Militarism

The Dead, the Living, and the Sacred: Patsy Mink, Antimilitarism, and Reimagining the Pacific World

Citation:

Wu, Judy Tzu-Chun. 2019. “The Dead, the Living, and the Sacred: Patsy Mink, Antimilitarism, and Reimagining the Pacific World.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 18 (2): 304–31.

Author: Judy Tzu-Chun Wu

Abstract:

This article focuses on the antinuclear and antimilitarism politics of Patsy Takemoto Mink (1927–2002), the first Japanese American female lawyer in Hawai'i, the first woman of color to become a U.S. congressional representative, and the namesake for Title IX. During the late 1960s and 1970s, Mink challenged the use of the Pacific lands, waters, and peoples as sites of military experimentation, subject to nuclear and chemical testing as well as war games. Mink's political worldview, shaped by her experiences and understanding of the interconnectedness between human and nonhuman life as well as water and land, reflected a Pacific World sensibility. She worked with, but also articulated political priorities that differed from, indigenous peoples of the Pacific. Focusing on these connected yet divergent Pacific imaginaries provides an opportunity to explore the significance of these antimilitarism campaigns for the study of transnational feminisms as well as Asian American and Pacific Islander studies. First, the protests of Mink and Native Hawaiian activists against U.S. militarism in the Pacific represented gendered critiques of U.S. empire, although in different ways. Second, Mink's advocacy via political liberalism provided opportunities for coalition formation yet also constrained the range of her gendered arguments and limited possible solutions beyond the U.S. polity. Third, the coalitional possibilities and incommensurabilities reveal the points of convergence and divergence between Asian American demands for full inclusion and Pacific Islander calls for decolonization and sovereignty. (Abstract from original source)

Keywords: Patsy Takemoto Mink, Cold War militarism, Pacific World, liberalism, settler colonialism

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Environment, Gender, Gender Analysis, Women, Livelihoods, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Political Participation, Rights, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Oceania Countries: United States of America

Year: 2019

Broadening the Security Paradigm: Indian Women, Anti-Nuclear Activism, and Visions of a Sustainable Future

Citation:

Das, Runa. 2007. “Broadening the Security Paradigm: Indian Women, Anti-Nuclear Activism, and Visions of a Sustainable Future.” Women’s Studies International Forum 30 (1): 1–15.

Author: Runa Das

Abstract:

This article uses the anti-nuclear activism of Indian women as a case study to question the relevance of statist discourses of security in Indian politics. By highlighting their activism against the Indian state (under its recent Hindu Right Bharatiya Janata Party government), this article deconstructs how (in)security imaginaries have been utilized by the Indian state to legitimize India's nuclear policies; how the Indian state's perceptions of (in)security has collided with 'people-centric' visions of security; and finally, how activism has enabled these women to de-center a militaristic and communal vision of (in)security that undergirds India's nuclear policy. I also highlight the ways in which women's activism has differed from that of men's including how women activists have used distinctive rationales and strategies to oppose Indian nuclearization. The contribution of this article lies in stitching together the spirit of inclusiveness that brings these women's leadership qualities, capabilities, and preferences to broaden India's security paradigm.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Patriarchy, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Nationalism, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: India

Year: 2007

From Cyborg Feminism to Drone Feminism: Remembering Women’s Anti-Nuclear Activisms

Citation:

Feigenbaum, Anna. 2015. “From Cyborg Feminism to Drone Feminism: Remembering Women’s Anti-Nuclear Activisms.” Feminist Theory 16 (3): 265–88.

Author: Anna Feigenbaum

Abstract:

By the 1990s the dynamic array of creative direct action tactics used against militarised technologies that emerged from women’s anti-nuclear protest camps in the 1980s became largely eclipsed by cyberfeminism’s focus on digital and online technologies. Yet recently, as robots and algorithms are put forward as the vanguards of new drone execution regimes, some are wondering if now is the time for another Greenham Common. In this article I return to cyborg feminism and anti-nuclear activisms of the 1980s to explore what drone feminism might look like today. I examine how antinuclear protesters infused affect and techne´, creating innovative images of, and tactics for, material resistance. I argue that Greenham women’s cyborg feminisms arose from their material entanglements with the military base. In their efforts to reveal and undermine the national and imperial myths upon which warfare is based, protesters re-imagined technological possibilities based upon a global accountability for ‘earthly survival.'
 

