The gendered human of humanitarianism: Medicalising and politicising sexual violence

Gender and History

Volumn 23, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 250-265

  Ticktin, Miriam ^a  

^a NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GENDER ISSUE; HUMANITARIAN AID; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL HISTORY; VIOLENCE;

EID: 79960672783     PISSN: 09535233     EISSN: 14680424     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0424.2011.01637.x     Document Type: Article

References (87)

1. Marc Le Pape and Pierre Salignon (eds), Civilians Under Fire: Humanitarian Practices in the Congo Republic 1998-2000 (Brussels: Médecins Sans Frontières, 2003).
2. Le Pape and Salignon (eds), Civilians Under Fire, p. 10
3. Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).
4. Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer; Joan Scott, 'Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference; or, The Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism', in Anne Hermann and Abigail Stewart (eds), Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991), pp. 254-67;
5. Chris Weedon, Feminism, Theory, and the Politics of Difference (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); Denise Riley, Am I That Name? Feminism and the Category of 'Women' in History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988)
6. Denise Riley, Am I That Name? Feminism and the Category of 'Women' in History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988);
7. Ien Ang, 'I'm a Feminist But... "Other" Women and Postnational Feminism', in Kum-Kum Bhavnani (ed.), Feminism and 'Race' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 394-409.
8. E.g., The International Rescue Committee, Médecins Sans Frontières, Médecins du Monde, International Committee of the Red Cross, Physicians forHuman Rights, InternationalMedical Corps, theUnitedNations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), CARE and Oxfam.
9. Médecins Sans Frontières, Shattered Lives: Immediate Medical Care Vital for Sexual Violence Victims (Brussels: Médecins Sans Frontières, 2009), p. 8.
10. See Resolution 1820 from 2008, 1888 from 2009 and, most recently, Resolution 1960 from 2010.
11. On the exclusions of liberal universalism, see e.g., Uday Mehta, 'Liberal Strategies of Exclusion', Politics and Society 18 (1990), pp. 427-54.
12. Chantal Mouffe also uses this distinction, but for her, the political is the dimension of antagonism which is constitutive of human societies. Chantal Mouffe, On the Political: Thinking in Action (NewYork: Routledge, 2005).Rancière's idea of 'dissensus' offers one interpretation of the political - i.e. the opposite of consensus, a process where an interval opens up. See Michel Agier's discussion of 'le politique' and 'la politique' where he draws on Rancière. Jacques Rancière, 'Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?' South Atlantic Quarterly 103 (2004), pp. 297-310;
13. Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (London: Continuum,2010); Michel Agier, Gérer les indésirables: Des camps de réfugiés au gouvernement humanitaire (Paris: Flammarion, 2008).
14. Michel Agier, Gérer les indésirables: Des camps de réfugiés au gouvernement humanitaire (Paris: Flammarion, 2008).
15. On the politics of the human, see Ilana Feldman and Miriam Ticktin (eds), In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). On the politics of care, see Miriam Ticktin, Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
16. Peter Redfield, 'Vital Mobility and the Humanitarian Kit', in Stephen J. Collier and Andrew Lakoff (eds), Biosecurity Interventions (New York: Columbia University Press/SSRC, 2008), pp. 147-72.
17. Miriam Ticktin, Casualties of Care; Miriam Ticktin, 'Where Ethics and Politics Meet: The Violence of Humanitarianism in France', American Ethnologist 33 (2006), pp. 33-49;
18. Miriam Ticktin, 'From Redundancy to Recognition: Transnational Humanitarianism and the Production of Non-Moderns', in Erica Bornstein and Peter Redfield (eds), Forces of Compassion: Humanitarianism between Ethics and Politics (Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press, 2011), pp. 175-98.
19. On the way in which people expect humanitarianism to do the work of politics, yet without the corruption of politics, see Rony Brauman, 'From Philanthropy to Humanitarianism: Remarks and an Interview', South Atlantic Quarterly 103 (2004), pp. 397-417.
20. Craig Calhoun, 'The Imperative to Reduce Suffering: Charity, Progress and Emergencies in the Field of Humanitarian Action', in Michael Barnett and Thomas Weiss (eds), Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), pp. 73-97.
21. Alice M. Miller, 'Sexuality, Violence against Women, and Human Rights: Women Make Demands and Ladies Get Protection', Health and Human Rights 7/2 (2004), pp. 17-47.
22. Miller, 'Sexuality, Violence against Women, and Human Rights', p. 23.
23. Sally Engle Merry, Human Rights and Gender Violence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)
24. Miller, 'Sexuality, Violence against Women, and Human Rights'; Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).
25. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 17 July 1998. U.N. Doc. A/CONF.183/9.
26. Catharine Mackinnon, Are Women Human? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 345.
27. Elizabeth Bernstein, 'The Sexual Politics of the New Abolitionism', Differences 18 (2007), pp. 128-43.
