Undoing Research on Sexual Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v18i3.1594Keywords:
DRC, representations, sexual violence, knowledge production, methodology, conflictAbstract
In the last decade the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) figures on the international radar as a place of horrific sexual violence and ‘vile barbarity’. Drawing on ethnographic research in eastern DRC, this paper argues that these framings have a contaminating effect on the researcher and the way that knowledge is produced and mediated. What does it mean to do research on violence in the ‘rape capital of the world’? It addresses three significant ‘fields of power’ that emerge when conducting research in a violent setting as a politically and geographically situated researcher. First, the paper argues that a colonial imaginary, which produces racial and sexual hierarchies, informs contemporary representations on sexual violence. Second, it critically examines current knowledge on sexual violence in eastern DRC that, primarily drawing on victims’ testimonies, may reinforce harmful framings. Third, the paper shows how I shaped my research in relation to ‘toxic’ discourses on sexual violence. In doing so, this article reflects on what it means to ‘undo’ research from a ‘violent’ space by disrupting received knowledge on sexual violence and critically exploring the researcher’s responsibility in representing violence as experienced by others and his/her complicity in perpetuating harmful framings.
References
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2002. Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?
Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others. American
Anthropologist 104 (3), 783-790.
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2011. Seductions of the “Honor Crime”. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 22(1), 17–63.
Ali, Suki. 2006. Racializing Research: Managing Power and Politics? Ethnic & Racial Studies 29 (3), 471–86.
Alcoff, Linda Martin. 2006. “The Whiteness Question”. In, Alcoff Linda Martin (ed), Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Triffin. 2007. Post-Colonial Studies: The
Key Concepts. London: Routledge.
Autesserre, Séverine. 2012. Dangerous Tales: Dominant Narratives on the Congo and Their Unintended Consequences. African Affairs 111 (443), 202-222.
Bartels, Susan, Jocelyn Kelly, Jennifer Scott, Jennifer Leaning, Denis Mukwege, Nina Joyce and Michael VanRooyen. 2013. Militarized Sexual Violence in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. Journal of Interpersonal Violence
28 (2), 340–58.
Bartels, Susan, Jennifer Scott, Denis Mukwege, Robert Lipton, Michael J.
VanRooyen and Jennifer Leaning. 2010. Patterns of Sexual Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: Reports from Survivors Presenting to Panzi Hospital in 2006. Conflict & Health 4, 9–18.
Bhabha, Homi. 1984. Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial
Discourse. October 28, 125–133.
Boesten, Jelke. 2017. Of Exceptions and Continuities: Theory and Methodology in Research on Conflict-related Sexual Violence. International Feminist Journal of Politics 19(4), 506-519.
Burton, Antoinette. 1990. The White Woman’s Burden: British Feminists and the
Indian Woman, 1865-1915. Women’s Studies International Forum 13 (4), 295–
308.
Buss, Doris. 2014. Seeing Sexual Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies.
The Limits of Visibility. In, Lebert, Joanne, Doris Buss, Obijiofor Aginam,
Donna Sharkey and Blair Rutherford (eds.), Sexual Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, International Agendas and African Contexts. London: Taylor and Francis, pp. 3-27.
Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of War : When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso. Chabal, Patrick and Jean-Pascal Daloz. 1999. Africa Works: Disorder as Political
Instrument. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Chilisa, Bagele, and Gabo Ntseane. 2010. Resisting Dominant Discourses: Implications of Indigenous, African Feminist Theory and Methods for Gender and Education Research. Gender & Education 22 (6), 617–32.
Cohen, Dara Kay, Amelia Hoover-Green and Elisabeth Jean Wood. 2013. Wartime Rape. Misconceptions, Implications, and Ways Forward. Special Report: United States Institute of Peace 232.
Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff. 2010. Africa Observed. Discourses of the Imperial Imagination. In, Roy Richard Grinker, Stephen C. Lubkemann and Christopher Burghard Steiner (eds.), Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Conrad, Joseph. 1990. Heart of Darkness and Other Tales. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Daley, Patricia. 2014. Researching Sexual Violence in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Methodologies, Ethics and the Production of Knowledge in an African Warscape. In, Anne Coles, Leslie Gray and Janet Momsen (eds), The Routledge Handbook on Gender and Development. London: Routledge.
