Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics [Updated Edition]

by Cynthia Enloe

This radical analysis of globalization reveals the crucial role of women in international politics today. Cynthia Enloe pulls back the curtain on the familiar scenes—governments promoting tourism, companies moving their factories overseas, soldiers serving on foreign soil—and shows that the real landscape is not exclusively male. She describes how many women's seemingly personal strategies—in their marriages, in their housework, in their coping with ideals of beauty—are, in reality, the stuff of global politics. In exposing policymakers' reliance on false notions of "femininity" and "masculinity," Enloe dismantles an apparently overwhelming world system, revealing it to be much more fragile and open to change than we think.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Politics, Gender, International Relations, History, Social Justice

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 11, 1990

About the author

Cynthia Holden Enloe is a feminist writer, theorist, and professor.

She is best known for her work on gender and militarism and for her contributions to the field of feminist international relations. She has done pioneering feminist research into international politics and political economy, and has considerable contribution to building a more inclusive feminist scholarly community.

Cynthia Enloe was born in New York, New York and grew up in Manhasset, Long Island, a New York suburb. Her father was from Missouri and went to medical school in Germany from 1933 to 1936. Her mother went to Mills College and married Cynthia's father upon graduation.

After completing her undergraduate education at Connecticut College in 1960, she went on to earn an M.A. in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1967 in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkely, Enloe was the first woman ever to be a Head TA for Aaron Wildavsky, then an up-and-coming star in the field of American Politics.

Enloe states that she has been influenced by many other feminists who use an ethnographic approach, specifically, Seung-Kyung Kim’s (1997) work on South Korean women factory workers during the pro-democracy campaign and Anne Allison’s (1994) work on observing corporate businessmen’s interactions with hostesses in a Tokyo drinking club. Enloe has also listed Diane Singerman, Purnima Mankekar, and Cathy Lutz as people who have inspired and influenced her work.

Reviews

[XJ Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book brought attention to feminist international politics and has become a must-read for students and others who are interested in feminism and international politics. Unlike other books on these two topics, it is easy to read and suitable for introduction to feminist international politics.
This book shows how feminism can expand and deepen our understanding of international politics by making this subject more accessible, relevant and inclusive. Indeed, one of the most important values of feminism is to humanise the so-called ‘high politics’ so as to reveal how the seemingly far-away politics and political decisions have serious consequences on human lives.
Feminism has always been a marginalised idea within the field of international politics and this marginalisation is produced and sustained by power relations that can be revealed exactly by feminist studies. In order to have a more thorough understanding of international politics, one must not ignore feminist analysis.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dare say this is a feminist classic both for its content and theoretical contributions. The gist of the book is that we can't understand international politics with understanding gender dynamics that underlie and suffuse those politics. There are so many things we assume to be normal or natural that are really products of decisions, cultural constructions, and ideologies. Enloe encourages us to look more closely at what men and women are doing in international politics and where the power lies between them. She shows that many agreements between male-led states or companies (trade, basing, or tourism deals, for example) are based on the assumption of available, compliant, and cheap female labor. This labor is not inherently cheap; it is made cheap by human decisions to devalue feminine work and women in general.

Great example: When clothing companies subcontract with Bangladeshi textile factories to produce cheap clothing, this is a purely non-gendered decision, right? Wrong. This type of deal can't work unless there are cheap, non-unionized laborers. Companies' ideal versions of this type of worker are almost always female because women are generally less powerful than men and expected to work only as complements to more important male work. They gravitate towards female workers and make women's labor cheap by enforcing the powerlessness of certain women. This assumption is unstated and usually unexamined by students of international politics, but the deal can't be understood without it. Therefore, we can't understand international trade, outsourcing, and globalization without factoring in gender analysis.

This book leans very heavily towards a pure social constructionist view, which makes the explanations of human behavior a little simplistic in some areas. A more balanced view of human beings' natural differences would have added a lot to this book, although the argument still basically works without it. Overall, I recommend this book for people who don't think that women matter much in international relations or feminists like myself who knew that in a vague sense already but needed to see how gender actually functions within international political issues in more concrete ways. This book will definitely make you more of a feminist, especially on labor issues. And that's good! It's also one of those books that will piss you off in that good feminist way of being pissed off. Why for example are teachers (an historically feminine profession) expected to do so much damn free work (not just low pay for work outside of school hours, but volunteering at school for low or no compensation, going to kids' games and performances, baking stuff, etc) and lawyers and doctors make sure to bill for every second of service they provide? If you can't figure that out by the end of this review, either I didn't write a good review or you didn't pay attention!!! Hilary 2016 I'm out.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yessss Cynthia. And yesss to feminism that centers and carefully analyzes third world women :)

Incredibly complex, thoughtful and dynamic. The book urges the reader to think about women in international politics, not solely as objects, on whom decisions are enacted upon, but also as changing, informed, complicated subjects ... who think about, decide, challenge, backpedal and move forward on what does and doesn't work for them/us.

