Abstract
Contemporary debates about security narratives highlight different forms of security: gender security, realist security or human security. The use of such terms often means that we do not recognize subtle variances within these narratives or the implications of these divergences. This article suggests and illustrates a way of achieving a deeper understanding of security narratives through investigating the temporal aspects of narrative content. A case study exploring three forms of gender security narratives among activists of feminist and women’s organizations in Serbia is used to demonstrate that similar perceptions of gender security exist. However, paying attention to the temporal discontinuities within the contents of these gender security narratives makes it possible to identify divergences connected to personal-political imaginations of conflict and post-conflict. These subtle variations in content are potentially product and productive of different policy prescriptions and outcomes. This article concludes by reflecting upon the presence of our past and future in the contents of our contemporary security narratives, suggesting that when we consider security, our analysis should aim to incorporate an understanding of the temporal nature of a security narrative.
Introduction
Security studies is rich with (sometimes competing) labels used by scholars and practitioners, including ‘feminist security’, ‘realist security’, ‘critical security’ and ‘human security’. These labels can be understood as narratives: representational practices through which we make sense of the world around us (Wibben, 2011: 2). These narrative labels serve as shorthand for signifying which type of ‘security talk’ (Wibben, 2011: 65–85) we are engaged in, signalling political intentions, ambitions or criticisms. That is, such labels provoke a particular train of ontological and epistemological associations, and these narratives order our understanding of security by enabling and limiting representations of security. However, uncritical consideration of these labels means that scholars may miss the subtle (but politically significant) divergences that exist when we talk about what the achievement of a particular security concept might look like. This article illustrates a way of reaching a deeper understanding of security narratives via paying attention to temporalities within a narrative form.
Contemporary applications of narrative analysis to security studies focus upon how events can be understood (Campbell, 1998) or upon the narratives at play within the discipline of security studies (Wibben, 2011). The analysis in this article is an amalgamation of these ideas, reading activist descriptions of gender security as narratives to reveal the political subjectivities supporting understandings of gender security. Narratives are not simply ‘true stories’, where debates ‘revolve around claims and counter-claims about the adequacy of differing narratives’ (Roberts, 2006: 703). Rather, I draw on the narrative approach adopted by Annick Wibben (2011: 41), who highlights how narratives are profoundly connected to claimed social and political identities, enabling and limiting representations of our world. Hence, I adopt a post-structural approach, following Claire Moon (2006) in incorporating narrative analysis into the general frame of discourse analysis. This article is part of a larger research project exploring gender security discourse in Serbia: the focus here is upon the gender security narratives underpinning such discourse. The aim is not merely to map divergent ways of talking about gender security, but rather to reveal the politics of our security narratives through paying attention to the divergent contents of gender security narratives explored in this article. I suggest that these contents differ even when similar forms of gender security are named. 1 A concern with the content suggests that we are curious about the representation of events supporting the creation of a narrative form, and in particular how certain temporal moments are emphasized. David Campbell (1998: 43) acknowledges the ‘inescapability of narrativity’, highlighting how the contents secure the ideological effects of a narrative (Campbell, 1998: 56–61). Hence, exploring the contents of gender security narratives through paying attention to temporality allows us to probe into diverse ideological effects of the narrative form presented.
The construction of a narrative relies upon a set of temporalities. In this article, I explore temporality in connection to conflict and post-conflict: specifically, how the past, present and future of conflict and post-conflict are described. Narrativity involves remembering and forgetting to draw connections between different historical events. These connections produce meanings: hence, similar forms of gender security may have divergent contents. I demonstrate how perceptions about conflict and post-conflict shape imaginings of ‘security’ in relation to past, present and future. These temporal moments are described in narratives through reference to a range of sensory perceptions, including memory, hope, belief and despair. Sensory experiences are often ignored in international relations but are central to how ‘security’ can be understood (Sylvester, 2010). This is because security is a discourse understood through experiences and perceptions of insecurity in the past and present, as well as the possibility and hope for security in the future. Narratives enable an imagining of the future by ‘narrating a causal and linear relationship’ between perceptions of violence in the past and an imagined future reconciliation (Moon, 2006: 269). The possibility of ‘security’ is expressed through narrated sensory perceptions about past, present and future as they relate to conflict and post-conflict.
This article focuses upon narratives of gender security produced by activists in Serbian feminist and women’s organizations. Gender security has become a concept used in activist and institutional sites (Hudson, 2010; Shepherd, 2008; Cohn, 2008). Much of the recent interest in gender security has been driven by UN Security Council Resolution 1325, passed by the Security Council on 31 October 2000. This resolution aims to bring gender issues to the forefront of conflict and post-conflict processes, and can be viewed as a site of discursive contact between ‘gender’ and ‘security’ (Shepherd, 2008: 6). The question of gendering security remains tricky. For some, it means adding women/gender. For others, including feminists, gender is a transformative concept pervading social and political life, opening the possibility of a broader conceptualization of the theory and practice of international security (Sjoberg, 2010: 4–5). Questions about what the inclusion of gender entails is an issue of some debate among those undertaking feminist and gendered analysis: these concerns are no different within activist sites. This article reveals the diversity of understandings about gender within gender security: even when similar forms are described, exploration of the contents reveals different understandings of the ‘gender problem’ and feminism.
