Abstract
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Military occupations are implicitly masculine affairs. It is men who compose
the majority of the military forces that undertake the tasks of occupation,
and primarily men who command an occupation force. These men
operate within the structures and culture of the hyper-masculinized military
institution. Yet not only is the attempt to make masculinities more
explicit in war, occupation and peacekeeping research quite recent, the
more complex gendered impacts of military occupation have only begun
to be interrogated. Women can be part of an occupation force. Both men
and women are affected as the occupied. There are gender complexities
and hierarchies within each side of the occupation power binary, that is
within the occupiers and within the occupied. These webs of hierarchical
and interactive gendered relationships are enacted in complex, diverse, and
often contradictory ways. The aim of this edited collection of chapters by
scholars, activists and those affected by occupation is to reveal the diversity
of the gendered impacts of military occupation on both the occupier and
the occupied. Attention is paid to the ways that occupation power is performed,
negotiated and subverted on a daily basis through the questioning
and interrogation of both normative and changing gender roles in occupation
power hierarchies and in occupied societies and spaces.