Keywords: militarism, cyborg feminism, drones, Donna Haraway, feminist activism

Topics: Feminisms, Infrastructure, Information & Communication Technologies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Militarization, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2015

Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham

Citation:

Roseneil, Sasha. 1995. Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham. London: Open University Press.

Author: Sasha Roseneil

Annotation:

Summary:

This text provides a sociological study of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. Using this as a basis, the author examines the ways in which feminists can resist and transform relations of male domination and female subordination. (Summary from WorldCat)

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Peace and Security, Rights, Women's Rights, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 1995

The Remaking of Social Contracts: Feminists in a Fierce New World

Citation:

Sen, Gita, and Marina Durano, eds. 2014. The Remaking of Social Contracts: Feminists in a Fierce New World. Zed Books. 

Authors: Gita Sen, Marina Durano

Abstract:

Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) argues that social contracts must be recreated if they are to fulfil the promise of human rights. In The Remaking of Social Contracts, leading thinkers and activists address a wide range of concerns - global economic governance, militarism, ecological tipping points, the nation state, movement-building, sexuality and reproduction, and religious fundamentalism. These themes are of wide-ranging importance for the survival and well-being of us all, and reflect the many dimensions and inter-connectedness of our lives. Using feminist lenses, the book puts forward a holistic and radical understanding of the synergies, tensions and contradictions between social movements and global, regional and local power structures and processes, and it points to other alternatives and possibilities for this fierce new world.

Table of Contents

  1. Front Cover
  2. About the Editors
  3. About DAWN
  4. Title
  5. Copyright
  6. Contents
  7. Foreword (Josefa Franscisco)
  8. Part I: Introductory Overview (Gita Sen & Marina Durano)
  9. Part II: Governing Globalization: Critiquing the Reproduction of Inequality
  10. Chapter 1: Financialization, Distribution and Inequality (Stephanie Seguino)
  11. Chapter 2: New Poles of Accumulation and Realignment of Power in the Twenty-first Century (Yao Graham & Hibist Wendemu Kassa)
  12. Chapter 3 The Modern Business of War (Oscar Ugarteche)
  13. Chapter 4: The Convergences and Divergences of Human Rights and Political Economy (Aldo Caliari)
  14. Part III: Political Ecology and Climate Justice: Tackling Sustainability and Climate Change
  15. Chapter 5: Climate Non-negotiables (Anita Nayar)
  16. Chapter 6: Geoengineering: A Gender Issue? (Diana Bronson)
  17. Chapter 7: Land Grabs, Food Security and Climate Justice: A Focus on Sub-Saharan Africa (Zo Randriamaro)
  18. Part IV: Secularism and Biopolitics: Confronting Fundamentalism and Deciphering Biopolitics
  19. Chapter 8: Negotiating Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights at the UN: A Long and Winding Road (Alexandra Garita & Francoise Girad)
  20. Chapter 9: The Making of a Secular Contract (Fatou Sow & Magaly Pazello)
  21. Chapter 10: Sexuality as a Weapon of Biopolitics: Rethinking Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill (Rosalind P. Petchesky)
  22. Part V: Frontier Challenges: Building Nation-States and Social Movements
  23. Chapter 11: The State of States (Claire Slatter)
  24. Chapter 12: Religious Fundamentalism and Secular Governance (Amrita Chhachhi)
  25. Chapter 13: Reframing Peace and Security for Women (Kumudini Samuel)
  26. Chapter 14: Feminist Activisms for New Global Contracts amidst Civil Indignation (Josefa Franscisco & Peggy Antrobus)
  27. Contributors
  28. Index
  29. Back Cover

 

Annotation:

Summary:

In The Remaking of Social Contracts, leading thinkers and activists address a wide range of concerns - global economic governance, militarism, ecological tipping points, the nation state, movement-building, sexuality and reproduction, and religious fundamentalism. These themes are of wide-ranging importance for the survival and well-being of us all, and reflect the many dimensions and inter-connectedness of our lives.

Using feminist lenses, the book puts forward a holistic and radical understanding of the synergies, tensions and contradictions between social movements and global, regional and local power.

Topics: Economies, Gendered Power Relations, Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Religion, Sexuality

Year: 2014

The Politics of Foot Powder: Depoliticizing Motherhood During the US War on Terrorism

Citation:

Christensen, Wendy M. 2018. “The Politics of Foot Powder: Depoliticizing Motherhood during the US War on Terrorism.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 20 (3): 315–30.

