Militarization: A Reader ed. by Roberto J. Gonzalez et al., and: Militarized Global Apartheid by Catherine Besteman (review)

I open Militarization: A Reader and find a brief editor's note explaining that the volume is the result of an initiative by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists (NCA) to oppose the militarization of anthropology.¹ The editors—Roberto Gonzalez, Hugh Gusterson, and Gustaaf Houtman—are all founding members of the NCA. The table of contents includes many other NCA members, including Catherine Besteman (author of Militarized Global Apartheid), Andrew Bickford, David Price, David Vine, and Catherine Lutz. The NCA formed as an independent network of US-based anthropologists promoting an ethical, demilitarized anthropology that refuses to participate in the US Army's Human Terrain System and related projects of the war on terror.² These scholars are building on a century-old tradition of critical anthropological engagement with the American war machine, going back to Franz Boas's (1919) indictment of American anthropologists who worked as spies during World War I. The NCA previously published The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual (2009) (a teardown of the US Army-Marine Corps's Counterinsurgency Field Manual), with an excerpt from the text appearing in the final section of the Reader. Thus, I initially thought of Militarization: A Reader as the group's unofficial next book.

To my surprise, the edited collection is a very different kind of book, softer and more invitational. The introduction begins with an account of toy soldiers: a son's love of toy soldiers, his father's grief after the death of his son in war, the father who then modifies toy soldiers as a memorial to his son. The volume's cover image—a GI Joe army man—can, at first, be easily mistaken for a real soldier. It's a heartrending ethnographic account of father-son relations in a militarized American society that sells war to children. The editors go on to discuss the military-industrial complex, the invention of action figures in the 1950s, as well as ongoing collaborations between the Pentagon, Paramount Pictures, and Hasbro to design new weapons systems alongside the films and toys that feature them. The gentle, empathetic introduction shies just short of an overt critique of American militarism. There is no mention of the editors' founding membership in the NCA or the organization's mandate. The editors go right up to that line and then stop. I put the book down, confused. Where are the Concerned Anthropologists?

The editors bring a compelling and timely ethic of demilitarization to our discipline—one that I share. However, I would have liked the editors to explicitly disclose that ethic in the body of the work. Back in 2019, when the collection went to press, I would likely have agreed with this gentler approach. But 2020 was a crucible of a year that has made the concerns of this volume feel more urgent. Published in 2020, by comparison, Besteman's Militarized Global Apartheid is outraged and uncompromising. Amid a global pandemic, the Reader's softness now feels a bit too parental. We've grown up. The study of militarism has become more necessary and our responsibility more pressing to model ethical anthropology.

We live in a world radically transformed by pervasive militarization, especially American militarization. The Reader is a much-needed cross-cultural reference for militarization in different contexts with a focus on the United States and its outsized impact on global conflict. The volume's strength is its comprehensive coverage and intersectional, multidisciplinary approach to militarization and its impacts. The edited collection is divided into 12 sections organized by theme, each section heralded by an introductory essay: Militarization and Political Economy; Military Labor; Gender and Militarism; The Emotional Life of Militarism; Rhetorics of Militarism; Militarization, Place, and Territory; Militarized Humanitarianism; Militarism and the Media; Militarizing Knowledge; Militarization and the Body; Militarism and Technology; and, lastly, Alternatives to Militarization. There are many entrances into the study of militarization, and this...