Books by Laura J. Shepherd
Focusing on critical approaches to security, this new textbook offers readers both an overview of... more Focusing on critical approaches to security, this new textbook offers readers both an overview of the key theoretical perspectives and a variety of methodological techniques.
With a careful explication of core concepts in each chapter and an introduction that traces the development of critical approaches to security, this textbook will encourage all those who engage with it to develop a curiosity about the study and practices of security politics. Challenging the assumptions of conventional theories and approaches, unsettling that which was previously taken for granted – these are among the ways in which such a curiosity works. Through its attention to the fact that, and the ways in which, security matters in global politics, this work will both pioneer new ways of studying security and acknowledge the noteworthy scholarship without which it could not have been thought.
This textbook will be essential reading to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of critical security studies, and highly recommended to students of traditional security studies, International Relations and Politics.
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This book examines the intersection of gender and violence in popular culture. Drawing on the lat... more This book examines the intersection of gender and violence in popular culture. Drawing on the latest thinking in critical international relations, media and cultural studies and gender studies, it focuses in particular on a number of popular TV shows including Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Generation Kill, The Corner and The West Wing.
The book makes a unique theoretical contribution to the ‘narrative turn’ in International Relations by illustrating the ways in which popular culture and global politics are intertwined and how we make sense of our worlds through these two frames. Methodologically, the book enhances discourse-theoretical analysis in IR through its incorporation of methods from narratology and film studies. The book proposes an aesthetic ethicopolitical approach to global politics which challenges us to interrogate how it becomes possible that we think what we think, it challenges the truths that we hold to be self-evident and that which we take to be common sense. It demands that we think carefully, critically, uncomfortably, about our world(s) – even when we’re ‘only’ watching television.
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""Considering the conditions, maintenance and interpretation of political violence, the authors a... more ""Considering the conditions, maintenance and interpretation of political violence, the authors analyze the multiple ways in which acts (and perpetrators) of violence, strategies of resistance and efforts at conflict resolution are gendered. Specifically, they engage with the constitution of gendered subjects and gendered agents in a range of different contexts of violence and conclude that acts of violence have varying degrees of legitimacy, dependent on context. They show that political violence is not the exclusive preserve of non-state actors, but that individuals, resistance movements, paramilitaries and state (or state-sponsored) organisations perpetrate violence in pursuit of political objectives.
""
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Gender Matters in Global Politics is a comprehensive textbook for advanced undergraduates studyin... more Gender Matters in Global Politics is a comprehensive textbook for advanced undergraduates studying feminism & international relations, gender and global politics and similar courses. It provides students with an accessible but in-depth account of the most significant theories, methodologies, debates and issues.
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"Commendations
'This is an excellent example of contemporary feminist poststructural research. I... more "Commendations
'This is an excellent example of contemporary feminist poststructural research. It offers a sophisticated, perceptive and persuasive analysis of the discursive constitution of gender/violence. Written with exquisite clarity, it will be of great use in both teaching and research as well as to the policy community.' -Marysia Zalewski, University of Aberdeen
'Laura Shepherd shows us here how we can bring the burgeoning scholarships on violence against women and on human security into conversation with each other in a way that makes us smarter about each - and about the intricate trickily gendered political processes of the UN too. Quite a feat.' - Cynthia Enloe, Clark University
'In this book, we are invited to ‘think differently’ about gender, violence, security and the international, and a space is made for imagining, and so acting, otherwise ...it is a model of clarity, intellectual rigour, and empathetic engagement.' - Jindy Pettman, Gender, Sexuality and Culture, Humanities, The Australian National University"
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Papers by Laura J. Shepherd
Men & Masculinities, 2013
Inspired by the themes of violence, masculinity and responsibility, this article investigates the... more Inspired by the themes of violence, masculinity and responsibility, this article investigates the visibility of male victims/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in war. Despite the passing of UNSCR 1820 in 2008, the formulation of UN ACTION (United Nations Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict), and the appointment of a United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General to lead policy and practice in this issue area, we argue here that male survivors/victims remain a marginal concern, which has, among other consequences, profound implications for the facilities that exist to support male victims/survivors during and after periods of active conflict. In the first section of the article, we provide an overview of the contemporary academic literature on rape in war, not only to act as the foundation for the analytical work that follows but also to illustrate the argument that male survivors/victims of sexualised violence in war are near-invisible in the majority of literature on this topic. Second, we turn our analytical lens to the policy environment charged with addressing sexualised violence in conflict. Through a discourse analysis focussed on the website of UN ACTION (www.stoprapenow.org), we demonstrate that this lack of vision in academic work maps directly to a lack of visibility in the policy arena. The third section of the article explores the arrangements in place within extant peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction programmes that aim to facilitate recovery with victims/survivors of sexualised violence in war. We conclude with reflections on the themes of violence, masculinity and responsibility in the context of sexualised violence in war and suggest that in this context all privileged actors have a responsibility to theorise violence with careful attention to gender in order to avoid perpetuating models of masculinity and war-rape that have potentially pernicious effects.
