Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics Updated Edition with a New Preface

Rating:
Summary: Sexploitation vs. just plain old exploitation
Review: I can't call myself a feminist. That would be quite ridiculous. But I have never been one to disparage the motivations of the movement in general. Women have been suppressed and oppressed and still are, for the most part. Their male oppressors still want to tell them what they can or cannot do with their bodies, hence with their very lives. That's the bottom line. I didn't really ever do any deep reading in the voluminous literature on feminism, women's rights, etc. I didn't think that I was clever for having avoided it, I just didn't have time or (I admit) burning curiosity. So, when I saw BANANAS, BEACHES and BASES on a bookstore shelf some years ago, I bought it, thinking that the subtitle, "Making Feminist Sense of International Politics" brought together two topics about which I could learn more. I finally read it recently, but must give it a very mixed review.

The author picks some very interesting issues. Tourism for one---a global business that touches nearly every corner of the earth and has created as many problems as it has solved. Mass, commercial tourism can be compared with plantation agriculture or clear-cut logging in terms of the amount of damage it does to human lives and the environment. Enloe brings this out very aptly. Military bases, plantation agriculture (for instance, of bananas), the need for cheap but fashionable, ready-to-wear clothes, and the high demand for domestic servants all fall under her discerning eye. Nobody can argue with her general positions on these subjects or on lesser topics such as `diplomatic wives' and their ambiguous position in the foreign services of the world. However---and this is a big however---I do disagree with her overall presentation. Sentences like "Yet nationalist movements have rarely taken women's experiences as the starting point for an understanding of how a people becomes colonized or how it throws off the shackles...." appalled me. Why just women ? Haven't the men been exploited, albeit in different ways ? Is not the entire country affected ? Prostitution exploits women, we are reminded. There is a vast number of male and child prostitutes too, just as exploited. Domestic violence may assist base commanders, but this is very far from being what is centrally dangerous and exploitative about bases. Such simplistic examples are legion in this book.

I think the basic fault of BB & B is to separate the fate of women from that of men or rather, from the fate of all victims of imperialism, oppression, and exploitation. If Enloe's aim was merely to show how women have been severely oppressed in X numbers of ways, that would be fine. But it is a reductionist argument to claim that women should be the focus for anti-exploitative actions, that women are central to the solutions. As women are half the human race, it is OBVIOUS that they cannot be excluded. Men have controlled and do control women, but international politics cannot be interpreted as a system for controlling women ! It is a system of power and anything and everything will be controlled if it can be. Feminism, as an attack on the way the world is presently constructed, is strong. Gender, as an ideological mode or framework, is weak, just as race, class, religion or language would be. Male/female, light/dark, yin/yang---these are eternal principles that cannot be ignored. ANY solution which leaves out a part, is no solution. If that were the only message Enloe put out, I would have no quarrel with her. As it is, I do.

Rating:
Summary: Sexploitation vs. just plain old exploitation
Review: I can't call myself a feminist. That would be quite ridiculous. But I have never been one to disparage the motivations of the movement in general. Women have been suppressed and oppressed and still are, for the most part. Their male oppressors still want to tell them what they can or cannot do with their bodies, hence with their very lives. That's the bottom line. I didn't really ever do any deep reading in the voluminous literature on feminism, women's rights, etc. I didn't think that I was clever for having avoided it, I just didn't have time or (I admit) burning curiosity. So, when I saw BANANAS, BEACHES and BASES on a bookstore shelf some years ago, I bought it, thinking that the subtitle, "Making Feminist Sense of International Politics" brought together two topics about which I could learn more. I finally read it recently, but must give it a very mixed review.

The author picks some very interesting issues. Tourism for one---a global business that touches nearly every corner of the earth and has created as many problems as it has solved. Mass, commercial tourism can be compared with plantation agriculture or clear-cut logging in terms of the amount of damage it does to human lives and the environment. Enloe brings this out very aptly. Military bases, plantation agriculture (for instance, of bananas), the need for cheap but fashionable, ready-to-wear clothes, and the high demand for domestic servants all fall under her discerning eye. Nobody can argue with her general positions on these subjects or on lesser topics such as 'diplomatic wives' and their ambiguous position in the foreign services of the world. However---and this is a big however---I do disagree with her overall presentation. Sentences like "Yet nationalist movements have rarely taken women's experiences as the starting point for an understanding of how a people becomes colonized or how it throws off the shackles...." appalled me. Why just women ? Haven't the men been exploited, albeit in different ways ? Is not the entire country affected ? Prostitution exploits women, we are reminded. There is a vast number of male and child prostitutes too, just as exploited. Domestic violence may assist base commanders, but this is very far from being what is centrally dangerous and exploitative about bases. Such simplistic examples are legion in this book.

