on gender and social divisions. Further, I see, as Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis (1983), that an intersectional approach to gender is an appropriate tool for understanding the concept of gender.
I discuss four specific areas relating to the constructions of gendered relations: a) the political construction of gender; b) the cultural and social construction of gender; c) multiplicity and locality of gender relations; and d) intersectionality and relations of gender with other social categories and inequalities. Gender and gendered identities are discussed as separate notions. First, I discuss the structural, radical and material conceptualisations of gender, and I review the ways that I use the material notion of gender in my work. Second, I discuss the problems associated with radical and structural theorisations of gender. Third, I discuss deconstructive theorisations of gender and move on to explain my own understanding to the concept of the gender, in which I stress that gender should be recognised as a social category, and in relation to how it interweaves with other social categories. Fourth, I give a clarification of what I mean by intersectionality and how my approach to intersectionality is different than that found in the structural and radical feminism. In doing so, this paper aims to provide a theoretical and methodological framework for conceptualising gender as a social category.
This paper draws on the methodology of my doctoral research that looked into the gendered aspects... more This paper draws on the methodology of my doctoral research that looked into the gendered aspects of the conflict in southeast Bangladesh and explored the gender specific implications of violence as well as examining the gendered embodiments of the Jumma nationalist project. In this paper, I endeavour to introduce my analytical approach that challenges the idea of objectivity, stresses the need for the researcher’s engagement with the research topic and participants, and asserts that the researcher’s subjective position has facilitated the research process, allowing me to access data on gendered violence in the conflict zone. I argue further that for an understanding of gendered aspects of armed conflict and indigenous women’s subjectivity in gendered violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, we need to employ knowledge of both radical and deconstructive feminism. In doing so, I stress on the one hand the need for a continuous redrawing and redesigning of methodological approaches in the social sciences; and on the other I emphasise the need for a social science research ‘with a heart and emotions as well as a mind’ (Stanley, 2003:4).
"There has been much academic work that demonstrates the complex links between gender, nation, st... more "There has been much academic work that demonstrates the complex links between gender, nation, state, armed conflict and violence. In her recent book, “The Body of War”, Zarkov (2007) explored the ways in which women were subjected to the ethno-nationalist violence in former Yugoslavia and the ways media representation of female and male bodies were gendered. Mukherjee (2008), in her article, “gendered embodiments: mapping the body-politic of the raped woman and the nation of Bangladesh” has shown that violence in Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 was inscribed upon the bodies of women. Whilst men soldiers were fighting at the frontier for the sake of the motherhood; their mothers, daughters and sisters left at military camps and/or at so called ‘home’ were subjected to widespread reproductive and sexual violence by the Pak-Military soldiers. Furthermore, feminist scholarship such as Cockburn (2004, 2001), Enloe (1993), Giles and Hyndman (2004),Hyndman (2008), Korac (2006, 2003, 1998) and Moser and Clark et al.(2001) have articulated that there is a notion to see political violence and armed conflict as “male domains, executed by men, whether as armed forces, guerrilla groups, paramilitaries or peace-keeping forces” (Enloe 1993 cited in Moser and Clark, 2001:3) and that there is a tendency to see women as simply victims in the armed conflict and war. However, this paper seeks to analyse the forms of gendered violence in the armed conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh and explore the violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts is highly gendered yet indigenous women in the conflict prone CHT cannot be seen as victims only.
The paper is an extract from the recently submitted doctoral thesis entitled 'Gender and armed conflict: the case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh’. Addressing the extreme human rights violation of indigenous women and men in the CHT, and the process of ethnic cleansing and ongoing militarised violence against the Jumma peoples during and after the armed conflict in the CHT, the thesis explores the gendered aspects of the armed conflict in the South-east Bangladesh. It examines the ways in which the armed conflict in the CHT has become gendered. In this paper, I, however, intend to limit the discussion to a brief exploration of the forms of gendered violence. I argue, herein, that although the forms of violence and the historical context of the armed conflict in the CHT are different than other armed conflicts and wars, violence during and after the conflict in the CHT has gender specific implications. The original chapter from which this paper has been derived provides a discussion on and comparisons to other war violence which is not within the scope of this paper.
