Transformative indicators? Gender expertise and technocratic peace
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6060720 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Laura Mcleod (0000-0001-7424-9106, The University of Manchester, UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 619-643 |
| Publication date | 2024-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of International Relations (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1354-0661 • E-ISSN: 1460-3713 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/13540661241259864 |
| OpenAlex | W4400984112 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 37 |
In the last decade, the use of indicators to track implementation of international peacebuilding and peacekeeping programmes, policies and practices has proliferated. Indicators are criticised by many scholars for their technocratic, standardised and colonialising effects. This article follows a different line of inquiry. Can indicators be transformative? Contemporary critiques place indicators as bureaucratic artefacts in a vacuum, detached and decontextualised from the nuances of human agency developing, utilising and subverting them. I conceptualise indicators as powerful gendered technologies of knowledge creation developed, used and subverted by institutional actors. Using interviews with institutional actors and United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Reports, I trace institutional stories of one indicator (out of 26) developed to capture implementation of the UN Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. The indicator investigated tracks the number of senior gender experts employed within UN Peacekeeping and Special Political Missions. Stories of progress, skill, and location in the reporting of this indicator between 2010 and 2020 highlight strategies deployed and opportunities taken by feminist-change advocates within the UN to prompt a deeper implementation of the WPS agenda. While indicators hold the danger of reinforcing neoliberal norms, the failure to conceptualise the potential for developing, utilising and/or subverting the indicators smacks of hubris, limiting opportunities for meaningful transformation
Economics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Social science · Sociology · Technocracy · Transformative learning · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Human Rights and Development · International Development and Aid · Law
The Seductions of Quantification
Data Feminism
Mainstreaming Gender in UN Security Policy
The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict
Reclaiming Everyday Peace
Re-tooling subjectivities
Introduction
Numbers in global security governance
The Limits of Formal Metrics during Conflict and Post-conflict Transition
High Resolution’ Indicators in Peacebuilding
The politics of counting and reporting conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence
This Is Our Gender Person”
Gender mainstreaming 2.0
Expertise at the intersection of technicality and ambiguity
Routine peace
The political functions of expert knowledge
Introduction
Politics by Number
Trick or Treat? The UN and Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security
On the necessity of critical race feminism for women, peace and security
Racial hierarchies of knowledge production in the Women, Peace and Security agenda
A Sociology of Quantification
Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance
Gender as national interest at the UN Security Council
Resources, Agency, Achievements
Feminisms, Women's Rights, and the UN
Cultural Dimensions of Power/Knowledge
A History of the Modern Fact
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |