In this brand new radical analysis of globalization, Cynthia Enloe examines recent events—Bangladeshi garment factory deaths, domestic workers in the Persian Gulf, Chinese global tourists, and the UN gender politics of guns—to reveal the crucial role of women in international politics today. It is probably a bit insane to take on the topics covered in this book. It has only been possible to make the attempt because I have had the wise and generous support of insightful friends and colleagues. First and foremost has been Joni Seager, coauthor of the groundbreaking feminist atlas, Women in the World. There was much less chance of my slipping into parochial assumptions with her as a constant sounding board, reading every chapter, passing on gems of information that a mere political scientist would never have seen. Others who have read chapters and given me valuable suggestions—and caveats—include Margaret Bluman, Laura Zimmerman, Serena Hilsinger, Ximena Bunster, and Margaret Lazarus. Superb copyediting has been done by Daphne Tagg. Margaret Bluman, my agent for this book, has also encouraged me to think that the questions posed were important ones for women committed to genuine social change. As hard as this will be, it will take all of this imagining-and more-if you are going to make reliable sense of international politics. Stretching your imagination, though, will not be enough. Making feminist sense of international politics requires that you exercise genuine curiosity about each of these women's lives-and the lives of women you have yet to think about. And that curiosity will have to fuel energetic detective work, careful digging into the complex experiences and ideas of domestic workers, hotel chambermaids, women's rights activists, women diplomats, women married to diplomats, women who are the mistresses of male elites, women sewing-machine operators, women who have become sex workers, women soldiers, women forced to become refugees, and women working on agribusiness plantations. I remember when I first began to hear the French phrase Plus les choses changent, plus elles deviennent les memes—which was usually shortened by the speakers to merely plus ça change . . ., as if the sophisticated listener should be able to fill in the rest. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Usually it was uttered with a sigh and a shrug (a Gallic shrug, even if the speaker wasn’t French). The people who said it seemed to the young, insecure me to be so worldly, so all-knowing. They had been around. They rarely admitted surprise. They seemed so smart. But as I spent more time digging away in feminist archives and taking part in conversations with women activists from Turkey, Iceland, Canada, Korea, Okinawa, Norway, Britain, and the United States, I came to be suspicious when I heard that world-weary phrase. It began to sound lazy rather than smart. It started to sound merely like a reason for not being curious, for not paying close attention. Cohn Carol, Enloe Cynthia (2003). "A Conversation with Cynthia Enloe: Feminists Look at Masculinity and the Men Who Wage War". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 28 (4): 1187–107. doi: 10.1086/368326. S2CID 145710099.

Bananas, Beaches and Bases - Wikipedia

Published by University of California Press 2014 Chapter one. Gender Makes the World Go Round Where Are the Women? From the bookTo do a gender investigation fueled by a feminist curiosity requires asking not only about the meanings of masculinity and femininity but also about how those meanings determine where women are and what they think about being there. Conducting a feminist gender analysis requires investigating power: what forms does power take? Who wields it? How are some gendered wieldings of power camouflaged so they do not even look like power? Figure 1. Egyptian women protesting sexual harassment hold up signs in Arabic and English, Cairo, 2013. Photo: OPantiSH. The 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. PDF / EPUB File Name: Bananas_Beaches_and_Bases_-_Cynthia_Enloe.pdf, Bananas_Beaches_and_Bases_-_Cynthia_Enloe.epub

Bananas, Beaches and Bases - Google Books Bananas, Beaches and Bases - Google Books

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. ³ 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. Kim's Story" reveals how gender and war affect each other on the other side of the world in the United States, whether or not one is actual place of war or away from it. Kim is a young American woman married to a National Guard soldier who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her story shows that their nation's state of war is dependent on wives playing certain roles. In the United States, "women who married active-duty, full-time American soldiers had been socialized to perform the demanding role of 'the military wife' ... each woman needed to be persuaded that she was most helpful and loyal to her own husband if she organized her labor and emotions in a way that enhanced the military as a whole." [22] Yet when the men comes home, there are stories that are untold. The American media are reluctant to pursue stories of domestic violence against women whose husbands are involved with the military largely because it is too great of a business risk during wartime. The blame for this neglect and decision to treat male domestic violence as a nonissue is on the entire military's masculinized culture. Carol Cohn and Cynthia Enloe, "A Conversation with Cynthia Enloe: Feminists Look at Masculinity and the Men Who Wage War," Signs, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Summer 2003): 1187–1107 Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics is a book by Cynthia Enloe. It was first published in 1990, with a revised edition published in 2014. [1] The book focuses on feminist international relations theory, deriving its title from "the gendered history of the banana" as exemplified by promotion of sales through images of Carmen Miranda, as well as gendered issues regarding tourism and military bases. [2] Content [ edit ]To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. None of us research and write books in a vacuum. I’m not a writer who heads for the mythical cabin-in-the-woods. All during this digging and composing, I’ve been seeing friends, sharing my puzzles, absorbing their ideas. You know who you are. You are the best. Thanks. a b c Kathryn, Ward (1993). "Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Book Review)". American Sociological Association. 22 (1): 80–82. Cynthia Enloe writes with passion, conviction, intelligence and verve as she makes such good feminist sense of international politics that the world never looks quite the same again. Innovative and a great read, Bananas, Beaches and Bases continues to be an outstanding example of the difference gender makes in social analysis. This is a book which provokes discussion with students, colleagues, friends and family. It is a book which has set the standard form much that followed. A classic."—Diane Bell, author of Ngarrindjeri Wurrurwarrin: A World That Is, Was, and Will Be