"
Cultural Contestation: Heritage, Ethnicity and the Role of Government, 2018
The chapter draws on my past research on the gender dynamics of a 27- year ethnically constructed... more The chapter draws on my past research on the gender dynamics of a 27- year ethnically constructed armed conflict in South-east region of Bangladesh, the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). This contribution shifts the original analysis to the role Bangladeshi government plays in identity construction leading to conflict between the Bengalese and the Jummos. I argue that exclusive expressions of Bengali culture leads to violent conflict, whilst the South Asian government plays a misogynist role in the process, furthering violence even in the post-accord situation in the CHT. The chapter analyses the role of different governments in the construction of the conflict between the Bengali and Jumma people in a supposedly secular state. By focusing on the process of state-assimilation of people from ethnic background other than Bengalese, I demonstrate that the role of different governments in resolving the age-old conflict over cultural heritage and ethnicity in Bangladesh is highly misogynist and cynical. Instead of appreciating the cultural contestations and various national identities in the state, the governments in Bangladesh, I argue, had taken disparaging mechanism to heritage of other ethnicities which continued up until today, creating spheres for nationalist conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts that needs a situated resolution.
Much of the discussion on the role of governments in the processes of contestations in the CHT has so far been over-generalized. Humayun Azad (2000), as one of few, has suggested that when we analyse the ongoing conflict in the CHT we ought to keep all intersectional events, contestations, and betrayals of politicians and governments aiding civic-nationalist politics in mind. Yet, the stress of his analysis was on civic nationalism. He paid little attention to the heritage contestation, and the role that the Bangladeshi government played in shaping the symbolic landscape. In this chapter, I revisit the conflict and examine the role of Bangladeshi government in identity construction and the ensuing cultural contestation. I show, in addition to the gendered phenomenon of nationalism, how ‘culture’ and heritage, as part of a symbolic landscape to which the Bengali and Jumma communities give meanings through historical narratives, give rise to heavy forms of contestation: namely widespread violence in the CHT.
A nation’s past and its socio-political and historical context are important for understanding ho... more A nation’s past and its socio-political and historical context are important for understanding how nations get involved in conflict, how ‘others’ are constructed within a nation-state, and how national struggles and armed conflict become gendered in the post-colonial situation in the global south. This paper includes a discussion of the socio-political and historical context, and the history of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Drawing on the intersectional and post-structuralist theoretical framework discussed in my thesis, I aim to provide a contextual discussion here in which the discursive ways in which the rooting of armed conflict in the CHT was made possible become apparent. This paper is a chapter in progress for my thesis, entitled 'gender and armed conflict: the case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh', and I do not claim the accuracy of my analysis.
A book review of Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire, and Maria Tamboukou (Eds.): Doing Narrative Resea... more A book review of Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire, and Maria Tamboukou (Eds.): Doing Narrative Research. Los Angeles / London / New Delhi / Singapore / Washington DC: Sage 2013. 270 pp. Paperback GBP 27.99, ISBN 9781446252666 In DIEGESIS 3.1 (2014)
This is a study of the gendered aspects of armed conflict. It explores gender relations between m... more This is a study of the gendered aspects of armed conflict. It explores gender relations between men and women and demonstrates how different groups of women and men experience, participate in and respond to ethnically-constructed armed conflict in southeast Bangladesh. It examines in which ways and to what extent their experiences in the conflict have been gendered. It is also a narrative about people’s longing to belong, and an attempt to understand the gendered embodiments of nationalism in a post-colonial location in the global south, Bangladesh.
The concepts of gender and ethnicity are integral to much feminist research in the field of conflict and peace studies, which has looked at the transformations of conflict, interrogating the power relations between women and men, and addressed, more recently, the added symbolic meaning and representation of gendered violence in conflict. However, studies have focused either on the ‘material reality’ or on the symbolic aspects of gender and ethnicity, and have rarely focused on the situated and contested aspects of gender relations between women and men in historically specific armed conflict. This thesis moves beyond a structural assessment of conflict and avoids a gender versus culture analysis; its aim is to develop a more nuanced understanding of the lived experiences of different groups of women and men in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). The research offers a three-level investigation: it looks at whether and how structural inequalities contribute to the making of the armed conflict and gendered violence; it provides a discursive analysis of narratives of sexual violence against women; and it offers an intersectional analysis of the lived experiences of women and men in the nationalist movement and armed conflict. The study considers the spatial, material, relational and changeable aspects of the nationalist movement and armed conflict to reveal that the experiences of different groups of women and men have been gendered in heterogeneous ways.
