CALL FOR PAPERS

Description

Feminist and post/decolonial work in International Relations (IR) and Global Political Economy (FGPE) has immensely impacted the ways in which we view power and global politics. In particular, this work has highlighted the varied and complex ways in which war, peace, and neo-liberal political economy restructuring works through and reproduces the gendered, racialised, heteronormative, and classed structures of inequality within and among nation-states. Little attention has been given to the various ways that economic and financial sanctions shape women's lives and experiences of (in)security in the target countries despite sanctions having become among the most popular policy tools for addressing international conflicts or other alleged threats to security. Similarly, international and UN policy making has narrowly limited the concern for women's (in)securities to "armed conflicts" — i.e. in the field of Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) — leaving out various ways through which the application of coercive economic tools shape gender relations and the lived realities of women's in target countries, which are often located in the Global South. In the absence of such feminist critical engagement, conventional state-centric, national-security, and Eurocentric frameworks have dominated the scholarly debate on sanctions.

Inspired by the question famously asked by Enloe (1989, Bananas, Beaches and Bases) that "where are the women in IR?", this workshop aims to bring together feminist scholars whose research is focused on sanctioned countries (including, but not limited to, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Haiti and Russia) to rethink international relations — and its gendered, racialised, heteronormative, and classed inequalities — from the viewpoint of women in the sanctioned states. Discussions of sanctions in various temporal/spacial locations, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives including International Relations, International Political Economy, International Law, Sociology, Media studies, economics and history are welcomed. The contributors need not be "experts" on economic sanctions, as "expertise" on economic sanctions has often been shaped through the aforementioned conventional approaches. Rather, developing alternative feminist and non-western epistemologies and multidisciplinary frameworks to the study of sanctions constitute one of the main purposes of the workshop.

THE THEMES OF THE WORKSHOP MAY INCLUDE AND ARE NOT LIMITED TO:

• Gendered, racialised, sexualised and classed implications of sanctions for the target States (i.e. in ways that economic sanctions may shift the dynamics of domestic politics i.e. economic policies, citizenship rights, political/women's movements, political parties, dissent, etc.)

• Gendered, racialised, sexualised and classed lived realities under the sanction regimes (i.e. impact on employment, increased poverty, inflations, etc.)

• Gendered, racialised, sexualised and classed discourses surrounding the imposition of sanctions on the target countries

• Gendered, racialised, sexualised and classed representations of the sanctioned countries

• The links between economic sanctions and the longer histories of colonialism and capitalism in each specific context

• Economic sanctions, UN agendas, and the structures of international law

For Interested Applicants

On the attached form, please provide the following information:

• Name

• Institutional Affiliation(s)

• Contact Information

• CV

• An abstract of, at most 500 words, describing your research interest/project

Abstracts will be considered through a blind-review process. In this aim, please do not include your name or affiliation in your abstract document or its file name. Please use a document or PDF format for all uploads. If interested in proposing a panel or if you have any questions, please contact info@thinkingiran.com.

Participation of scholars with affiliations to the Global South is strongly encouraged. Funding may be provided for those who wish to participate in person.

The workshop is organized and led by Asma Abdi and benefits from the support of renowned scholars in both fields of critical sanction studies and feminist IR and IPE, Eva Nanopoulos, Nicola Pratt, and Juanita Elias, who will act not only as chairs and discussants of the panels but will also contribute to the establishment of the network. We envision that this workshop would be followed by another one-day event dedicated to an in-depth discussion of a selected number of papers for publication in a peer-reviewed special issue.

This event is sponsored in partnership with the RETHINKING IRAN Initiative at Johns Hopkins SAIS, Queens Mary University Centre of Law and Society in a Global Context, and the University of Warwick, Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS).