The material basis of gender-based violence and its circuits: a political economy perspective on post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bringing into dialogue the continuum of violence and circuits of violence perspectives, this chapter provides a structural explanation of post-conflict gender-based violence against women. Homing in on the political economy of post-conflict transition, it argues that the intersections between local and global dynamics and between formal and informal actors in post-conflict society account for a material basis of enduring violence against women. This argument challenges the existing scholarship and questions the conceptual separation of the global and local and of the formal and informal processes of post-war political and economic transition and of their protagonists. The analysis of femicide and other forms of gender-based violence against women in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina demonstrates how women’s marginalised socio-economic position increases their vulnerability to male dominance and violence, while attesting to the gendered nature of the post-war politico-economic transitions. This argument is examined empirically with reference to the cumulative effects of the interrelated dynamics of economic governance failures, neoliberal transition, informality and criminal economy in the aftermath of war.