Militarization

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

Gendered Violence and Neocolonialism: Indigenous Women Confronting Counterinsurgency Violence

Citation:

Castillo, R. Aída Hernández, and Mariana Mora. 2008. “Gendered Violence and Neocolonialism: Indigenous Women Confronting Counterinsurgency Violence.” Latin American Perspectives 35 (1): 151–54.

Authors: R. Castillo, Aída Hernández, Mariana Mora

Annotation:

Summary:
The first months of the Calderón administration in Mexico have been characterized by the militarization of indigenous regions throughout the country and the continued criminalization of social movements?the perpetration of state violence and repression in the name of "social peace." The April 26 reforms of the Federal Penal Code designed to "punish terrorism," which impose severe sentences on those who threaten the peace and tranquility of the population "by any violent method," have been denounced as yet another strategy for criminalizing social movements. The Fox administration's "neoliberal multiculturalism," which appropriated and trivialized indigenous peoples' demands (see Hernández, Paz, and Sierra, 2005), has been replaced by neoconservative policies and actions that treat organized indigenous peoples as delinquents. The rhetoric of cultural recognition has similarly been exchanged for a developmental discourse against poverty. In this new content, indigenous women are suffering the consequences of militarization in a special way. A climate of insecurity and intimidation has emerged in regions known historically for the presence of indigenous and peasant organizations.

Topics: Conflict, Indigenous, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Rights, Indigenous Rights, Sexual Violence, Rape, Terrorism Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2008

The Gender Gap in Voting in Post-Conflict Elections: Evidence from Israel, Mali and Côte D’Ivoire

Citation:

Stockemer, Daniel, and Michael J Wigginton. 2020. “The Gender Gap in Voting in Post-Conflict Elections: Evidence from Israel, Mali and Côte D’Ivoire.” Conflict Management and Peace Science, 1-23. doi: 10.1177/0738894220966577.

Authors: Daniel Stockemer, Michael J. Wigginton

Abstract:

In this article, we first formulate some theoretical expectations about the development of the gender gap in voting in post-conflict situations. Second, we test these expectations on five cases, including two civil wars, the Ivorian Civil War (2011) and the Malian Civil War (2013–2015), and three major international Israeli conflicts, the Yom Kippur War (1973) and the First and Second Lebanon Wars (1982–1985 and 2006). We do so by comparing women’s and men’s turnout before and after a conflict using individual voting data and find that the sum of the nine factors we identify (i.e. duration of war, type of warfare, end of fighting after ceasefire/peace settlement, change in workforce participation, international involvement in the peace process, international development aid, the militarization of politics and female social movement activism) explain changes in the gender gap in voting after the conflict in three of the five cases we study.

Keywords: Gender gap in voting, post-conflict situation

Topics: Gender, Men, Women, Militarization, Political Participation, Post-Conflict Regions: Africa, Asia, Middle East Countries: Côte D'Ivoire, Israel, Mali

Year: 2020

Globalization as Racialized, Sexualized Violence

Citation:

Kuokkanen, Rauna. 2008. “Globalization as Racialized, Sexualized Violence.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 10 (2): 216-233.

Author: Rauna Kuokkanen

Abstract:

In my article, I suggest that indigenous women are among the hardest hit by economic globalization - the expansion of markets, trade liberalization and cheapening of labour - and that globalization represents a multifaceted violence against indigenous women. I consider this with the help of two examples. First, I discuss the largely ignored case of missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada and how the interlocking systems of oppression (colonization, patriarchy and capitalism) are further intensified by globalization. Second, I examine the death of a Hopi woman, Private Piestewa, in the context of militarization, history of colonization and globalization. I analyse these examples in an intersectional framework that reveals the links between colonization, patriarchy and capitalism all of which inform the current processes of globalization.

Keywords: global capitalism, indigenous women, US military, violence against women, war on iraq

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Globalization, Indigenous, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Race, Sexual Violence Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Canada, United States of America

Year: 2008

Power, Borders, Security, Wealth: Lessons of Violence and Desire from September 11

Citation:

Agathangelou, Anna M., and L. H. M. Ling. 2004. “Power, Borders, Security, Wealth: Lessons of Violence and Desire from September 11.” International Studies Quarterly 48 (3): 517–38.

Authors: Anna M. Agathangelou , L. H. M. Ling

Abstract:

America's "war on terror" and Al Qaeda's "jihad" reflect mirror strategies of imperial politics. Each camp transnationalizes violence and insecurity in the name of national or communal security. Neoliberal globalization underpins this militarization of daily life. Its desire industries motivate and legitimate elite arguments (whether from "infidels" or "terrorists") that society must sacrifice for its hypermasculine leaders. Such violence and desire draw on colonial identities of Self vs. Other, patriotism vs. treason, hunter vs. prey, and masculinity vs. femininity that are played out on the bodies of ordinary men and women. We conclude with suggestions of a human security to displace the elite privilege that currently besets world politics.

