Cynthia Enloe

1
Cynthia Enloe

• Power infuses all international relationships.
  Paying serious attention to gender politics and
  women changes in a fundamental way how the
  international political system works and how much
  power it takes to maintain.

2
Bananas, Beaches, and Bases

• Enloe asks How do powerful political actors use
  women and ideas about femininity and masculinity
  to pursue their goals?
• Where are women in the picture?
• She addresses this question in her book by
  focusing on topics often thought of as
  apolitical tourism, postcards, Carmen Miranda,
  blue jeans, domestic labor.

3
Where are women in this picture?

• President Bushs address to the nation on
  January 10th about his new military strategy in
  Iraq.

4
Masculinity

• Mens presumptions about how to be masculine in
  doing their jobs, exercising influence, or
  seeking relief from stress are often made
  invisible.
• Enloes examples.
• Can you think of others?

5
Beyond the Global Victim

• Deconstructing the myth that women are essential,
  universal victims by
• Analyzing the complicity of women within systems
  of power.
• Recognizing that women in diverse situations have
  equally diverse and creative forms of survival
  and resistance.

6
Beyond the Third World Victim

• Deconstructing the myth that Third World women
  are victims of culture by
• Analyzing persistent First World stereotypes
  (categories of knowledge) that freeze other
  women in time, space, and history.
• Analyzing how inequality is created and
  maintained by international relations of power,
  including colonialism and transnational
  political-economic systems.

7
Chandra Mohanty

• Feminists relations to and centrality in
  particular struggles depend on our different,
  often conflictual, locations and histories.
• Feminist cartographies of struggle relate to
  forceful ways in which the world has been
  symbolically and materially divided.

8
Colonialism

• International division of economic production
  simultaneous with the rise of industrialization.

Colonial Capitals
Colonies
9
Nested Hierarchies

• Competition between European powers for control
  over colonies gave rise to the modern system of
  nation states.
• Colonized struggled for independence through this
  language of national sovereignty.
• Women struggled within these anti-colonial
  nationalist movements to turn them into something
  positive for women.

10
International vs. Transnational

• How womens struggles within nation-states have
  unfolded defines particular national feminisms.
• International womens aid. Who sets the agenda
  for NGO feminist activism? Based on whose history
  and needs?
• Transnational womens organizing as a response to
  transnational economic restructuring.

11
Mohanty Colonialism, Class, Gender

• White masculinity as norm racialization and
  sexualization of colonized peoples
• Colonialism often built upon and reinforced
  indigenous patriarchies
• Rise of feminist politics within national
  liberation movements
• How can we see these forces at play in Enloes
  discussion of tourism?

12
Mohanty The State, Citizenship, Racial
Formation

• Gender regime whereby the state is the primary
  organizer of the power relations of gender.
• But who counts as legitimate citizens within
  this regime?
• How can we see these forces at play in Enloes
  discussion of tourism?

13
Mohanty Multinational Production Social Agency

• The consolidation of a multinational economy as
  continuous and discontinuous with territorial
  colonialism.
• Corporate race to cheapest labor market (where
  women fit into the picture) in gaps between
  national rules and regulations.
• How can we see these forces at play in Enloes
  discussion of tourism?