Sara Meger, Ph.D.
sara.meger@unimelb.edu.au
The University of Melbourne
About Me:
Sara Meger is a Lecturer in International Relations in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests centre on international security, global political economy, and gender. She is particularly interested in the connection between armed conflict and political violence, capital accumulation, and gender norms. Sara has conducted extensive field research in Democratic Republic of Congo, Russia and Ukraine, where she interviewed combatants, policymakers, non-governmental actors, and interest groups involved in conducting, regulating, and responding to armed conflict. Her work has been published in outlets such as International Studies Quarterly, The International Feminist Journal of Politics, and Postcolonial Studies. Her research has also been published in a recent book by Oxford University Press entitled Rape Loot Pillage: the Political Economy of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict. Prior to joining the University of Melbourne, Sara was an Assistant Professor in Gender Studies at Central European University in Budapest, where she taught Critical Policy Studies, Gender Peace and Security, and Gender in International Development.
Research Interests
Conflict Processes & War
Gender and Politics
Political Economy
Political Violence
Terrorism
Ukraine Crisis
Colombian Peace Process
Gender And War
Foreign Fighters
Sexual Violence
Countries of Interest
Congo, Democratic Republic of the (Zaire)
Ukraine
Colombia
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Recent international relations scholarship tends to view sexual violence, especially rape, as an exceptional—if not aberrant—phenomenon in war and armed conflict. Indeed, it often treats it as the sole form of gender-based violence capable of threatening international peace and security. I challenge the isolation of this particular form of gender violence in the study and governance of international security. I argue that the securitization of sexual violence produced its “fetishization” in international advocacy, policy, and scholarship. The stages of securitization operate as a process of fetishization by first, decontextualizing and homogenizing this violence; second, objectifying this violence; and third, affecting inter-unit relations through the “selling back” of sexual violence to actors involved in conflict. As such, my argument helps specify why securitization fails to adequately address an issue like sexual violence and often results in further retrenchment of disparate power relations.
Books Written:
What are the root causes of sexual violence in war? From times of antiquity through the most recent conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda, the Congo, and Syria, rape and other forms of sexual violence have been a consistent feature of war. Analyses of these more recent conflicts have prompted a surge of research into rape as a weapon of war and prompted a number of international and national initiatives to address this form of violence. This work has helped to identify rape as a deliberate tool of war-making rather than simply an inevitable side effect of armed conflict. However, much of what has been written on rape as a weapon of war has suggested that the underlying causes stem from a single motivation—whether individual, symbolic, or strategic. This singular focus has led to disagreement in the field about how we can understand the causes and consequences of sexual violence in war and about how to respond to this atrocity. Sara Meger argues that it is this approach to sexual violence in war that has rendered ineffective recent attempts by the UN, national governments, and aid and advocacy organizations to address it. Rather than identifying conflict-related sexual violence as an isolated phenomenon, this book argues that sexual violence is a form of gender-based violence (perpetrated against both men and women) and a manifestation of unequal gender relations that are exacerbated by the social, political, and economic conditions of war. She looks at trends in the form and function of sexual violence in recent and ongoing conflicts to argue that, in different contexts, sexual violence takes different forms and is used in pursuit of different objectives. Taking a political economy perspective she argues that these variations can be explained by broader struggles over territory, assets, and other productive resources of contemporary armed conflicts. As it is a reflection of global political economic struggles, she argues that sexual violence in war can't be addressed only at the local level, but must be addressed through regional and international policy. She concludes by providing some initial ideas about how this can be done via the UN and national governments.