28. Calhoun, 'Imperative to Reduce Suffering'; Alex DeWaal, 'Humanitarianism Reconfigured: Philanthropic Globalization and the New Solidarity', in Michel Feher (ed.), Nongovernmental Politics (Boston: MIT Press, 2007), pp. 183-95.
29. Formore on this perspective, see Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics, tr. Graham D. Burchell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 190;
30. Thomas Haskell, 'Capitalism and the Origins of Humanitarian Sensibility', in Thomas Bender (ed.), The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 107-60.
31. For a map of different perspectives on humanitarianism, Richard A. Wilson and Richard D. Brown (eds), Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
32. Ilana Feldman, 'The Quaker Way: Ethical Labor and Humanitarian Relief', American Ethnologist 34 (2007), pp. 689-705.
33. Kristin Ross, May '68 and Its Afterlives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002);
34. Anne Vallaeys, Médecins Sans Frontières: La biographie (Paris: Fayard, 2004).
35. Nicolas de Torrente, 'Humanitarian Action Under Attack: Reflections on the Iraq War', Harvard Human Rights Journal 17 (2004), pp. 1-29.
36. For critiques of development, James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development', Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994);
37. Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995);
38. Akhil Gupta, Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).
39. See Ticktin, 'Where Ethics and Politics Meet'. See also Didier Fassin, 'The Humanitarian Politics of Testimony: Subjectification through Trauma in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict', Cultural Anthropology: Journal of the Society for Cultural Anthropology 23 (2008), pp. 531-58.
40. Brauman, 'From Philanthropy to Humanitarianism'.
41. Mariella Pandolfi, 'Laboratory of Intervention: The Humanitarian Governance of the Postcommunist Balkan Territories', in Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Sandra Teresa Hyde, Sandra Pinto and Byron J. Good (eds), Postcolonial Disorders (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), pp. 157-86.
42. On Chumanitarianism as a form of government, see also Didier Fassin, 'Humanitarianism: A Nongovernmental Government', in Feher (ed.), Nongovernmental Politics, pp. 149-59.
43. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
44. Brauman, 'From Philanthropy to Humanitarianism', p. 399.
45. Le Pape and Salignon (eds), Civilians Under Fire, p. 11.
46. In the United States, domestic violence began to be incorporated into the medical system in the late 1970s and early 1980s, starting with the category of battered women's syndrome. This medicalisation was structured to be interdependent with the criminalisation of domestic violence, in which criminal charges could be laid even without the survivor's consent, leading to incarceration or, for some, detention and deportation. In other words, medicalisation relates to many things, but it cannot be understood without taking into account the ties between the medical system and pharmaceutical industries, new forms of capital and an expanding prison industrial complex. See Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo, 'The Medicalization of Domestic Violence', in Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2006), pp. 179-88.
47. As WHO's website states, '"sex" refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women', while '"gender" refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women'. World Health Organization (2011), http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/index.html (accessed 27 April 2011).
48. Physicians for Human Rights, 'Epidemic of Inequality: Women's Rights and HIV/AIDS in Botswana and Swaziland. An Evidence-Based Report on the Effects of Gender Inequity, Stigma and Discrimination' (2007), http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/documents/reports/botswana-swazilandreport. pdf (accessed 27 April 2011);
49. United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 'Legacy ofWar: An Epidemic of Sexual Violence in the DRC' 26 November 2008, http://www.unfpa.org/public/News/pid/1399 (accessed 27 April 2011);
50. On the International Medical Corps's use of the term, see http://www.internationalmedicalcorps.org/Page.aspx?pid=1885 (accessed 27 April 2011).
51. I thank Jenny Prewo for her assistance in putting together this survey.
52. See the UNIFEM (US National Committee, Metropolitan NY chapter) event, 'Half the World Deserves a Whole Voice: The Pandemic of Violence against Women', 16 November 2009. I thank Habiba Jaffe for bringing this to my attention.
53. Nicolas Gavey, 'Rape, Trauma and the Politics of Representation', paper presented at 'Gender Violence and Gender Justice: Critical Perspectives on Post-Conflict Societies' conference, held at Emory University, Emory, GA, 8-9 May 2009.
54. Peter Redfield, 'Doctors, Borders and Life in Crisis', Cultural Anthropology: Journal of the Society for Cultural Anthropology 20 (2005), pp. 328-61, here p. 350.
55. The images on the cover of MSF, Shattered Lives; Physicians for Human Rights and Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Nowhere to Turn: Failure to Protect, Support, and Assure Access to Justice for Darfuri Women (Cambridge, MA: Physicians for Human Rights, 2009);
56. CARE International UK, Rape as a Weapon (London: CARE International, 2009).
57. Médecins Sans Frontières, Shattered Lives, p. 9.
58. Sherene Razack, Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004).
