The Front Line Runs Through Every Woman

by O'Gorman, Eleanor

• ISBN13: 9781847010407
• ISBN10: 1847010407
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-10-20
• Publisher: James Currey Ltd

Summary

A Zimbabwe-specific study, focusing on the lives of women in a small locale (Chiweshe) during the anti-colonial insurgency, this book is also a challenge to established and still current modes of thought and research orientations which over-simplify the complex realities women face in the full range of violent conflicts, both past and present. By contextualizing the voices of women of Chiweshe, not only is an important and under-developed aspect of Zimbabwean and African history revealed, but a new approach to comprehending the highly-tensioned lives of women in war is presented, which is characterized here as Gendered Localised Resistance. This is examined through the prism of life in the Protected Villages in Chiweshe experienced in everyday social relations, revolutionary roles, and food security. It traces how women forged strategies of survival and resistance in the middle of guerrilla warfare pitted between the forces of the state and the revolutionary resistance movements. The book can be read as a unique and richly detailed account of the lives of women during the Zimbabwe civil war and liberation struggle; as a wider argument about how researchers can approach and incorporate lived experience into accounts of larger dynamics (war/revolution); and as a substantial and important contribution to feminist historiography and writings on women and war. Eleanor O' Gorman is Senior Associate at the Gender Studies Centre and a Research Associate at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge; an independent consultant who has advised the UN, the UK Government (DFID and FCO), the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, the European Commission, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Zimbabwe: Weaver Press

Author Biography

Eleanor O' Gorman is an international adviser on development, peace and conflict issues and is a research associate at the University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

List of Maps & Photographs	p. viii
Acknowledgements	p. ix
Acronyms	p. xi
Glossary	p. xii
Introduction Women, War Voice & Agency	p. 1
Situating Women in Revolution Battlefront Myths & Homefront Lies	p. 15
Re-framing Women's Revolutionary, Lives Women, Gender & Local Resistance	p. 40
Setting the Field work Context Zimbabwe as Arena, Chiweshe as Locale	p. 55
Women's Perceptions of Revolutionary Participation Understandings of Agency & Consciousness	p. 69
Living with & within Revolution Challenges to Unity & Community	p. 91
The Front Line Runs Through Every Woman Resistance & Survival by Woman in Revolutionary War	p. 123
Conclusion Women's Agency & Voice in War Reconsidered	p. 147
Appendices:
Select Chronolgy of War	p. 159
Bibliographical Profiles	p. 161
Bibliography	p. 171
Index	p. 187
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