Maria Eriksson Baaz
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 328743 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Maria Eriksson Baaz |
| NOMBRES | Maria Eriksson |
| APELLIDO | Baaz |
| FIRMA | BAAZ M E |
| AFILIACIONES | Uppsala University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7702-2000 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 25 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 574 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 25 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2008 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2023 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
Visibilising hidden realities and uncertainties
This article seeks to move beyond the Euro/North-centrism recurrent in methodological discussions on what we may learn from the COVID-19 pandemic. Such debates often centre on uncertainty and involuntary immobility – aspects which are hardly new for many researchers. In this article, we argue that the pandemic offers an opportunity to rethink research relations between what we term ‘contracting researchers’ in the Global North and ‘facilitating r…
The master’s ‘outlook’ shall never dismantle the master’s house
Race and racism in narratives of insecurity
This introductory text frames the contributions of this forum, bringing together, scholars who have been working for a long time to dismantle knowledge systems that sustain whiteness, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy, in the context of recent developments. It first provides a brief overview of well-established knowledges on the various ways in which racism and racial inequalities remain deeply embedded within academia. This is followed by a snapshot …
Fiscal capacity in “post”-conflict states
What is sexual about conflict-related sexual violence? Stories from men and women survivors
Despite the prominent attention that the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has recently garnered globally, we still know far too little about what is sexual about sexual violence, according to whom, as well as why and how this matters in our efforts to prevent and redress its harms. A growing theoretical, political, legal and ethical imperative to ask questions about the sexual part of sexual violence across both war and peace is…
Who’s at Risk? Reflections on In/Security When Working With/Through Military Brokers in Conflict Settings
In this paper, I reflect upon my experience of working with active military officers-cum-research brokers in research on the Congolese (DRC) armed forces. Drawing upon the traditions of autoethnography and Narrative International Relations, I recount the story of an evolving relationship between one particular military broker and myself. It highlights how military research brokers, while frequently cast not only as capable of handling their own s…
Exploring the Backstage
The contribution and situation of research brokers problematically tend to be shrouded in silence in most research texts. In this article we probe into the particular ethical and methodological challenges that we may encounter when working with brokers in conflict settings, drawing upon existing literature and contributions of this special issue. Reposing on post-colonial perspectives, we problematize both the increasing securitization of conflic…
Curious erasures
Wartime sexual violence is especially egregious precisely because it is a sexual form of violence that causes particular harms. Yet, curiously, and in contrast to feminist theory on sexual violence more generally, the sexual has been erased from frames of understanding in dominant accounts of wartime rape. This article places the seeming certainty that “wartime rape is not about sex (it’s about power/violence)” under critical scrutiny and poses q…
What Can We/Do We Want to Know? Reflections from Researching SGBV in Military Settings
This article explores methodological challenges that arose in two perpetrator-centered research projects on sexual and gender-based violence in two different armed forces contexts: the British Army and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. We examine how the interplay between research subjects’, in this case perpetrators’, performances and our own desires and investments as researchers shape the knowledge we produce. Ultimately, w…
Confronting the colonial
Drawing on postcolonial theory, this article queries into the ways in which the concepts of militarism/militarization and securitization are applied to ‘African’ contexts. We highlight the selective nature of such application and probe into the potential reasons for and effects of this selectiveness, focusing on its signifying work. As we argue, the current selective uses of securitization and militarism/militarization in ‘Africa’ scholarship ten…
Navigating ‘taxation’ on the Congo River
Based on comprehensive research among boat operators and navy personnel working on the Congo River (DRC), this article explores how assessments of ‘taxation’ are shaped by the interplay of legitimation and ‘officialisation’. As such, it draws upon and contributes to scholarly debates on taxpayers’ attitudes towards taxation. While boat operators resent having to pay a plethora of authorities, including the navy, along the Congo River, the article…
Violence in African Elections
Multiparty elections have become the bellwether by which all democracies are judged, and the spread of these systems across Africa has been widely hailed as a sign of the continent's progress towards stability and prosperity. But such elections bring their own challenges, particularly the often intense internecine violence following disputed results
Being reformed