Much of the attention paid to the notion of gender security has sought to describe how to achieve, or the problems of achieving, gender security (Olonisakin et al., 2011). In this article, I argue that rather than focusing on what gender security is, we should explore how particular meanings of gender security are formed, revealing the political tensions inherent in the concept. These narrative forms take on different meanings as a result of variances in their substantive contents, rather than formal elements giving content to narratives. Therefore, even seemingly similar forms of (gender) security can hold subtle divergences in content, which are potentially product and productive of different policy prescriptions and outcomes.
The first part of the article provides an overview of the dynamics of Serbian feminist and women’s organizing, and how these have been shaped by Serbia’s relationship to the conflicts of the 1990s. The rest of the article adopts a tripartite structure to explore forms of gender security articulated by activists of feminist and women’s NGOs in Serbia. Each form of gender security is investigated via a temporal aspect that affects the contents of gender security narratives. These temporal aspects include political subjectivities (about conflict and post-conflict), temporal discontinuities (about when the ‘problem’ is deemed to have started), and experience (personal senses of insecurity). These temporal aspects affect the contents of all of the gender security narratives highlighted, but each aspect is investigated in turn to allow for a deeper consideration of how they shape the narrative contents. Exploring the contents of our narratives provokes a deeper appreciation of the complexity of security, highlighting how past, present and future matter in the construction of security narratives. I conclude by highlighting the importance of temporal complexity for the construction of, and our responses to, security narratives taking place in a variety of institutional and activist sites.
Serbian feminist and women’s organizing and the post-conflict moment
The analysis presented in this article focuses upon narrative contents related to conflict and post-conflict in Serbia. Serbia is an ideal case study for exploring perceptions of conflict and post-conflict within a particular narrative of gender security. This is because the state has a complex relationship to the conflicts of the 1990s, which continue to shape political and social debates, crafting hotly contested gender security narratives to investigate. To understand the divergences in narrative contents, it is critical to understand the dynamics of Serbian feminist and women’s organizing, and how these dynamics have been shaped by memories, perceptions, affect and hopes related to conflict and post-conflict.
Serbia has a complex relationship to the conflicts that occurred in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, a relationship that affects how policy is interpreted (McLeod, 2011). Theoretically, the Serbian state did not go to war with another state. However, the Serbian state is thought to be a key collaborator in the conflicts, reproducing violent and nationalist rhetoric, and Serbia suffered many of the social, cultural, political and economic effects of war. In addition, Serbia faced aerial bombardment at the hands of NATO in 1999. The lack of certainty about how to locate Serbia in relation to the conflicts of the 1990s has profoundly shaped contemporary debates about the extent of responsibility that Serbia has for the war crimes that were committed, most notably the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995, where at least 7,000 Muslim men and boys went missing, presumed dead. While I do not directly draw out activist narratives about Srebrenica here, Srebrenica is a useful departure point for understanding the diversity of positions that exist about the conflicts of the 1990s. This point is underscored by Campbell (1998: 40), who suggests that ‘“Srebrenica” has become … one of those historically pregnant names that mark much more than a place on a map, any encounter with the events symbolized by it involves an indebtedness to narrativity’.
The status assigned to the Srebrenica massacre is indicative of the contemporary political debates that surround Serbia’s role in relation to the wars of the 1990s. Various surveys have suggested that ‘up to 50% of the population are in doubt as to whether events such as Srebrenica ever happened and, if they did, under what circumstances’ (Obradovic-Wochnik, 2009: 62). Intense ‘historical revisionism … [has] cast Serbs as victims’, suggesting that Serbians and Serbia have been oppressed and demonized by their neighbours – especially the Croats and the Kosovo Albanians (Ramet, 2007: 47). This ‘denial syndrome’ has had implications for Serbia’s cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the European Union (Ramet, 2007; Subotić, 2010). Even in the run-up to the formulation of a 2010 parliamentary declaration condemning the crimes in Srebrenica, 2 there were debates about the wording of the declaration: Was Srebrenica a war crime, a case of genocide, or not? 3 In sum, there is ongoing debate about the extent to which the Serbian state and Serbian society can be said to be responsible for the war policies and crimes committed during the 1990s, as well as the importance of accepting responsibility.
These debates about Serbia’s relationship to conflict have shaped the dynamics of Serbian feminist and women’s organizing in the post-conflict moment, particularly what can be best described as the ‘political responsibility agenda’. The political responsibility agenda refers to questions about whether the Serbian state and Serbian society should accept responsibility for the war crimes that occurred during the 1990s, including Srebrenica. Organizations campaigning on political responsibility issues – like the feminist-pacifist NGO Women in Black – are publically unpopular: activists may face social disquiet at best and violent abuse at worst. There are also a variety of activists and organizations that deliberately do not engage with political responsibility issues for a range of reasons: either they do not view these issues as relevant to the problems faced by women or they fear for their personal security or the stability of their funding should they make highly politicized statements about the importance of political responsibility. The gender security narratives investigated in this article emanate from a broad range of activists holding a variety of positions about political responsibility.
