"At Gøre Køn som Protest" - Performative Praksisser og Kollektiv Mobilisering i Ravnstrup Kvindefredslejr

Doing Gender as Protest: Performative Practices and Collective Mobilization in the Ravnstrup Women's Peace Camp

Daarbak, Lene

4. semester

Samfundsfag (cand.soc.), Kandidat

2026

2026-01-02

67

This thesis examines how women in the Ravnstrup Women’s Peace Camp constructed and negotiated gendered political identities through performative practices and collective mobilization, and how these processes formed the basis for an alternative political practice. Established in 1984 near a NATO bunker in Denmark, the camp functioned not only as a site of protest against nuclear militarization, but also as a political community in which everyday life, bodily presence, and collective organization were integral to political action. The analysis draws on Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, Erving Goffman’s concept of framing, and resource mobilization theory. Methodologically, the study is based on a qualitative analysis of written archival material, including diaries, letters, internal documents, and meeting records from the camp. These sources provide insight into participants’ practices, self-understandings, and internal reflections over time. The findings show that gender in the Ravnstrup Women’s Peace Camp functioned not merely as an identity category, but as an actively produced political resource. Through repeated bodily actions, everyday routines, rituals, and affective practices, the women rendered their protest morally legitimate and politically recognizable. At the same time, continuous framing work was necessary to define these practices as political, both internally within the camp and externally in relation to authorities and the public. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that this performative form of politics was dependent on the mobilization of material, social, emotional, and communicative resources. While the camp challenged dominant, masculinized forms of political action by resignifying femininity as political authority, it also produced new normative expectations and constraints. Gender thus emerges as both a political resource and a structuring limitation within alternative political practice.

Ravnstrup

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