In contrast to most studies addressing security sector reform (SSR) in Africa, this article queries defence reform efforts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from a governmentality perspective and hones in on processes of subjectification and modes of agency among members of the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC). Based on extensive field research in the DRC, it explores how army staff produce themselves through (and outside of) the ways …
The agency of liminality
The inherently unstable boundaries between military and civilian worlds have emerged as a main object of study within the field of critical military studies. This article sheds light on the (re)production of these boundaries by attending to a group that rarely features in the debates on the military/civilian divide: army wives in a ‘non-Northern’ context, more specifically the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Drawing upon the ‘analytical t…
Successive flops and occasional feats
Successive flops and occasional feats : development contributions and thorny social navigation among Congolese return migrants
Africa's Return Migrants
Many African migrants residing abroad nurture a hope to one day return, at least temporarily, to their home country. In the wake of economic crises in the developed world, alongside rapid economic growth in parts of Africa, the impetus to 'return' is likely to increase. Such returnees are often portrayed as agents of development, bringing with them capital, knowledge and skills as well as connections and experience gained abroad. Yet, the reality…
Arbiters with guns
Based on extensive field research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), this article elucidates the logics, processes and readings surrounding certain ‘extra-military’ practices enacted by the Congolese army, namely the processing of various types of disputes between civilians. Exceeding the boundaries of the domain of ‘public security’, such activities are commonly categorised as ‘corruption’. Yet such labelling, founded on a suppo…
The volatility of a half-cooked bouillabaisse
In early 2012, Congolese army deserters formed the M23 rebel movement. This article analyses the insurgency and other armed group activity in the eastern DRC in the light of the politics of rebel-military integration. It argues that military integration processes have fuelled militarization in three main ways. First, by creating incentive structures promoting army desertion and insurgent violence; second, by fuelling inter-and intra-community con…
Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War
All too often in conflict situations, rape is referred to as a 'weapon of war', a term presented as self-explanatory through its implied storyline of gender and warring. In this provocative but much-needed book, Eriksson Baaz and Stern challenge the dominant understandings of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings. Reading with and against feminist analyses of the interconnections between gender, warring, violence and militarizati…
Fearless Fighters and Submissive Wives
This article addresses an underreported aspect of contemporary warring in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): the experiences of women soldiers and officers in the Congolese national armed forces (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo [FARDC]). It thus addresses an empirical gap in scholarly and policy knowledge about female soldiers in national armies on the African continent, and the DRC in particular. Based on original inter…
Feeding the Horse
Based on original interview material, this article addresses the organization of unofficial economic activities within the Congolese (Democratic Republic of the Congo) police force. In contrast to dominant assumptions in security sector reform discourses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in which property violations tend to be portrayed as disorganized, ad-hoc activities, following from irregular and insufficient salaries, the article show…
Whores, men, and other misfits
The global attention focused on sexual violence in the DRC has not only contributed to an image of the Congolese army as a vestige of pre-modern barbarism, populated by rapists, and bearing no resemblance to the world of modern armies; it has also shaped gender and defence reform initiatives. These initiatives have become synonymous with combating sexual violence, reflecting an assumption that the gendered dynamics of the army are already known. …
Why Do Soldiers Rape? Masculinity, Violence, and Sexuality in the Armed Forces in the Congo (DRC)
This article explores the ways soldiers in the Congo speak about the massive amount of rape committed by the armed forces in the recent war in the DRC. It focuses on the reasons that the soldiers give to why rape occurs. It discusses how the soldiers distinguish between "lust rapes" and "evil rapes" and argues that their explanations of rape must be understood in relation to notions of different (impossible) masculinities. Ultimately, through rea…
Making sense of violence
During the last years the DRC has made itself known in the world for terrible acts of violence committed by armed men - militia and the regular army - against the civilian population. The voices of the soldiers and combatants have so far been absent in the accounts of this violence. This silence is problematic, both because it makes it harder to understand such violence, but also because it reinforces stereotypes of African warriors as primitive …
Same and other
The idea of African Otherness has occupied a central role in discourses on cultural production in Africa, whether film, literature, music or the arts. These claims, articulated both by 'Western' an ...
