Norm Diffusion and Vernacularisation: The Meeting of International and Local Gender Norms

This project will critically examine the ability of the Women Peace and Security Agenda (WPS) to reduce the prevalence of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in postconflict localities via the process of top down norm diffusion on which it operationally relies. 'Norm diffusion' here refers to the spread of social norms from a source to an adopter via influence. The existing, albeit limited, literature on norm diffusion on the ground emphasises the active role of local actors in vernacularising externally prescribed norms within their own culture's pre-existing normative frameworks. This suggests that the influence of top-down attempts to diffuse norms into target localities in a linear fashion is limited. This project thus sets out to investigate how the gender norms prescribed by the WPS - when filtered through National Action Plans (NAP) and Community Development Programmes (CDP) - intersect with, and vernacularise into, those of its targeted localities, and the impact that these processes may have on their diffusion. It sets out to answer two main questions:

1) How do the gender norms prescribed by the WPS intersect with the pre-existing gender identities in targeted localities?
2) How do these gender identities affect the vernacularisation of the normative gender framework prescribed by the WPS?

The work of CDPs - in terms of mediating flows of knowledge and power between the local and the global - results in the ongoing reconfiguration of local power structures and social identities. Localities targeted by CDP's should thus be approached as 'transnational ethnoscapes'. Due to the fuzzy boundaries of these 'transnational ethnoscapes' empirically tracing the trajectories of cultural production and addressing the research questions at hand necessitates a qualitative approach that involves the use of multiple sources, discourse analysis, and fieldwork in the form of multi-sited
observational ethnographic research.

This project tentatively suggests Uganda as a suitable case study. The UN has reported a consistent decrease in reported rates of SGBV in Uganda. However, due to the lack of substantive research on the process of norm diffusion on the ground, no firm conclusions can be drawn as to how or why the CDP's implemented in the area havebeen successful. In light of this, Uganda presently offers a vital research window through which the process of norm diffusion on the ground can be studied.

This project will provide two important contributions to the fields of knowledge crucial to the development of frameworks and related policy programmes that function to successfully implement the WPS. It will firstly add to the academes understanding of norm diffusion and vernacularisation. Secondly, it will provide crucial data for those designing future frameworks, and policy programmes, on the international, national, and local levels towards the reduction of SGBV in post-conflict contexts.