Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice

Volume 16, Number 1, March 2004

Symposium: Women, Human Security
and Globalization

Special Editor: Linda Basch, National Council for Research on Women

Contents:

Linda Basch, Human Security, Globalization, and Feminist Visions
Mary Robinson, An Ethical, Human-Rights Approach to Globalization
Kristen Timothy, Human Security Discourse at the United Nations
Sadako Ogata, The Human Security Commission's Strategy
Charlotte Bunch, A Feminist Human Rights Lens
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Gender, Globalization and New Threats to Human Security
J. Ann Tickner, Feminist Responses to International Security Studies
Deborah L. Rhode, Gender and the U.S. Human Rights Record
Leith Mullings, Domestic Policy and Human Security in the U.S.
Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey, Women Opposing U.S. Militarism in East Asia
Sally L. Kitch and Margaret A. Mills, Appropriating Women's Agendas
Sima Wali, Violence, Terror, and Accountability in Afghanistan
Geeta Rao Gupta, Globalization, Women and the HIV/ AIDS Epidemic
Rabab Abdulhadi, Imagining Justice and Peace in the Age of Empire
Ken Coates, Dealing with the Hydra?
Emily Cohen, The New Green Movement in Cuba
Peace Profile: Timothy L. Reed, Muhammed Ali

From Linda Basch’s Introduction:

The first cluster of essays deals with the developing discourse of human security, the imaginings of international activists, scholars, and thinkers of what this concept needs to encompass, and the moral and normative role it could play as an international framework. Using a feminist lens, they also critique the construct, questioning some of its assumptions and the ways it is being framed. The second cluster of essays provides perspectives from specific political, economic, and social contexts on gendered threats to human security, but also raises question about how we evaluate a human-security framework at this historic juncture and in different locations.

The articles in the volume point to massive insecurities that characterize the human condition. They also illustrate the complexities, nuances, and historical specificities that need to be considered in articulating a framework to foster human security. We need to ask, in the wake of these challenges, a question raised by [Kristen] Timothy: whether human security and its constituent elements have the potential to become a transforming paradigm. As she points out, there is no concurrence in the international community that this is a politically viable framework for shaping global or national policies. It may therefore be left to activism, and particularly women’s activism, cited in many of the papers, to build on the gains of earlier social movements to construct a new vision for a new social order.

From the Peace Review’s Website:

Peace Review is a quarterly, multidisciplinary, transnational journal of research and analysis, focusing on the current issues and controversies that underlie the promotion of a more peaceful world. Social progress requires, among other things, sustained intellectual work, which should be pragmatic as well as analytical. The results of that work should be ingrained into everyday culture and political discourse. Peace Review defines peace research very broadly to include peace, human rights, development, ecology, culture and related issues. The task of the journal is to present the results of this research and thinking in short, accessible and substantive essays. Each issue develops a particular theme but the journal runs both on-theme and off-theme essays.

Peace Review has been published since 1989 by Taylor & Francis, Inc. in Britain. It has a distribution in more than 50 countries, and has over 130 institutional and 100 individual subscribers. The Editorial Board is drawn from peace studies and related fields and includes academics, researchers, and activists from around the world.

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