Dauphinée, Elizabeth. 2007. The Ethics of Researching War : Looking for Bosnia.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
D’Errico, Nicole C. Tshibangu Kalala, Louise Bashige Nzigire, Felicien Maisha and Luc Malemo Kalisya. 2013. ‘You say rape, I say hospitals. But whose voice is louder?’ Health, aid and decision-making in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Review of African Political Economy 40(135), 51-66.
Desai, Gaurav G. 2001. Subject to Colonialism: African Self-Fashioning and the
Colonial Library. Durham: Duke University Press.
Doezema, Jo. 2010. Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of
Trafficking. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dolan, Chris. 2010. “War is Not Yet Over”: Community Perceptions of Sexual
Violence and its Underpinnings in Eastern DRC. London: International Alert.
Douma, Nynke and Dorothea Hilhorst. 2012. Fond de Commerce? Sexual Violence Assistance in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Wageningen: Wageningen University.
Dunn, Kevin C. 2003. Imagining the Congo: The International Relations of
Identity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ensler, Eve. 2007. A Conversation with Eve Ensler: Femicide in the Congo. Lumo,
17 September. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/pov/lumo/eve-ensler/
Eriksson Baaz, Maria and Maria Stern. 2010. The Complexity of Violence: A critical analysis of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Stockholm: Sida and Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.
Eriksson Baaz, Maria and Maria Stern. 2013. Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War?: Perceptions, Prescriptions, Problems in the Congo and Beyond. London: Zed Books.
Evans, Brad and Henry A. Giroux. 2015. Disposable Futures: The Seduction of
Violence in the Age of the Spectacle. San Francisco: City Lights. Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.
Farmer, Paul. 2005. Pathologies of Power. Health, Human Rights, and the New
War on the Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge.Selected Interviews and Other Writings
1972-1977. New York: Vintage Books.
Gettleman, J. (2007, October 7). Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War.
New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/world/africa/07congo.html?_r=0
Grinker, Roy Richard, Stephen C. Lubkemann, and Christopher Burghard Steiner (eds.). 2010. Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hall, Stuart. 1997. Representation : Cultural Representations and Signifying
Practices. London: Sage.
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Oxfam International. 2010. ‘Now the World is Without Me’: An Investigation of Sexual Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Cambridge: Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
Henry, Nicola. 2014. The Fixation on Wartime Rape: Feminist Critique and
International Criminal Law. Social & Legal Studies 23(1), 93-111.
Holmes, John. 2007. Congo’s Rape War, Los Angeles Times, 11 October. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/news/la-oe-holmes11oct11-story.html.
Human Rights Watch. 2002. The War within the War. Sexual Violence against
Women and Girls in Eastern Congo. New York: Human Rights Watch.
Hunt, Nancy Rose. 1990. Domesticity and Colonialism in Belgian Africa: Usumbura’s Foyer Social, 1946-1960. Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society 15(3), 447–474.
Johnson, Kirsten, Jennifer Scott, Bigy Rughita, Michael Kisielewski, Jana Asher, Ricardo Ong and Lynn Lawry. 2010. Association of Sexual Violence and Human Rights Violations with Physical and Mental Health in Territories of the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association 5, 553.
Kaboru, Berthollet, Gunnel Andersson, Catrin Borneskog, Annsofie Adolfsson, Edmond Ntabe Namegabe. 2014. Knowledge and Attitudes towards Sexual Violence in Conflict-Affected Rural Communities in the Walikale District, DR Congo: Implications for Rural Health Services. Annals of Public Health and Research 1(2), 1009-1016.
Kapoor, Ilan. 2004. Hyper-Self-Reflexive Development? Spivak on Representing the Third World ‘Other. Third World Quarterly 25 (4), 627–647.
Kelly, Jocelyn. 2010. Rape in War: Motives of Militia in DRC. Special Report: United States Institute of Peace 243.
Kelly, Jocelyn, Theresa S. Betancourt, Denis Mukwege, Robert Lipton and Michael J. Vanrooyen. 2011. Experiences of Female Survivors of Sexual Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo: A Mixed-Methods Study. Conflict and Health 5(25), 1-8.
Kipling, Rudyard. 1899. The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands. In, Rudyard Kipling’s Verse, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1922.
Kitzinger, Jenny. 1995. Qualitative Research. Introducing focus groups. BMJ 311,
299-302.
Kristof, Nicholas. 2008. The Weapon of Rape. New York Times, June 15. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/opinion/15kristof.html
Kristof, Nicholas. 2010. Death by Gadget. New York Times, June 27. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27kristof.html
Kogacioglu, Dicle. 2004. The Tradition Effect: Framing Honor Crimes in
Turkey. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 15(2), 119-151.
Lake, Milli and Kate Cronin-Furman. Forthcoming. Ethics Abroad: Research and
Field Methods in Areas of Limited Statehood. Political Science & Politics.
Lauro, Amandine. 2005. Coloniaux, ménagères et prostituées au Congo Belge
(1885-1930). Loverval: Editions Labor.
Lewis, Stephen. 2008. Remarks by Stephen Lewis, delivered at the 10th Annual V- Day Celebrations, 14 April. Retrieved from
http://www.stephenlewisfoundation.org/news- resources/speeches?month=4&year=2008
Longombe, Ahuka Ona, Kasereka M. Claude and Joseph Ruminjo. 2008. Fistula and Traumatic Genital Injury from Sexual Violence in a Conflict Setting in Eastern Congo: Case Studies. Reproductive Health Matters 16(31), 132-141.
Lowe, Lisa. 2015. The Intimacies of Four Continents. North Carolina: Duke
University Press.
Malkki, Lisa. 1996. Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and
Dehistoricization. Cultural Anthropology 11(3), 377-404.
McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the
Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge.
Merry, Engle Sally. 2016. The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence and Sex Trafficking. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mertens, Charlotte. 2017. Frames of Empire. Sexual Violence and the Congo. PhD Dissertation, University of Melbourne.
Mertens, Charlotte and Maree Pardy. 2017. ‘Sexurity’ and Its Effects in Eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo. Third World Quarterly 38(4), 956-979.
Mudimbe, Valentin-Yves. 1988. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mukwege, Denis and Cathy Nangini. 2009. Rape with Extreme Violence: The New Pathology in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. PLoS Med 6(12), e1000204.
Nordstrom, Carolyn and Antonius Robben (eds). 1995. Fieldwork under Fire.
Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press.
Oyewumi, Oyeronke. 1997. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of
Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Palermo, Tia and Amber Peterman. 2011. Undercounting, Overcounting and the Longevity of Flawed Estimates: Statistics on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Bulletin of the World Health Organisation 89(12), 924-925.
Peterman, Amber, Tia Palermo, and Caryn Bredenkamp. 2011. Estimates and Determinants of Sexual Violence against Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The American Journal of Public Health 101(6), 1060-1067.
Polman, Linda. 2010. The Crisis Caravaan. What’s Wrong with Humanitarian
Aid? New York: Metropolitan Books.
Pottier, Johan. 2007. Rights Violations, Rumour, and Rhetoric: Making Sense of Cannibalism in Mambasa, Ituri (Democratic Republic of Congo). The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 825-843.
Pratt, Marion, and Leah Werchick. 2004. Sexual Terrorism: Rape as a Weapon of
War in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. USAID/DCHA.
Richards, Paul. 2004. No Peace, No War: An Anthropology of Contemporary
Armed Conflicts. Oxford : James Currey.
Said, Edward W. 1989. Representing the Colonized: Anthropology’s Interlocutors.
Critical Inquiry 15(2), 202-225.
Sikweyiya, Yandisa, Elizabeth Dartnall, and Rachel Jewkes. 2016. Gender and Ethics. Exploring the Role Gender Plays in How People Perceive and Experience Research Participation. In, Keerty, Nakray, Margaret Alston and Kerri Whittenbury (eds), Social Science Research Ethics for a Globalizing World. New York: Routledge.
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and
Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books.