The focus on feminist and women’s organizations is useful for a number of reasons. First, focusing on feminist and women’s organizations exposes the explicit debates that exist about the concept of gender security. While we all (perhaps without realizing) have a perspective about gender security, for the most part activists of feminist and women’s organizations will have an explicit view about gender, which shapes their observations about gender security. Second, nuances in the political responsibility debate are apparent here: alongside activists who insist upon the importance of facing the past and accepting political responsibility (Fridman, 2011), there are activists who are in various states of knowledge, acknowledgement and denial (Obradovic-Wochnik, 2009). These nuances shape perspectives about how to remember war and conflict, as well as hopes for the post-conflict present and future: in other words, all of the temporal discontinuities within the contents of the various gender security narratives explored in this article. These tensions about the role played by the Serbian state and Serbian society in relation to the conflicts of the 1990s and the extent and direction of political responsibility deemed necessary have significant implications for how gender security is thought about. Through paying attention to moments of discontinuity relating to conflict and post-conflict in the gender security narratives of activists, it is possible to identify subtle differences in the narrative contents within various forms of gender security.
Narrating gender security
In this article, gender security narratives are drawn from 48 semi-structured interviews with 69 activists conducted between February and August 2008 with activists involved in Serbian feminist and women’s NGOs. 4 Each activist was asked, ‘What does gender security mean to you?’ Through their responses, activists explained how and why they thought of gender security in a particular way. A basic content analysis of the responses suggested similar concerns: for example, 22 responses highlighted social censorship of political dialogue as a security concern, while 15 responses mentioned economic insecurity. Initially, I struggled to make sense of these categories, as they did not resemble the diversity of activist perceptions of gender security encountered during field research. It is for this reason that I turned to an exploration of the contents of the narrative forms.
While interviews necessarily involve an element of narrative co-construction, asking activists ‘What does gender security mean to you?’ aimed to stimulate an explanation and interpretation of gender security, imposing a sense of certainty and existence: that is, a gender security narrative. It is interesting to note that Kirsti Stuvøy (2010: 287) could not ask her participants ‘What is human security to you?’ because human security is not a term used in the context of her research on women’s crisis centres in Russia. However, I was interested in how activists understood and conceptualized the possibility of security, rather than the production of security, as Stuvøy (2010: 288) had been. In asking activists what gender security meant to them, I was seeking to provide space for locally owned conceptualizations of the concept, rather than working with pre-existing academic frameworks. Furthermore, that I could ask activists this question and that they responded (admittedly, with varying levels of confidence) says something about the discursive power and flexibility of the concept gender security. Most activists, particularly those involved with Women in Black, had encountered the concept of gender security via learning about UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (McLeod, 2012). However, where activists were less confident in their articulations of gender security, this was revealing of their positionality within Serbian feminist and women’s organizing. The ambition of gender security has been interpreted in Serbia in multifarious and contradictory ways by different sites claiming political authority over the concept (McLeod, 2011). Divergences between actors about gender security is partially produced through the different ways in which Serbia’s relationship to conflict and post-conflict is problematized (McLeod, 2011). Hence, asking ‘What does gender security mean to you?’ draws out how individual activists explained their own perceptions of a gender security problem and how it might be resolved: that is, their gender security narrative.
Limiting my timeframe to February–August 2008 acts as a restraint to partially fix a narrative within one particular temporal moment, 5 enabling insights about various representations of memories, perceptions and hopes. It is worth briefly outlining the key political events that occurred in Serbia during early 2008: the immediate concerns affected how individual interviewees responded. 6 I embarked upon my field research just after Kosovo proclaimed its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008, an event that gave renewed vigour to the long-running debate about the place of Kosovo in Serbia. Shortly after Kosovo’s proclamation of independence, there were nationalist riots in Belgrade, where the US embassy was set on fire. The coalition government collapsed over debates about how to respond to Kosovo’s declaration of independence, and the recently elected centre–left, pro-EU President Boris Tadić called for parliamentary elections to be held on 11 May 2008. The election campaign that followed was polarized over the issues of EU membership and the status of Kosovo. A new coalition government was formed on 7 July, with a majority supported by pro-EU parties. Soon after, Radovan Karadžić, a fugitive war criminal wanted by The Hague, was arrested in Belgrade, triggering localized nationalist demonstrations in support of Karadžić. These contemporary contexts provide a backdrop to the gender security narratives of activists at that particular moment.
Analysis and comparison of security narratives generated through semi-structured interviews revealed that activists – regardless of their personal or organizational attitudes to Serbia’s relationship to the conflict of the 1990s – named similar gender security concerns. Responses connected gender security to human rights concerns, identified structural security problems and/or noted an increasing sense of insecurity following transitions affecting daily life. Generally, activists identified similar gender security problems, but the precise contents of the activists’ narrative forms varied. Below, each gender security narrative will be investigated via paying attention to the divergent contents of the narratives. This will demonstrate how these contents are connected to political identities forged out of temporal perceptions related to conflict and post-conflict in Serbia.
Connection of security with human rights
Activists connected gender security with human rights or values normally associated with human rights, including individual rights and freedom of speech, expression and movement. For the late Biljana Kovaćević-Vućo, the founding chair of Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights and a Women in Black activist, ‘Human rights means [that] human beings are safe and free, and security means the same’. 7 This connection is unsurprising, given that both human rights and gender security can emphasize a moral concern for the individual human being. The narrative form of gender security considered here is the connection with human rights. However, there is a tension in what initially appears to be a coherent gender security narrative. For some activists, limitations on the exercise of human rights that cause insecurity are a consequence of a nationalist ethos reinforcing the lack of responsibility accepted by the Serbian state and Serbian society in relation to the war crimes committed in the 1990s. For other activists, the limitations on the exercise of human rights are viewed as part of a broader post-conflict context, and have little to do with the actions of the Serbian state. The divergences in narrative contents relate to how individual activists configure Serbia’s relationship to war and conflict.
