Sexualized war violence. Knowledge construction and knowledge gaps Anette Bringedal Houge ⁎ Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 6706, St. Olavs plass, 0130 Oslo, Norway abstract article info Article history: Received 17 June 2014 Received in revised form 13 July 2015 Accepted 15 July 2015 Available online xxxx Keywords: Sexual/ized war violence War rape Mass atrocities Perpetrators Supranational criminology This qualitative literature review provides an overview of the proliferating research field that research on sexu- alized war violence has become. The article critically reviews some of the main theories on sexualized war violence in light of five basic and interrelated dimensions: terminology and conceptualizations, etiological approaches, disciplinary grounding, contextual emphasis, and, lastly, the policy implications these dimensions imply. The review involves a discussion of critical contestations within the field and an outline of research gaps that still need exploration. Sexualized war violence is a research area that warrants criminological attention; it is an aim of this article to suggest possible theoretical and empirical directions that such inquiries may take. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 1.1. Locating sexual war violence research within a criminological tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 2. Theorizations on sexualized war violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 2.1. Terminology and conceptualization: from implicit vaginal rape to differentiated sexual/ized 5 violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 2.2. Etiological approaches: from biologically determined to socially constructed perpetrators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 2.3. Disciplinary grounding: From qualitative feminist analyses to large-N statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 2.4. Contextual emphasis: From patriarchal continuum to war specific processes? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 2.5. Policy implications: Security and criminalization from periphery to center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 3. Concluding remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 1. Introduction Only a few decades ago, sexualized war violence was underreported and under analyzed. It was considered an inevitable consequence of warfare, and thus irrelevant for analyses of war and international politics. Today, sexualized war violence is a vast and growing field of re- search, involving multiple disciplines. It is also an increasingly important concern for international security politics (e.g., Kerry & Hague, 2014). From a marginalized position in the wider fields of research on peace, conflict, and international relations, sexualized war violence is today seen as an indispensable part of academic presentations and analyses of war and peace processes. Taking the increased criminological atten- tion to international crimes into account, the purpose of this article is twofold: (1) to critically structure and assess the status of research on sexual war violence to better understand how we theorize the phe- nomena that this term captures and (2) to introduce this particular area of atrocity crimes research to internationally oriented criminolo- gists and scholars from adjacent fields. Although it is not within the scope of this article to conduct empirical analysis, it can be read as an invitation to further criminological inquiry into both the theoretical and empirical phenomena that sexualized war violence comprise. As a brief outline of the pages to come, I will start by locating re- search on sexualized war violence within the emerging subfield of criminology referred to as supranational or international criminology. Aggression and Violent Behavior xxx (2015) xxx–xxx ⁎ Tel.: +47 22850125; fax: +47 22850252. E-mail address: a.b.houge@jus.uio.no. AVB-00937; No of Pages 9 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2015.07.009 1359-1789/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Aggression and Violent Behavior Please cite this article as: Houge, A.B., Sexualized war violence. Knowledge construction and knowledge gaps, Aggression and Violent Behavior (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2015.07.009