Spivak, Gayatri. 1988. ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ In, Nelson, Cary and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana : University of Illinois Press.
Syed, Jawad and Faiza Ali. 2011. The White Woman’s Burden: From Colonial
Civilisation to Third World Development. Third World Quarterly 32 (2), 349–
65.
Thapar-Björkert, Suruchi and Marsha Henry. 2004. Reassessing the Research Relationship: Location, Position and Power in Fieldwork Account. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 7, 363-381.
Traoré, Aminata. 2002. Le Viol de l’Imaginaire. Paris: Fayard.
United Nations Security Council. 2013. Open Debate on Resolution 2106.
Retrieved from http://webtv.un.org/watch/part-i-women-and-peace-and-
securitysecurity- council-6984th-meeting/2503651625001/
Verweijen, Judith. 2016. Coping with the Barbarian Syndrome: The Challenges of Researching Civilian-Military Interaction ‘from Below’ in the Eastern DR Congo. In, Nakray, Keerty, Margaret Alston and Kerri Whittenbury (eds.), Social Science Research Ethics for a Globalizing World. New York: Routledge, pp 243–57.
Verweijen, Judith. 2015. The Ambiguity of Militarization. The Complex Interaction between the Congolese Armed Forces and Civilians in the Kivu Provinces, DR Congo. PhD Dissertation, University of Utrecht.
Verlinden, Peter. Oost-Congo: meer dan verkrachtingen alleen. Koppen, 26 mei
2011. Retrieved from
http://deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/videozone/archief/programmas/koppen/2.158
77/2.15878/1.1032792
Wallström, Margot. 2011. The War in Congo Waged on the Bodies of Women and Girls. The World Post, March 8. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margot-wallstrom/the-war-in-congo-waged- on_b_832329.html
World Health Organisation. 2007. WHO Ethical and Safety Recommendations for Researching, Documenting and Monitoring Sexual Violence in Emergencies. WHO Press: Geneva.
Wright Penn, Robert. N.d. Robin Wright Penn Raises Hope for Congo. Retrieved from http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/content/robin-wright-penn-raises- hope-congo
Zalewski, Marysia and Anne Sisson Runyan. 2016. ‘Unthinking’ Sexual Violence in a Neoliberal Era of Spectacular Terror. Critical Studies on Terrorism 8 (3):
439-455.
Zihindula, Ganzamungu, and Pranitha Maharaj. 2015. Risk of Sexual Violence: Perspectives and Experiences of Women in a Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Journal of Community Health 40 (4), 736–43.
Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others. American
Anthropologist 104 (3), 783-790.
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2011. Seductions of the “Honor Crime”. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 22(1), 17–63.
Ali, Suki. 2006. Racializing Research: Managing Power and Politics? Ethnic & Racial Studies 29 (3), 471–86.
Alcoff, Linda Martin. 2006. “The Whiteness Question”. In, Alcoff Linda Martin (ed), Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Triffin. 2007. Post-Colonial Studies: The
Key Concepts. London: Routledge.
Autesserre, Séverine. 2012. Dangerous Tales: Dominant Narratives on the Congo and Their Unintended Consequences. African Affairs 111 (443), 202-222.
Bartels, Susan, Jocelyn Kelly, Jennifer Scott, Jennifer Leaning, Denis Mukwege, Nina Joyce and Michael VanRooyen. 2013. Militarized Sexual Violence in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. Journal of Interpersonal Violence
28 (2), 340–58.
Bartels, Susan, Jennifer Scott, Denis Mukwege, Robert Lipton, Michael J.
VanRooyen and Jennifer Leaning. 2010. Patterns of Sexual Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: Reports from Survivors Presenting to Panzi Hospital in 2006. Conflict & Health 4, 9–18.
Bhabha, Homi. 1984. Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial
Discourse. October 28, 125–133.
Boesten, Jelke. 2017. Of Exceptions and Continuities: Theory and Methodology in Research on Conflict-related Sexual Violence. International Feminist Journal of Politics 19(4), 506-519.
Burton, Antoinette. 1990. The White Woman’s Burden: British Feminists and the
Indian Woman, 1865-1915. Women’s Studies International Forum 13 (4), 295–
308.
