Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics

Product Information

Cynthia Enloe's Report from The Syrian Peace Talks, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom January 30, 2014. Cynthia Enloe". Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University . Retrieved 2023-04-19. Some women, of course, have not been treated as furniture. Among those women who have become visible in the recent era's international political arena are Hillary Clinton, Mary Robinson, Angela Merkel, Christine Lagarde, Michelle Bachelet, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Shirin Ebadi. Each of these prominent women has her own gendered stories to tell (or, perhaps, to deliberately not tell). But a feminist-informed investigation makes it clear that there are far more women engaged in international politics than the conventional headlines imply. Millions of women are international actors, and most of them are not Shirin Ebadi or Hillary Clinton. Stephanie Van Hook, " Taking women's lives seriously — an interview with Cynthia Enloe" September 13, 2012. Wagingnonviolence.com,

Bananas, Beaches and Bases - Scribd Cynthia Enloe - Bananas, Beaches and Bases - Scribd

A new edition of Bananas, Beaches and Bases is cause for cosmic good cheer. This trailblazing treatment of the gender politics of global market and military projects is a feminist classic. Always ahead of the curve, before globalization had achieved cache in academic circles, Enloe was there, cajoling Western feminists out of our politicial parochialism. There is no more creative, insightful, engaging feminist guide to international politics." Judith Stacy, author of Brave New Families - from cover A feminist gender analysis calls for continuing to ask even more questions about the genderings of power: Who gains what from wielding a particular form of gender-infused power? What do challenges to those wieldings of that form of power look like? When do those challenges succeed? When are they stymied? Bates, Laura (November 6, 2017). " 'Never be the most feminist person you know' – Laura Bates meets Cynthia Enloe". Theguardian.com . Retrieved November 7, 2017. This book is a rare gem. International relations will never look the same again. Through Bananas, Beaches and Bases and the many lives women live, Cynthia Enloe most persuasively shows that global politics is not where it is supposed to be. This updated edition of this classic is very welcome indeed."Full Book Name: Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics [Updated Edition]

Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist [PDF] [EPUB] Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist

At the same time, we can be more curious about who does not pay attention to women's experiences-of war, marriage, trade, travel, revolution, and plantation and factory work. Who reaps rewards when women's experiences of these international affairs are treated as if they were inconsequential, mere "human interest" stories? That is, one becomes an international political investigator when one seeks to figure out who is rewarded if they treat women's experiences and women's gender analyses as if either were mere embellishments, almost entertainment, as if neither sheds meaningful light on the causes of the unfolding global events. Rewards are political. Gender makes the world go round -- On the beach: Sexism and tourism -- Nationalism and masculinity -- Base women -- Diplomatic wives -- Carmen Miranda on my mind: International politics of the banana -- Blue jeans and bankers -- 'Just like one of the family': Domestic servants in world politicsThe flaw at the core of these mainstream, seemingly "sophisticated" commentaries is how much they take for granted, how much they treat as inevitable, and thus how much about the workings of power they fail to question-that is, how many types of power, and how many wieldings and wielders of power, they miss. This is the work of a well-traveled feminist mulling over the inequalities of the postmodern world. In a lively overview of tourism, the food industry, army bases, nationalism, diplomacy, global factories, and domestic work, Enloe persuasively argues that gender is key to the workings of international relations. Most of all, one has to become interested in the actual lives—and thoughts—of complicatedly diverse women. One need not necessarily admire every woman whose life one finds interesting. Feminist attentiveness to all sorts of women is not derived from hero worship. Some women, of course, will turn out to be insightful, innovative, and even courageous. Upon closer examination, other women will prove to be complicit, intolerant, or self-serving. The motivation to take all women’s lives seriously lies deeper than admiration. Asking Where are the women? is motivated by a determination to discover exactly how this world works. One’s feminist-informed digging is fueled by a desire to reveal the ideas, relationships, and policies those (usually unequal) gendered workings rely upon. Mary Fainsod Katzenstein (2001). "Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics". The American Political Science Review. 95 (1): 252–253. JSTOR 3117694. The Susan Strange Award, International Studies Association, for "a person whose singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and organizational complacency in the international studies community during the previous year." (2007) [31]

