In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Living in a time of war demands that we ask hard questions. Thinking critically, expressing dissent, and holding governments accountable are especially important when their policies lead to the killing of innocent people, massive human suffering, destruction of vital community infrastructure, and the degradation of the natural environment, with grave consequences for present and future generations . Justifications for war and militarization are diverse, but one reason we often hear in today’s United States is the need to attain and maintain security, particularly national security. A yearning for security resonates with many people in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September , . A sense of fear and insecurity enabled the political mobilization needed to support the post-/ U.S.led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet many people in the United States and around the world, particularly peace and social justice activists, have been asking the following questions: Is militarization an effective antidote to fear? What is the meaning of security? Whose security? What are the gaps between dominant conceptions of security and the interests of ordinary citizens, especially those in marginalized positions? What are the costs of embracing war and militarized violence as a solution to conflict? Might increasing militarization result in greater insecurity ? What practical alternatives to militarism can we envision and implement? In the period since / and encompassing the war in Iraq, the concept of homeland security in the United States has increasingly animated policies associating safety with aggressive military actions, growing military spending, patrolled borders, the erosion of civil liberties, and the recycling and creation of new racialized categories of potentially dangerous “suspects.” U.S. foreign policy has long been heavily militarized, but some observers in the United States had hoped to reap a “peace dividend” as the cold war ended in the late s and early s. Instead, the United States has continued its long-standing pattern of military engagement, intervening in countries as diverse as Panama, Sudan, Somalia, 3 1 Rethinking Security, Confronting Inequality An Introduction BARBARA SUTTON AND JULIE NOVKOV ——————————————————————— ——————————————————————— CH001.qxd 5/29/08 10:15 AM Page 3 Colombia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia. U.S. conventional military power, which is now unrivaled by that of any other country, grounds policies that promote empire—the political, cultural, economic, and military hegemony of the United States—on a global scale. In the wake of /, rhetorical devices and doctrines such as “shock and awe,” “preemptive strike,” and the “war on terror” have come to embody this military drive, engaging other countries as allies, targets , or clients of the U.S. military machine. Militarization also undergirds the insidious dilution of the concept of torture, the erosion of international commitments to limit violence and aggression, and the weakening of civic life, politics, and truth as the U.S. president and his administration attempt to justify unrestrained war in the name of security. The term militarization refers to how societies become dependent on and imbued by the logic of military institutions, in ways that permeate language, popular culture, economic priorities, education systems, government policies, and national values and identities (Enloe a). Militarization is most visible in moments of armed violence and war. This book considers the scope and implications of militarization in multiple sites within the United States and in crossnational context in the present moment of global economic and political restructuring. At the same time, this book illuminates the fractures and continuities with past legacies of militarism. Individual chapters highlight political developments in various regions: Africa, Europe, North America, Latin America, the Middle East, and the South Pacific Islands. In exploring militarization and resistance to militarism in different corners of the world, the authors show the powerful influence of transnational social forces, including colonialism and globalization. This project explores how social inequalities relate to war and militarism. As the culmination of a broader academic program on the theme of gender, race, and militarization, this volume emphasizes links among racial and gender relations and ideologies in a critique of various aspects of militarization. Several chapters also investigate interconnections with other significant axes of power and difference: sexuality, ethnicity, nation, class, and global inequalities. We also attend to individual, community, and transnational responses to militarization that strive to reverse these processes. As feminist scholar Cynthia Cockburn suggests , we urgently “need to know more about how peace is done” (, , emphasis in original), how to envision and become proficient at crafting cultures of peace. This volume interrogates the meanings and consequences of...

Share