The perils of recognising local agency: a situational concept of agency and the case of victims of sexual violence and the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)

Navigating vulnerabilities and masculinities: How gendered contexts shape the agency of male sexual violence survivors

“…Within the context of the so-called local turn in peacebuilding research (Mac Ginty and Richmond, 2013), feminist security studies and critical international relations scholars increasingly emphasize the importance of recognizing the agency of conflict-affected communities (Alison, 2004; Mannergren-Selimovic, 2018; Menzel, 2018). This recognition comes in response (and contrast) to much of the existing literature on conflict studies, peacebuilding, and transitional justice, which frequently constructs an ‘ideal’ type of victim as an ever-vulnerable person without agency (Baines, 2015).…”

“…At the same time, however, it is important to reiterate that ‘agency [is] not a general characteristic which actors either have or lack, but a quality that actors’ doing may have in a specific context’ (Menzel, 2018: 4), which in turn demonstrates the existence of spatially and temporally contingent as well as structural conditions for agency and its situational character (Menzel, 2018). Across different contexts, social and political constraints, expectations, and dynamics thus create ‘choice architectures .…”

“…Rather than simply making visible multiple instances of male survivors making deliberate choices to engage with their experiences, however, we also more broadly investigate the opportunity structures that shape survivors’ possibilities for acting in an agentive fashion, as well as the sociopolitical and gendered spaces in which these acts of agency occur, which necessitates a situational and relational understanding of agency (Baines, 2017; Menzel, 2018). We argue that local political conditions and gender relations, and particularly constructions of masculinities, can both prevent male survivors of sexual violence from exercising agency and simultaneously enable them to do so.…”

Batwa, gorillas and the Ruhija road: a relational perspective on controversies at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda

“…It is enacted in relations among various heterogeneous actors -thus a reality effect of such enactments (Michael, 2016;Latour, 2014;Law, 2000). Limited, no or strong agency arises from the different ways in which actors relate to different sets of other actors in particular situations (Menzel, 2018;Ren, 2011). This conceptualisation of relational agency is very much in line with Foucault's notion of power (see e.g.…”

“…To do so, we use a Foucauldian and Actor-Network Theory [ANT] inspired conceptualisation of the enactment of situational agency (Menzel, 2018) to analyse the various mechanisms and processes that enact particular versions of Batwa-ness (Middelveld, van der Duim and Lie, 2016;Ren, 2011). Thus, we move beyond oppressor-oppressed dichotomies towards an understanding of how communities engage in multiple relations with other actors to co-create development and conservation.…”