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I will begin with the journal name itself, as it signals something of the complicated, productive and volatile mix that propelled us towards journal launch and shaped its pages from the first issue...

This article uses the concept of the ‘new home front’ to address the ethical and political reframing of national and international politics in the ‘war on terror’. It examines the links between ethics and politics in the context of links between ‘home’ and the ‘front’. The first thing to make clear is that the ‘new home front’ in the war on terror has multiple dimensions to it. Just as it refers to links between ‘home’ (as in national or domestic) and the ‘front’ (as in the military spheres of action in Iraq and Afghanistan), it also refers literally to the home front, with terrorist attacks and continuing threats of them in the UK, importantly from home-grown as well as internationally networked terrorists. So there is a complex spatiality involved in the ethical contexts of policies and politics related to the war on terror that binds security issues at home to military action overseas in ways that are overt or not. I aim to unpack some of the less obvious dimensions of that complexity in three areas. All three relate to the problematic nature of assumed separations between domestic and foreign policy, between what is considered to be ‘out there’ (overseas, foreign) and what is ‘in here’ (home, domestic). The first area concerns the varied impacts of new media connections as part of everyday life. The new media (the internet and diverse mobile devices linked to it) have disrupted traditional national vertical (top-down) linkages between political agents, the mass media and the public through a myriad horizontal real-time online connections. This means that it is far harder for governments to control the ethical content of information distributed about war, as demonstrated, for example, by the dissemination of pictures of prisoners being tortured in Abu Ghraib prison. The second area of spatial complexity relates to the pervasiveness of security concerns as integrative of domestic and foreign influences, in contrast to the predominant traditional view of security threats as external. The significance of home-grown terrorism, and intelligence and policing efforts to detect, prevent and punish it, have led to new ethical dilemmas for liberal democracies. The winning of hearts and minds is as much about persuading citizens of the legitimacy of the security imperatives that limit their liberal freedoms—the very freedoms such imperatives are ultimately intended to protect—as it is about encouraging them to be vigilant and report on any suspicions they may have about potential threats. The third area of spatial complexity is probably the least overtly recognized in terms of the ethics and politics of the war on terror. It relates to everyday citizenship and multiculturalism and gender. Here the collective and individual arenas are touched on in ways that demonstrate some of the deeper politics of the war on terror, including identity politics. Multiculturalism has been substantially in the foreground of this war and a new reflexivity about liberalism within and beyond the UK. Women and gender relations have been central to ethical tensions in the war on terror. They have frequently featured in links between foreign and domestic policy, including in the contexts of multicultural politics and religious issues.

These research notes offer some reflections on media and the ‘war on terror’ drawn from an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) research seminar series titled ‘Ethics and the War on Terror: Politics, Multiculturalism and Media’. The points cover the relationship of media to questions of security in the ‘war on terror’, and distinctions between old and new media.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show how the blurring of public and private spheres is among the changes associated with the phenomenon of blogging. In linking this to theories of globalization shows more clearly how new media transformations have macro as well as micro significance.Design/methodology/approachAn assessment of blogging is undertaken in the context of theories of globalization, with specific focus on issues related to public/private linkages, the aim being to make theory‐practice connections to enhance understanding of the wider implications of blogging.FindingsThe analysis identifies how theories of globalization offer foundational understanding for investigating blogging as a social rather than purely new media development. This relates to the spatial reconfigurations of social, political, economic and cultural life, which have been characteristic of processes of globalization. The ways in which blogging demonstrates the blurring of public and private spheres is usefully understood within this broader spatial framework.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a primarily conceptual and theoretical approach with substantive reference to blogging, which remains at the general level rather than looking in detail at different kinds of blogs and their implications. Its contribution is therefore located primarily in the conceptual and theoretical domains.Practical implicationsThis form of analysis foregrounds public/private sphere boundaries in relation to blogging and could contribute to critical thinking about the social implications of blogging for bloggers and readers alike.Originality/valueConceptual and theoretical linkages between theories of globalization, especially in relation to spatial issues, blogging and the blurring of public and private.

