The relationships of violence at the centre of the relationship between labour and capital are rarely understood as violence, and even less so as gendered violence. But they are, and Turshen’s analysis links how women experience violence in both their productive and reproductive lives, and how this is reproduced in conflict.
The public/private divide is a mythical construct, created and maintained by structures of capitalism and patriarchy. This is a central tenet of feminist analysis (and Turshen draws on many of these, notably Bakker and Gill 2003) as shown by countless others (for example, Pearson’s 1997 analysis of the crisis of reproduction in Cuba, as well as a crisis of production). But here we have an examination of the lives of women in conflict, in which this division completely unravels. The link between production and reproduction is through the embodied, lived experiences of women, of the violence of capitalism and the extreme privatisation agenda of modern neoliberalism, the collapse of the state and the commercialisation of life – where everything and everyone is for sale in an unregulated market created and maintained by conflict, in which women’s bodies and women’s lives are situated according to their gender, as both productive and reproductive agents.
As with slavery and colonialism, people’s (women’s) lives in conflict are structured according to the market, and situations of conflict create new markets for neoliberalism, reinforced by the aid system (p. 125). This implicates both the macro-economic models of structural adjustment which created such a violent gendered impact in many countries, and development projects such as microfinance, leading to the financialisation of social relations (p. 73), and what Sylvia Chant has termed the ‘feminisation of responsibility and obligation’ under neoliberal models of development (Chant 2007).
The book is organised to articulate Turshen’s detailed analysis of gendered violence, and its persistence in conflict and post-conflict. In Part I a theoretical and historical examination offers an understanding of violence as structurally produced and reproduced along gendered lines, specifically using the extractive industries of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sierra Leone as examples. Turshen’s analysis locates the personal within the structural, and articulates the continuities between current forms of violence, and the historical contexts of colonialism and slavery.
Part II looks at the gendered nature of violence in production, in biological and social reproduction, and in the construction of people’s lives in situations of armed conflict. The examples of mining in DRC and Sierra Leone are used to illustrate how violence is contained within
the processes of production, the women and men whose labour power is necessary for production, and the violent practices of those who employ and manage workers in neoliberal capitalist regimes. (p. 70)
The productive roles of women are intricately linked to processes of biological and social reproduction, illustrated by the crossover of productive and reproductive activities of women (e.g., in microfinance, and informal trading). But where Turshen’s analysis of violence stands out is in the understanding she develops of the embodied nature of the relationship between production and reproduction in women’s lives. Foremost here of course is what happens to women in wartime, and the normalisation of sexual violence.
The example of Tanzania is used to compare the experiences of women in a nation at peace, particularly the ability of women to organise and resist the inequalities of their productive and reproductive lives (e.g., TAWOMA, the Tanzania Women Miners Association, and the Sierra Leone Market Women’s Union). In this, Turshen does not neglect to emphasise that women are not always and only victims lacking their own agency. In many contexts women manage complex livelihoods, ‘and the evidence of their struggles to survive is marked by the impact of neoliberalism’ (p. 126).
The final part of the book turns to ideas of accountability and justice. Accountability initiatives have historically been based on individuals, and national divisions (international criminal courts held for particular conflicts, for example). This, however, does not allow an understanding of how violence and institutionalised norms of violence are embedded and perpetuated at the level of the global economy. Turshen reminds us that war is a collective experience (p. 184), and that therefore accountability structures also need to have a collective resonance. There is also no way ‘back’. Often post-conflict (or post-disaster) frameworks seek to ‘return’ to a set of perceived traditional norms. However, Turshen argues convincingly for accountability in post-conflict situations to take place in the current reality of people’s – and specifically women’s – lives, and to address the violence that goes beyond the national context, and that is deeply embedded in the global economic system (p. 180).
Turshen’s analysis is drawn from an incredibly broad range of work. This book builds on her feminist analysis of women’s health, and ‘the struggles … over the terms and conditions under which production and reproduction are being integrated within the global economy’ (p. xi, emphasis in original). The development of her analysis is based on asking questions about how women’s livelihoods and relationships both within and without households can contribute to historical and contemporary studies of violence and its persistence, based not only on literature and interdisciplinary research, but also on an understanding of feminist activism around these issues, and the need to reflect the messy realities of women’s lives.
This is not a ‘neat’ book, in that the analysis suggests loose ends that cannot be tied up. But this is reflective of the extreme messiness of violence and conflict that make up the lives of many women, and for this it is refreshing and ultimately more convincing, and more useful in understanding the persistence of violence in women’s lives.