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Feminist Review, 2012
This article explores a gendered dimension of war and conflict analysis that has up until now rec... more This article explores a gendered dimension of war and conflict analysis that has up until now received little attention at the intersection of gender studies and studies of global politics: queer bodies in, and genderqueer significations of, war and conflict. In doing so, the article introduces the concept of cisprivilege to International Relations as a discipline and security studies as a core sub-field. Cisprivilege is an important, but under-explored, element of the constitution of gender and conflict. Whether it be in controversial reactions to the suggestion of United Nations Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin that airport screenings for terrorists not discriminate against transgendered people, or in structural violence that is ever-present in the daily lives of many individuals seeking to navigate the heterosexist and cissexist power structures of social and political life, war and conflict is embodied and reifies cissexism. This article makes two inter-related arguments: first, that both the invisibility of genderqueer bodies in historical accounts of warfare and the visibility of genderqueer bodies in contemporary security strategy are forms of discursive violence; and second, that these violences have specific performative functions that can and should be interrogated. After constructing these core arguments, the article explores some of the potential benefits of an interdisciplinary research agenda that moves towards the theorisation of cisprivilege in security theory and practice.
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International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2011
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 was adopted in October 2000 with a view to ensuri... more United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 was adopted in October 2000 with a view to ensuring that all aspects of conflict management, post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding be undertaken with a sensitivity towards gender as an axis of exclusion. In this paper, I do not dwell on the successes and shortcomings of UNSCR 1325 for long, instead using a discussion of the Resolution as a platform for analysis of subsequent Resolutions, including UNSCRs 1820 (2008), 1882 (2009), 1888 (2009) and 1889 (2009). This last relates specifically to the participation of women in peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction and is the most recent pronouncement of the Security Council on the issue of ‘women and peace and security’. Through this analysis, I draw attention to the expectations of and pressures on (some) women in the arena of peace and security, which can only be alleviated through discursive and material change in attitudes towards equality and empowerment. I argue that the Council is beginning to recognize – and simultaneously to constitute – (some/most) women as agential subjects and suggest that the fragmented and mutable representations of women in Council resolutions offer a unique opportunity for critical engagement with what ‘women’ might be, do or want in the field of gender and security.
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International Review of the Red Cross, 2010
Facilitating critical reflection on the words and concepts used to write policy enables practitio... more Facilitating critical reflection on the words and concepts used to write policy enables practitioners to avoid unconsciously reproducing the different forms of oppression and exclusion that their policies seek to overcome. In this article, the author provides an analysis of Chapter 5.10 of the United Nations Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards, arguing that policy makers, scholars, students and practitioners cannot avoid making and/or changing meaning through their well-meaning interventions, but that this need not lead to political or practical inertia.
