New orientation

After receiving Prof Chan's comments on my initial proposal, I made a few changes to the direction of my paper.

This will contain the overview of my new approach, and a detailed version should follow by Thursday.

The scope of my paper needs to be broadened in the sense that my theoritical framework needs to be broadened. Instead of only using 1325 as the backbone of my paper, I am going to delve further into feminist theory on international conflict.

In broad terms, my final paper will rest on the concepts of gendered conflict and gendered peace: the notion that men and women play different roles within conflicts based on the culture and that 'peace' accords are also gendered, and need to be examined in order to see the differential effect (if any) on men and women.

Peace will be defined in feminist terms, using Cynthia Enloe's conceptualization where peace for women means that women themselves have ultimate control over their own lives.

In order to focus the concepts of gendered conflict and gendered peace, Sri Lanka and Chechnya will be used. These two were selected for reasons aforementioned in this blog but just to summarize a few: they are both societies still embroiled one way or another in a longstanding conflict; the conflict is identity-based (primarily identified as ethnic); both societies conflicts have arisen out of periods of transition (Sri Lanka-deconlization, Chechnya- fall of communist regime). Within the realm of gendered peace for example; various peace accords will be examined in order to determine whether or not these agreements are along gender lines.

In sum, it will be a very similar concept as previously described, the main difference being I am expanding my scope to include the notion of conflict and defining the terms conflict and peace in feminist terms.