Buss, Doris. 2014. Seeing Sexual Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies.
The Limits of Visibility. In, Lebert, Joanne, Doris Buss, Obijiofor Aginam,
Donna Sharkey and Blair Rutherford (eds.), Sexual Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, International Agendas and African Contexts. London: Taylor and Francis, pp. 3-27.
Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of War : When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso. Chabal, Patrick and Jean-Pascal Daloz. 1999. Africa Works: Disorder as Political
Instrument. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Chilisa, Bagele, and Gabo Ntseane. 2010. Resisting Dominant Discourses: Implications of Indigenous, African Feminist Theory and Methods for Gender and Education Research. Gender & Education 22 (6), 617–32.
Cohen, Dara Kay, Amelia Hoover-Green and Elisabeth Jean Wood. 2013. Wartime Rape. Misconceptions, Implications, and Ways Forward. Special Report: United States Institute of Peace 232.
Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff. 2010. Africa Observed. Discourses of the Imperial Imagination. In, Roy Richard Grinker, Stephen C. Lubkemann and Christopher Burghard Steiner (eds.), Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Conrad, Joseph. 1990. Heart of Darkness and Other Tales. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Daley, Patricia. 2014. Researching Sexual Violence in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Methodologies, Ethics and the Production of Knowledge in an African Warscape. In, Anne Coles, Leslie Gray and Janet Momsen (eds), The Routledge Handbook on Gender and Development. London: Routledge.
Dauphinée, Elizabeth. 2007. The Ethics of Researching War : Looking for Bosnia.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
D’Errico, Nicole C. Tshibangu Kalala, Louise Bashige Nzigire, Felicien Maisha and Luc Malemo Kalisya. 2013. ‘You say rape, I say hospitals. But whose voice is louder?’ Health, aid and decision-making in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Review of African Political Economy 40(135), 51-66.
Desai, Gaurav G. 2001. Subject to Colonialism: African Self-Fashioning and the
Colonial Library. Durham: Duke University Press.
Doezema, Jo. 2010. Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of
Trafficking. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dolan, Chris. 2010. “War is Not Yet Over”: Community Perceptions of Sexual
Violence and its Underpinnings in Eastern DRC. London: International Alert.
Douma, Nynke and Dorothea Hilhorst. 2012. Fond de Commerce? Sexual Violence Assistance in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Wageningen: Wageningen University.
Dunn, Kevin C. 2003. Imagining the Congo: The International Relations of
Identity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ensler, Eve. 2007. A Conversation with Eve Ensler: Femicide in the Congo. Lumo,
17 September. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/pov/lumo/eve-ensler/
Eriksson Baaz, Maria and Maria Stern. 2010. The Complexity of Violence: A critical analysis of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Stockholm: Sida and Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.
Eriksson Baaz, Maria and Maria Stern. 2013. Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War?: Perceptions, Prescriptions, Problems in the Congo and Beyond. London: Zed Books.
Evans, Brad and Henry A. Giroux. 2015. Disposable Futures: The Seduction of
Violence in the Age of the Spectacle. San Francisco: City Lights. Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.
Farmer, Paul. 2005. Pathologies of Power. Health, Human Rights, and the New
War on the Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge.Selected Interviews and Other Writings
1972-1977. New York: Vintage Books.
Gettleman, J. (2007, October 7). Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War.
New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/world/africa/07congo.html?_r=0
Grinker, Roy Richard, Stephen C. Lubkemann, and Christopher Burghard Steiner (eds.). 2010. Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hall, Stuart. 1997. Representation : Cultural Representations and Signifying
Practices. London: Sage.
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Oxfam International. 2010. ‘Now the World is Without Me’: An Investigation of Sexual Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Cambridge: Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
Henry, Nicola. 2014. The Fixation on Wartime Rape: Feminist Critique and
International Criminal Law. Social & Legal Studies 23(1), 93-111.
Holmes, John. 2007. Congo’s Rape War, Los Angeles Times, 11 October. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/news/la-oe-holmes11oct11-story.html.
