Gender and Private Security in Global Politics [Paperback]

For two hundred years the provision of military security has been a central and defining function of the modern nation-state. The increasing reliance on private military and security companies in contemporary conflict marks a fundamental transformation in the organization of military violence, and it raises issues of accountability and ethics that are of particular concern to feminists. This privatization of force not only enables states to circumvent citizens' democratic control over questions of war and peace, but also undermines women's and minority groups' claims for greater inclusion in the military sphere.

Gender and Private Security in Global Politicsbrings together key scholars from the fields of international relations, security studies, and gender studies to argue that privatization of military security is a deeply gendered process. The chapters employ a variety of feminist perspectives, including critical, postcolonial, poststructuralist, and queer feminist perspectives, as well as a wide range of methodological approaches including ethnography, participant-observation, genealogy, and discourse analysis. This is the first book to develop an extended feminist analysis of private militaries and to draw on feminist concerns regarding power, justice and equality to consider how to reform and regulate private forces.

Acknowledgements

List of Contributors

List of Acronyms

Gender and the Privatization of Military Security: An Introduction
Maya Eichler

Part One: Beyond the Public/Private Divide: Feminist Analyses of Military Privatization and the Gendered State

Chapter 1: Military Privatization as a Gendered Process: A Case for Integrating Feminist International Relations and Feminist State Theories
Saskia Stachowitsch

Chapter 2: Military Privatization and the Gendered Politics of Sacrifice
Bianca Baggiarini

Chapter 3: Gender, PMSCs, and the Global Rescaling of Protection: Implicatiol#