About the Book
In Legacies of War Kimberly Theidon examines the lives of children born of wartime rape and the experiences of their mothers and communities to offer a gendered theory of harm and repair. Drawing on ethnographic research in postconflict Peru and Colombia, Theidon considers the multiple environments in which conception, pregnancy, and childbirth unfold. She reimagines harm by taking into account the impact of violence on individual people as well as on more-than-human lives, bodies, and ecologies, showing how wartime violence reveals the interdependency of all life. She also critiques policy makers, governments, and humanitarian organizations for their efforts at postconflict justice, which frequently take an anthropocentric rights-based approach that is steeped in liberal legalism. Rethinking the intergenerational reach of war while questioning what counts as sexual and reproductive violence, Theidon calls for an explicitly feminist peace-building and postconflict agenda that includes a full range of sexual and reproductive rights, including access to safe and affordable abortions.
Table of Contents:
Gratitude vii
Introduction 1
1. Beyond Stigma 9
2. Situated Biologies 37
3. Ecologies and Aftermaths 57
4. The Long Way Around 85
Final Reflections 93
Notes 97
Bibliography 107
Index 115
About the Author :
Kimberly Theidon is Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies at Tufts University and author of Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru.
Review :
“This stunning and timely book is rightly disturbing, with its focus on sexual violence and the harm inflicted on women and their offspring, directly and indirectly, in Peru and Colombia. Kimberly Theidon has pulled together threads of apparently disparate events over time to reveal how reproductive violence impacts multiple environments, moving far beyond a woman’s womb. She brings formidable insights to this highly perturbing subject.” - Margaret Lock, Marjorie Bronfman Professor Emerita, Departments of Social Studies of Medicine and of Anthropology, McGill University “Combining sharp insight, cutting-edge theoretical work, and a profound assessment of the legacies of war and the possibilities of repair, Kimberly Theidon foregrounds the agency of women, insisting on a reproductive justice that includes women’s right to have or not have a child, and the means for choice to be available. Compelling and supremely well written, Legacies of War makes important interventions into studies of gender, war, violence, and human rights and will find an audience among scholars and policy makers working on transitional justice, peacekeeping, and peace building.” - Elisabeth Jean Wood, author of (Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador) "Urgent, timely, and heartbreaking. . . . As Theidon asks us to move beyond facile assumptions about these women and children, she similarly asks us to expand our analytical focus to consider the connections between reproductive and environmental harm and justice." - María Elena García (NACLA) "Legacies of War provides deep reflection and raises difficult questions. As such, this is an important book for students of the Andes, global gender justice, and (post-)conflict violence and reconciliation. In addition, it is a very well-written journey through the possibilities and value of ethnographic work and scholarship." - Jelke Boesten (Journal of Latin American Studies) "Writing in a narratively engaging ethnographic style, the author describes the international agendas, policies, and practices that maintain the invisibility of women’s rights in the context of wartime violence. Throughout the text, Theidon focuses on solutions and calls for an “explicitly feminist peace-building and postconflict reconstruction agenda” (p. 5). Readers will come away with a nuanced account of how war, violence, and reproduction permeate the globe. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals." - J. Wies (Choice) "Permeated by compassion and deep insight, Legacies of War is a groundbreaking book that offers unique and innovative perspectives on a topic that has received scant attention in academic and policy debates. . . . It holds the potential to improve assistance and support for victims of war-both human and other than human-and should therefore be read by any scholar and practitioner working with reconciliation and post-war reconstruction processes." - Sofie Rose (International Feminist Journal of Politics) "This book makes visible a widely hidden outcome of sexual violence and poses vital questions of increasing importance as we continue to face assaults on women’s reproductive rights and the natural environment. It would be of particular interest to those engaged with social and environmental justice, gender, Latin American studies, and human rights." - Nicole Coffey Kellett (Journal of Anthropological Research) "In this book, as excellent as it is timely and urgent to disseminate, Theidon manages to put into perspective the horrors of sexual violence in Colombia and Peru, while bringing up the same problems in various parts of the planet. The author looks inward and outward, from small indigenous populations to large first world countries, to conclude that in all areas patriarchy, machismo and sexual violence against women have not yet listened to the victims of these forms of violence." (translated from Spanish) - Mara Favoretto (Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research) “Meticulously researched and well-grounded in theory, Legacies of War is an insightful examination of the intergenerational impact of war on women, children, communities, and the environment. By interweaving personal encounters, first-hand examples, and survivor stories with traditional scholarly approaches, Theidon brings the subject matter to life and makes cogent arguments that are easily understood, even by those with little background in the subject matter." - Lynn C. Purkey (Feministas Unidas) "Theidon demonstrates in Legacies of War a unique ability to recognize, analyze and interconnect, with delicate sensibility and an innovative conceptual apparatus, the intricacies of invisibilized harm in complex post-conflict scenarios. The book should be recommended reading for policy makers and scholars interested in violence, its after effects and a posthumanist approach to justice and reparations." - Alejandro Quintero Mächler (Revista) "This book inspires new questions in peace studies, medical anthropology, and environmental humanities. It opens theoretical routes to ethnographically explore the nuances of conflict-related sexual and reproductive violence, the challenges of transitional justice projects to repair the interspecies entanglements that are affected by war, and the limits and possibilities of the human rights framework to build a feminist peacebuilding agenda." - Vanesa Giraldo-Gartner (American Anthropologist) “Theidon's analysis of the extensive reproductive violence of war is necessary and provocative . . . [T]his ambitious feminist and posthumanist approach to violent conceptions urges us to think more broadly about who and what the victims of war are.” - Diana Pardo Pedraza (Anthropological Quarterly) "Especially compelling. . . . Reading Legacies of War, one might conclude that environmental harm is a form of sexual harm inasmuch as it affects our distributed capacity for reproduction. This is a model of reproductive justice beyond ‘human exceptionalism and its devastating consequences’ (p. 94)." - Stephanie Clare (Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory)
