Kurdish Women's Freedom Movement Gender, Body Politics and Militant Femininities

Amidst ongoing wars and insecurities, female fighters, politicians and activists of the Kurdish Freedom Movement are building a new political system that centres gender equality. Since the Rojava Revolution, the international focus has been especially on female fighters, a gaze that has often been essentialising and objectifying, brushing over a much more complex history of violence and resistance. Going beyond Orientalist tropes of the female freedom fighter, and the movement's own narrative of the 'free woman', Isabel Kaeser looks at personal trajectories and everyday processes of becoming a militant in this movement. Based on in-depth ethnographic research in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, with women politicians, martyr mothers and female fighters, she looks at how norms around gender and sexuality have been rewritten and how new meanings and practices have been assigned to women in the quest for Kurdish self-determination. Her book complicates prevailing notions of gender and war and creates a more nuanced understanding of the everyday embodied epistemologies of violence, conflict and resistance.

Product details

• Authors: Isabel Käser, Isabel (London School of Economics and Poli Kaser, Isabel Kaser
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press Academic
• Content: Book
• Product form: Paperback / Softback
• Publication date: 28.02.2023
• Subject: Education and learning > Teaching preparation > Vocational needs; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education
• EAN: 9781009011112
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0901111-2
• Pages: 258
• Dimensions (packing): 15.5 x 23 x 1.5 cm
• Series: Print on Demand
• Subjects: Ethnic Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies, HISTORY / Middle East / General, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / Political Advocacy, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, Political activism, Social and cultural history, Middle Eastern history, Gender studies, gender groups, Political activism / Political engagement, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Cultural & Ethnic Studies / General