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Political Studies Review, 2009
In this essay I develop a critique of the war/peace dichotomy that is foundational to conventiona... more In this essay I develop a critique of the war/peace dichotomy that is foundational to conventional approaches to IR through a review of three recent publications in the field of feminist security studies. These texts are Cynthia Enloe's (2007) Globalization and Militarism, David Roberts' (2008) Human Insecurity, and Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women's Violence in Global Politics by Laura Sjoberg and Caron Gentry (2008). Drawing on the insights of these books, I ask first how violence is understood in global politics, with specific reference to the gendered disciplinary blindnesses that frequently characterise mainstream approaches. Second, I demonstrate how a focus on war and peace can neglect to take into account the politics of everyday violence: the violences of the in-between times that international politics recognises neither as ‘war’ nor ‘peace’ and the violences inherent to times of peace that are overlooked in the study of war. Finally, I argue that feminist security studies offers an important corrective to the foundational assumptions of IR, which themselves can perpetuate the very instances of violence that they seek to redress. If we accept the core insights of feminist security studies – the centrality of the human subject; the importance of particular configurations of masculinity and femininity; and the gendered conceptual framework that underpins the discipline of IR – we are encouraged to envisage a rather different politics of the global.
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Journal of Gender Studies, 2009
This article explores the dynamics of morality, legality and gendered violence represented in one... more This article explores the dynamics of morality, legality and gendered violence represented in one episode of the television series Angel. In this episode, simply titled ‘Billy’, a young man is hunted down by Angel, who is both a private detective and a vampire with a soul, to prevent him from unleashing ‘primordial misogyny’ in the men he touches. I argue that the dominant themes of the episode are gender, morality and legality. Whereas the latter are represented as contextually specific, the performances of gender adhere to a binary logic in keeping with modernist notions of the subject. I outline the theory of gender/ed violence that underpins my analysis, before investigating signifiers of legality and morality, drawing on wider themes from the series. I illustrate that legality and morality may be represented as unstable, but this radical potential is undermined by the representation of masculinised violence as inherently tied to material bodies. I conclude that the organisation of the episode – and of the series overall – around the notion that ‘if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do’ (Angel 2.16) is undermined through the representations of gender and gendered violence that are central themes in this performance.
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Review of International Studies, 2008
This investigation explores the ways in which discourses of security functioned to allow military... more This investigation explores the ways in which discourses of security functioned to allow military intervention in Iraq to become ‘thinkable’, and how these actions serve to reconfigure not only the identities of states – the US and Iraq – but also the characteristics of the international as a spatial and conceptual domain. In the weeks preceding the military intervention in Iraq, significant negotiations were conducted between the US government and the UN that were commented on extensively in press statements and other documents released by both parties. Drawing on UNSC Resolutions, public debates and academic analyses, in this article I analyse the relations between the US and the UN in the build-up to the Iraq war, making two related claims.
First, I argue that each discourse is organised around a particular logic of security. By ‘logics of security’, I mean the ways in which various concepts are organised within specific discourses of security. That is, each competing conceptualisation of security has a distinct primary focus, referent object and perspective on the arrangement of the international system. The ways in which these claims are made, the assumptions that inform them, and the policy prescriptions that issue from them, are what I refer to as ‘logics of security’. Second, I argue that the intervention in Iraq, a violence undertaken in the name of ‘security’, has functioned to reproduce the international as a spatial and conceptual domain according to the logic of a highly conventional narrative of sovereigneity, and, ultimately, of state identity.
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Critical Studies on Terrorism, 2008
This paper explores the relationship between visual representation and claims to legitimacy in th... more This paper explores the relationship between visual representation and claims to legitimacy in the current George W. Bush administration's ‘war on terror’. Drawing on discourse theoretical works that focus analytical attention on the power of visual representation in communicating authority and legitimacy, this paper argues that crucial to such communicative acts is the rendering of a receptive audience complicit in particular interpretations of the images in question. While various visual representations construct political subjectivity and agency in different ways, common to all interpretations is the centralisation of an authoritative narrative. It is argued that this authorial voice must be challenged in the formulation of a politics resistant to dominant discourses of security/counter-terrorism in the West.
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International Studies Quarterly, 2008
United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 was adopted in 2000 with the aim of ensur... more United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 was adopted in 2000 with the aim of ensuring all efforts toward peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction, as well as the conduct of armed conflict itself, would entail sensitivity toward gendered violence and gendered inequalities. In this article, I contrast two accounts of the writing of UNSCR 1325 that issue from the two institutions that claim authority over the document: the United Nations Security Council and the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security. I make a broader theoretical argument about the importance of paying analytical attention to the discursive terrain of international institutions when analyzing the formulation and implementation of security policy, concluding that contemporary theorizing of international institutions is product/productive of a particular configuration of political authority and legitimacy that can, and should, be challenged.
