Series of Lectures by the Department of Development Studies
Time: Monday, 11 June 2012, 18.00-20.00
Venue: Department of African Studies, Campus of the University of Vienna, Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Vienna
Feminist theorizing about the complex ways in which gender is implicated in situations of armed conflict has over the past decade become overtaken by a veritable “Gender and Conflict Industry” now part of the normative framework of the new humanitarianism and their recent global interventions. But what about situations in which conflict is longstanding, endemic and where emergency is a near-permanent way of life? This talk seeks to interrogate some of the assumptions both about gender and conflict in the mainstream approaches that dominate the “Gender and Conflict Industry”. It will do so through reference to the often surprising and contradictory outcomes that the past decade of protracted Israeli military, spatial and economic violence has had on gendered norms, expectations and subjectivities across Palestinian society.
Rema Hammami is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the  Institute for Women’s Studies of the Birzeit University in Palestine.