Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Jenny Hedstrom, (Associate Professor in War Studies, Department of War Studies and Military History, Swedish Defence University), who will discuss women's labour and the Kachin conflict.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Rockefeller Hall 374. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

About the Talk

This book explores insurgency warfare from the vantage point of women’s social reproductive and productive labour. The research combines feminist political economy and war studies to explain why and how war is sustained and reproduced. Developing the concept of militarised social reproduction, I examine how women’s underpaid or undervalued household duties enable and sustain the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), a poor insurgent group fighting for political rights and a degree of autonomy in the north of Myanmar. Based on more than one hundred semi-structured interviews and participant observations collected between 2013 and 2023 in Myanmar and Thailand, I show how women’s labour (re)produced from the household provides a critical, if overlooked, piece to the puzzle that is the war in Kachinland. I argue that while dominant accounts of the Kachin conflict are preoccupied with the conduct of States or the actions of military leadership, it is more instructive to focus on the activities of the household. Focusing on women’s reproductive work helps to explain how and why the Kachin conflict has been maintained for so long, despite the superior strength and resources of the Burman military force.

About the Speaker

Jenny Hedström is an Associate Professor in War Studies at the Swedish Defence University. Jenny’s research and teaching concerns the relationship between households, gender, and warfare; gender, transitions, and peacebuilding; women’s activism and resistance; and ethics and methods when researching war, often with a focus on civil wars in Myanmar. Her research has been published in the International Feminist Journal of Politics, Peacebuilding, Critical Military Studies and International Studies Review, and other outlets. Together with Elisabeth Olivius, she is the editor of the edited collection “Waves of Upheaval in Myanmar: Gendered Transformations and Political Transitions” (NIAS Press, 2023). Jenny is the Principal Investigator for the Swedish Research Council-funded project “Women’s Labour in Civil War” and co- Principal Investigator for the project “Gender Experts in Peacebuilding”. Together with Hilary Faxon she leads the “Land, Labour, Love and Revolution” project - a collaboration with farmers, artists, students and activists to trace and understand gendered relations of land, labour and love in the Myanmar Spring Revolution.