The Visualising War and Peace podcast series, hosted by the Visualising War Research Group, explores how war and battle get presented in art, text, film and music.  With the help of expert guests, they unpick war stories from all sorts of different periods and places.

Professor Marsha Henry featured in a recent Podcast, joining Dr Alice König (University of St Andrews) to discuss the themes from her latest book The End of Peacekeeping: Gender, Race, and the Martial Politics of Intervention, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024). 

The episode starts with Marsha discussing militarism (the ideology that armed conflict is acceptable, normal, even impressive, noble, desirable - and of greater value in society than many civilian activities) and militarisation (the process by which individuals and groups, civilians as well as soldiers, are socialised into war-oriented worldviews).  As she underlines, militarisation often intersects with discourses of gender (that reflect and generate inequalities between men and women) and also with discourses of race and colonisation (again leading to inequalities and oppression).  While it is less studied, the same trend can be observed in contexts of peacekeeping, where ideas of gender and race can similarly result in unequal and harmful experiences.  This has led Marsha to adopting 'intersectional feminist methodologies' in her study of both militarisation and peacekeeping - an approach she explains in detail.

The bulk of the episode focuses on Marsha's study of current systems of peacekeeping, in particular the harms perpetrated in official peacekeeping missions via e.g. gender-based violence, colonising impulses, and global north thinking.  In her book The End of Peacekeeping, Marsha argues that peacekeeping is not simply a practical but also ‘an epistemic project that actively produces knowledge about peacekeeping, peoples, and practices and as such maintains global systems of power and inequality including heterosexism, colonialism, racism, and militarism’. For that reason, she advocates for its abolition - a proposal we discuss in depth.

In exploring alternatives to current peacekeeping practices, Marsha underlines the need for 'knowing differently' by examining peacekeeping more systematically from the perspectives of 'the peacekept'.  We discuss the power of different peace imaginaries to shift habits of thinking and doing, and the need to visualise peacekeeping broadly, as encompassing e.g. environmental work.  Despite advocating for an end to peacekeeping, Marsha concludes the episode by looking ahead to positive futures - achievable if we are able to dismantle gendered, racist and colonising approaches that for too long have resulted in peacekeeping itself becoming a mechanism of direct, cultural and structural. 

Listen to the episode here.  

 

Professor Marsha Henry

Professor Henry is the Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair in Women, Peace, Security and Justice.  Her research is concerned with the gendered and racialised politics of violence; militarisation; global south development; international aid and intervention; and conflict, peace, and security.  She is the author of several books, the latest of which is: The End of Peacekeeping:  Gender, Race, and the Martial Politics of Intervention (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024).

Marsha has also advised a number of national governments on women’s participation in the armed forces, combatting sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian settings, and developing anti-racist and diversity strategies in foreign policy ministries.