This is a conversation with Marie E. Berry and Milli Lake, co-founders and principal investigators of the Women’s Rights After War Project. We primarily spoke about their article "on inconvenient findings" and their paper for Annual Reviews "women's rights after war: on gender interventions and enduring hierarchies"

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Topics Discussed:

• The limitations of many 'women's empowerment' programs
• What happens when research findings challenge the work that policy makers are invested in promoting? Example of degrowth and economics
• Who gets excluded when certain interests (such as class) are maintained?
• Examples of Rwanda, Bosnia and Lebanon
• Narrowly-defined arena for justice
• The three Dayton agreements (referencing the episode with Aida Hozic) and ongoing situation in Bosnia and Serbia
• War logics in 'postwar' contexts
• The USA as a 'postwar' country
• Should we make inconvenient findings less inconvenient?
• The idea of nation states
• The role of futurism and speculative movements

Resources Mentioned:

• 69/ The Entrenched “Manliness” of Ethnic Power-sharing Peace Agreements (with Aida A. Hozić) https://thefirethisti.me/2021/03/28/69-the-entrenched-manliness-of-ethnic-power-sharing-peace-agreements-with-aida-a-hozic/

Recommended Books:

• Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
• Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
• The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow
• Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown
• Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown
• Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation by adrienne maree brown
• On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint by Maggie Nelson
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer