Women and Conflict Studies

Traditionally, women have been viewed as having little agency in wars and conflicts. Women were thought neither to cause the wars nor to fight them. When women were considered at all by scholars of war, they were conceived of primarily as victims. As women gained the franchise and ultimately began to be elected into political office in advanced democracies, some scholars began to consider the foreign policy implications of this—that is, do women’s attitudes toward war and defense policy differ from those of men and do these views produce different outcomes at the ballot box? Furthermore, do women behave differently with regard to security issues once in national office? Does their presence change the way their male colleagues vote on these issues? In recent decades, scholarship emerging first from critical feminist theory and later from positivist political scientists has begun to look more explicitly for women’s roles, experiences, and influences on and in conflict. This work has led to the recognition that, even when victimized in war, women have agency, and to the parallel conclusion that men’s agency is not as complete as scholars, practitioners, and the public have often assumed. This bibliography provides an overview of the development of women and conflict literature as well as several prominent themes and questions within the literature. It is of necessity incomplete and interested scholars are encouraged to review related articles in Oxford Bibliographies in International Relations, such as “Feminist Security Studies” by Kristen P. Williams, and “Women and Peacemaking/Peacekeeping” by Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley.

Christians as Levites: Rethinking Early Christian Attitudes toward War and Bloodshed via Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine

This article seeks to break the scholarly deadlock regarding attitudes toward war and bloodshed held by early Christian thinkers. I argue that, whereas previous studies have attempted to fit early Christian stances into one or another “unitary-ethic” framework, the historical-textual data can be best accounted for by positing that many early Christian writers held to a “dual-ethic” orientation. In the latter, certain actions would be viewed as forbidden for Christians but as legitimate for non-Christians in the Roman Empire. Moreover, this dual-ethic stance can be further illuminated by viewing it in connection with the portrayal in the Hebrew Bible of the relation between Levites and the other Israelite tribes. This framing enables us to gain a clearer understanding not only of writers like Origen and Tertullian, who upheld Christian nonviolence while simultaneously praising Roman imperial military activities, but also of writers such as Augustine, whose theological-ethical framework indicates a strong assumption of a dual-ethic stance in his patristic predecessors.

“A Source of Mortification to All Truly Loyal Men”

In this essay, Timothy Orr focuses on the Allegheny Arsenal in Pittsburgh to reveal how employers used allegations of partisan disloyalty to weaken the rights and protections of war workers. As Orr relates, political discrimination underlay the purge of fifteen factory workers charged with disloyal speech in May 1863. The men were accused by fellow workers of uttering statements critical of Lincoln and his war policies. Their dismissal following an extrajudicial inquiry sparked a heated partisan exchange in area newspapers. Orr argues that popular attitudes toward war workers during the Civil War contrasted sharply with those of the World Wars. In the latter era, this work was seen more clearly in patriotic terms, as a substitute for military service in the national cause. In the Civil War, however, military work alone was not satisfactory proof of patriotism. Workers in military manufacturing then were held to a standard of loyalty regulating not just actions but also their words.

Worlds Apart: Conflict Exposure and Preferences for Peace

Life on the frontlines of a civil war is markedly different from life in safe(r) areas. How does this drastic difference in lived experience shape civilian attitudes toward war and peace? Contrary to theories that link conflict exposure to intransigence, I argue that under certain conditions, exposure increases support for both peace as an outcome and the granting of concessions to armed actors who render settlement more likely. I use various model specifications and matching methodology on survey data from the Colombian peace process, finding strong evidence that civilians in conflict zones exhibit greater support for the peace process overall and are more willing to grant political concessions to armed groups. Mixed evidence further suggests that exposed civilians are less willing to reintegrate with demobilized fighters. The study has theoretical implications for accounts of conflict exposure and helps explain regional variation in the failed referendum vote in Colombia.

When the whip comes down: Marxism, the Soviet experience, and the nuclear revolution

This article examines the conflict between traditional Marxist attitudes toward war and the problem of the nuclear revolution. It shows how the advent of the nuclear revolution in the 1950s undermined traditional Marxist-Leninist concepts of war, and then goes on to argue that this development must be placed at the centre of contemporary Marxian IR if it is to have explanatory power in the twenty-first century. To make this case directly, it engages with Justin Rosenberg’s revival of Trotsky’s idea of uneven and combined development and its subsidiary law of ‘the whip of external necessity’, and argues that the whip can remain salient today only if one accepts the political utility of nuclear war. The impasse created by the nuclear revolution, it concludes, points Marxist IR in the direction of classic Marxist visions of supranationalism and human unity.

Gender, Attitudes Toward War, and Masculinities in Japan

Previous studies have argued that masculinity is linked to war. We conducted a web-based survey to examine relationships between gender, attitudes toward war, and masculinities within a sample of Japanese adults of both sexes ( N = 366). Our results indicated that while men were more likely than women to accept war, the relationship between attitudes toward war and masculinities was inconclusive. Moreover, the results suggested that favorable attitudes toward war among men could be attenuated by interpersonal orientations. Based on our findings, we recommend a reexamination of attitudes toward war within the Japanese population.