Why Do Soldiers Rape? Masculinity, Violence, and Sexuality in the Armed Forces in the Congo (DRC)
This article explores the ways soldiers in the Congo speak about the massive amount of rape committed by the armed forces in the recent war in the DRC. It focuses on the reasons that the soldiers give to why rape occurs. It discusses how the soldiers distinguish between "lust rapes" and "evil rapes" and argues that their explanations of rape must be understood in relation to notions of different (impossible) masculinities. Ultimately, through rea…
Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War
All too often in conflict situations, rape is referred to as a 'weapon of war', a term presented as self-explanatory through its implied storyline of gender and warring. In this provocative but much-needed book, Eriksson Baaz and Stern challenge the dominant understandings of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings. Reading with and against feminist analyses of the interconnections between gender, warring, violence and militarizati…
The volatility of a half-cooked bouillabaisse
In early 2012, Congolese army deserters formed the M23 rebel movement. This article analyses the insurgency and other armed group activity in the eastern DRC in the light of the politics of rebel-military integration. It argues that military integration processes have fuelled militarization in three main ways. First, by creating incentive structures promoting army desertion and insurgent violence; second, by fuelling inter-and intra-community con…
Exploring the Backstage
The contribution and situation of research brokers problematically tend to be shrouded in silence in most research texts. In this article we probe into the particular ethical and methodological challenges that we may encounter when working with brokers in conflict settings, drawing upon existing literature and contributions of this special issue. Reposing on post-colonial perspectives, we problematize both the increasing securitization of conflic…
Africa's Return Migrants
Many African migrants residing abroad nurture a hope to one day return, at least temporarily, to their home country. In the wake of economic crises in the developed world, alongside rapid economic growth in parts of Africa, the impetus to 'return' is likely to increase. Such returnees are often portrayed as agents of development, bringing with them capital, knowledge and skills as well as connections and experience gained abroad. Yet, the reality…
Making sense of violence
During the last years the DRC has made itself known in the world for terrible acts of violence committed by armed men - militia and the regular army - against the civilian population. The voices of the soldiers and combatants have so far been absent in the accounts of this violence. This silence is problematic, both because it makes it harder to understand such violence, but also because it reinforces stereotypes of African warriors as primitive …
Confronting the colonial
Drawing on postcolonial theory, this article queries into the ways in which the concepts of militarism/militarization and securitization are applied to ‘African’ contexts. We highlight the selective nature of such application and probe into the potential reasons for and effects of this selectiveness, focusing on its signifying work. As we argue, the current selective uses of securitization and militarism/militarization in ‘Africa’ scholarship ten…
Curious erasures
Wartime sexual violence is especially egregious precisely because it is a sexual form of violence that causes particular harms. Yet, curiously, and in contrast to feminist theory on sexual violence more generally, the sexual has been erased from frames of understanding in dominant accounts of wartime rape. This article places the seeming certainty that “wartime rape is not about sex (it’s about power/violence)” under critical scrutiny and poses q…
Violence in African Elections
Multiparty elections have become the bellwether by which all democracies are judged, and the spread of these systems across Africa has been widely hailed as a sign of the continent's progress towards stability and prosperity. But such elections bring their own challenges, particularly the often intense internecine violence following disputed results
The agency of liminality
The inherently unstable boundaries between military and civilian worlds have emerged as a main object of study within the field of critical military studies. This article sheds light on the (re)production of these boundaries by attending to a group that rarely features in the debates on the military/civilian divide: army wives in a ‘non-Northern’ context, more specifically the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Drawing upon the ‘analytical t…
Fearless Fighters and Submissive Wives
This article addresses an underreported aspect of contemporary warring in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): the experiences of women soldiers and officers in the Congolese national armed forces (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo [FARDC]). It thus addresses an empirical gap in scholarly and policy knowledge about female soldiers in national armies on the African continent, and the DRC in particular. Based on original inter…