The research demonstrates that the conflict in the CHT is a highly gendered phenomenon, yet ‘situated’ so that women and men, and Bengali and Jumma people, experience the conflict in different ways. Economic exploitation and state assimilation of the Jumma people are obvious factors in the making of the conflict; however, the phenomena of gendered violence and the subjectivity of Jumma women to sexual violence during and after the armed conflict are not merely the effects of male supremacy or the international politics of militarisation. What the Jumma women experience in the conflict is much more complex. Their lived experiences are informed by their ethnicity, nationality, culture and gender. Likewise, the responses of the Jummos and civilian Bengalese are informed by: their political goals, collective sentiment and sense of belonging; nationalist ideologies, political values and practices; a longing to demonstrate a difference and a culturally distinctive identity; performing chosen and appropriate roles; and the desire and ability to negotiate with shifting lifestyles, embodying their experience of the material situation, and the repetitions of daily life in a changing society. It is the contestations of all these factors, which illustrate the complexity of the phenomenon of gendered violence and the gendered aspects of the conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
This study recognises that the state, as a momentous social actor, contributes to the making of the nationalist projects and ensuing conflict with gendered violence. But the women and men living the conflict are agents in their own lives, and never victims per se. The findings are based on my ethnographic fieldwork, narrative interviews with Jumma women and men, semi-structured interviews with Bengali women, men, mediators and actors, and library research on the topic. Meanings in this research are co-constructed between me as a feminist researcher and my interviewees, and do not necessarily reflect any general ‘truths’.
This case draws on the methodology of a doctoral research that examines the gendered aspects of t... more This case draws on the methodology of a doctoral research that examines the gendered aspects of the ethnically constructed armed conflict in southeast Bangladesh and explores the lived gendered experiences of indigenous women and men. Three key aspects of the research methodology are discussed in this paper. I emphasise that intersectionality and narrative methodology are most helpful in doing empirical research on ethnically constructed conflict, and I explain how participants were engaged by the use of a critical anti-oppressive approach. The paper addresses questions such as which methodology is appropriate for conducting research on gendered aspects of ethno-nationalist conflict, and what are the ethical considerations and challenges for carrying out research on other cultures in a situation involving conflict.
Gender is not a simple concept and feminists have theorised the concept of gender from various st... more Gender is not a simple concept and feminists have theorised the concept of gender from various stand points. Whilst some argued that gender is a form of power, others have argued that ‘it is a complex phenomenon’. In most studies on gender relations between women and men researchers tend to take on either material or symbolic feminist approach to gender. Whilst structural and material feminists suggest that gender should be seen as a system of power and in relation to male domination and economic constructions of gender that results in women’s subordinate position, discursive feminists looked at cultural and social constructions of gender and suggest that gender is constructed through and by discourse within which the network of power relations operates. This paper argues for an approach which allows us for analysing gender at a level that neither dismisses the arguments that found in the structural and material feminism, nor place the discursive and cultural approaches to gender at the centre. I suggest that we consider the ontological basis of gender, and we should interrogate the differences in explanations between structural and discursive feminism. We need an approach that is informed by both materialist and discursive feminist scholarships, but which does not ‘put one over the other’ (Anthias, 2001:378). I argue, with Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis (2002), that we need to use a ‘situated’ feminist standpoint which would allow us to grasp the specific social, political and economic processes involved in each historical instance as important for any investigation on gender and social divisions. Further, I see, as Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis (1983), that an intersectional approach to gender is an appropriate tool for understanding the concept of gender.
I discuss four specific areas relating to the constructions of gendered relations: a) the political construction of gender; b) the cultural and social construction of gender; c) multiplicity and locality of gender relations; and d) intersectionality and relations of gender with other social categories and inequalities. Gender and gendered identities are discussed as separate notions. First, I discuss the structural, radical and material conceptualisations of gender, and I review the ways that I use the material notion of gender in my work. Second, I discuss the problems associated with radical and structural theorisations of gender. Third, I discuss deconstructive theorisations of gender and move on to explain my own understanding to the concept of the gender, in which I stress that gender should be recognised as a social category, and in relation to how it interweaves with other social categories. Fourth, I give a clarification of what I mean by intersectionality and how my approach to intersectionality is different than that found in the structural and radical feminism. In doing so, this paper aims to provide a theoretical and methodological framework for conceptualising gender as a social category.