I think the basic fault of BB & B is to separate the fate of women from that of men or rather, from the fate of all victims of imperialism, oppression, and exploitation. If Enloe's aim was merely to show how women have been severely oppressed in X numbers of ways, that would be fine. But it is a reductionist argument to claim that women should be the focus for anti-exploitative actions, that women are central to the solutions. As women are half the human race, it is OBVIOUS that they cannot be excluded. Men have controlled and do control women, but international politics cannot be interpreted as a system for controlling women ! It is a system of power and anything and everything will be controlled if it can be. Feminism, as an attack on the way the world is presently constructed, is strong. Gender, as an ideological mode or framework, is weak, just as race, class, religion or language would be. Male/female, light/dark, yin/yang---these are eternal principles that cannot be ignored. ANY solution which leaves out a part, is no solution. If that were the only message Enloe put out, I would have no quarrel with her. As it is, I do.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: I've been studying international politics and gender issues for some time but they've always been presented as separate subjects. To find a cohesive, academic work integrating the two was fabulous. Her work is jointly informative and interesting providing enough theory to be of academic interest and enough examples to exceed the category of a mere textbook. Highly recommend this!

Rating:
Summary: An Entertaining Read
Review: My brother brought this home from school. He said he hated it. I read it and loved it. Some of her theories are a little far-out, but most of what she says makes sense. Her major point is "The personal is political, the personal is international." Enloe makes some amazing and original connections between institutions and policies that are considered inherent and gender roles. Don't limit this to the text book category.

Rating:
Summary: Women and Global Politics
Review: What do nationalism, Chiquita bananas and Mexican garment factories have in common? In Cynthia Enloe's trailblazing book, they illuminate the interplay between global politics and women. Few scholars have investigated why and how international politics and global trade shape definitions of masculinity and femininity; this book does that and more, providing new perspectives on the gendering of power. For Enloe, power imbues the cultural, social and economic interactions that gird global politics; "relationships we once imagined were private or merely social are in fact infused with power, usually unequal power backed up by public authority (p.195)." Here, Enloe extends the analytical approach Friedan used in The Feminine Mystique (1963), which considered the connection between feminine stereotypes and evolving US global power and security interests. Enloe pushes Friedan's analysis into a global context and brings into sharper focus the way public politics are masculinized via the control of women's activities.

Each of the chapters in Enloe's book explores a different theme -- from tourism to US military bases -- in order to demonstrate how the personal is political and the political is personal. Enloe most successfully draws out the linkages between domestic life and public authority in her chapters on nationalism, banana republics and garment factories. Looking at the experiences of women in places as diverse as Sri Lanka and Palestine, Enloe finds women asserting a sense of national identity that conflicts with their feminine roles of tending home and children. Even more problematic, if increased militarization creates an emphasis on communal unity, issues of sexual inequality are often discounted; thus, the nation is redefined, but in a masculinized form. Enloe's most global chapter nicely couples women in the United States with women in Honduras, both of whom the United Fruit Company controls to a certain degree by promoting and relying on women's feminized roles. In the United States, housewives respond to advertising and turn bananas into a booming business, while in Honduras, mothers and daughters accept low paid work on banana plantations or in nearby brothels. In a later chapter, Enloe turns to the international garment industry, noting again how industry keeps women's work cheap by drawing on patriarchal ideas about labor. At the same time, concepts like risk and adventure underlie international financial decisions and masculinize global banking, the money driving the garment industry.

In arguing that international processes depend on particular configurations of masculinity and femininity, Enloe has produced an important work. However, this book is so wide ranging that it often forgoes providing a complex analysis of its topics; Enloe makes sweeping and often simplistic generalizations, such as "international tourism needs patriarchy to survive (p.41)." Yet Enloe depicts a tourism industry that responds to changing cultural and social norms; for example, the tourist industry incorporates the idea, launched by women, of the white female adventurer. Enloe wants to demonstrate the importance of gender in tourism; however, this reader was more struck by the way her book illustrates tourism's dependency on racism for its survival. In addition, many of Enloe's linkages, especially between female sexuality and the control of predominantly male populations, while intuitively comprehensible, are poorly supported by evidence. The presence of high levels of prostitution around US military bases, for example in the Philippines, seems at least equally tied to issues of international economics as it is to providing security for military bases. Why, I wonder, is there a collapse (in the host country) of previously defining notions about male / female domestic and sexual relations? Why are the patriarchal values that keep women at home or considering the needs of their compañeros in Afghanistan and Mexico suddenly demolished in the Philippines? Attention to the pressure that international economics places on the gendering of domestic relations in countries that maintain US military bases would have nuanced Enloe's argument.