Human Rights Watch. 2002. The War within the War. Sexual Violence against
Women and Girls in Eastern Congo. New York: Human Rights Watch.
Hunt, Nancy Rose. 1990. Domesticity and Colonialism in Belgian Africa: Usumbura’s Foyer Social, 1946-1960. Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society 15(3), 447–474.
Johnson, Kirsten, Jennifer Scott, Bigy Rughita, Michael Kisielewski, Jana Asher, Ricardo Ong and Lynn Lawry. 2010. Association of Sexual Violence and Human Rights Violations with Physical and Mental Health in Territories of the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association 5, 553.
Kaboru, Berthollet, Gunnel Andersson, Catrin Borneskog, Annsofie Adolfsson, Edmond Ntabe Namegabe. 2014. Knowledge and Attitudes towards Sexual Violence in Conflict-Affected Rural Communities in the Walikale District, DR Congo: Implications for Rural Health Services. Annals of Public Health and Research 1(2), 1009-1016.
Kapoor, Ilan. 2004. Hyper-Self-Reflexive Development? Spivak on Representing the Third World ‘Other. Third World Quarterly 25 (4), 627–647.
Kelly, Jocelyn. 2010. Rape in War: Motives of Militia in DRC. Special Report: United States Institute of Peace 243.
Kelly, Jocelyn, Theresa S. Betancourt, Denis Mukwege, Robert Lipton and Michael J. Vanrooyen. 2011. Experiences of Female Survivors of Sexual Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo: A Mixed-Methods Study. Conflict and Health 5(25), 1-8.
Kipling, Rudyard. 1899. The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands. In, Rudyard Kipling’s Verse, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1922.
Kitzinger, Jenny. 1995. Qualitative Research. Introducing focus groups. BMJ 311,
299-302.
Kristof, Nicholas. 2008. The Weapon of Rape. New York Times, June 15. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/opinion/15kristof.html
Kristof, Nicholas. 2010. Death by Gadget. New York Times, June 27. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27kristof.html
Kogacioglu, Dicle. 2004. The Tradition Effect: Framing Honor Crimes in
Turkey. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 15(2), 119-151.
Lake, Milli and Kate Cronin-Furman. Forthcoming. Ethics Abroad: Research and
Field Methods in Areas of Limited Statehood. Political Science & Politics.
Lauro, Amandine. 2005. Coloniaux, ménagères et prostituées au Congo Belge
(1885-1930). Loverval: Editions Labor.
Lewis, Stephen. 2008. Remarks by Stephen Lewis, delivered at the 10th Annual V- Day Celebrations, 14 April. Retrieved from
http://www.stephenlewisfoundation.org/news- resources/speeches?month=4&year=2008
Longombe, Ahuka Ona, Kasereka M. Claude and Joseph Ruminjo. 2008. Fistula and Traumatic Genital Injury from Sexual Violence in a Conflict Setting in Eastern Congo: Case Studies. Reproductive Health Matters 16(31), 132-141.
Lowe, Lisa. 2015. The Intimacies of Four Continents. North Carolina: Duke
University Press.
Malkki, Lisa. 1996. Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and
Dehistoricization. Cultural Anthropology 11(3), 377-404.
McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the
Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge.
Merry, Engle Sally. 2016. The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence and Sex Trafficking. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mertens, Charlotte. 2017. Frames of Empire. Sexual Violence and the Congo. PhD Dissertation, University of Melbourne.
Mertens, Charlotte and Maree Pardy. 2017. ‘Sexurity’ and Its Effects in Eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo. Third World Quarterly 38(4), 956-979.
Mudimbe, Valentin-Yves. 1988. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mukwege, Denis and Cathy Nangini. 2009. Rape with Extreme Violence: The New Pathology in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. PLoS Med 6(12), e1000204.
Nordstrom, Carolyn and Antonius Robben (eds). 1995. Fieldwork under Fire.
Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press.
Oyewumi, Oyeronke. 1997. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of
Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Palermo, Tia and Amber Peterman. 2011. Undercounting, Overcounting and the Longevity of Flawed Estimates: Statistics on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Bulletin of the World Health Organisation 89(12), 924-925.
