Gender and the ‘New Imperialism’: A Feminist Political Economy Theory of War and Political Violence

A fundamental question in the study of international relations is why does war occur? How can we understand its causes? How can we understand the behaviors of actors prior to and in war? By synthesizing feminist and critical IR scholarship on the role of capitalist social forces, the relations between states, and the construction of gender identities and gendered hierarchies internationally, this paper examines how war operates in the international system as both a means of capital accumulation and an instrument for maintaining the gendered hierarchical ordering of states. While critical scholarship has explored the way that violence is an inherent element of the global capitalist project (Escobar, 2004; Harvey, 2003; Luxemburg, 1913, 1988), what interests me here is the precise forms, functions, and actors involved in armed conflict under contemporary neoliberal capitalism, whereby violence serves as an outsourcing of both the means and labor of resource extraction and accumulation under what Harvey calls the ‘new imperialism’. What has been missing in these analyses, however, is the role that gender plays in informing violence. Violence is embedded in the global political economy through systems of trade and commerce that are intimately connected to hierarchies of power and hegemonies, both political-economic and gendered. The ability of capital to exploit violence in the periphery for the purpose of accumulation rests on the exploitation of gender norms, constructions, and hierarchical relations across multiple levels of analysis. Therefore, this paper explores how hierarchically ordered gender identities are constructed and reinforced through neo-liberal globalization and development that in turn both cause and justify contemporary forms of war and armed conflict. It is theorized that gender hierarchy manifested and expressed through global political and economic relations shape the (changing) gendered organizations of conflict as well as the gendered behaviours of states and other actors engaged in political violence.