This article serves as a lead-in to the special issue and reflects on the relationship between globalization, ethics, and the ‘war on terror’. It argues that while globalization studies have focused substantially on the marketization of life, including the realms of politics and culture, the current ‘war on terror’ phase has directed focus in theory and practice back to traditional state-centred security concerns and critical investigation of state–citizen relations, notably in the context of multicultural societies. The article discusses three key areas of ethics. First those connected to the terminology of ‘war’ in this context and the applicability of just war thinking; second, the challenge of such rhetoric to core values of liberal democracies, such as equality and impartiality; and third, the consequences for the division between the political and public spheres and the supposedly private spheres of religion and culture. Este articulo sirve como introduccion al asunto en particular y se refleja en l...

I argue that gender mainstreaming across varied policy contexts may help to transform the ‘inferior’ status allocated to feminist international relations (IR) in relation to mainstream (masculinist) IR. I begin by outlining the problem of this inferior status, explaining the historical background to it and reasons for its perpetuation. I then explain gender mainstreaming developments and diverse ways in which they illustrate the importance of gender, including for our understanding of power and inequality. I pose questions about whether these developments and the policy practices related to them can raise consciousness in the wider IR discipline about the nature of feminist IR, and its contribution as an inclusive approach to humanity, focusing on both men and women and relations among and between them. I argue that gender mainstreaming policies related to the core IR area of human security and violence are a key challenge to the constraints of masculinist IR. I conclude that gender mainstreaming could be a site of new conversations and understanding between feminist IR and mainstream IR.

Gillian Youngs discusses some of the broad themes featured in The United Nations Development Programme : A Better Way? by Craig Murphy. She looks at the central role of the concept of human development in the progress of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the pivotal contribution of the annual Human Development Report published by the UNDP from 1990 onwards. Development (2007) 50, 153–159. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100392

Gillian Youngs explores the term virtual democracy in three broad and loosely interrelated areas: new spatialities of politics; virtual imperatives for proactive politics; the multimedia public sphere. Development (2007) 50, 23–27. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100331

We live in a different world in the 21st century, and much of that difference is technologically mediated. It is not an overstatement to say that many of our theories and concepts are far from up to speed with what these changes mean. This is the case not only with how to understand and analyse the world and different structures and processes within it but also with inevitably how to critique them, identify negative impacts and overcome them. The Internet and digital transformations that have resulted from it, especially since the arrival of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, have heralded a new spatiality in human affairs yet to be fully comprehended in philosophical, and many other, senses. This new spatiality represents a complex approach to the social that incorporates the Internet and its virtual processes as much as more familiar traditional physical settings and activities. The overall aim in this chapter is to locate violence and women’s agency within this complex spatiality to enhance our thinking about forms of gendered oppression and resistance to them. Use of the Internet has expanded the social sphere and identity and relational processes within it, so it is an integral part of considerations of being and empowerment. This discussion draws on the concept of ‘techno-transcendence’ to capture this expansion and to recognize how the Internet has contributed to reducing temporal and spatial constraints.

Introduction Heather Widdows Herjeet Marway PART I. WOMEN AS VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE 1. Rape, women's autonomy, and male complicity Sarah Sorial Jacqui Poltera 2. Women between agency and coercion Elena Alonzo 3. Prostitution and the concept of agency Rhea Jean PART II. WOMEN AS PERPETRATORS OF VIOLENCE 4. Self-harm as violence: when victim and perpetrator are one Hanna Pickard This chapter is available under a CC BY license via palgraveconnect.com 5. Autonomy, value and violence: assessing substantive accounts of autonomy Jules Holroyd 6. Female suicide bombers and autonomy Herjeet Marway 7. Women raping men Iain Law PART III. GOVERNANCE, VIOLENCE AND AGENCY 8. Andrea Dworkin's Pornography: men possessing women - a reassessment Bob Brecher 9. Violence, techno-transcendence and feminism: thinking about agency in the digital age Gillian Youngs 10. 'Not Just Victims...But': Towards a Critical Theory of the Victim Robin May Schott PART IV. THEORISING VIOLENCE AND AGENCY 11. Women's agency and the fallacy of autonomy: the example of rape and sexual consent Paul Reynolds 12. What is violence? Amanda Cawston 13. Ontology, freedom and the body that can birth Alison Assiter

This article introduces this theme issue and examines how Feminist International Relations is responding to the war on terror. The articles address ideologies, religions and conflict and highlight the enduring problem of the absence of women's voices in the theory and practice of mainstream International Relations. I argue that the question of agency is central to the issue as a whole: women's agency or lack of it, to shape not only our own lives and destinies, but those of the wider societies to which we belong. I argue this is best interpreted through a ‘transitional nexus’ representing the twofold situation women and feminists confront when working for change. This involves not only the kinds of change women are working towards, but also the historically created patriarchal context affecting how such efforts are recognized, or more usually not recognized, because of the marginal status assigned to women and their diverse interests over a long history and across different societies of the world...