Peterman, Amber, Tia Palermo, and Caryn Bredenkamp. 2011. Estimates and Determinants of Sexual Violence against Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The American Journal of Public Health 101(6), 1060-1067.
Polman, Linda. 2010. The Crisis Caravaan. What’s Wrong with Humanitarian
Aid? New York: Metropolitan Books.
Pottier, Johan. 2007. Rights Violations, Rumour, and Rhetoric: Making Sense of Cannibalism in Mambasa, Ituri (Democratic Republic of Congo). The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 825-843.
Pratt, Marion, and Leah Werchick. 2004. Sexual Terrorism: Rape as a Weapon of
War in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. USAID/DCHA.
Richards, Paul. 2004. No Peace, No War: An Anthropology of Contemporary
Armed Conflicts. Oxford : James Currey.
Said, Edward W. 1989. Representing the Colonized: Anthropology’s Interlocutors.
Critical Inquiry 15(2), 202-225.
Sikweyiya, Yandisa, Elizabeth Dartnall, and Rachel Jewkes. 2016. Gender and Ethics. Exploring the Role Gender Plays in How People Perceive and Experience Research Participation. In, Keerty, Nakray, Margaret Alston and Kerri Whittenbury (eds), Social Science Research Ethics for a Globalizing World. New York: Routledge.
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and
Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books.
Spivak, Gayatri. 1988. ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ In, Nelson, Cary and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana : University of Illinois Press.
Syed, Jawad and Faiza Ali. 2011. The White Woman’s Burden: From Colonial
Civilisation to Third World Development. Third World Quarterly 32 (2), 349–
65.
Thapar-Björkert, Suruchi and Marsha Henry. 2004. Reassessing the Research Relationship: Location, Position and Power in Fieldwork Account. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 7, 363-381.
Traoré, Aminata. 2002. Le Viol de l’Imaginaire. Paris: Fayard.
United Nations Security Council. 2013. Open Debate on Resolution 2106.
Retrieved from http://webtv.un.org/watch/part-i-women-and-peace-and-
securitysecurity- council-6984th-meeting/2503651625001/
Verweijen, Judith. 2016. Coping with the Barbarian Syndrome: The Challenges of Researching Civilian-Military Interaction ‘from Below’ in the Eastern DR Congo. In, Nakray, Keerty, Margaret Alston and Kerri Whittenbury (eds.), Social Science Research Ethics for a Globalizing World. New York: Routledge, pp 243–57.
Verweijen, Judith. 2015. The Ambiguity of Militarization. The Complex Interaction between the Congolese Armed Forces and Civilians in the Kivu Provinces, DR Congo. PhD Dissertation, University of Utrecht.
Verlinden, Peter. Oost-Congo: meer dan verkrachtingen alleen. Koppen, 26 mei
2011. Retrieved from
http://deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/videozone/archief/programmas/koppen/2.158
77/2.15878/1.1032792
Wallström, Margot. 2011. The War in Congo Waged on the Bodies of Women and Girls. The World Post, March 8. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margot-wallstrom/the-war-in-congo-waged- on_b_832329.html
World Health Organisation. 2007. WHO Ethical and Safety Recommendations for Researching, Documenting and Monitoring Sexual Violence in Emergencies. WHO Press: Geneva.
Wright Penn, Robert. N.d. Robin Wright Penn Raises Hope for Congo. Retrieved from http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/content/robin-wright-penn-raises- hope-congo
Zalewski, Marysia and Anne Sisson Runyan. 2016. ‘Unthinking’ Sexual Violence in a Neoliberal Era of Spectacular Terror. Critical Studies on Terrorism 8 (3):
439-455.
Zihindula, Ganzamungu, and Pranitha Maharaj. 2015. Risk of Sexual Violence: Perspectives and Experiences of Women in a Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Journal of Community Health 40 (4), 736–43.
Downloads
Published
2019-07-08
How to Cite
Mertens, C. (2019). Undoing Research on Sexual Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 18(3), 662–687. https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v18i3.1594
Issue
Section
Research
License
Authors agree to publish their articles in ACME under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