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The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 2007
In the discipline of International Relations (IR), which takes seriously issues of war and peace,... more In the discipline of International Relations (IR), which takes seriously issues of war and peace, there has been a lack of attention paid to theorising security in relation to violence. In this article, I explore the potential for a feminist reworking of these concepts. With reference to a range of literature addressing security and violence, I offer some insights into the relevance of such a reconceptualisation. I draw attention to the ways in which work on issues of violence and security function to reproduce understandings of these concepts that delimit the value of both academic theorising and policy prescription. In the study of security, because of the discursive power of the concept, and of violence, these considerations are particularly important, as they can literally be issues of life and death.
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International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2006
Understanding the ways in which the discursive construction of gender allowed for the US-led atta... more Understanding the ways in which the discursive construction of gender allowed for the US-led attacks on Afghanistan to be considered a legitimate response to the attacks of 9/11 is vital to the study of international relations and for the reclaiming of a feminist politics of the attacks. Through the identification and exploration of various representations of identity in the period after 9/11 and before the attacks on Afghanistan, I will illustrate the centrality of narratives of gender to the production of a recognizable and legitimate narrative of war. I focus on the identities of ‘the nation’, ‘the enemy’ and ‘the intervention’, with each exploring not only the ways in which they are created and perpetuated, but also the ways in which they make certain responses, actions and attitudes permissible and censor others. In conclusion, I draw attention to the economic concerns of the USA that were marginalized within the discursive construction of identity post-9/11, and the ways in which the tensions created by this marginalization can be used as a critical tool to begin to unpick gendered constructions that were represented as seamless at the time.
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Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2006
Efforts to criminalise gendered violence in the international domain, through legislation such as... more Efforts to criminalise gendered violence in the international domain, through legislation such as the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (1993), can only ever have limited success. Through my analysis of DEVAW, I argue that the Declaration is produced through discourses of gender, violence, security and the international. What is meant by these concepts is reflected and reproduced within the document. Therefore, in order to understand the limited success of such efforts to criminalise gendered violence, it is necessary to investigate how these meanings have been constructed and how they could be constructed differently. I offer alternatives to the dominant conceptualisations of gendered violence and security, considering the ways in which both gender and the international are violently reproduced through efforts to securitise violence. Through my analysis I demonstrate that a reconceptualisation of both gendered violence and international security is desirable and necessary for the construction of research programs that operationalise these concepts in a more coherent and productive manner.
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Globalizations, 2011
... Burgess argues that, in the particular case which she analyses, participation in formal polit... more ... Burgess argues that, in the particular case which she analyses, participation in formal political activity is mediated by 'uneven and contested geographies of participation' (this issue), a conclusion broadly supported by Donatella Alessandrini and Irene León (this issue). ...
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Books by Laura J. Shepherd
With a careful explication of core concepts in each chapter and an introduction that traces the development of critical approaches to security, this textbook will encourage all those who engage with it to develop a curiosity about the study and practices of security politics. Challenging the assumptions of conventional theories and approaches, unsettling that which was previously taken for granted – these are among the ways in which such a curiosity works. Through its attention to the fact that, and the ways in which, security matters in global politics, this work will both pioneer new ways of studying security and acknowledge the noteworthy scholarship without which it could not have been thought.
This textbook will be essential reading to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of critical security studies, and highly recommended to students of traditional security studies, International Relations and Politics.
The book makes a unique theoretical contribution to the ‘narrative turn’ in International Relations by illustrating the ways in which popular culture and global politics are intertwined and how we make sense of our worlds through these two frames. Methodologically, the book enhances discourse-theoretical analysis in IR through its incorporation of methods from narratology and film studies. The book proposes an aesthetic ethicopolitical approach to global politics which challenges us to interrogate how it becomes possible that we think what we think, it challenges the truths that we hold to be self-evident and that which we take to be common sense. It demands that we think carefully, critically, uncomfortably, about our world(s) – even when we’re ‘only’ watching television.