This article explores the ethics of access in relation to globalization, feminism and information society. It argues that the virtual settings of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are beginning to place significant emphasis on sociospatial as well as geospatial understandings of the world and the interactions that take place within it. The article examines the extreme material and other associated inequalities of contemporary globalization, and the concentration of technological development and power in the rich economies. Historical developments related to these factors are discussed, including the gendered nature of technologies and social processes shaping their production, application and use. It is argued that feminist theory and practice is relevant to broad debates about inequality of access in the information age, as well as to those concentrating specifically on gender and women. The tension between liberal/neoliberal focus on ‘equality’ and the ‘grotesque’ levels of contemporary ...

This article examines the argument that women and gender are essential to the study of International Relations. It explains why this understanding is based on ontological revisionism and examines key areas where feminist International Relations has explored this possibility: war, militarism and security; sovereignty and the state; and globalization.

Gillian Youngs argues that one of the major challenges of the new virtual era is to understand exactly what the transformative meanings of processes involving the Internet may be, in order to ensure that approaches are both politically engaged and sociologically rich. She focuses on the meaning-practice relationship as both central to this challenge and a definitive site for futuristic thinking about women's politics in global contexts. Development (2002) 45, 23–28. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1110400

Gillian Youngs is University of Wales Alliance Research Chair, Professor of Digital Economy and academic director of the Institute of Advanced Broadcasting, University of Wales, Newport. She is associate editor of Development and she is currently leading an ESRC Research Seminar Series entitled ‘Digital Policy: Connectivity, Creativity and Rights’ (RES-451-26-0849) and is working on a manuscript for Routledge on Virtual Globalization.

The chapter explores how information and communication technologies (ICTs) have brought about transformations in transnational feminist theory and practice in multiple ways that continue to challenge historically embedded areas of gender discrimination, not least those related to core areas of STEM—science, technology, engineering, and math. The boundary-crossing nature of ICTs transformed political space for women in transnational terms. Previously male-dominated international relations were reconfigured in significant ways by the cybertechnology revolution. Feminist critiques of male-dominated STEM and the drive toward digital cultures hold significant promise for new power for women. They also point to an area rich in potential for feminist and women’s future activism and advocacy as well as entrepreneurialism. This chapter develops these arguments in more detail by looking at feminism and the new networked world; transnational feminism and digital public spheres; and upping the policy stakes for gender balance in STEM and innovation.

This paper examines the gender matrix of time, arguing for cross-disciplinary consideration of political economy, globalization and technology to achieve a detailed understanding of gendered hierarchies of time and the ways in which public/private identifications of social space and time have variously constructed and maintained them. It is argued that women are alienated from their own time, which is identified as most legitimately allocated to the service of others both in the home and at work. The inter-relationship of technologies and gendered identities is explored in relation to public/private divisions and the political-economic and scientific-technological knowledge processes that contribute to upholding them. ICTs reflect these historically established gendered patterns, but international projects such as 'Women on the Net' also demonstrate the capacities of these technologies for disrupting the gender matrix of time through their use by women for women.

(1999). The Ghost of Snow White. International Feminist Journal of Politics: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 311-314.

In considering women’s relationship to information and communication technologies (ICTs), it is important to look at the historically embedded gender inequalities that exist in the areas of science and technology as well as examining the creative and entrepreneurial uses of ICTs in which women around the world are engaged. The picture of globalization and ICTs and women’s lives is highly complex, reflecting structural problems but also new dynamics that have contributed to empowering women and global women’s movements.