Activist inscriptions of insecurity included the absence of freedom of speech, particularly the lack of freedom in political expression. In this context, restrictions upon freedom of expression do not necessarily relate to state control, but rather what constitutes a socially acceptable political position. Certainly, during the 1990s, there was much political repression, as Ljilja Radovanović, a Women in Black activist, highlighted: when all that [war, nationalism] started, you could be punished for only one spoken or unspoken word that opposed the state.
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However, it is the post-conflict era that poses the most pressing concern for some activists. Ljilja contends that even now, if you express your disagreement [with the state] it is viewed as an issue of national importance … [there is a] national consensus, a state-religious [value] that you are not allowed to question.
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Indeed, in the post-conflict era, many activists are concerned that, in order to maintain their personal security, they need to moderate their own views, which may not be socially acceptable.
For those activists who question the state and insist upon the need to face the past, there is anxiety regarding their own security as human rights defenders, a concern related to freedom of political expression. On 15 March 2008, during a performance for International Women’s Day, Stasa Zajović, the coordinator of Women in Black – Serbia, climbed up the steps of a statue in the middle of the Trg Republike, the main square and thoroughfare in central Belgrade, with a megaphone, yelling ‘Mladić in The Hague!’, ‘Karadžić in The Hague!’ 10 Jovanka Brikić recalls ‘looking around … I understood that it was very brave to say that even in Belgrade: even though the police were protecting us’. 11 Jovanka’s concern was not unusual: many Women in Black activists highlighted their sense of insecurity during public events: several peaceful demonstrations over the past 20 years have been met with violence, abuse and tear gas. Activists who are aware that they are expressing a political position that is socially unpopular feel insecure when publically vocalizing such stances. As a consequence, security is connected to the need to feel safe to express particular political views.
For many activists, there was a very real sense of insecurity involved in publicly stating their belief that indicted war criminals Mladić and Karadžić should be tried in The Hague. However, the same narrative form equating gender security with the achievement of human rights can be seen with very different content, most notably from activists who connected gender security with freedom of movement. Prior to December 2009, a Serbian passport carried visa restrictions in terms of entry to other countries. 12 Some activists, like Smiljka, made statements like ‘we want to travel, and it is difficult here to cross the border, this is a reason to feel insecure … we used to have these red [Yugoslavian] passports when we travelled everywhere’. 13 Pride was taken in the relative freedom that Yugoslavian citizens had in terms of travelling, especially during the 1980s, and woven into these accounts was a sense of loss that this freedom was no more (see also Jansen, 2012). Travel was perceived as having been easier during the 1970s and 1980s than it was in early 2008.
Saying that these narratives connect gender security to human rights, including freedom of speech and movement, would be accurate, but it downplays the divergences in their contents. Given that ‘narrative makes it possible, both in fiction and life, to express the vision of another’ (Wibben, 2011: 49), it is pertinent that different understandings of gender security as human rights are expressed. Individual senses of security and insecurity are not false or unimportant – indeed these narratives are reflective of reality. Rather, probing the contents reveals the political subjectivities inherent in any narrative. The contents of these security narratives differ because security narratives have a political and politicized function that is performative of particular configurations of political order (Shepherd, 2008).Thus, the narrative used to explain the discourse of security resembles a particular political and politicized perception. For Stasa and Ljilja, their sense of insecurity relating to limitations upon freedom of speech and expression is indicative of a critical political position about the refusal of the Serbian state and Serbian society to confront the war crimes of the 1990s. Smiljka does not make any explicit connection to the politics of the Serbian state in relation to her visa restrictions, even though one reason that travel was restricted partially arises from EU conditions. Not making these connections explicit, even when probed, is indicative of political subjectivities about Serbia’s relationship to the conflicts of the 1990s.
Understanding the role of these political subjectivities is important, because they shape the steps deemed to be necessary to secure gender security. While, as Jenny Edkins points out, securing security is impossible because the achievement of security is ‘always to come’, since ‘the subject can never be fully complete or secure’ (Edkins, 2002: 75, 80), these narratives are about the possibility of security and how it might be achieved. For many activists, including Ljilja and Smiljka, gender security is possible via the achievement of freedom of speech and movement. Noticing the political divergences in their narrative contents reveals the different ways in which the same form of gender security is thought to be possible. For some, like Ljilja, the possibility of gender security includes recognizing the role of the Serbian state and Serbian society in supporting and stimulating the violence of the wars in the 1990s: the achievement of security in terms of freedom of speech is made possible via the achievement of political responsibility. For others, like Smiljka, a connection to the political responsibility agenda is less important and not always necessary for the achievement of gender security. This is related to the kinds of subjects produced in the gender security narratives analysed, as well as how interviewees construct their own identities in these narratives, with implications for their practices. For instance, Ljilja’s positioning as a resistant subject affects her practice of contestation with the government. Exploring the contents highlights connections to particular political perspectives about conflict and post-conflict pasts, presents and futures, demonstrating various positions about the achievement of gender security.
