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

Product Information

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. 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.

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

Redrawing the map of international politics has made the investigations into, and the conversations about, those politics a lot more lively. For me, that has been one of the genuine joys of being part of this collaborative, transnational feminist exploratory journey. Many more people, certainly a lot more women, are now in the conversation. They are adding their own stories, experiences, puzzles, and findings to that conversation. The windows and doors have been thrown wide open. For example, a British woman decides to cancel her plans for a winter holiday in Egypt. She thinks Egypt is exotic, the warm weather would be welcome, and cruising down the Nile sounds exciting; but she is nervous about political upheaval in the wake of the overthrow of Egypt’s previous regime. So instead she books her winter vacation in Jamaica. In making her tourism plans, she is playing her part in creating the current international political system. She is further deepening Egypt’s financial debt while helping a Caribbean government earn badly needed foreign currency. And no matter which country she chooses for her personal pleasure, she is transforming chambermaid into a major globalized job category. 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.

About the Author

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 political parochialism. There is no more creative, insightful, engaging feminist guide to international politics. Cynthia Enloe is an international feminist treasure, and Bananas, Beaches, and Bases her signature work."—Judith Stacey, author of Brave New Families Lacey, Anita, and Thomas Gregory. "Twenty-five Years of Bananas, Beaches and Bases: A Conversation with Cynthia Enloe." N.p., August 2016. Web. September 27, 2016. That is, making useful sense—feminist sense—of international politics requires us to follow diverse women to places that are usually dismissed by conventional foreign affairs experts as merely private, domestic, local, or trivial. As we will discover, however, a disco can become an arena for international politics. So can someone else’s kitchen or your own closet. 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." 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.

Cynthia Enloe - Wikipedia Cynthia Enloe - Wikipedia

The first publisher of Bananas was Pandora Press, a small, innovative feminist British publisher. I was, I confess, nervous when I learned that the American publisher most interested in copublishing it would be a major university press. I thought to myself: Oh, but then activist women and profeminist men will never see the book. I was wrong. I was missing a crucial development: feminists were rising into the ranks of influential editors inside many university presses. Naomi Schneider, now executive editor at the University of California Press, has been a believer in Bananas, making sure that it would be available to a wide and diverse range of interested readers. It was Naomi who convinced me to look anew at all the topics and questions here, to undertake this thorough updating and revision. Only Naomi could have persuaded me. Also on the skilled publishing team that has turned this newly updated manuscript into the handsome book you are holding are Kate Warne, Claudia Smelser, Christopher Lura, Elena McAnespie, and Bonita Hurd. I am indebted to each of them.

Chicago

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. Ethnic Conflict and Political Development, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1973 (repr. University Press of America, 1986).

Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of - JSTOR

In Maneuvers; the International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives, Enloe expands on her themes from Does Khaki Become You. She emphasizes the different experiences of women located in varied ethnic, national, class, and occupational contexts and how they are tailored to the needs of militarism, therefore embedding themselves in policy. In The American Political Science Review Mary Fainsod Katzenstein writes, "Those already among Enloe's wide readership will know some of this text's central arguments, but Maneuvers offers a trove of new insights. A thesis even more powerfully developed here than in Enloe's earlier writings is the title of the book—how policymakers maneuver to make strategic choices." Katzenstein later states, " Maneuvers has more than a functionalist lesson; by emphasizing policy choices and variability across time and national context, Enloe shows that militaries are not governed by primeval identities." [29] Honors and recognition [ edit ] It probably feels like a stretch to see yourself working in a disco outside a foreign military base. It is hard to think about how you would try to preserve some modicum of dignity for yourself in the narrow space left between the sexualized expectations of your foreign male soldier-clients and the demands of the local disco owner who takes most of your earnings.

Table of Contents

Full Book Name: Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics [Updated Edition] The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War, Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1993 (published in Japanese, 1999); new ed. Berkeley & London, University of California Press, 2000 (published in Turkish, 2003).