Description
Although the field and study of transitional justice – referring to measures designed to deal with the legacies of human rights violations in the aftermath of conflicts or authoritarian regimes – was traditionally silent on gender, the past decade witnessed the increasing utilization of feminist theories to elucidate the gendered workings of post-conflict transitions. Not at least since Bell and O’Rourke in 2007 have posed the critical questions of ‘where are women, where is gender and where is feminism in transitional justice’, considerations around gender have increasingly gained traction in the growing literature. However, while gender perspectives have become a burgeoning focus of analysis in the TJ field, the dominant conceptualization of 'gender' in scholarship and practice on dealing with the past effectively remains an exclusive one, predominantly equated with ‘women’.
As a result of these dominant foci and conceptions, careful consideration for the roles of masculinities and for the experiences of sexual and gender minorities remains mostly absent. By bringing different critical approaches to gender in TJ – including masculinities and queer perspectives – into conversation, this panel begins to address these gaps. We thereby contribute towards a more inclusive and holistic understanding of gender in transitional spaces, which both challenges and contributes to current approaches and practices. The papers in this panel address incorporate masculinities and queer perspective across different post-conflict contexts, as well as from diverse disciplinary, theoretical and methodological backgrounds, to illustrate the diversity of contexts where such approaches offer new insights into understanding, disrupting and/or complexifying these processes.
