Top 10 Books: International Women’s Day 2023
Mariana Vieira
This year marks the fifth instalment of our International Women’s Day reading list. Books written by women should be celebrated all year-round for their outstanding contributions to the field of International Relations and you can find more excellent work by women authors in our IA Bookshelf series. On this occasion, we highlight books reviewed in International Affairs in the last twelve months, and their respective impressive authors. Look out for these future household names pushing the fields of conflict prevention, Latin American studies, European foreign policy and American military history. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather an indicative measure of how promising the future looks!
1) Feminist conversations on peace
Edited by Sarah Smith and Keina Yoshida. Published in Bristol by Bristol University Press.
In this unassuming edited volume, Sarah Smith and Keina Yoshida bring together over thirty contributors to interrogate feminist perspectives on conflict and challenge the very premise of producing and publishing academic arguments. Emphasizing conversations over co-authorship, the chapters discard the need for consensus and reflect on numerous issues, including neo-liberal conceptions of peace, peacebuilding practices and feminist thinking in the academic ivory tower. Given the range of voices featured, the book will appeal to researchers with a theoretical interest and practitioners alike. Brilliantly reviewed in conjunction with Barbara Trojanowska’s Finding gender equality in the women, peace and security agenda.
Read the full review here.
2) Borderlands
Written by Raffaella A. Del Sarto. Published in Oxford by Oxford University Press.
Borderlands convincingly challenges mainstream narratives on Europe’s relations with its ‘southern neighbours’. Raffaella A. Del Sarto combines elements of constructivism with a Marxist core–periphery lens to evaluate the imperial nature of European interactions with the Mediterranean Middle East. This framework is then deployed in Sarto’s fieldwork, examining the last two decades of trade relations and cooperation on migration, borders and security between the two regions. The book persuasively points to structural and economic inequalities that are reminiscent of how empires interacted with their borderlands. Should the review be convincing, the book is currently open access!
Read the full review here.
3) Atomic steppe
Written by Togzhan Kassenova. Published in Redwood City, CA by Stanford University Press.
Atomic Steppe is a rare book in its ability to foreground the human costs of attempts to attain and retain nuclear weapons. Drawing on extensive interviews, Togzhan Kassenova presents an account of Kazakhstan’s denuclearization that holds important insights for wider discussions of non-proliferation and uncovers the multitude of trade-offs that these negotiations usually involve for the different interested parties. In the process, Kassenova sheds new light on the dilemmas facing Kazakh policy-makers, making a significant contribution to wider policy debates.
Read the full review here.
4) The world that Latin America created
Written by Margarita Fajardo. Published in Cambridge, MA by Harvard University Press.
Margarita Fajardo traces the emergence of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA or CEPAL as it is known in Spanish and Portuguese) in an account relevant to anyone interested in institutional history, international political economy or Latin American studies. Fajardo compellingly depicts the struggle of ideas that took place among CEPAL’s members on how to best manage the region’s economic development. Without losing sight of the agency of the individuals involved, Fajardo sheds light on CEPAL’s role as a powerful vehicle through which Latin American intellectuals challenged the postwar development agenda, with lasting implications for the future of the global economy.
Read the full review here.
5) Vernacular rights cultures
Written by Sumi Madhok. Published in Cambridge by Cambridge University Press.
Sumi Madhok’s masterpiece offers an approach to decolonization that avoids treating the non-western locations as ‘traditional’ or ‘case-studies’ and advances a powerful critique of universal human rights. The book begins with a theoretical discussion that incorporates historical ontology and feminist frameworks, which Madhok expertly deploys in her rich ethnographic work. Empirically, Vernacular rights cultures takes readers to northwest India and Pakistan’s Punjab province, following social movements and struggles for rights. This way, Madhok demonstrates how rights are conceived in context-specific conditions by those on the ground. Explore our review forum, featuring contributions from four experts and including an author’s response.
Read the review forum here.
6) Women’s international thought: towards a new canon
Edited by Patricia Owens, Katharina Rietzler, Kimberly Hutchings and Sarah C. Dunstan. Published in Cambridge by Cambridge University Press.
The second in the series that began with Women’s international thought: a new history, this book provides a nuanced and engaging appraisal of women’s contributions to International Relations scholarship. With the aim of compiling an ‘alternative archive of international thought’ the voices, writings and experiences included insightfully highlight the many ways that women contributed to and otherwise been forgotten in IR over the decades. This fantastic volume has sparked fundamental conversations about canonization in the discipline and belongs on your bookshelf regardless of your subfield.
Read the full review here.
7) Seeing human rights
Written by Sandra Ristovska Published in Cambridge, MA by MIT Press.
Sandra Ristovska’s Seeing human rights explores the myriad ways human rights organizations shape video activism. When it comes to visual evidence, these collectives are becoming the main experts with increasing authority and legitimacy on training and video verification standards. Ristovska incisively points to how human rights organizations collaborate with a range of other actors, from journalists to legal experts and universities, effectively acting as brokers between governmental bodies, international institutions and activists. Packed with innovative concepts, this hidden gem is highly recommended for anyone keeping up with journalism studies, as well as the visual turn in International Relations and now in international law. It is also open access!
Read the full review here.
8) Diaspora diplomacy
Written by Ayca Arkilic. Published in Manchester by Manchester University Press.
Ayca Arkilic’s first book, Diaspora diplomacy, is a promising debut. Two decades ago, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in Turkey and, ever since, successive administrations have sought to engage the Turkish diaspora in Europe. Arkilic explores the AKP’s domestic and international goals, as well as the impact of its policies on Turkey–EU relations. Based on fieldwork in Turkey, France and Germany, the book offers a multidimensional portrayal of the Turkish government, the heterogenous diasporic community and French and German migration policies. Of particular note is the book’s emphasis on the Turkish diaspora’s role as a diplomatic agent that refreshingly pushes back on the domestic–international binary that has shaped the study of International Relations.
Read the full review here.
9) Proscribing peace
Written by Sophie Haspeslagh. Published in Manchester University Press.
Sophie Haspeslagh has written an important and satisfying book on the pitfalls of listing groups as terrorist organizations for contemporary peace processes. Proscribing peace exposes the short-sightedness of a counterterrorism tool that vilifies these groups and delegitimizes a peaceful resolution, making long-lasting peace an elusive goal. Hapeslagh combines an innovative conceptual framework with the compelling case-study of the Colombian peace negotiations in what will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in contemporary peace processes and state responses to political violence.
Read the full review here.
10) An American brothel
Written by Amanda Boczar. Published in Ithaca by Cornell University Press.
In An American brothel, Amanda Boczar provides an insightful account of the politics of sex, its accompanying hierarchies and their impact on American military and diplomatic conduct during the Vietnam war. In doing so, Boczar’s account fundamentally challenges those that would exclude the private sphere from their understandings of warfare. Ultimately, the book’s postcolonial focus on relationships, and the clashes over how sex work was managed, helps readers understand American policy failures and the wider gendered dimensions of military intervention.
Read the full review here.
If you have not already, check out our IA bookshelf for some additional reads and some equally incredible women authors.
Mariana Vieira is the Book Reviews Editor of International Affairs.
Read the review section in our March 2023 issue in full here.
Find more suggestions from the IA Bookshelf series here.
If you are interested in reviewing a book for the journal, there are two ways to get in touch. Either register your interest in our book review application form here or follow us on social media where we post regular call outs for specific books and experts.
All views expressed are individual not institutional.