This paper draws on the methodology of my doctoral research that looked into the gendered aspects... more This paper draws on the methodology of my doctoral research that looked into the gendered aspects of the conflict in southeast Bangladesh and explored the gender specific implications of violence as well as examining the gendered embodiments of the Jumma nationalist project. In this paper, I endeavour to introduce my analytical approach that challenges the idea of objectivity, stresses the need for the researcher’s engagement with the research topic and participants, and asserts that the researcher’s subjective position has facilitated the research process, allowing me to access data on gendered violence in the conflict zone. I argue further that for an understanding of gendered aspects of armed conflict and indigenous women’s subjectivity in gendered violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, we need to employ knowledge of both radical and deconstructive feminism. In doing so, I stress on the one hand the need for a continuous redrawing and redesigning of methodological approaches in the social sciences; and on the other I emphasise the need for a social science research ‘with a heart and emotions as well as a mind’ (Stanley, 2003:4).
"There has been much academic work that demonstrates the complex links between gender, nation, st... more "There has been much academic work that demonstrates the complex links between gender, nation, state, armed conflict and violence. In her recent book, “The Body of War”, Zarkov (2007) explored the ways in which women were subjected to the ethno-nationalist violence in former Yugoslavia and the ways media representation of female and male bodies were gendered. Mukherjee (2008), in her article, “gendered embodiments: mapping the body-politic of the raped woman and the nation of Bangladesh” has shown that violence in Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 was inscribed upon the bodies of women. Whilst men soldiers were fighting at the frontier for the sake of the motherhood; their mothers, daughters and sisters left at military camps and/or at so called ‘home’ were subjected to widespread reproductive and sexual violence by the Pak-Military soldiers. Furthermore, feminist scholarship such as Cockburn (2004, 2001), Enloe (1993), Giles and Hyndman (2004),Hyndman (2008), Korac (2006, 2003, 1998) and Moser and Clark et al.(2001) have articulated that there is a notion to see political violence and armed conflict as “male domains, executed by men, whether as armed forces, guerrilla groups, paramilitaries or peace-keeping forces” (Enloe 1993 cited in Moser and Clark, 2001:3) and that there is a tendency to see women as simply victims in the armed conflict and war. However, this paper seeks to analyse the forms of gendered violence in the armed conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh and explore the violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts is highly gendered yet indigenous women in the conflict prone CHT cannot be seen as victims only.
The paper is an extract from the recently submitted doctoral thesis entitled 'Gender and armed conflict: the case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh’. Addressing the extreme human rights violation of indigenous women and men in the CHT, and the process of ethnic cleansing and ongoing militarised violence against the Jumma peoples during and after the armed conflict in the CHT, the thesis explores the gendered aspects of the armed conflict in the South-east Bangladesh. It examines the ways in which the armed conflict in the CHT has become gendered. In this paper, I, however, intend to limit the discussion to a brief exploration of the forms of gendered violence. I argue, herein, that although the forms of violence and the historical context of the armed conflict in the CHT are different than other armed conflicts and wars, violence during and after the conflict in the CHT has gender specific implications. The original chapter from which this paper has been derived provides a discussion on and comparisons to other war violence which is not within the scope of this paper.
"
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Papers by Rumana Hashem
Much of the discussion on the role of governments in the processes of contestations in the CHT has so far been over-generalized. Humayun Azad (2000), as one of few, has suggested that when we analyse the ongoing conflict in the CHT we ought to keep all intersectional events, contestations, and betrayals of politicians and governments aiding civic-nationalist politics in mind. Yet, the stress of his analysis was on civic nationalism. He paid little attention to the heritage contestation, and the role that the Bangladeshi government played in shaping the symbolic landscape. In this chapter, I revisit the conflict and examine the role of Bangladeshi government in identity construction and the ensuing cultural contestation. I show, in addition to the gendered phenomenon of nationalism, how ‘culture’ and heritage, as part of a symbolic landscape to which the Bengali and Jumma communities give meanings through historical narratives, give rise to heavy forms of contestation: namely widespread violence in the CHT.