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In this chapter I engage in a broad discussion of the area of intelligence in the context of both feminist perspectives on international relations and the hi-tech nature of contemporary times. The latter area is likely to appear more obviously pertinent than the former to most readers. So, part of the purpose of what follows is to reflect on how feminist International Relations (IR) might help us think differently and perhaps more critically about intelligence and diverse ethical considerations linked to it. This forms the first part of the chapter and involves some exploration of the ontological challenges presented by feminist IR to conventional understandings of intelligence and the state-centred politics it is framed by. The technological configuration of intelligence practices is a familiar and perhaps fetishized domain. It is one of the areas that connects the world of hidden security operations with popular discourses and culture. We have only to think of the iconic figure of ‘James Bond – 007’ and the extent to which not only his ‘licence to kill’ but most of his antics are facilitated by an ever-increasingly complex and exotic, not to mention deadly, array of technological weaponry and gadgetry. The recent BBC television series ‘Spooks’ is another more current and seemingly less fictionalized illustration of the array of technologies that enable intelligence gathering, not least those used for surveillance purposes. The discussion of this area that follows concentrates on two particular and inter-related concerns. The first is the functions of technologies in mediating experience, including the expression of and subjection to power, and the second concerns the saturation of technologies in different areas of contemporary life and the ‘normalization’ of such processes as surveillance. This examination forms the second part of the chapter and includes some probing of ethical implications. The information society debate (see, for example: Castells 2000; Webster 2006; Youngs 2007) is of assistance here. It directs our attention to the expanding roles of information and computerized data in social structures and relations , whether we are thinking about virtual (digital or data) identities or commodities such as databases, which are relevant to many intelligence processes, including profiling (Lyon 2001 and 2002). The third part of the chapter discusses feminist perspectives on technology, and some ways in which they can contribute to generating fresh potential for political critique.

Just a few statistics indicate the importance of gender to understanding of inequality in the contemporary world. Increasing numbers of women may be joining the workforce around the world but they earn only around 75 per cent of what men earn (UNDP 2002: 23). Of the world’s estimated 854 million illiterate adults, 544 million are women, and of the 113 million children not in primary school, 60 per cent are girls. There are an estimated 100 million ‘missing’ women around the world – 50 million in India alone – who would be alive but for infanticide, neglect or sex (selective abortion). Each year more than 500,000 women die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth. Worldwide, only 14 per cent of national parliamentarians are women, with little difference between industrial and developing countries and positive exceptions including both (UNDP 2002: 10-11, 16, 23).

Technology has been too much a missing link in the analysis of GPE. This chapter explores it as one of the conceptual paths to developing our understanding of power, including through the association of production and consumption. It is identified as part of the path toward embodied understanding, particularly in helping to close the production-consumption circle. The chapter explains how technology is usefully integrated into both an historical analysis of developments leading to globalization, and examination of the changing qualities of US hegemony in this context. I argue that technological factors are key to exploring transnational linkages, especially as they are articulated through crossborder corporate networks and the activities of the most powerful transnational corporations (TNCs). I also illustrate how technology is an embedded dimension of discourses of globalization, such as Fukuyama’s (1992) ‘end of history’ thesis, and thus crucial to critical thinking about such discourses (see also Youngs 1996). Drawing in particular on the work of Susan Strange (1994 and 1996), the chapter goes on to discuss technology as an element of structural power in the global economy.

This chapter explores overlapping concerns rooted in my experience of the study of IR in general and IPE more specifically. In my early student days, a naive question haunted me about IR. I would repeatedly, and of course silently, ask myself the following question: where are the people? This was long before I understood the high politics orientation of the field and the implications for its representation of ‘the people’. It took me many years to begin to obtain satisfactory answers to my query, at least to start to explain to myself why there appeared to be no people in this strangely structured world called IR. It remains a pertinent question for newcomers to the discipline whose direct experience of its prime high politics domain will often be limited and who are therefore left with the feeling that they are entering a rather alien world of analysis. Once I became fully familiar with the foci of the discipline, such as foreign policy analysis, international history and international theory, I started to understand that ‘the people’, which from my perspective at that time just meant people in general, were distant but they were there, encapsulated in representative terms such as the state, bureaucracy, interest groups and so on.

The state has been under siege in the study of global relations1 both substantively and theoretically. The strain has increased with time, particularly in the post-1945 period2 with the transnational destructive capacities of nuclear weapons3 the growth of the international market, most recently in ‘invisible’ goods such as services and finance4 and the global reach of sophisticated communications networks.5 The collapse of the binary world division between East and West and the apparent increased fragmentation and instability have left analysts challenged by the need to understand the violent uncertainties now produced6 or anxious to develop comforting theories of a new unified global age of liberal capitalism.7 The bottom line with regard to the state has been the degree to which it can be considered a suitable and concretely appropriate unit of analysis in international, or what I prefer, in the contemporary context, to call global, relations. Also, how does it divide the national domain ‘inside’ from the international domain ‘outside’ and what are the meanings of such divisions?8