59. Interview with Tim Allen, April 1999. See Tim Allen and David Styan, 'A Right to Interfere? Bernard Kouchner and the New Humanitarianism', Journal of International Development 12 (2000), pp. 825-42.
60. Le Pape and Salignon (eds), Civilians Under Fire, p. 75.
61. Médecins Sans Frontières, 'The Crushing Burden of Rape: Sexual Violence in Darfur', briefing paper, Amsterdam, 8 March 2005, http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/reports/2005/sudan03.pdf, p. 1 (accessed 27 April 2011).
62. Médecins Sans Frontières, 'Crushing Burden of Rape', p. 6.
63. Médecins Sans Frontières, 'MSF shocked by arrest of Head of Mission in Sudan - charged with crimes against the state', 30 May 2005, http://www.msf.org.uk/articledetailaspx?fId=Arrest_of_Paul_ Foreman__Statement_by_Jan_Egeland_Emergency_Relief_Coordinator_an (accessed 27 April 2011).
64. Sudanese Online, 'Second MSF aid worker arrested over Sudan rape report' (2005), http:// www.sudaneseonline.com/enews2005/jun1-60862.shtml
65. Redfield, 'Doctors, Borders and Life in Crisis', p. 343.
66. It should be noted that this tension is not an issue for the 'Anglo-Saxon' or British tradition of humanitarianism exemplified by CARE or Oxfam, who choose to combine humanitarianism with development, taking a more utilitarian, multi-pronged approach, and who do not therefore always shy away from political engagement. See Karl Blanchet and Boris Martin (eds), Critique de la raison humanitaire (Paris: Le Cavalier bleu, 2005). For instance, CARE's programme to address gender-based violence encompasses forms of post-conflict development. However, such multi-pronged approaches bring their own sets of problems, such as dependence on the state for funding, and the well-known challenges of development and their own forms of antipolitics.
67. In particular, Stoler sees a resurgence of interest in sexual politics as part of a dispositif of biosecurity, where intimate contact in various forms has been intensified in the name of security. Ann Stoler, 'Beyond Sex: Bodily Exposures of the Colonial and Postcolonial Present', in Anne Berger and Eleni Varikas (eds), Genre et Postcolonialismes: Dialogues Transcontinentaux (Paris: Editions des Archives Contemporaines, 2010), pp. 191-220.
68. Miller, 'Sexuality, Violence against Women, and Human Rights'.
69. Boltanski, Distant Suffering, p. 190.
70. Liisa Malkki, 'Children, Humanity and the Infantilization of Peace', in Feldman and Ticktin (eds), In the Name of Humanity, pp. 58-85.
71. Le Pape and Salignon (eds), Civilians Under Fire, p. 10.
72. Le Pape and Salignon (eds), Civilians Under Fire, p. 11.
73. Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian Books, 1951), p. 295.
74. Miller, 'Sexuality, Violence against Women and Human Rights', p. 29.
75. Chandra Mohanty, 'UnderWestern Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses', Feminist Review 30 (1988), pp. 61-88. For an example of how powerlessness is required for legal recognition, see Razack, 'Domestic Violence as Gender Persecution'
76. Miriam Ticktin, 'Sexual Violence as the Language of Border Control: Where French Feminist and Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric Meet', SIGNS: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society 33 (2008), pp. 863-89.
77. Le Pape and Salignon (eds), Civilians Under Fire, pp. 65-6.
78. Le Pape and Salignon (eds), Civilians Under Fire, p. 66.
79. Le Pape and Salignon (eds), Civilians Under Fire, p. 67.
80. Le Pape and Salignon (eds), Civilians Under Fire, p. 10.
81. On the belief that a woman's chastity is her most precious possession, see Miller, 'Sexuality, Violence against Women, and Human Rights'.
82. Gayle Rubin, 'Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality', in Carole S. Vance (ed.), Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Boston and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 267-319, here p. 279.
83. Amal Hassan Fadlalla, 'The Neoliberalization of Compassion: Darfur and theMediation of American Faith, Fear, and Terror', in Jane L. Collins, Micaela Di Leonardo and Brett Williams (eds), New Landscapes of Inequality: Neoliberalism and the Erosion of Democracy in America (Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press, 2007), pp. 209-28, here p. 218.
84. On the question of using sexual violence to bring political struggle to a head, see also Paromita Chakravarti and her discussion of the Indian army's rape and murder of Thangjam Manorama Devi, after which twelve middle-aged Meira Paibi women stormed the western gate of the Kangla Fort, a symbol of state power in Manipur, with their clothes off, daring the Indian army to rape them, and demanding the withdrawal of the Armed Forces Special Protection Act. Chakravarti argues that this was the most powerful form of protest issued, levelling a challenge both to the Indian army, and to other Indian feminists, to reevaluate their own languages of activism and engagement with a patriarchal state. Paromita Chakravarti, 'Reading Women's Protests: Questioning National Feminist Frames', paper presented at 'Gender Violence and Gender Justice: Critical Perspectives on Post-Conflict Societies' conference, held at Emory University, Emory, GA, 8-9 May 2009.
85. On the inequality of lives at the heart of humanitarianism, seeDidier Fassin, 'Inequality of Lives, Hierarchies of Humanity: Moral Commitments and Ethical Dilemmas of Humanitarianism', in Feldman and Ticktin (eds), In the Name of Humanity, pp. 238-55.
86. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004);
87. Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009).