TY - JOUR
T1 - Winning the battle but losing the war on violence: A feminist perspective on the declining global violence thesis
AU - True, Jacqueline Marie
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - Scholars have recently claimed that global violence - defined largely as homicide and casualties from war - is in steep decline. However, research dedicated to using data to prove the decline of violence, in particular Steven Pinker s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, almost completely neglects evidence of gendered violence within and across states. This methodological and analytical failure results from flawed theoretical assumptions about what violence is and how to count violent incidences. While prevalence surveys show that a large proportion of women and girls (not to mention men and boys) experience sexual and gender based violence (SGBV), it does not appear in declinist analyses. This is especially problematic given the burgeoning evidence of SGBV's scale and significance in current conflicts, often as a tactic of war targeting civilians. Analyzing global violence from a feminist perspective thus radically challenges declinist views about trends of violence. The explicitly feminist perspective on international relations in this article provides a more universal accounting of global violence, and the contemporary changes in the nature and forms of violence. (c) 2015 Taylor Francis
AB - Scholars have recently claimed that global violence - defined largely as homicide and casualties from war - is in steep decline. However, research dedicated to using data to prove the decline of violence, in particular Steven Pinker s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, almost completely neglects evidence of gendered violence within and across states. This methodological and analytical failure results from flawed theoretical assumptions about what violence is and how to count violent incidences. While prevalence surveys show that a large proportion of women and girls (not to mention men and boys) experience sexual and gender based violence (SGBV), it does not appear in declinist analyses. This is especially problematic given the burgeoning evidence of SGBV's scale and significance in current conflicts, often as a tactic of war targeting civilians. Analyzing global violence from a feminist perspective thus radically challenges declinist views about trends of violence. The explicitly feminist perspective on international relations in this article provides a more universal accounting of global violence, and the contemporary changes in the nature and forms of violence. (c) 2015 Taylor Francis
UR - http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14616742.2015.1046269
U2 - 10.1080/14616742.2015.1046269
DO - 10.1080/14616742.2015.1046269
M3 - Article
VL - 17
SP - 554
EP - 572
JO - International Feminist Journal of Politics
JF - International Feminist Journal of Politics
SN - 1461-6742
IS - 4
ER -