Author: Wendy M. Christensen

Abstract:

This article uses the example of mothers of service members during the US War on Terrorism (October 2001 to present) to show how gendered maternal ideology can disempower women to participate in the political process. When their children join the Armed Forces, mothers seek out online support groups where their experiences of war are validated by other mothers. In these groups, they draw on their maternal relationship to war to define what “support” and “politics” mean. Support is defined as unconditional backing of the troops and the war, and political viewpoints are considered unrelated to this maternal support. Adopting militarized motherhood, mothers describe speaking out against the war politically as dangerous to the troops. Doing so hurts their morale, thus jeopardizing their mission and safety. Collectively, mothers police the boundaries of support and politics, and are disempowered to question war, or to engage in the political process during wartime.

Keywords: war and militarism, political participation, motherhood

Topics: Gender, Women, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Political Participation, Terrorism Countries: United States of America

Year: 2018

Interrogating the Constructions of Masculinist Protection and Militarism in the Syrian Constitution of 1973

Citation:

Aldoughli, Rahaf. 2019. "Interrogating the Constructions of Masculinist Protection and Militarism in the Syrian Constitution of 1973." Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 15 (1): 48-74.

Author: Rahaf Aldoughli

Abstract:

This is a revisionist study of Syrian Baʾathism. At its heart is an examination of ingrained masculinist bias. This article argues that there is a reciprocal relationship between militarism and masculinity, achieved through gratifying protection for both the nation and women. While most feminist scholarship dealing with states formation in the Arab context attributes its gendered nature to dictatorship, patriarchy, and religion, there is no debate about the development of states and their relation to militarism and masculinism. This construction of militarized masculinity in Baʾath ideology ensures the preservation of gendered laws that perceive women as less equal. While teasing out this aspect, this study seeks to explore the status of women in the Syrian Constitution (1973) and laws by investigating the role of the state as a male protector in which women’s rights become challenged by the state’s paternalistic perceptions.

Keywords: militarism, masculinist protection, women, Syria, constitutions

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Governance, Constitutions, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Syria

Year: 2019

From Guerrilla Girls to Zainabs: Reassessing the Figure of the “Militant Woman” in the Iranian Revolution

Citation:

Gordan, Arielle. 2021. "From Guerilla Girls to Zainabs: Reassessing the Figure of the "Militant Woman" in the Iranian Revolution." Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 17 (1): 64-95.

Author: Arielle Gordon

Abstract:

Scholars have long accounted for representations of women in the Iranian Revolution by categorically classifying them as “devout mothers” or “heroic sisters,” embodied respectively in the Shiʾi archetypes of Fatima and Zainab. However, a closer look at images of militant women finds them residing within the traditions of their time, as part and parcel of an era of liberation movements in which the idiom of the female fighter featured prominently. This article takes a transnational look at tropes of women’s militancy and traces how they filtered into Iranian revolutionary culture. Finally, it contends that only with the consolidation of Khomeini’s power and the start of the Iran-Iraq War is this figure renamed Zainab and sustained as a central icon of the Islamic Republic.

Keywords: visual culture, revolution, transnationalism, representation, 'gender'

Topics: Armed Conflict, National Liberation Wars, Combatants, Female Combatants, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Religion Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iran, Iraq

Year: 2021

The Crucible of Sexual Violence: Militarized Masculinities and the Abjection of Life in Post-Crisis, Neoliberal South Korea

Citation:

Park, Youme. 2016. “The Crucible of Sexual Violence: Militarized Masculinities and the Abjection of Life in Post-Crisis, Neoliberal South Korea.” Feminist Studies 42 (1): 17-40.

Author: Youme Park

Abstract:

This paper explores the ways the “civil” society of Post-Crisis, neoliberal South Korea is constituted by a type of militarized masculinity that normalizes and even legitimates sexual violence. When the movie version of the best selling novel, The Crucible, written by Gong, Ji-Young, was released in the fall of 2011, it created a public outcry against the case of sexual molestation of handicapped children by their teachers and school administrators. On September 24 of the same year, a sexual assault inflicted upon a female high school student by a US soldier ignited a mass protest against what many perceive to be an insult against Korea’s national sovereignty. By exploring these two moments of cultural crises, I argue that in a militarized society like South Korea, 1) violence is routinized and normalized (while exoticized and sensationalized at the same time) when it is imagined in sexual terms, 2) sexual violence is naturalized when it is folded into masculine and militarized power, 3) militarism justifies its absolute power to adjudicate who to kill and to let live by resorting to the idealized form of masculinity that is based on the conflation of brutality with immortality, and finally, 4) a public outrage against sexual brutality can be easily co-opted into the reformist rhetoric that argues for a more benevolent form of patriarchy or neocolonial domination unless such outrage is accompanied by a thorough rejection of domination (and brutality) as an idealized form of political power and life itself.

