Dissertation thoughts

[kangeiko]

New thoughts on dissertation: what role have the efforts to mainstream gender within an international human rights and international humanitarian context played in the evolving notions of 'victimhood'?

Or, possibly because that's way too wanky -

we knew what/who we defined as victim
then we had gender mainstreaming
we had new training
new laws
new thingamibobs
what role did these new thingamibobs play in the definition of victimhood?

big kisses to Faludi's "Stiffed: The Betrayal of Modern Man", which I shall be plundering for ideas.

Does any of that make sense? I have to get a good 10-12K words out of it. I'm thinking, a fair bit of theory, lots of witness testimony (Flick had a super cool and groovy idea of looking at prosecutions of soldiers/peacekeepers/other pertinent people in cases where things went wrong, and going from there), wrap it all up with a slice of law.

Tired now. Away - to bed!

Comments

[dphearson.livejournal.com]

How about this:

How does 'capitalism' continue to redefine gender roles, and thus the idea of 'victimhood'?

Women have been seen in various ways, but emerging industrialisation and capaitalism redefined geneder roles- at least for the middle class women and those women who served them. With the emergence of civil rights and definition of victimhood, how does capitalism still continue to define a person in terms of geneder and gender expectations?

[kangeiko]

Unfortunately, I think that it would probably overlap with one of my coursework essays. They penalise quite heavily for that. :(

What about -

"Twenty-first century victims: gender and sexuality in the formation of fin de siecle notions of victimhood"

Focus on -
recent developments in media theory / impact thereof (inc. abu ghraib). also your compulsory mulvey.
gender mainstreaming in victim support / refugee support / post-conflict orgs (need greater clarification on this, but you get the idea).
general theory about fetishisations of abused bodies, the objectification of victimhood, psychoanalytic theory to mix in with the media. Some work has been done on the growing popularity of PTSD as a diagnosis, especially amongst children, where specialist help is provided for a few - rather than general help for the many (argument is, kids are resilient, many are misdiagnosed and we're messing it all up).
victim / abuse theories in faludi, frantz fanon, rape theory esp susan marcus (focus on yugoslav conflicts).


To wanky? Too vague?

I need to write an 800 word proposal for Monday. I'm all voer the place at the moment. I plan on cheating, and adding in an annotated bibliography which is both helpful and yet incredibly vague. :)

[dphearson.livejournal.com]

1) Darn. That was one of my thesis for my dual degree in undergrad. I still think it is a rich vein to explore.

2)All of that is too vague. I would focus on points 1 and 4, and combine them together for your thesis proposal.

Good luck, and tell us all about it!