OVERVIEW

The twin exercises of redefining ‘security’ and delimiting the scope of security discourse and policy entail searching beyond familiar and the self-evident subjects. Non-traditional formulations of and approaches to security have formed a central part of WISCOMP’s research agenda. Seeking to place gender concerns squarely within the parameters of the evolving discourse on security, WISCOMP conducts and facilitates research on a range of themes to engage with the expanding contours of the security debate.

The Engendering Security Program seeks to contribute to a corpus of knowledge, empirical, and theoretical, on the ways in which gender and emerging formulations of security intersect in South Asia, and seeks to:

• Contribute to a process of empirically mapping the area of gender and non-traditional security in sites of violent conflicts across South Asia in a manner that highlights both the differences and similarities of experiences across cultures and national boundaries.
• Map the differences and commonalities of the experiences of gender, security and conflict in conflict zones in the South and South East Asian region.
• Explore the range of experiences of gender and conflict across South Asia to examine if there are common connecting threads.
• Examine the empirical studies of the En-gendering Security Series to locate spaces for women in the politics and processes of peacebuilding.
• Devise a vocabulary of conflict transformation that finds resonance within the cultural experiences of South Asia.
• Build a corpus of knowledge in the area of Non Traditional Security that stands the test of sound theory.