Bananas, Beaches and Bases - Wikipedia

This assertion-that many commentators underestimate power-may seem odd, since so many gender- incurious commentators appear to project an aura of power themselves, as if their having insights into the alleged realities of power bestows on them a mantle of power. Yet it is these same expert commentators who gravely underestimate both the amount and the kinds of power it has taken to create and to perpetuate the international political system we all are living in today. It is not incidental that the majority of the people invited to serve as expert foreign affairs commentators are male. For instance, one study revealed that, although white men constitute only 31 percent of today's total U.S. population, they made up 62 percent of all the expert guests on the three most influential American evening cable news channels.

Article contents

As influential as these past and present local and international feminist media innovations were-and still are-in offering alternative information and perspectives, they did not and still do not have sufficient resources (for instance, for news bureaus in Beijing, Cairo, Nairobi, London, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro). Nor can they match the cultural and political influence wielded by large well-capitalized or state-sponsored media companies-textbook publishers, network and cable television companies, national radio stations and newspapers, Internet companies, and major film studios. These large media companies have become deliberately international in their aspirations. They are not monolithic, but together they can determine what is considered "international," what is defined as "political," what is deemed "significant," and who is anointed an "expert." To make reliable sense of today’s (and yesterday’s) dynamic international politics calls both for acquiring new skills and for redirecting skills one already possesses. That is, making feminist sense of international politics necessitates gaining skills that feel quite new and redirecting skills that one has exercised before, but which one assumed could shed no light on wars, economic crises, global injustices, and elite negotiations. Investigating the workings of masculinities and femininities as they each shape complex international political life—that is, conducting a gender-curious investigation—will require a lively curiosity, genuine humility, a full tool kit, and candid reflection on potential misuses of those old and new research tools. ⁴ Adam Jones, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives, by Cynthia Enloe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), Contemporary Politics, 7: 2 (2001), pp. 171–75.

Bananas, beaches and bases : making feminist sense Citation - Bananas, beaches and bases : making feminist sense

Gill, V. (1985). "Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics". Journal of Peace Research. 22 (1): 87–90. doi: 10.1177/002234338502200107. JSTOR 423590. Enloe, Cynthia. 2004. The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in The New Age of Empire. London: University of California Press, p. 158. Second, if we continue to ignore the distinct ideas and actions of the British and American women abolitionists, we will underestimate the internal tensions that marked the transatlantic antislavery movement itself: to sustain their movement over decades and in the face of formidable opposition, male and female antislavery activists not only had to reconcile their differing ideas about race, property, freedom, and the meaning of humanity, but they also had to work out among themselves their contentious differences over femininity, mascul The politics of marriage can become even more intensely international as a result of gendered pressures from outside: colonial rule, new international norms of human rights, transnational religious evangelizing, and membership in new interstate unions whose standards have to be met. A family's wedding album rarely shows what power was wielded nationally or internationally and by whom in that ceremony. One has to dig deeper, even when the digging makes one uneasy.The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy, Oakland, University of California Press, 2018. The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was founded a century ago by transnational feminist peace activists in the midst of World War I. Many groups on this partial list, by contrast, have been created in the years since the 1990s. New transnational networks and coalitions are on the brink of being launched today. Each network has its own gendered international political history. Maha's Story" talks about an Iraqi woman who, as well as many others, found themselves in a situation where their husband is either dead, divorced, detained, or missing, with children to care for, no social safety nets, meager finances, and no working papers. Maha finds herself caught in between an ethnic cleansing which Enloe terms, "the wielding of violence and intimidation for the sake of driving people of one ethnic or sectarian community out of a region...for the sake of securing that space for members of another ethnic or sectarian community." [22]