In DIEGESIS 3.1 (2014)
The concepts of gender and ethnicity are integral to much feminist research in the field of conflict and peace studies, which has looked at the transformations of conflict, interrogating the power relations between women and men, and addressed, more recently, the added symbolic meaning and representation of gendered violence in conflict. However, studies have focused either on the ‘material reality’ or on the symbolic aspects of gender and ethnicity, and have rarely focused on the situated and contested aspects of gender relations between women and men in historically specific armed conflict. This thesis moves beyond a structural assessment of conflict and avoids a gender versus culture analysis; its aim is to develop a more nuanced understanding of the lived experiences of different groups of women and men in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). The research offers a three-level investigation: it looks at whether and how structural inequalities contribute to the making of the armed conflict and gendered violence; it provides a discursive analysis of narratives of sexual violence against women; and it offers an intersectional analysis of the lived experiences of women and men in the nationalist movement and armed conflict. The study considers the spatial, material, relational and changeable aspects of the nationalist movement and armed conflict to reveal that the experiences of different groups of women and men have been gendered in heterogeneous ways.
The research demonstrates that the conflict in the CHT is a highly gendered phenomenon, yet ‘situated’ so that women and men, and Bengali and Jumma people, experience the conflict in different ways. Economic exploitation and state assimilation of the Jumma people are obvious factors in the making of the conflict; however, the phenomena of gendered violence and the subjectivity of Jumma women to sexual violence during and after the armed conflict are not merely the effects of male supremacy or the international politics of militarisation. What the Jumma women experience in the conflict is much more complex. Their lived experiences are informed by their ethnicity, nationality, culture and gender. Likewise, the responses of the Jummos and civilian Bengalese are informed by: their political goals, collective sentiment and sense of belonging; nationalist ideologies, political values and practices; a longing to demonstrate a difference and a culturally distinctive identity; performing chosen and appropriate roles; and the desire and ability to negotiate with shifting lifestyles, embodying their experience of the material situation, and the repetitions of daily life in a changing society. It is the contestations of all these factors, which illustrate the complexity of the phenomenon of gendered violence and the gendered aspects of the conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
This study recognises that the state, as a momentous social actor, contributes to the making of the nationalist projects and ensuing conflict with gendered violence. But the women and men living the conflict are agents in their own lives, and never victims per se. The findings are based on my ethnographic fieldwork, narrative interviews with Jumma women and men, semi-structured interviews with Bengali women, men, mediators and actors, and library research on the topic. Meanings in this research are co-constructed between me as a feminist researcher and my interviewees, and do not necessarily reflect any general ‘truths’.
I discuss four specific areas relating to the constructions of gendered relations: a) the political construction of gender; b) the cultural and social construction of gender; c) multiplicity and locality of gender relations; and d) intersectionality and relations of gender with other social categories and inequalities. Gender and gendered identities are discussed as separate notions. First, I discuss the structural, radical and material conceptualisations of gender, and I review the ways that I use the material notion of gender in my work. Second, I discuss the problems associated with radical and structural theorisations of gender. Third, I discuss deconstructive theorisations of gender and move on to explain my own understanding to the concept of the gender, in which I stress that gender should be recognised as a social category, and in relation to how it interweaves with other social categories. Fourth, I give a clarification of what I mean by intersectionality and how my approach to intersectionality is different than that found in the structural and radical feminism. In doing so, this paper aims to provide a theoretical and methodological framework for conceptualising gender as a social category.
The paper is an extract from the recently submitted doctoral thesis entitled 'Gender and armed conflict: the case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh’. Addressing the extreme human rights violation of indigenous women and men in the CHT, and the process of ethnic cleansing and ongoing militarised violence against the Jumma peoples during and after the armed conflict in the CHT, the thesis explores the gendered aspects of the armed conflict in the South-east Bangladesh. It examines the ways in which the armed conflict in the CHT has become gendered. In this paper, I, however, intend to limit the discussion to a brief exploration of the forms of gendered violence. I argue, herein, that although the forms of violence and the historical context of the armed conflict in the CHT are different than other armed conflicts and wars, violence during and after the conflict in the CHT has gender specific implications. The original chapter from which this paper has been derived provides a discussion on and comparisons to other war violence which is not within the scope of this paper.
"
Much of the discussion on the role of governments in the processes of contestations in the CHT has so far been over-generalized. Humayun Azad (2000), as one of few, has suggested that when we analyse the ongoing conflict in the CHT we ought to keep all intersectional events, contestations, and betrayals of politicians and governments aiding civic-nationalist politics in mind. Yet, the stress of his analysis was on civic nationalism. He paid little attention to the heritage contestation, and the role that the Bangladeshi government played in shaping the symbolic landscape. In this chapter, I revisit the conflict and examine the role of Bangladeshi government in identity construction and the ensuing cultural contestation. I show, in addition to the gendered phenomenon of nationalism, how ‘culture’ and heritage, as part of a symbolic landscape to which the Bengali and Jumma communities give meanings through historical narratives, give rise to heavy forms of contestation: namely widespread violence in the CHT.
