The Military-Peace Complex: Gender and Materiality in Afghanistan (Advances in Critical Military Studies)

Exploring the physical, embodied landscape of the military-peace complex in Afghanistan. Based on original research and interviews. Articulates and explores the notion of a military-peace complex as a framework to understand intervention practices in Afghanistan. Offers a holistic account of the international project in Afghanistan. Pays attention to under-studied aspects of the international project in Afghanistan including the everyday, gendered and material dynamics that shape it. This book focuses on the military and statebuilding components of the international project in Afghanistan since 2001. It posits and discusses the military-peace complex as a framework through which to understand the international project in Afghanistan, pointing to the sliding together and collapse between military and peace actors, mandates and ideational frameworks. Arguing that military and peace work in the liberal mode cannot be logically separated, but rather are co-constituted and operate in a dynamic relationship to each other with fluid and shifting boundaries, the book focuses on the role of gender within the logics of the international project in Afghanistan, as well as exploring material and spatial entanglements and cross-cutting logics. Based on original interviews and wider research the book offers a holistic way of viewing the international project in Afghanistan, drawing attention to its under-noticed elements and providing a new way of understanding its politics This volume focuses on the military and statebuilding components of the international project in Afghanistan since 2001. It posits and discusses the military-peace complex as a framework through which to understand the international project in Afghanistan, pointing to the sliding together and collapse between military and peace actors, mandates and ideational frameworks. Arguing that military and peace work in the liberal mode cannot be logically separated, but rather are co-constituted and operate in a dynamic relationship to each other with fluid and shifting boundaries, this book looks at the role of gender within the logics of the international project in Afghanistan, as well as exploring material and spatial entanglements and cross-cutting logics Contents 6 List of Figures 7 Acknowledgements 8 List of Abbreviations 10 Introduction 12 1. Afghanistan in Context 39 2. Performing the Military–Peace Complex: Logics that Entangle 73 3. The Martial Politics of Things and Spaces 110 4. Liberal Feminism, the Third World Woman and the Third Gender 149 A Final Conclusion 187 Bibliography 193 Index 219