If reality can kill the dream, why can't the dream kill reality?

-George Moore.
 



 
(authored) books
 
gendering global conflict: towards a feminist theory of war (under contract and under review, columbia university press)

Gendering Global Conflict defines war from a feminist perspective, derive feminist-inspired hypotheses about the causes of war at the macro- and micro-level, and test these hypotheses using statistical analyses, case studies, discourse analyses, and formal models. The book explains what gendered lenses can tell us about what war is, what causes war, how war can be stopped or mitigated, what its political, economic, and humanitarian effects are, and when war ends. It engages the discipline of IR as a whole while maintaining the epistemological, methodological, and ontological insights of a specifically feminist approach to IR.

The book has four major sections: “wars in a gendered world,” the “causes of war,” “the fighting of wars,” and the “consequences of wars.” Each section discusses the current theorizing concerning its subject matter, and the insights of feminist theories concerning those analyses.

(see draft intro here)

 
mothers, monsters, whores: women's violence in global politics (with Caron Gentry, zed books, 2007)

A woman did that? The general reaction to women's political violence is still one of shock and incomprehension.

Mothers, Monsters, Whores provides an empirical study of women's violence in global politics. The book looks at military women who engage in torture; the Chechen 'Black Widows'; Middle Eastern suicide bombers; and the women who directed and participated in genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda. Sjoberg & Gentry analyse the biological, psychological and sexualized stereotypes through which these women are conventionally depicted, arguing that these are rooted in assumptions about what is 'appropriate' female behaviour. What these stereotypes have in common is that they all perceive women as having no agency in any sphere of life, from everyday choices to global political events.

This book is a major feminist re-evaluation of women's motivations and actions as perpetrators of political violence.

Mothers, Monsters, Whores has been reviewed in Politics and Gender, Women's Studies, and Political Studies Review

Mothers, Monsters, Whores acknowledgments

 
gender, justice, and the wars in iraq: a feminist reformulation of just war theory (lexington books, 2006)

Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq offers a feminist critique and reconstruction of just war theory. It points out gender biases in the just war tradition and suggests alternative jus ad bellum and jus in bello standards that emphasize women, political marginality, and empathy. Laura Sjoberg applies this feminist just war theory to analyze the wars in Iraq since the end of the Cold War—the First Gulf War, the war of sanctions, and the Second Gulf War. By examining international political discourse from and about Iraq, it shows where war generally and just war specifically are gendered. Through the stories of key just war characters like Jessica Lynch, this book reveals where women are omitted and subordinated in global politics. Sjoberg suggests that dialogue and empathy replace righteousness in just war thinking for the good of human safety everywhere and concludes with alternative visions of Gulf War policies, inspired by feminist just war theory.

Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq has been reviewed in Signs, Millennium, and a number of other journals.

Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq acknowledgments