Despite these flaws, Enloe should be commended for broadening our understanding of global politics. Indeed, Enloe challenges our conceptions of international politics while empowering female readers to think about how global issues might relate to their own experiences. The author's portrayal of the September 19th Garment Workers Union in Mexico highlights how women can recognize their dehumanized role in the global economic system; moreover, in examining the lives of working women across the globe, she calls on middle class feminists to hear and support a diversity of female needs. This book provides a welcome addition to current scholarship on the global market and will benefit anyone interested in considering the complex forms that power can take in international politics.

Rating:
Summary: Women and Global Politics
Review: What do nationalism, Chiquita bananas and Mexican garment factories have in common? In Cynthia Enloe's trailblazing book, they illuminate the interplay between global politics and women. Few scholars have investigated why and how international politics and global trade shape definitions of masculinity and femininity; this book does that and more, providing new perspectives on the gendering of power. For Enloe, power imbues the cultural, social and economic interactions that gird global politics; "relationships we once imagined were private or merely social are in fact infused with power, usually unequal power backed up by public authority (p.195)." Here, Enloe extends the analytical approach Friedan used in The Feminine Mystique (1963), which considered the connection between feminine stereotypes and evolving US global power and security interests. Enloe pushes Friedan's analysis into a global context and brings into sharper focus the way public politics are masculinized via the control of women's activities.

Each of the chapters in Enloe's book explores a different theme -- from tourism to US military bases -- in order to demonstrate how the personal is political and the political is personal. Enloe most successfully draws out the linkages between domestic life and public authority in her chapters on nationalism, banana republics and garment factories. Looking at the experiences of women in places as diverse as Sri Lanka and Palestine, Enloe finds women asserting a sense of national identity that conflicts with their feminine roles of tending home and children. Even more problematic, if increased militarization creates an emphasis on communal unity, issues of sexual inequality are often discounted; thus, the nation is redefined, but in a masculinized form. Enloe's most global chapter nicely couples women in the United States with women in Honduras, both of whom the United Fruit Company controls to a certain degree by promoting and relying on women's feminized roles. In the United States, housewives respond to advertising and turn bananas into a booming business, while in Honduras, mothers and daughters accept low paid work on banana plantations or in nearby brothels. In a later chapter, Enloe turns to the international garment industry, noting again how industry keeps women's work cheap by drawing on patriarchal ideas about labor. At the same time, concepts like risk and adventure underlie international financial decisions and masculinize global banking, the money driving the garment industry.

In arguing that international processes depend on particular configurations of masculinity and femininity, Enloe has produced an important work. However, this book is so wide ranging that it often forgoes providing a complex analysis of its topics; Enloe makes sweeping and often simplistic generalizations, such as "international tourism needs patriarchy to survive (p.41)." Yet Enloe depicts a tourism industry that responds to changing cultural and social norms; for example, the tourist industry incorporates the idea, launched by women, of the white female adventurer. Enloe wants to demonstrate the importance of gender in tourism; however, this reader was more struck by the way her book illustrates tourism's dependency on racism for its survival. In addition, many of Enloe's linkages, especially between female sexuality and the control of predominantly male populations, while intuitively comprehensible, are poorly supported by evidence. The presence of high levels of prostitution around US military bases, for example in the Philippines, seems at least equally tied to issues of international economics as it is to providing security for military bases. Why, I wonder, is there a collapse (in the host country) of previously defining notions about male / female domestic and sexual relations? Why are the patriarchal values that keep women at home or considering the needs of their compañeros in Afghanistan and Mexico suddenly demolished in the Philippines? Attention to the pressure that international economics places on the gendering of domestic relations in countries that maintain US military bases would have nuanced Enloe's argument.

Despite these flaws, Enloe should be commended for broadening our understanding of global politics. Indeed, Enloe challenges our conceptions of international politics while empowering female readers to think about how global issues might relate to their own experiences. The author's portrayal of the September 19th Garment Workers Union in Mexico highlights how women can recognize their dehumanized role in the global economic system; moreover, in examining the lives of working women across the globe, she calls on middle class feminists to hear and support a diversity of female needs. This book provides a welcome addition to current scholarship on the global market and will benefit anyone interested in considering the complex forms that power can take in international politics.