5 - ‘Land Is Our Mother’

Summary

This chapter extends existing literature on property, political authority and state formation by focusing on the gendered aspects of ethno-territorial conflict. From late 1998, Solomon Islands was plunged into a period of conflict, and by 2003, it was regarded as a ‘failed state’. Militants made territorial claims that were grounded in highly gendered notions of culture and ethnicity, and in the aftermath of the conflict, attention has been devoted to consolidating these distinctions via a new constitution adopting a federal system. While ’the Tension’ has often been interpreted as exposing the fragility of state institutions and the tenacity of custom, this chapter argues that it must be understood as emerging from processes of state formation. These processes are profoundly gendered, and reproduce state norms and institutions as a masculine, even hypermasculine, domain. This is highlighted by the widespread gender-based violence perpetrated by militants during the conflict, which was not merely an effect of territorial claims, but constituted them, with devastating consequences for women, children and men who perceived and sought to express themselves differently.