The Kurdish Women's Freedom Movement

Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-1-316-51974-5
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 288 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 532 g

Amidst ongoing wars and insecurities, female fighters, politicians and activists of the Kurdish Freedom Movement are building a new political system that centres gender equality. Since the Rojava Revolution, the international focus has been especially on female fighters, a gaze that has often been essentialising and objectifying, brushing over a much more complex history of violence and resistance. Going beyond Orientalist tropes of the female freedom fighter, and the movement's own narrative of the 'free woman', Isabel Käser looks at personal trajectories and everyday processes of becoming a militant in this movement. Based on in-depth ethnographic research in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, with women politicians, martyr mothers and female fighters, she looks at how norms around gender and sexuality have been rewritten and how new meanings and practices have been assigned to women in the quest for Kurdish self-determination. Her book complicates prevailing notions of gender and war and creates a more nuanced understanding of the everyday embodied epistemologies of violence, conflict and resistance.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Käser, Isabel

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Interessengruppen, Lobbyismus und Protestbewegungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Naher & Mittlerer Osten
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; 1. The PKK – a woman's party? A history of the Kurdistan women's freedom movement 1978–2020; 2. Diyarbakir under fire: women at the barricades; 3. The mountain life: on learning to become free; 4. Mothers and martyrs: the struggle for life and the commemoration of death in Maxmûr camp; 5. Unmaking and remaking sexuality: body politics and the PKK; Conclusion.

Über Autor(innen)

Käser, Isabel
Isabel Käser is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Research Associate at the University of Bern. She gained her PhD at SOAS University of London and has previously worked in journalism and diplomacy, most recently leading the research project 'Art in Peace Mediation' for the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. She has lectured at the University of Bern, and the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr (UKH), and is currently the Principal Investigator of a collaborative project between the LSE and the UKH entitled 'The Kurdistan Region of Iraq Post-ISIS: Youth, Art and Gender'.