Fatherhood, Gender, and Interventions in the Geopolitical: Analyzing Paternal Peace, Masculinities, and War

Abstract

War and peace are gendered and gendering geopolitical processes, constituting particular configurations of masculinity and femininity. When men are considered in relation to war and peace the majority of scholarly accounts focus on soldiers and perpetrators, typically observing their place in the gendered geopolitical solely through military/ized masculinities. In contrast, this article examines fatherhood as a masculine subjectivity, interacting in a nexus with other masculinities to produce an intelligible propeace intervention in war, and considers the implications for our understandings of gender and the geopolitical. To analyze this political subjectivity of what I term "paternal peace," the article considers the case of Bob Bergdahl. Bergdahl's son was a US soldier held by a Taliban-aligned group for five years until 2014. During this time Bergdahl was publically critical of US foreign policy, presenting his son's release as part of a peace process that could end violence in Afghanistan. I unpack how Bergdahl's public political subjectivity was the outcome of a "gender project" drawing on accounts of "valley" fatherhood in combination with particular forms of diplomatic and military masculinity. I consider how Bergdahl's intervention was publically received, and how the geopolitical reach of it was pacified within gendered and racialized coding.This article considers the possibility and practice of what I term "paternal peace" and considers implications for our understandings of gender and the geopolitical. This is explored through the case of Bob Bergdahl, the father of an American soldier held by a Taliban-aligned group for five years. Bergdahl described himself as "a father who wants his son back" (Carroll 2014). His public campaign for his son's release became inextricably connected to his critiques of American foreign policy, Guantanamo Bay, and direct diplomatic overtures to his son's captors, which were framed as a chance to end the war in Afghanistan through a peace process.Men and women populate imaginations of the geopolitical as players in the gendered "universalised storyline of warring" (Baaz and Stern 2009, 496). Men and masculinities are idealized in connection with war's violence and women and femininities are idealized in relation to peace. Although scholarship has detailed the constructed rather than "natural" form of this configuration, when men are considered in relation to war, it is typically as soldiers, militarized protectors, or perpetrators, and it is explained through the concept of military/ized masculinities. In a departure from this, I reveal the multiple and interacting gendered repertoires through which men encounter, are subject to, and engage in war. I examine how politically unruly engagements in war, peace, and diplomacy can be undertaken through subject positions associated with fatherhood masculinity. I discuss how Bob

A model of paternal protection in the context of political violence: Insights from the occupied Palestinian territories

“…Furthermore, some fathers noted that staying in their homes and communities despite the violence was an act of sumud , or everyday peaceful resistance, a finding consistent with other scholarship on the experiences of Palestinians under occupation (Akesson, 2014c, 2015b, 2015c; Giacaman et al, 2009; Nguyen-Gillham et al, 2008; Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2006; Sousa et al, 2014). Sumud as a component of paternal protection also reinforces recent scholarship on ‘paternal peace’ (Tidy, 2018: 2), which aims to move away from negative perceptions of men as part of the ‘universalized storyline of warring’ (Baaz and Stern, 2009: 496).…”

Aisyiyah's Role in Preparing Political Cadres

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Violations of the heart: Parental harm in war and oppression

“…The conduct of war is enabled by and produces specific forms of femininities and masculinities, and constructions of motherhood and fatherhood are central to making sense of and legitimising violence. 15 As such, the conditions of war and oppression generate crucial shifts in how parenthood is discursively constructed -often further strengthening existing regulatory gender norms. It is thus important to recognise motherhood and fatherhood as sites that are both manipulated for political ends and invested with meaning at the level of lived experiences.…”