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WORLD ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNION

CONGRESS 2024​

Paper

Beyond the Household and the Battlefield: Feminist Insights on War, Peace, and the Politics of Everyday Life

presenters

    Diana Pardo Pedraza

    Nationality: Colombia

    Residence: United States

    George Washington University

    Presence:Face to Face/ On Site

Keywords:

Everyday militarisms; Liberal peace; Nonviolent futures

Abstract:

Drawing on my ethnographic work in minefields and demining sites in rural Colombia, this paper delves into feminist research that transcends traditional gender-centric analyses within contexts of war and militarism, while steadfastly committing to the exposure and interrogation of power relations and differences. I detail feminist methodological and theoretical approaches that examine the seeping of warfare and political violence into the quotidian and ordinary—how military logics “feel at home in the world.” Often hidden in plain sight, everyday militarisms find a catalyst in “civilian” bodies, practices, landscapes, and infrastructures. This exploration requires the reevaluation of the domestic and the home; no longer confined to the household or the realms of privacy, they refer to the habitats and milieus of violent material relationships that are both ongoing and latent, encompassing public spaces like neighborhoods, local businesses, waste disposal infrastructures, hospices, and crop fields. This feminist attention to the ‘domestication of war and militarism’ also critiques liberal models of peace, which tend to pacify communities and suppress political demands and conflicts. It proposes peace in a minor key: the humble, small-scale cultivation of nonviolent and collaborative futures.