Rape as a Practice of War: Toward a Typology of Political Violence

Elisabeth Jean Wood

Politics & Society, 2018, vol. 46, issue 4, 513-537

Abstract: When rape by an armed organization occurs frequently, it is often said to be a strategy of war. But some cases of conflict-related rape are better understood as a practice , violence that has not been explicitly adopted as organization policy but is nonetheless tolerated by commanders. The typology of conflict-related rape in this article emphasizes not only vertical relationships between commanders (principals) and combatants (agents) but also the horizontal social interactions among combatants. It analyzes when rape is likely to be prevalent as a practice, emphasizing not only gendered norms and beliefs of the society from which combatants come but also how those might be transformed by the organization’s socialization processes. In the conclusion, I suggest that the typology is relevant for analysts of all forms of of political violence and also for prosecutors, policy advocates, and policymakers concerned with conflict-related rape.

Keywords: sexual violence; rape; political violence; armed conflict (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032329218773710 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:46:y:2018:i:4:p:513-537

DOI: 10.1177/0032329218773710

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politics & Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().