Women who volunteer

A relative autonomy perspective in Al-Shabaab female recruitment in Kenya

Bibliographic Data

ID12918772
AuthorsF A Badurdeen (0000-0001-5228-375X, Technical University of Mombasa, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume13
Issue4
Pages616-637
Publication date2020-08-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Studies on Terrorism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1753-9161 • E-ISSN: 1753-9153
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17539153.2020.1810993
OpenAlexW3081470705
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited20

Notions of relative autonomy shape the discourse on voluntary recruitment of women and girls to terrorist networks. This article discusses voluntariness of women in Al-Shabaab recruitment, using feminist theories of relational autonomy based on an ethnographic study of sixteen selected Al-Shabaab women returnees in Kenya. The study analyses women’s autonomous decision-making in volunteering for the Al-Shabaab network. Women participate on their sheer will independently of religiously inclined cultural values at one end, and on the other end, participation is shaped via gender-dynamics of submission and subordination within families and the community. However, due caution is exhibited in understanding different aspects in autonomous decision-making in volunteering, where some women had joined these networks as a struggle to exercise agency within systems of oppression in patriarchal setups with the lure for emancipation within the Al-Shabaab network and the utopian caliphate

Agency (philosophy · Autonomy · Emancipation · Ethnography · Oppression · Perspective (graphical · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Subordination (linguistics · Gender Studies · Law · Religion, Society, and Development · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development

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