The political and politicized nature of a narrative can be made explicit by drawing out the narrative’s temporal formation. Indeed, ‘what we call “politics” draws upon a particular linear notion of time’ (Edkins, 2003: xiii). Narratives are reliant upon a construction of time: pasts, presents and futures are arranged in a particular order – an arrangement that is political. Recognizing the (created) temporality inherent in a narrative highlights the connection between narratives and experience. The impossibility of reproducing lived experiences means narratives – along with their formation and ordering – include interpretation (Wibben, 2011: 44). The temporality of a narrative does not refer just to the past or present: the future also plays a role. Consideration of the ‘future’ is especially relevant in narratives about ‘post-conflict’ and ‘security’, as both refer to perceptions and hopes for the future. The temporalities involved in any narrative help construct a plot that resembles a personal-political imagination. The temporality embedded in activist narratives can be drawn out through thinking about experiences, perceptions and hopes. For Stasa and Ljilja, facing the past and confronting war crimes committed in the name of Serbia is critical to achieving their hopes for the present and future of post-conflict reconciliation. The next section hones in on another form of gender security, utilizing analysis of this particular narrative form to highlight the importance of temporal discontinuities in understanding divergent contents of gender security narratives.
Structural logics of in/security: Women-specific security concerns
Temporal complexities about Serbia’s relationship to conflict and post-conflict play a part in gender security narratives explicitly described as women-specific concerns about violence and inequality. This narrative form supports a perspective that placing women’s in/security issues at the forefront of the security agenda reveals the ways in which ‘“women” are constituted – and, more often, ignored – by a host of other actors, practices and levels’ (Hansen and Olsson, 2004: 408). A number of women-specific security concerns were identified: domestic violence, sex trafficking, misogyny and the disproportionate numbers of men compared to women in political positions. I focus upon retraditionalization as an example of the organizing logics that shape women-specific security concerns in Serbia. Perspectives about what Serbia’s post-conflict concerns are shape the representation of this narrative. For instance, while most activists explained violence and inequality through reasoning concerned with the hidden gender structures embedded within society, some extended their explanations to make connections between violence and inequality and the long-term impacts of war and nationalism. Exposing various narrative contents about conflict and post-conflict illuminates the effects of temporality upon a gender security narrative.
Narratives necessarily involve a temporality in which past, present and futures are utilized to produce a coherent and linear representation. This temporality is informed by moments of discontinuity: a moment where something is deemed to have happened. The divergences in the narrative form that ‘gender security includes women-specific security concerns’ are revealed through moments of discontinuity related to conflict and post-conflict. These considerations about temporal discontinuity in a narrative relate to the political identity of the individual activist. As Maria Stern (2005: 7) points out, ‘who (we say) we are matters in how we conceive of, strive for, and practice security’, since how we describe security ‘implies (and indeed informs) a particular expression of our identity’. The political identities of activists from Serbian feminist and women’s organizations mean that their gender security narratives exclude or include connections to conflict and post-conflict, revealing divergences even in the same form of gender security. As discussed below, the way in which activists connect (or do not connect) the violence of war to violence against women shapes the ideological contents of their gender security narratives, with ramifications for how gender insecurities might be resolved.
Subtle differences in the contents of women-specific security concerns are illuminated in discussions of the ‘retraditionalization of women’s identities, social roles, and symbolic representations’ (Papić, 1999: 154). In Serbia, these retraditionalizations are generally linked to Eastern Orthodoxism, notably the Serbian Orthodox Church, or Islam. For Zibija Dh-Šarenkapić, the coordinator of a women’s human rights organization in Novi Pazar, southwest Serbia, retraditionalization is a source of insecurity. The consequences of retraditionalization noted by Zibija include reductions in abortion rights, increasing inequality in marriage, different social expectations governing women’s bodies (i.e. the expectation that unmarried women will be virgins and cover their hair), and an increasing withdrawal of women from the public sphere.
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Zibija argues that retraditionalization is a consequence of economic factors: Women used to be socially visible and economically independent: now a lot of women are unemployed, the factories are closed down, large numbers of women have returned to the role of housewife, thinking about how to make lunch out of very little … 60% of women are unemployed. If we oppress the women we are increasing the power of religious communities.
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Another activist, Ljilja Radovanović from Women in Black, also highlights retraditionalization as negatively affecting women’s security, because ‘the material status of women [and] reproductive rights are being encroached upon, women are in a worse position concerning their right to abortion’. However, Ljilja contends that retraditionalization is a result of ‘pressures due to the strengthening of nationalism and clericalism, and these phenomena are, as we know, related to the war’.
Both narratives have a temporal dimension: for Zibija, women used to be socially visible and economically independent, while Ljilja points to ‘the war’ as the moment of change. Zibija’s rationalization places emphasis upon present-day economic factors, making no direct or explicit connection to the wars. When asked whether retraditionalization could be understood as a post-conflict problem, Zibija agreed to an extent that it could, identifying an increase in retraditionalization after 1995 and 2000, but stressed that ‘we were simply on the edge of conflict…. [Conflict was] nearby’. 16 The implication is that conflict was not the cause of retraditionalization, but retraditionalization is one of the features of (what is problematically defined as) a post-conflict era. However, for Ljilja, retraditionalization is obviously a social consequence of conflict: she states that ‘as we know, [retraditionalization is] related to the war’. By highlighting nationalism, she suggests the nationalist war policies of the 1990s continued to affect social and political life in the post-conflict era: Ljilja’s discursive logics behind this particular signification of security point to a narrative emphasizing retraditionalization as a consequence of war. Highlighting how conflict is conceptualized by Ljilja and Zibija, while conceiving their explanations of conflict and post-conflict as moments of temporal discontinuity, reasserts the divergence in the contents of their gender security narratives.