Feeding the Horse
Based on original interview material, this article addresses the organization of unofficial economic activities within the Congolese (Democratic Republic of the Congo) police force. In contrast to dominant assumptions in security sector reform discourses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in which property violations tend to be portrayed as disorganized, ad-hoc activities, following from irregular and insufficient salaries, the article show…
Arbiters with guns
Based on extensive field research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), this article elucidates the logics, processes and readings surrounding certain ‘extra-military’ practices enacted by the Congolese army, namely the processing of various types of disputes between civilians. Exceeding the boundaries of the domain of ‘public security’, such activities are commonly categorised as ‘corruption’. Yet such labelling, founded on a suppo…
Visibilising hidden realities and uncertainties
This article seeks to move beyond the Euro/North-centrism recurrent in methodological discussions on what we may learn from the COVID-19 pandemic. Such debates often centre on uncertainty and involuntary immobility – aspects which are hardly new for many researchers. In this article, we argue that the pandemic offers an opportunity to rethink research relations between what we term ‘contracting researchers’ in the Global North and ‘facilitating r…
Being reformed
In contrast to most studies addressing security sector reform (SSR) in Africa, this article queries defence reform efforts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from a governmentality perspective and hones in on processes of subjectification and modes of agency among members of the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC). Based on extensive field research in the DRC, it explores how army staff produce themselves through (and outside of) the ways …
What is sexual about conflict-related sexual violence? Stories from men and women survivors
Despite the prominent attention that the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has recently garnered globally, we still know far too little about what is sexual about sexual violence, according to whom, as well as why and how this matters in our efforts to prevent and redress its harms. A growing theoretical, political, legal and ethical imperative to ask questions about the sexual part of sexual violence across both war and peace is…
Navigating ‘taxation’ on the Congo River
Based on comprehensive research among boat operators and navy personnel working on the Congo River (DRC), this article explores how assessments of ‘taxation’ are shaped by the interplay of legitimation and ‘officialisation’. As such, it draws upon and contributes to scholarly debates on taxpayers’ attitudes towards taxation. While boat operators resent having to pay a plethora of authorities, including the navy, along the Congo River, the article…
Whores, men, and other misfits
The global attention focused on sexual violence in the DRC has not only contributed to an image of the Congolese army as a vestige of pre-modern barbarism, populated by rapists, and bearing no resemblance to the world of modern armies; it has also shaped gender and defence reform initiatives. These initiatives have become synonymous with combating sexual violence, reflecting an assumption that the gendered dynamics of the army are already known. …
What Can We/Do We Want to Know? Reflections from Researching SGBV in Military Settings
This article explores methodological challenges that arose in two perpetrator-centered research projects on sexual and gender-based violence in two different armed forces contexts: the British Army and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. We examine how the interplay between research subjects’, in this case perpetrators’, performances and our own desires and investments as researchers shape the knowledge we produce. Ultimately, w…
Who’s at Risk? Reflections on In/Security When Working With/Through Military Brokers in Conflict Settings
In this paper, I reflect upon my experience of working with active military officers-cum-research brokers in research on the Congolese (DRC) armed forces. Drawing upon the traditions of autoethnography and Narrative International Relations, I recount the story of an evolving relationship between one particular military broker and myself. It highlights how military research brokers, while frequently cast not only as capable of handling their own s…
Fiscal capacity in “post”-conflict states
Making sense of violence
During the last years the DRC has made itself known in the world for terrible acts of violence committed by armed men - militia and the regular army - against the civilian population. The voices of the soldiers and combatants have so far been absent in the accounts of this violence. This silence is problematic, both because it makes it harder to understand such violence, but also because it reinforces stereotypes of African warriors as primitive …
Why Do Soldiers Rape? Masculinity, Violence, and Sexuality in the Armed Forces in the Congo (DRC)