Topics: Civil Society, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Masculinism, Patriarchy, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Militarization, Sexual Violence, Violence Countries: South Korea

Year: 2016

Reclaim the Earth: Women Speak Out for Life on Earth

Citation:

Caldecott, Léonie, and Stephanie Leland, eds. 1983. Reclaim the Earth: Women Speak Out for Life on Earth. London: Women’s Press.

Authors: Léonie Caldecott, Stephanie Leland

Annotation:

Summary:

Essays discuss nuclear proliferation, chemical pollution, land rights, childbirth, infanticide, ecology, and feminist activities around the world (Summary from Google Books).

Table of Contents:

1. The Eco-Feminist Imperative
Ynestra King

2. Unity Statement
Women’s​ Pentagon Action

3. Unholy Secrets: The Impact of the Nuclear Age on Public Health
Rosalie Bertell

4. The Long Death (poem)
Marge Piercy

5. Sveso Is Everywhere
Women’s Working Group, Geneva; translated and extracted from the French by Frances Howard-Gordon

6. The Politics of Women’s Health
Nancy Worcester

7. Feminism: Healing the Patriarchal Dis-Ease
Jill Raymond and Janice Wilson

8. Ask A Stupid Question (poem)
Susan Saxe

9. Feminism and Ecology: Theoretical Connections
Stephanie Leland

10. Roots: Black Ghetto Ecology
Wilmette Brown

11. Seeds That Bear Fruit: A Japanese Woman Speaks
Manami Suzuki

12. Another Country (poem)
Marge Piercy

13. Thought for Food
Liz Butterworth

14. The Power to Feed Ourselves : Women and Land Rights
Barbara Rogers

15.  The Land Is Our Life: A Pacific Experience
Léonie Caldecott

16. A Micronesian Woman (poem)
Rosalie Bertell

17.  Greening the Desert: Women of Kenya Reclaim Land
Maggie Jones and Wanagari Maathai

18.  Greening the Cities: Creating a Hospitable Environment for Women and Children
Penelope Leach

19.  Against Nuclearisation and Beyond
Statement of Sicilian women

20. For the Hiroshima Maidens (poem)
Léonie Caldecott

21. Gaea: The Earth as Our Spiritual Heritage
Jean Freer

22. He Wanine, He Whenau: Maori Women and the Environment
Ngahuia Te Awekotuku

23. All of One Flesh: The Rights of Animals
Norma Benney

24. The Mothers Do Not Disappear
Marta Zabaleta; translated by Jackie Rodick

25. Invisible Casualities: Women Servicing Militarism
Lesley Merryfinch

26. Alternative Technology: A Feminist Technology?
Chris Thomas

27. Safety and Survival
Margaret Wright

28. Birth: The Agony or the Ecstasy?
Caroline Wyndham

29. A New Form of Female Infanticide
Manushi Collective

30. Saving Trees, Saving Lives: Third World Women and the Issue of Survival
Anita Anand

31. Time for Women: New Patterns of Work
Sheila Rothwell

32. Personal, Political and Planetary Play

33. The Warp and the Weft: The Coming Synthesis of Eco-Philosophy and Eco-Feminism
Hazel Henderson

34. Prayer for Continuation (poem)
Susan Griffin

Topics: Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Health, Infrastructure, Urban Planning, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Political Participation, Race, Rights, Land Rights, Security, Food Security, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Africa, East Africa, Asia, East Asia, Oceania Countries: Japan, Kenya, Micronesia, New Zealand

Year: 1983

Pages

© 2024 CONSORTIUM ON GENDER, SECURITY & HUMAN RIGHTSLEGAL STATEMENT All photographs used on this site, and any materials posted on it, are the property of their respective owners, and are used by permission. Photographs: The images used on the site may not be downloaded, used, or reproduced in any way without the permission of the owner of the image. Materials: Visitors to the site are welcome to peruse the materials posted for their own research or for educational purposes. These materials, whether the property of the Consortium or of another, may only be reproduced with the permission of the owner of the material. This website contains copyrighted materials. The Consortium believes that any use of copyrighted material on this site is both permissive and in accordance with the Fair Use doctrine of 17 U.S.C. § 107. If, however, you believe that your intellectual property rights have been violated, please contact the Consortium at info@genderandsecurity.org.

Subscribe to RSS - Militarism