While both Zibija and Ljilja have concerns about retraditionalization, their subjectivities about Serbia’s relationship to the conflicts of the 1990s shape the different ways in which they interpret the consequences of war. Both activists point to patriarchal structures as a factor for women’s insecurity. What differentiates these narratives concerns the extent to which war and nationalism are viewed as a process that amplifies patriarchy, affecting gendered violences and inequalities that have a detrimental impact upon gender security. Among many activists supportive of the political responsibility agenda, there is a belief that war, nationalism and multiple transitions have generated a culture in which there is a lack of will to deal with gender violences and inequalities. In contrast, activists who were not as supportive of the political responsibility agenda did not highlight war and nationalism as central contributing factors for senses of women-specific insecurity. Revealing ways in which conflict and/or post-conflict is narrated as a temporal discontinuity contributes to our understanding of the political subjectivities that play a part in shaping precise configurations of security narratives.
Insecurity following transitions affecting ‘everyday life’
The contents of the gender security narratives discussed so far – and, indeed, all security narratives – are profoundly shaped by personal experiences. The final gender security narrative discusses how activists connected gender security to senses of insecurity affecting daily life. Concerns included: economic anxiety, concerns about education or health, an inability to plan for the future, fears for their own children, and apprehension about their own safety in the community. As in other aspects of gender security narratives explored in this article, while there is a shared sense among activists that Serbia’s multiple transitions from communism, war and dictatorship have increased the insecurity of daily life, there are differences in how these insecurities are narrated, notably in the critique of the politics of the state and the extent to which these politics are configured as a consequence of war. Analyses of other narrative forms in this article have highlighted the importance of political subjectivities and temporal discontinuities in shaping narrative forms. These insights will be drawn together via a consideration of the popular feminist insight that the personal is political, and vice versa, highlighting the importance of experience in shaping divergent contents of a gender security narrative.
When asked what security meant to them, activists started from the position of what made them feel insecure, and from this articulation of insecurity, they (sometimes) flipped the coin around to state a position on security. This suggests that personal experiences are articulated as moments of insecurity, and from those moments of insecurity, a political position on security can be represented. In making these connections between the personal and the political, I am echoing the popular feminist insight that ‘the personal is political’ and vice versa (Enloe, 2000: 195). These personal experiences are frequently articulated as senses of insecurity: what activists feel, hear, see as insecurity, shaping perceptions of security. The focus upon a ‘sensory’ notion of in/security means starting from a consideration of how ‘security hurts or annoys us as individuals. We might think, that is, about what security feels like and does not feel like’ (Sylvester, 2010: 24.). Through thinking about what makes them feel insecure, activists highlight broader notions about security and what the concept might mean. Noticing sensory perceptions of experience within a narrative shifts our analysis from a standpoint feminist perspective (where experience is a tangible, lived understanding) towards a post-structural feminist perspective where narratives capture interpretative aspects ‘inherent in any recollection of experience’ (Wibben, 2011: 44). Personal experiences are important in making and supporting a security narrative, and these feminist insights remind us that security narratives rely upon perceptions about experience.
The transformation of these personal senses of insecurity to political visions of security can be understood through ‘turning to the word [i.e. ‘security’] itself’ (Dillon, 1996: 119). That is, ‘insecurity is always already and simultaneously inscribed within security’, and so there is a constant tension and duality at the heart of security discourse (Dillon, 1996: 127). By recognizing the duality of security, it is possible to draw out the political nature of the personalized stories – a transformation many activists did themselves. For instance, Jovanka Brikić, the coordinator of Women in Action, located in Velika Plana, a small town southeast of Belgrade, describes an incident where the daughter of another activist was mugged at knifepoint. She then says: Plana was always a relatively quiet and safe town…. Security in general is significantly lower. This is not just a feeling, this is not some kind of paranoia…. [Security is reduced because of] war, transition, poverty, rather than [the end of] communism. We are faced with the weakness of state institutions in dealing with prevention and confrontation of violence.
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Jovanka’s response focused upon senses of insecurity, which she then related to a range of structural factors – war, transition, poverty – before identifying the source of the problem as the state, giving a political explanation for her personal sense of insecurity, and hinting at what is necessary to secure security. Thus, the tensions constituting in/security act as the ‘opening which calls forth the prospect of a political life’ (Dillon, 1996: 128). Jovanka’s narrative highlights a transformation from her personal experiences to a political sense of the problem and the action needed. Critically, this political perception is connected to her understanding of conflict and post-conflict in Serbia.
Jovanka’s narrative illustrates her perceptions about the connections between gender security and the impact of transitions upon daily life. She makes it clear that war is a central factor in her sense of insecurity. This contrasts with the account offered by an activist from Women’s Centre Obrenovački, an NGO organizing social activities for women. Andjela felt that unemployment was a major cause of gender insecurity in Serbia, arguing that employed and unemployed women are not the same! We in Serbia know that well! [This economic insecurity] is not a problem we faced a few years ago. First we had one regime, then we had another one, but in the last eight years there has been no progress. Our progress is so slow and this situation lasts too long.
