Cynthia H. Enloe

Ethnic conflict and political development

Provides a fresh look at the handling of tensions between people with different ethnic identities from many countries, and seeks out those methods which genuinely reduce conflict. Originally published in 1973 by Little, Brown and Company.

Women in NATO militaries—A conference report

Abstract From April 9–12, 1981 seventeen women convened in Amsterdam to describe and analyze women in militaries, with our special focus on women being recruited into the militaries allied in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The workshop, ‘Women in NATO Militaries’, was sponsored by the Feminism and Socialism Project of the Transnational Institute (TNI). Women activists and researchers came from Norway, Canada, Britain, West Germany, Holland and the United States. In addition, though Israel is not a member of NATO, an Israeli participant was invited because so many of the presumptions about how and when women are included within a governments regular armed forces derive from the perceived experience of the Israeli military.

The recruiter and the sceptic: a critical feminist approach to military studies

To be a critical military analyst is to be a sceptically curious military analyst. Using a critical feminist approach to studying the military can help to generate more reliable explanations and more realistic accountings of the creation and role of any given military and of broader processes of militarization. This article moves from a memorial of an army recruitment stand in Somerville, Massachusetts, to broad questions on the strategies of military recruitment and the ways in which masculinities and femininities are used by recruiters. These questions are central for recruiters in meeting their quotas, yet are regularly ignored by military analysts. These questions include: which genders, ethnicities, sexualities and classes are targeted and excluded for recruitment and reenlistment? How are narrow perceptions of manliness used to encourage enlistments? How are the mothers, girlfriends and wives of potential enlistees engaged with by recruiters? These speak to broader questions on how militaries are created, sustained and deployed. The calculations made by recruiters are usually shielded from view to maintain perceptions of legitimacy within the eyes of citizens. A critical approach to military studies brings these calculations into view and calls for scepticism, a deepening curiosity and a serious engagement with feminist questions.

Militarism, Patriarchy and Peace Movements

Cynthia Cockburn’s contributions to feminist anti-war and anti-militarism activism include The Space between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict (1998), The Line: Women, Partition and the Gender Order in Cyprus (2004), From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis (2007) and most recently Antimilitarism: Political and Gender Dynamics of Peace Movements (2012). We invited Cockburn to speak at the Symposium on ‘Rethinking Masculinity and Practices of Violence’ held at the London School of Economics and Political Science in May 2011. In her keynote address, she shared her concerns about developments in feminist writing on gender, violence, militarization and anti-war activism. We later invited her to have a conversation about her concerns with longtime friend and peer Cynthia Enloe. Enloe has published Does Khaki Become You? The Militarisation of Women’s Lives (1983), Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (1989), The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (1993), Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (2000) and Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link (2007). Her newest book on militarization is Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War (2010). Here the two Cynthias continue their more than twenty-year-long conversation on the politics of gender, militarism and peace movements. The following conversation took place over email during the autumn of 2011.

The Risks of Scholarly Militarization: A Feminist Analysis

Michael Mossers thoughtful essay calls on us as political scientists to engage more closely with the contemporary US military. To weigh the implications of such a proposal, we need to consider, I think, not just the military but the wider, deeper processes of militarization. As a multi-layered economic, political, and cultural process, militarization can be blatant and off-putting; but just as often it can be subtle and seductive. All of us trying to craft the best practices of political science here in the United States in the early decades of the twenty-first century are making those scholarly efforts at a time when militarization is a potent process in American public life. Awareness of its potency breeds scholarly caution.

Closing Reflection: Militiamen Get Paid; Women Borrowers Get Beaten

A rural poor woman wants to withdraw from the microcredit scheme, but her husband slaps her when she even suggests not renewing her loan.

Women After Wars: Puzzles and Warnings

Most of us who have observed wars or experienced them first hand know both of these things. Still, there is the temptation to give any process a too neat starting date and too neat ending date. To do so makes the world seem more manageable, more susceptible to human understanding. At no time is this temptation more potent than when we are analyzing a war. Then we are subject not only to our historian’s urge to assign definitive dates; we are, in addition, inclined to put the hurtful past behind us, to look forward, to get on with our lives. But to give in to this combination of emotional and intellectual urges not only, I think, risks general analytical naivety; it risks seriously underestimating the differences between women’s and men’s experiences of post-war social change.

Combat and ‘combat’: a feminist reflection

● Awoman who has been attacked by a male domestic partner wielding a machete or a pistol is not officially recognized as having been ‘in combat.’ ● Awoman who has been severely wounded by aircraft-dropped cluster bombs or by a drone attack is not recognized as having been ‘in combat.’ ● A civilian woman who survives sexual assault by a male soldier of the state or of an armed militia is not recorded as having been ‘in combat.’ ● A military woman who has been raped by a male military comrade or superior is not awarded a ‘combat’ ribbon.

Post Gulf War Forum Creeping Militarization

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Twenty-five years of Bananas, Beaches and Bases: A conversation with Cynthia Enloe

Cynthia Enloe’s book Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics brought a new approach to the study of war, conflict and political economy, an approach informed by and starting from a feminist curiosity. Such a starting point allows for recognition of the diverse, often disregarded gendered dynamics of militarization. A feminist curiosity facilitates making visible the politicization of everyday life via what Enloe calls a bottom-up approach to research and investigation. This account of a conversation between feminist scholars draws attention to the means by which researchers exercise the sociological imagination in their work on labour, militarism and war; the theorizing of gendered militarization; the role for feminist activism around conflict and sexual violence as well as solidarity politics; and the life cycle of Bananas, Beaches and Bases.