""
'This is an excellent example of contemporary feminist poststructural research. It offers a sophisticated, perceptive and persuasive analysis of the discursive constitution of gender/violence. Written with exquisite clarity, it will be of great use in both teaching and research as well as to the policy community.' -Marysia Zalewski, University of Aberdeen
'Laura Shepherd shows us here how we can bring the burgeoning scholarships on violence against women and on human security into conversation with each other in a way that makes us smarter about each - and about the intricate trickily gendered political processes of the UN too. Quite a feat.' - Cynthia Enloe, Clark University
'In this book, we are invited to ‘think differently’ about gender, violence, security and the international, and a space is made for imagining, and so acting, otherwise ...it is a model of clarity, intellectual rigour, and empathetic engagement.' - Jindy Pettman, Gender, Sexuality and Culture, Humanities, The Australian National University"
Papers by Laura J. Shepherd
First, I argue that each discourse is organised around a particular logic of security. By ‘logics of security’, I mean the ways in which various concepts are organised within specific discourses of security. That is, each competing conceptualisation of security has a distinct primary focus, referent object and perspective on the arrangement of the international system. The ways in which these claims are made, the assumptions that inform them, and the policy prescriptions that issue from them, are what I refer to as ‘logics of security’. Second, I argue that the intervention in Iraq, a violence undertaken in the name of ‘security’, has functioned to reproduce the international as a spatial and conceptual domain according to the logic of a highly conventional narrative of sovereigneity, and, ultimately, of state identity.
With a careful explication of core concepts in each chapter and an introduction that traces the development of critical approaches to security, this textbook will encourage all those who engage with it to develop a curiosity about the study and practices of security politics. Challenging the assumptions of conventional theories and approaches, unsettling that which was previously taken for granted – these are among the ways in which such a curiosity works. Through its attention to the fact that, and the ways in which, security matters in global politics, this work will both pioneer new ways of studying security and acknowledge the noteworthy scholarship without which it could not have been thought.
This textbook will be essential reading to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of critical security studies, and highly recommended to students of traditional security studies, International Relations and Politics.
The book makes a unique theoretical contribution to the ‘narrative turn’ in International Relations by illustrating the ways in which popular culture and global politics are intertwined and how we make sense of our worlds through these two frames. Methodologically, the book enhances discourse-theoretical analysis in IR through its incorporation of methods from narratology and film studies. The book proposes an aesthetic ethicopolitical approach to global politics which challenges us to interrogate how it becomes possible that we think what we think, it challenges the truths that we hold to be self-evident and that which we take to be common sense. It demands that we think carefully, critically, uncomfortably, about our world(s) – even when we’re ‘only’ watching television.
""
'This is an excellent example of contemporary feminist poststructural research. It offers a sophisticated, perceptive and persuasive analysis of the discursive constitution of gender/violence. Written with exquisite clarity, it will be of great use in both teaching and research as well as to the policy community.' -Marysia Zalewski, University of Aberdeen
'Laura Shepherd shows us here how we can bring the burgeoning scholarships on violence against women and on human security into conversation with each other in a way that makes us smarter about each - and about the intricate trickily gendered political processes of the UN too. Quite a feat.' - Cynthia Enloe, Clark University
'In this book, we are invited to ‘think differently’ about gender, violence, security and the international, and a space is made for imagining, and so acting, otherwise ...it is a model of clarity, intellectual rigour, and empathetic engagement.' - Jindy Pettman, Gender, Sexuality and Culture, Humanities, The Australian National University"
First, I argue that each discourse is organised around a particular logic of security. By ‘logics of security’, I mean the ways in which various concepts are organised within specific discourses of security. That is, each competing conceptualisation of security has a distinct primary focus, referent object and perspective on the arrangement of the international system. The ways in which these claims are made, the assumptions that inform them, and the policy prescriptions that issue from them, are what I refer to as ‘logics of security’. Second, I argue that the intervention in Iraq, a violence undertaken in the name of ‘security’, has functioned to reproduce the international as a spatial and conceptual domain according to the logic of a highly conventional narrative of sovereigneity, and, ultimately, of state identity.