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Gendered Realities of Life in Post-Conflict Kosovo: Addressing the Hegemonic Man*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jamie Munn
Jamie Munn*
Affiliation:
City University, London, UK. Jamie.Munn.l@city.ac.uk
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Extract

In 2005, years after an enforced peace was constructed between Serbia and its Albanian-majority province Kosovo, the outcome of a better life for ordinary citizens seemed yet to be fulfilled. However, this was not the most important change in the lives of Kosovars. I will argue that the lives of Kosovars are characterised by a lack of economic growth and the increased importance of the normative concept of the hegemonic man. Kosovars, like many “traditionally” patriarchal societies, have constructed identities of the patriotic man and the exalted childbearing woman as icons of national survival. These designated identities often negate the realities of war-affected communities. The gendered places of man and woman in political reality are marred by the traumatic events of life. Within this framework, I analyze interviews with people who have developed “alternative” identities or, as phrased by Carver, “bonded” senses of self-esteem as a result of viewing themselves as somewhat unable to live up to the iconic emblem. In the context of a continued occupation of the province by both the international bodies assigned to the province and the Serbian state (Kosovo is not yet independent from Serbia), one of the main questions asked by many Kosovars today remains: “What was the war about if not independence and where are the spoils of victory?”

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , July 2006 , pp. 289 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

1. Reports on gendered roles and masculinity have been collected from the British Red Cross, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), CARE, Children's Aid Direct, MSF, Oxfam, Save the Children, and UNICEF on various research visits to Kosovo between March 2000 and July 2004.Google Scholar

2. The material gathered for my forthcoming monograph on gendered realities in Kosovo, Unanswered Calls from Kosovo (London: Sage, 2006).Google Scholar

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36. All names of interviewees have been changed. This interview took place in Pejü in April 2001.Google Scholar

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65. Interview in Pristina with members of both the Mother Theresa Society and the OSCE in June 2003.Google Scholar

66. Interview in Pristina with a member of the Mother Theresa Society in June 2003.Google Scholar

67. Same interviewee within the Mother Theresa Society in June 2003.Google Scholar

68. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases , 1990, p. 56.Google Scholar

69. Ibid. For a more in-depth analysis on feminist curiosity when it comes to all things militarised and the impact these attitudes with culture have on women (and discussed at a lesser degree on men) see Enloe, The Curious Feminist, pp. 14, 69, 102, 113, 157.Google Scholar

70. See E. Anderson, In the Game: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005)Google Scholar

71. G. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 34.Google Scholar

72. Interview in Pristina in June 2004.Google Scholar

73. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality , pp. 127–128.Google Scholar

74. See C. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases; Hooper, Manly States; and Mayer, “From Zero to Hero,” for lengthy discussion and examples of more ethnographic and illustrative points.Google Scholar

75. This and other similar terms of hatred could be seen on houses across Kosovo during and directly following the conflict. “Shiptar” is a term that Albanians have used (sometimes to distinguish between Albanians in Albania and those living outside in other territories); however, it was a form of verbal abuse from Serbs.Google Scholar

76. This interview took place following an emotively charged memorial service for a murdered priest-monk near Klina. Shortly after this interview members of the local community were arrested on charges of aiding the rape of eight Albanian women in 1999 and eight months later convicted of these crimes as well as the murder of 13 Albanian orphaned children, the youngest of which was only seven months old.Google Scholar

77. Alluding to Enloe's Curious Feminist.Google Scholar

78. Interview in June 2001 held in the University of Pristina, emphasis added.Google Scholar

79. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases , p. 64.Google Scholar

80. Ibid., p. 132.Google Scholar