Abstract
In Female Suicide Bombings: A Critical Gender Approach, Tanya Narozhna and W. Andy Knight present an in-depth analysis of a timely and underresearched topic. By contrasting a critical approach to a problem-solving one, the authors problematize hitherto applied theoretical assumptions and research agendas that often focus solemnly on the individual and depoliticize women’s engagement with political violence. “Unlike problem-solving scholarship, critical theories are concerned with the larger picture of the socio-political order and longue durée historical change” (p. 27). By pursuing a critical gendered approach to the topic, they aim at regarding female suicide bombings as a sociopolitical practice that is deeply politicized and gendered.
The main contribution of the book is to deconstruct dominant representations of female suicide bombings within Western academia (and, to a smaller extent, within the media). Narozhna and Knight engage with the issue in order to “reveal multiple ways in which mainstream representations of this political violence build on the assumption of essential differences between male and female bombers, stereotypically contrast female suicide bombers with their male counterparts, and consistently depoliticize violence of the former, despite the fact that their acts have been perpetrated in the larger context of socio-political struggles” (p. 5). By applying a critical gender approach, the authors manage to show the limitations of explanations that focus exclusively on instrumental rationality and provide a convincing concept how to widen our understanding of the topic. By illuminating the discourses and intersections of race, sex, gender, and religion in Western representations of the topic, the authors show how knowledge is created along the dichotomy of usw and them as the “backward oppressive Oriental Other” and the “modern liberal Western self” (p. 22).
The strength of Female Suicide Bombings lies in its carefully written deconstruction of mainstream ways of thinking and writing about female suicide bombings. In order to do this, the authors provide deep insights into a little known topic. For the reader, it might come as a surprise that—despite their relatively small number—female suicide bombings have occurred in many different cultural and sociopolitical settings over the last three decades. Tanya Narozhna and W. Andy Knight elaborate on the historical evolvement of the phenomena in geographical areas that spread from Lebanon to Sri Lanka, Turkey, Russia, Palestine, Iraq, and Nigeria among others. The empirical material, seen from a critical gender approach, shatters images of women as inherently peaceful and other gendered stereotypes, such as female suicide bombers as victims that are urged into their actions by male protagonists. What is more, the authors analyze the organizations behind female suicide bombings and how they are represented in both problem-solving approaches and feminist security studies. Finally, Narozhna and Knight engage with the question how the political thinking of orthodox approaches is concerned with and thereby biased by Western counterterrorism. While the analysis is very convincing, their own recommendations of how to respond to female suicide bombings fall relatively short and come less well prepared for the reader. Another question arises about the use of the term “female suicide bombers” that is problematized by the authors themselves. Why the implications of the term are very well reflected, the decision to use it anyhow, can certainly be controversially discussed.
The book is very well written and clearly organized; especially the short conclusions at the end of each chapter make it easy to follow the authors’ argument. As it deals with a very timely topic from a critical gender perspective, it is both valuable for readers interested in the topic as such and its empirical dimensions and for those who are interested in theoretical examinations of the way critical gendered dimensions are neglected in current research—not only concerning the specific field of female suicide bombings. When it comes to classroom uses, the book may be used in manifold ways. It provides valuable insight in gender issues in conflict and post conflict societies, especially if one aims at exploring women’s roles in conflict beyond stereotypical notions of women’s inherent peacefulness. In a broader sense, it is worthwhile studying the book as an example of how supposedly neutral discourses (also in academia) are based on masculine concepts both explicitly (sometimes on purpose) and implicitly.