This article explores the ways soldiers in the Congo speak about the massive amount of rape committed by the armed forces in the recent war in the DRC. It focuses on the reasons that the soldiers give to why rape occurs. It discusses how the soldiers distinguish between "lust rapes" and "evil rapes" and argues that their explanations of rape must be understood in relation to notions of different (impossible) masculinities. Ultimately, through rea…
Feeding the Horse
Based on original interview material, this article addresses the organization of unofficial economic activities within the Congolese (Democratic Republic of the Congo) police force. In contrast to dominant assumptions in security sector reform discourses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in which property violations tend to be portrayed as disorganized, ad-hoc activities, following from irregular and insufficient salaries, the article show…
Whores, men, and other misfits
The global attention focused on sexual violence in the DRC has not only contributed to an image of the Congolese army as a vestige of pre-modern barbarism, populated by rapists, and bearing no resemblance to the world of modern armies; it has also shaped gender and defence reform initiatives. These initiatives have become synonymous with combating sexual violence, reflecting an assumption that the gendered dynamics of the army are already known. …
The volatility of a half-cooked bouillabaisse
In early 2012, Congolese army deserters formed the M23 rebel movement. This article analyses the insurgency and other armed group activity in the eastern DRC in the light of the politics of rebel-military integration. It argues that military integration processes have fuelled militarization in three main ways. First, by creating incentive structures promoting army desertion and insurgent violence; second, by fuelling inter-and intra-community con…
Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War
All too often in conflict situations, rape is referred to as a 'weapon of war', a term presented as self-explanatory through its implied storyline of gender and warring. In this provocative but much-needed book, Eriksson Baaz and Stern challenge the dominant understandings of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings. Reading with and against feminist analyses of the interconnections between gender, warring, violence and militarizati…
Fearless Fighters and Submissive Wives
This article addresses an underreported aspect of contemporary warring in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): the experiences of women soldiers and officers in the Congolese national armed forces (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo [FARDC]). It thus addresses an empirical gap in scholarly and policy knowledge about female soldiers in national armies on the African continent, and the DRC in particular. Based on original inter…
Arbiters with guns
Based on extensive field research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), this article elucidates the logics, processes and readings surrounding certain ‘extra-military’ practices enacted by the Congolese army, namely the processing of various types of disputes between civilians. Exceeding the boundaries of the domain of ‘public security’, such activities are commonly categorised as ‘corruption’. Yet such labelling, founded on a suppo…
Successive flops and occasional feats
Successive flops and occasional feats : development contributions and thorny social navigation among Congolese return migrants
Africa's Return Migrants
Many African migrants residing abroad nurture a hope to one day return, at least temporarily, to their home country. In the wake of economic crises in the developed world, alongside rapid economic growth in parts of Africa, the impetus to 'return' is likely to increase. Such returnees are often portrayed as agents of development, bringing with them capital, knowledge and skills as well as connections and experience gained abroad. Yet, the reality…
Being reformed
In contrast to most studies addressing security sector reform (SSR) in Africa, this article queries defence reform efforts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from a governmentality perspective and hones in on processes of subjectification and modes of agency among members of the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC). Based on extensive field research in the DRC, it explores how army staff produce themselves through (and outside of) the ways …
The agency of liminality
The inherently unstable boundaries between military and civilian worlds have emerged as a main object of study within the field of critical military studies. This article sheds light on the (re)production of these boundaries by attending to a group that rarely features in the debates on the military/civilian divide: army wives in a ‘non-Northern’ context, more specifically the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Drawing upon the ‘analytical t…
Curious erasures
Wartime sexual violence is especially egregious precisely because it is a sexual form of violence that causes particular harms. Yet, curiously, and in contrast to feminist theory on sexual violence more generally, the sexual has been erased from frames of understanding in dominant accounts of wartime rape. This article places the seeming certainty that “wartime rape is not about sex (it’s about power/violence)” under critical scrutiny and poses q…
