ABSTRACT

Drawing on a postcolonial perspective and theories of strategic narratives and silences, this article looks at how Sweden’s feminist foreign policy (FFP) was reported in the media of conflict-affected states. It improves our understanding of feminist foreign policy reception by showing that from twenty selected countries, only newspapers in ten states had content on the FFP. It is argued that this modest media coverage was guided by a lack of interest in the FFP expressed in silence as an indirect way of resistance to norm promotion. This lack of interest is conceptualised as a postcolonial disengagement with Sweden’s strategic narratives. The article further demonstrates that in the remaining ten countries the media transmitted Sweden’s strategic narratives without subjecting them to critical scrutiny. This lack of scrutiny is conceptualised as a postcolonial allowance of FFP narratives in conflict-affected states. The conceptualisation of norm reception through postcolonial disengagement and allowance advances our understanding of acceptance and rejection of gender equality norms advocated by ethical foreign policies in marginalised states. The article contributes to the emerging work on postcolonial FFP and Women, Peace and Security (WPS) by improving our knowledge on local actors’ agency in countries affected by conflict.

摘要

借鉴后殖民视角和战略叙事与沉默理论，本文着眼于受冲突影响国家的媒体如何报道瑞典的女权主义外交政策 (FFP)。它通过展示从二十个选定的国家中，只有十个州的报纸有关于 FFP 的内容，提高了我们对女权主义外交政策接受度的理解。有人认为，这种适度的媒体报道是由于对 FFP 缺乏兴趣而沉默表达的，这是一种间接抵制规范推广的方式。这种缺乏兴趣被概念化为后殖民时代的脱离接触与瑞典的战略叙事。文章进一步表明，在其余十个国家中，媒体在传播瑞典的战略叙述时并未对其进行严格审查。这种缺乏审查被概念化为受冲突影响的国家对 FFP 叙述的后殖民许可。通过后殖民脱离接触和宽容对规范接受的概念化，促进了我们对边缘化国家道德外交政策所提倡的性别平等规范的接受和拒绝的理解。这篇文章通过提高我们对受冲突影响国家当地行为者机构的了解，为后殖民 FFP 和妇女、和平与安全 (WPS) 的新兴工作做出贡献。