Neither the Global North nor the Global South: locating the post-Soviet space in/out of the Women, Peace and Security agenda

Abstract

Despite 20 years of theorization on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, a critical review of the WPS literature points to a large, curious, and ignored epistemic gap regarding the post-Soviet space. In this exploratory article, I want to problematize this absence. While the gap can be partly attributed to the Anglophone hegemony in this literature, I suggest an alternative explanation: metageography and the “in-betweenness” of the post-Soviet region as an ambiguous space corresponding to neither the Global North nor the Global South. Drawing on insights from post-socialist feminist theories about the former “Second World,” I argue that the post-Soviet space has been erased from the WPS literature because–as elsewhere in the social sciences–the end of the Cold War rearranged the East/West geopolitical imaginaries into a Global North/Global South divide. Consequently, this epistemic gap creates an incomplete picture of the WPS agenda as a whole. I urge and challenge WPS scholars to pay attention to this region by developing the outline of a more holistic research agenda beyond the Global North/Global South binary.