What Can We/Do We Want to Know? Reflections from Researching SGBV in Military Settings
This article explores methodological challenges that arose in two perpetrator-centered research projects on sexual and gender-based violence in two different armed forces contexts: the British Army and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. We examine how the interplay between research subjects’, in this case perpetrators’, performances and our own desires and investments as researchers shape the knowledge we produce. Ultimately, w…
Confronting the colonial
Drawing on postcolonial theory, this article queries into the ways in which the concepts of militarism/militarization and securitization are applied to ‘African’ contexts. We highlight the selective nature of such application and probe into the potential reasons for and effects of this selectiveness, focusing on its signifying work. As we argue, the current selective uses of securitization and militarism/militarization in ‘Africa’ scholarship ten…
Navigating ‘taxation’ on the Congo River
Based on comprehensive research among boat operators and navy personnel working on the Congo River (DRC), this article explores how assessments of ‘taxation’ are shaped by the interplay of legitimation and ‘officialisation’. As such, it draws upon and contributes to scholarly debates on taxpayers’ attitudes towards taxation. While boat operators resent having to pay a plethora of authorities, including the navy, along the Congo River, the article…
Violence in African Elections
Multiparty elections have become the bellwether by which all democracies are judged, and the spread of these systems across Africa has been widely hailed as a sign of the continent's progress towards stability and prosperity. But such elections bring their own challenges, particularly the often intense internecine violence following disputed results
Who’s at Risk? Reflections on In/Security When Working With/Through Military Brokers in Conflict Settings
In this paper, I reflect upon my experience of working with active military officers-cum-research brokers in research on the Congolese (DRC) armed forces. Drawing upon the traditions of autoethnography and Narrative International Relations, I recount the story of an evolving relationship between one particular military broker and myself. It highlights how military research brokers, while frequently cast not only as capable of handling their own s…
Exploring the Backstage
The contribution and situation of research brokers problematically tend to be shrouded in silence in most research texts. In this article we probe into the particular ethical and methodological challenges that we may encounter when working with brokers in conflict settings, drawing upon existing literature and contributions of this special issue. Reposing on post-colonial perspectives, we problematize both the increasing securitization of conflic…
Fiscal capacity in “post”-conflict states
What is sexual about conflict-related sexual violence? Stories from men and women survivors
Despite the prominent attention that the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has recently garnered globally, we still know far too little about what is sexual about sexual violence, according to whom, as well as why and how this matters in our efforts to prevent and redress its harms. A growing theoretical, political, legal and ethical imperative to ask questions about the sexual part of sexual violence across both war and peace is…
The master’s ‘outlook’ shall never dismantle the master’s house
Race and racism in narratives of insecurity
This introductory text frames the contributions of this forum, bringing together, scholars who have been working for a long time to dismantle knowledge systems that sustain whiteness, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy, in the context of recent developments. It first provides a brief overview of well-established knowledges on the various ways in which racism and racial inequalities remain deeply embedded within academia. This is followed by a snapshot …
Visibilising hidden realities and uncertainties
This article seeks to move beyond the Euro/North-centrism recurrent in methodological discussions on what we may learn from the COVID-19 pandemic. Such debates often centre on uncertainty and involuntary immobility – aspects which are hardly new for many researchers. In this article, we argue that the pandemic offers an opportunity to rethink research relations between what we term ‘contracting researchers’ in the Global North and ‘facilitating r…
Same and other
The idea of African Otherness has occupied a central role in discourses on cultural production in Africa, whether film, literature, music or the arts. These claims, articulated both by 'Western' an ...
Sociology (21 obras) · Political science (20 obras) · Law (15 obras) · Gender, Security, and Conflict (13 obras) · Law (13 obras) · Criminology (10 obras) · Politics (9 obras) · Peacebuilding and International Security (8 obras) · Gender Studies (7 obras) · Democracy (6 obras)