Making sense of wartime rape: a multi-causal and multi-level analysis

Scholars have long sought to explain the causes of wartime rape. While mono-causal explanations, focused on power and dominance, are increasingly losing ground to more complex, multi-causal explanations, a significant gap within the academic literature nevertheless persists: namely, the relationship between different causal variables remains critically under-explored. The purpose of this article, hence, is precisely to develop a multi-causal explanation that integrates, rather than merely identifies, a variety of possible causes. It does so by adopting a three-pronged, multi-level analysis focused on macro (societal), meso (group) and micro (individual) causal factors. While it broadly adopts a social constructivist approach, it also argues that such an approach over-emphasizes structure at the expense of agency. This research accordingly combines social constructivism with an emphasis on performance. Specifically, it argues that macro-level factors such as patriarchy and nationalism create a ‘script’ for the commission of rape, which ‘actors’—namely groups and individuals—interpret and perform. It thereby seeks to develop an explanatory framework that balances structure and agency, rather than privileging the former over the latter. This article attaches greatest importance to the meso, group level. Deconstructing the idea that rape constitutes a powerful weapon of war, it seeks to demonstrate that in the permissive/enabling environment that macro, societal factors create, wartime rape ultimately occurs because of its immense strategic and symbolic value to armed groups.