Only rarely have feminist theorists addressed the adequacy of just -war theory, a set of principles developed over hundreds of years to assess the justice of going to war and the morality of conduct in war. Recently, a few feminist scholars have found just -war theory inadequate, yet their own counterproposals are also deficient. I assess feminist contributions to just -war theorizing and suggest ways of strengthening, rather than abandoning, this moral approach to war.

When the terms ?women? and ?violence? are used, it is usually in the context of women as victims and rarely as perpetrators of violence, and yet women do behave aggressively ? for instance, as female suicide bombers. An ethical analysis of this role, however, has tended to be somewhat overlooked, partly because of the gender stereotypes at play, with little (or spurious) focus on the agency and autonomy of the women. This has resulted in an incomplete understanding of the unique (...) ways in which societies treat female political aggressions, and the consequences of this for their agency. This paper seeks to redress these issues by evaluating two different societal portrayals of female suicide bombers; that of the ?scandalous subwoman? and the ?sublime superwoman?. It argues that violent women's agency is often distorted to extremes beyond that of their male counterparts, and that it is imperative to avoid misrepresenting them either as agentless victims (?subwomen?) or wholly agentic (?superwomen?) since, even in times of political instability, they can rarely be dichotomised in this binary way. (shrink)

Feminist peace theories that find hope for peace in the ideal of the caretaking woman are grounded in patriarchal gender distinctions, fail to challenge adequately the patriarchal dualism that constitutes the self by devaluing the other, and the practice of caretaking about which they speak may be easily co-opted into the service of war. Feminist peace theory should address the devaluation of "others," in order to undermine this justification and motivation for war.

In this article, I explore recent work on realist political theory and international politics. I discuss how scholarship on the topic emanates from two different fields—International Relations and political philosophy—and argue that there is a good case for greater engagement between them. I open by delineating various kinds of realism, showing that the term covers a wide variety of methodological and political approaches. In particular, I suggest, it is important to recognize the difference between liberal and radical approaches. The remainder (...) of the essay examines assorted examples of realist international political theorizing, work that ranges from attempts to rewrite the canon of 20th century political thought to contributions to the vibrant global justice debates. (shrink)