Browsing by Author "Laitila, Kaisa"

This master’s thesis explores the dichotomic relationship between victimhood and women’s agency in relation to peacebuilding in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. The object of analysis is the United Nations discourse on women, peace and security, materialized in the Security Council resolutions on the other hand, and narratives of female peace activists in the city of Sarajevo on the other. The study seeks to examine different understandings that women peace activists develop as regards to peace and security with a particular focus on the meanings they give to concepts of victimhood and agency. The overall aim is to show the need for moving away from passive victimization to a more plural representation of female subjectivity in post-conflict. Theoretical framework for the study is rooted in poststructuralist feminist scholarship influenced by Michel Foucault’s conceptualizations of power and the subject. More precisely, Judith Butler’s performative theory of gender and Laura Shepherd’s discourse theoretical approach work as a starting point for the analysis of the construction of gendered subjectivities. Through poststructuralist understanding of discourse and power, the primary effort is to challenge the essentialist binaries, and to show the central role of language in construction of certain types of femininities. The research data consists of selected UN Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security and the material gained from the interviews with women peace activists. The data is explored with a use of discourse analytical techniques within wider poststructuralist framework. The thesis presents a reading of two narratives of production in tandem through which the concepts of agency and victimhood are assessed. The activist accounts both conformed to and challenged the traditional gendered constructions of female subjectivity reproduced in the Security Council documents. Agency found its justification from the conventional victim roles that women have been exposed to through time. However, claiming agency through collective victimization can be read as an effort to construct powerful gendered identities. As such there is a need to think anew about women’s agency in relation to peace and security, and to find power in discursive constructions that have generally been seen as powerless.