Topics: Gender, Femininity/ies, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Security, Human Security, Violence Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2004

Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea

Citation:

Moon, Seungsook. 2005. Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Author: Seungsook Moon

Annotation:

This pathbreaking study presents a feminist analysis of the politics of membership in the South Korean nation over the past four decades. Seungsook Moon examines the ambitious effort by which South Korea transformed itself into a modern industrial and militarized nation. She demonstrates that the pursuit of modernity in South Korea involved the construction of the anticommunist national identity and a massive effort to mold the populace into useful, docile members of the state. This process, which she terms “militarized modernity,” treated men and women differently. Men were mobilized for mandatory military service and then, as conscripts, utilized as workers and researchers in the industrializing economy. Women were consigned to lesser factory jobs, and their roles as members of the modern nation were defined largely in terms of biological reproduction and household management.
Moon situates militarized modernity in the historical context of colonialism and nationalism in the twentieth century. She follows the course of militarized modernity in South Korea from its development in the early 1960s through its peak in the 1970s and its decline after rule by military dictatorship ceased in 1987. She highlights the crucial role of the Cold War in South Korea’s militarization and the continuities in the disciplinary tactics used by the Japanese colonial rulers and the postcolonial military regimes. Moon reveals how, in the years since 1987, various social movements—particularly the women’s and labor movements—began the still-ongoing process of revitalizing South Korean civil society and forging citizenship as a new form of membership in the democratizing nation. (Summary from Duke University Press)

Topics: Citizenship, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Femininity/ies, Masculinity/ies, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Nationalism Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: South Korea

Year: 2005

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

Working through Warfare in Ukraine: Rethinking Militarization in a Ukrainian Theme Café

Citation:

Uehling, Greta Lynn. 2020. “Working through Warfare in Ukraine: Rethinking Militarization in a Ukrainian Theme Café.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 22 (3): 335–58.

Author: Greta Lynn Uehling

Abstract:

The conflict between Ukraine and Russia in the Donbas region has led both countries to strengthen their respective militaries. The literature on militarization emphasizes the subtle and largely unconscious ways in which militarization spreads through society. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2017, I argue that attention to the intersubjective aspects of the process exposes the self-conscious working through of military realities. I make this argument using the case study of a restaurant run by demobilized fighters, Café Patriot. Specifically, I show how the café’s proprietors aimed to provide an anti-depressive atmosphere for fighters, and to provoke critical thinking among non-combatant patrons. The café challenged theorizing on militarization by effacing the separation between military and civilian as predicted, but doing so in the interest of reminding people of militarization rather than blinding them to it. These findings highlight veterans’ constructive efforts to re-inhabit a fractured world, and contrast with portrayals in critical studies of militarized masculinity. In sum, the café represented an effort to intervene in the process of militarization using, strangely enough, the trappings of militarization. At stake is the definition of militarization as an insidious process.

Keywords: militarization, masculinity, gender, emotions, veterans, feminism

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization Regions: Europe, Eastern Europe Countries: Ukraine

Year: 2020

Racialized Geographies and the ‘War on Drugs’: Gender Violence, Militarization, and Criminalization of Indigenous Peoples

Citation:

Hernández Castillo, Rosalva Aída. 2019. “Racialized Geographies and the ‘War on Drugs’: Gender Violence, Militarization, and Criminalization of Indigenous Peoples.” The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 24 (3): 635–52.

Author: Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo

Abstract:

SPANISH ABSTRACT:
En este artículo reflexiono sobre el impacto que está teniendo la llamada “guerra contra el narco” en los cuerpos y territorios de los pueblos indígenas de México. Tomando como ventana analítica las historias de vida de mujeres víctimas de violencia sexual en regiones militarizadas y paramilitarizadas, así como las historias de exclusión de mujeres indígenas presas en el marco de la lucha contra el narcotráfico, me interesa establecer un vínculo entre la ocupación mediante la violación de los cuerpos de las mujeres indígenas, su control y encarcelamiento, con la ocupación de sus territorios y el despojo de sus recursos naturales. Se trata de procesos que se dan demanera simultánea y que responden a las lógicas neocoloniales del capitalismo en cuya reproducción han sido fundamentales las desigualdades de género y raza.
 
ENGLISH ABSTRACT:
This article examines the effects of the “war on drugs” on the bodies and territories of indigenous peoples of Mexico. This article uses the life histories of women victims of sexual violence in militarized and paramilitarized regions as the analytical framework to inspect, histories of exclusion of indigenous women incarcerated in the context of the war on drugs. This research argues that there are deeply entangled inter-connections between occupation of indigenous women’s bodies through the violation, control, and incarceration and the occupation of indigenous territories and dispossession of their natural resources. These processes take place simultaneously and respond to the neocolonial logics of capitalism, within which gender and race inequalities are essential for their reproduction. 

Keywords: gender, human rights, law, Indigenous people

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Indigenous, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Paramilitaries, Race, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2019

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