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Interwoven into this account is a sense of insecurity arising from limited positive change or economic stability, which is deemed to be a consequence of the multiple transitions and regime changes of the past 20 years, making daily life frustrating for Andjela.
The frustration with the lack of certainty in daily lives was echoed by Jelena, an activist from Voice of Difference, an NGO predominately aiming to increase female participation in Serbian elections. When asked the day before the Serbian parliamentary elections in May 2008 what security meant to her, Jelena stated: After the [NATO] bombing I cannot say what would be a secure situation for me, because you simply learn to live in different conditions…. [If Serbia were] a member of the EU, I could get the [certainty] that in the next few years my country would have certain kind of government, certain laws, because here [in Serbia at the moment] you cannot ‘catch’ the reality and say that’s it … because here we cannot plan our lives any longer than a week in advance; we can’t think of loans, because if the radicals form the government, what will happen with foreign banks and our loans?
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For Jelena, her day-to-day insecurity affected her ability to plan for the future, or a tendency to subconsciously prepare for the worst. Both accounts reflect a frustration with the progress of the state in achieving security within everyday life. Fears for futures are embedded in these accounts, arising out of an uncertainty based upon events in the past. However, different ways of framing the insecurities of daily life are woven into these narratives, framings that are indicative of the individual’s position in relation to conflict and post-conflict.
Examination of the temporalities involved in the contents of Andjela’s, Jelena’s and Jovanka’s gender security narratives highlights the importance of perspectives about Serbia’s relationship to conflict and post-conflict. For Andjela, there has been ‘no progress in the last eight years’, suggesting that the promises of a brighter future after the fall of the Milošević regime in October 2000 had been shattered by 2008. Indeed, democratization across Central and Eastern Europe has limited possibilities for gender equality (Einhorn, 2006). However, when we compare Andjela’s position with Jelena’s, divergences in how post-conflict personal-political imaginations configure a particular vision of gender security are illuminated. Jelena points to specific structural changes that are needed: ‘a certain kind of government’ and membership of the EU are critical for achieving gender security in Serbia. Insecurity for Jelena is linked to the policies of the Serbian Radical Party (‘the radicals’: Srpska radikalna stranka, SRS), who are a far-right nationalist party, previously led by Vojislav Šešelji, currently on trial for war crimes in The Hague. The SRS secured 23% and 29% of the votes in the 2003 and 2007 elections, respectively, and in 2008 campaigned on an anti-EU membership platform. For Jelena, the promise of EU membership is the ‘certainty’ that Serbia would have a particular political profile, because ‘European laws and legislation will force our society to change’, specifically in stimulating Serbian society to face the past and accept political responsibility. 20 That is, a future vision of postwar security for Jelena would mean that the Serbian state and Serbian society had addressed nationalist perceptions and attitudes rooted in the past conflict.
These narratives also raise interesting questions about what is considered to be a gender security issue. Initially, there seems to be some ambivalence towards the notion of gender: viewing gender security as connected to human rights or a special concern with daily lives does not easily distinguish such concerns from those of, for instance, a human security agenda. Andjela’s narrative can, at a glance, be ascribed the status of a gender security narrative on the basis that she talks about women’s unemployment. However, gender is not ‘an oversimplified simile for women’, but rather ‘relates to the assumptions made about people with male or female bodies and the roles attached to these bodies’, as well as the values and meanings emanating from these social constructions of masculinity and femininity (Hudson, 2010: 7). Viewed from this perspective, gender is all-encompassing, and most (if not all) security concerns have gendered ramifications. This is certainly the case for Jelena, who believes that ‘I as a feminist should not deal with women’s issues only; I should deal with the politics of this country, and that politics should provide a better position for women and other marginalized groups’. 21 For Jelena, the insecurity of daily life is shaped by patriarchal and nationalist structures, which have ramifications for the practice of masculinity and femininity in Serbia.
To underpin the variations in the discursive logics of gender security narratives between activists, we must once more return to the extent that conflict frames these narratives of gender security. On the surface, many activists connected gender security to concerns ascribed to daily life. A concern with the content of these narratives requires curiosity about the selection and representation of events and where the temporal emphasis is placed. All three narratives point to insecurity in daily life, but Andjela stresses her sense of limited progress in the last eight years, while Jelena suggests that a certain kind of government is needed to target the insecurity of daily lives. A colleague that Jelena shares an office with, Slavica Stojanović, argues that the phrase ‘everyday life’ should be used with care: it is not a politically neutral phrase, and it can be used to camouflage deeper structural issues. 22 That is, for some – including Jelena and Jovanka – there are structural factors at stake: the refusal to address contemporary nationalism in Serbia has affected the insecurity of day-to-day life, affecting unemployment, poverty, and the affordability of health and social insurance. It is their representations and perspectives about Serbia’s relationship to conflict that explain the disparity in their narrative contents, and particularly the representation of personal experiences within their security narratives.