In DIEGESIS 3.1 (2014)
The concepts of gender and ethnicity are integral to much feminist research in the field of conflict and peace studies, which has looked at the transformations of conflict, interrogating the power relations between women and men, and addressed, more recently, the added symbolic meaning and representation of gendered violence in conflict. However, studies have focused either on the ‘material reality’ or on the symbolic aspects of gender and ethnicity, and have rarely focused on the situated and contested aspects of gender relations between women and men in historically specific armed conflict. This thesis moves beyond a structural assessment of conflict and avoids a gender versus culture analysis; its aim is to develop a more nuanced understanding of the lived experiences of different groups of women and men in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). The research offers a three-level investigation: it looks at whether and how structural inequalities contribute to the making of the armed conflict and gendered violence; it provides a discursive analysis of narratives of sexual violence against women; and it offers an intersectional analysis of the lived experiences of women and men in the nationalist movement and armed conflict. The study considers the spatial, material, relational and changeable aspects of the nationalist movement and armed conflict to reveal that the experiences of different groups of women and men have been gendered in heterogeneous ways.
The research demonstrates that the conflict in the CHT is a highly gendered phenomenon, yet ‘situated’ so that women and men, and Bengali and Jumma people, experience the conflict in different ways. Economic exploitation and state assimilation of the Jumma people are obvious factors in the making of the conflict; however, the phenomena of gendered violence and the subjectivity of Jumma women to sexual violence during and after the armed conflict are not merely the effects of male supremacy or the international politics of militarisation. What the Jumma women experience in the conflict is much more complex. Their lived experiences are informed by their ethnicity, nationality, culture and gender. Likewise, the responses of the Jummos and civilian Bengalese are informed by: their political goals, collective sentiment and sense of belonging; nationalist ideologies, political values and practices; a longing to demonstrate a difference and a culturally distinctive identity; performing chosen and appropriate roles; and the desire and ability to negotiate with shifting lifestyles, embodying their experience of the material situation, and the repetitions of daily life in a changing society. It is the contestations of all these factors, which illustrate the complexity of the phenomenon of gendered violence and the gendered aspects of the conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
This study recognises that the state, as a momentous social actor, contributes to the making of the nationalist projects and ensuing conflict with gendered violence. But the women and men living the conflict are agents in their own lives, and never victims per se. The findings are based on my ethnographic fieldwork, narrative interviews with Jumma women and men, semi-structured interviews with Bengali women, men, mediators and actors, and library research on the topic. Meanings in this research are co-constructed between me as a feminist researcher and my interviewees, and do not necessarily reflect any general ‘truths’.
I discuss four specific areas relating to the constructions of gendered relations: a) the political construction of gender; b) the cultural and social construction of gender; c) multiplicity and locality of gender relations; and d) intersectionality and relations of gender with other social categories and inequalities. Gender and gendered identities are discussed as separate notions. First, I discuss the structural, radical and material conceptualisations of gender, and I review the ways that I use the material notion of gender in my work. Second, I discuss the problems associated with radical and structural theorisations of gender. Third, I discuss deconstructive theorisations of gender and move on to explain my own understanding to the concept of the gender, in which I stress that gender should be recognised as a social category, and in relation to how it interweaves with other social categories. Fourth, I give a clarification of what I mean by intersectionality and how my approach to intersectionality is different than that found in the structural and radical feminism. In doing so, this paper aims to provide a theoretical and methodological framework for conceptualising gender as a social category.
The paper is an extract from the recently submitted doctoral thesis entitled 'Gender and armed conflict: the case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh’. Addressing the extreme human rights violation of indigenous women and men in the CHT, and the process of ethnic cleansing and ongoing militarised violence against the Jumma peoples during and after the armed conflict in the CHT, the thesis explores the gendered aspects of the armed conflict in the South-east Bangladesh. It examines the ways in which the armed conflict in the CHT has become gendered. In this paper, I, however, intend to limit the discussion to a brief exploration of the forms of gendered violence. I argue, herein, that although the forms of violence and the historical context of the armed conflict in the CHT are different than other armed conflicts and wars, violence during and after the conflict in the CHT has gender specific implications. The original chapter from which this paper has been derived provides a discussion on and comparisons to other war violence which is not within the scope of this paper.
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