Revisiting Gendered States

Abstract

State sovereignty and autonomy in the twenty-first century are both under challenge and continually reasserted in diverse ways through gender, sexuality, and race-making. This paradox makes it pertinent to revisit the idea of states as gendered political entities. Bringing together scholars from international relations and postcolonial and development studies, this volume collectively theorizes the modern state and its intricate relationship to security, identity politics, and gender. Drawing on postcolonial and critical feminist approaches, together with empirical case studies, contributors engage with the ontological foundations of the modern state and its capacity to adapt to the global and local contestations of its identity, histories, and purpose. They examine the various ways in which gender explains the construction and interplay of states in global politics today; and how states, be they neoliberal, postcolonial, or religious (or all three together), impact the everyday lives and security of their citizens. Such a rich array of feminist analyses of multiple kinds of states provides crucial insight into gender injustices in relatively stable states, but also into the political, economic, social, and cultural inequalities that produce violent conflicts threatening the sovereignty of some states and even leading to the creation of new states.

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