Experience tends to be understood as something that is historical: something that we have lived through, although, as pointed out earlier, we interpret experiences. To begin drawing together the points made in this article about the importance of paying attention to the contents of our security narratives via exploring temporal discontinuties, experience and political subjectivities, it is useful to turn to the concept of ‘presence’, developed by the historian Eelco Runia (2006a: 310). Runia suggests that ‘presence’ allows us to envisage a presence of the past (Runia, 2006a: 310), via ‘“being in touch” – either literally or figuratively – with people, things, events, and feelings that made you into the person that you are’ (Runia, 2006b: 5). This suggests that there is a sensory and personal aspect that matters in our time. Critically, presence is not about preservation; rather, it is about ‘a whisper of life’ (Runia, 2006b: 5): it is about the illusion of our past in the presence of our present. Placing an understanding of presence within our security narratives emphasizes how our understanding of security relies upon perceptions about past, present and future, and in particular how we conceptualize our experience in relation to these temporal moments. How we describe our experience relies upon presence and the illusionary nature of our past in our present, as well as our hopes for a secure future.
Conclusions: Temporality of contents
While a certain level of agreement exists among activists of Serbian feminist and women’s NGOs that gender security means the achievement of human rights, prevention of violence and inequality towards women, and the stability of daily lives, normative divergences subsist. These divergences are exposed through exploring the temporal aspects shaping the contents of gender security narratives, including political subjectivities, discontinuities and experience. All of these contents involve noticing a range of temporalities: from hope and possibility for the future, recalling specific events from the past, and presence. These temporal moments are not mutually exclusive, and indeed there is a temporal complexity underpinning the contents of our security narratives. Understanding the contents of our narrative form enables a deeper understanding of security. Calls for a deeper conceptualization of security in order to understand the concept’s political nature are not new, but tend to urge us to delve into the history of the concept (see Dillon, 1996; Huysmans, 1998). While there is unquestionably a history of ‘security’ that affects meanings, I argue that there is a greater temporal complexity affecting the functioning of security, including presence and futures. This temporal complexity can be drawn out by an exploration of the narrative contents.
Considering temporal complexity in relation to our security narratives has two central implications for security theory and practice. First, noticing temporal complexity reinforces the point that it is not necessarily the past, historical and lived experiences that directly shape security ambitions. Exploring the contents of our narratives reveals that people recall a past that matters in the presence of our present: a presence affected by the hopes and ambitions that we (may) have about the future. Indeed, our past may well be mediated by hopes for a secure future. Noticing temporal complexities highlights ways in which the ideological effects of ‘experience’ can be understood within feminist and post-structural security studies, opening possibilities for a theorization of ‘experience’ as it relates to identity. This approach could move away from the sharp distinction highlighted by Buzan and Hansen (2009: 208–210) between ‘a Tickner-Human-Security-Critical Security Studies or a Poststructuralist position’. Related to this point, noticing the temporal complexities of gender security narratives enables deeper problematization of the ‘gender’ question, highlighting the diversity of possible positions held about what ‘gender’ and ‘feminism’ entail. Obviously, this could be applicable to other visions of security, like human or environmental security. However, contrasting the contents of security narratives illuminates how (and how much) subtle variances within these narratives really matter for security policy and practice.
This brings me to the second point that I wish to make. Highlighting temporal complexities enables appreciation of the subtle divergences in our security narratives and how they have ramifications for the (illusionary) achievement of security. In the case of Serbia, these divergences have normative implications for visions of gender security and the practice of advocacy. As already discussed, questions about the extent to which Serbian state and society are responsible for the war crimes committed during the conflicts of the 1990s continue to dominate Serbian society. Accordingly, some activists – most notably those connected to Women in Black – believe that political responsibility and facing the past is necessary for the achievement of gender security, while others do not. These divergences affect not only how gender security is rendered as an aspiration, but also how activists mobilize themselves and conduct their advocacy. That is, perceptions about key moments of temporal discontinuities shape practice. For example, Women in Black activists narrated a linear relationship between the violence of the Serbian state during the 1990s and a secure future where political responsibility is acknowledged. Thus, their advocacy focuses upon challenging social perceptions and state structures. Ultimately, an analysis of the temporal contents of a security narrative broadens understandings of how narratives order personal/subjective differences in perceptions of security problems and solutions within activist and institutional settings.
Achieving a deeper understanding of security narratives – whether ‘realist security’, ‘human security’ or ‘gender security’ – requires an exploration of the contents of these narrative forms. While this article has focused on gender security narratives, the insights presented are applicable to all security narratives. The inclusion of a temporal understanding encourages complexity in our analyses of security narratives, exposing the political subjectivities shaping meanings of security. Several activists interviewed suggested that ‘gender security’ has become a buzzword, in part because of an increasing international concern with the discourse in post-conflict contexts. It is nothing new to note that activists adapt their language to fit into donor agendas (Horn, 2008). While it appears that activists are operating and responding within the confines of the buzzword ‘gender security’, they are also using the concept to reinforce their pre-existing political beliefs. Thus, the contents of these narratives relate to the legitimization of certain – possibly pre-existing – political objectives: experience, hopes, memories and perceptions are forced into a coherent chronology to legitimize contemporary claims to political agency. Paying attention to the temporal contents of security narratives illustrates not only a range of normative political visions for the achievement of ‘security’, but also how security narratives are utilized to legitimize political objectives.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The research in this article would not have been possible without the willing participation of all those interviewed: hvala vam puno! The author is grateful to Gordana, Aleksander and Adam for their research assistance. She would also like to thank Maja Zehfuss, Cristina Masters, Rachel Johnson, and the Security Dialogue reviewers and editors for their insightful comments on earlier versions of the article.
Funding
The research for this article was made possible by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Postgraduate Studentship Award (PTA-031-2005-00220) held between October 2005 and April 2010.