She finishes the book with something along the lines of: If the personal is political, the political is personal... the personal must then be international, which means the international is personal.

If you want a book that talks about everything from colonization to Iran-contra to military bases to the gender and sexual politics of the banana industry, all through a feminist lens, read this :)

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The class in which I read this was the best class I ever took in my life, so far. The class in general, but this book was part of it, really opened up my eyes to the gender of the international economy.

[Bob Newman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sexploitation vs. just plain old exploitation

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, 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.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one was an eye opener the first time I read it.

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

taught me what great feminist scholarship can look like.

[Wanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book in college too. I was amazed at how much about the world I didn't know. Cynthia Enloe's book is a masterpiece and one that any political scientist should read.

[Elina T.C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing insight into the fundamental influence of gendering through patriarchy/capitalism on the world we know today. A must-read for any feminist out there. And a non-feminist too.

[Tilda]

tää on parasta mitä oon yliopistossa lukenut (toistaiseksi?)

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

En tiedä, kuinka paljon mukavampaa olisi ollut lukea tämä omaksi iloksi. Nyt luin tenttiin. Vähän luulen, että ilman tenttipainetta olosi jäänyt lukematta.

Julkaisuvuonnaan 1989 tämä on ollut radikaali ja merkittävä virstanpylväs. Nykyään teos on kv-politiikan klassikko.

2020-luvun tenttiin lukijana olisin arvostanut muutamaa editointikierrosta: toistoa on jonkin verran tai oikeastaan melko paljon, ja kaikkea lähestytään konkreettisten esimerkkien kautta. Ymmärrän, että kasarin ilmapiirissä on ollut pakko tarjoilla rautalankaa, ja nykykeskusteluissa viestit usein typistetään periaatteellisen tason yleistyksiksi tai iskulauseiksi. Siinä mielessä hyvää ja tervetullutta vaihtelua, vähän raskasta luettavaa vaan.

Feministinen ajattelu on mennyt eteenpäin Enloen ajoista, ja hyvä niin. Kiitos pioneerityöstä kuuluu mm. juuri Enloelle. Maailma on toisaalta muuttunut, toisaalta pysynyt häkellyttävän samana. BBB on myös mielenkiintoinen kurkistusikkuna sekä toisen aallon feminismiin että feminismin kolmanteen aaltoon liitettyyn intersektionaaliseen ajatteluun, jossa mm. sukupuolta, rotua ja luokkaa ei voi irrottaa toisistaan ja tarkastella yksittäisinä entiteetteinä.

Ratkaisukeinoiksi sortoon Enloe tarjoaa järjestäytymistä ja naisten omaa, omaehtoista ajattelua ja toimintaa. Enloe käy myös hyvin läpi, miten naisten järjestäytymistä on aikojen saatossa pyritty estämään.

[Sofiya Hashmi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fundamental text for anyone studying International Relations. This book isn't normally prescribed as a text and it was one I chose to read rather than having it assigned to me. But it should be. IR as a study is lacking solely due to its focus on the public sphere of International Relations. Enloe's book (through her acknowledgement of the private sphere and how the private sphere contributes to the public sphere) helps fills in the blanks. I recommend it for not only IR students but for anyone wanting to understand better how the world works and how power relations operate on a global scale.

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think I read this updated version. Certainly check this out, especially you U.S. citizens as the U.S. has over 160 military bases around the world. Do you want to know what happens around them? How they negatively effect communities, women, and social communities even when there is no war or occupation?
Do you want to know how not calculating women's unpaid labor skews the economic picture painted by those financial and governmental institutions? There is an awful lot of information in here worth checking out.

[Kaia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I heard very high reviews of this book and thus I was disappointed that it was a very shallow review of topics related to feminism and globalization, without very much depth. This book raises very good questions, but barely starts to provide the answers.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a heads-up, this is another long one because it serves as class notes to remind me. Enloe's book was groundbreaking when it first came out and remains a crucial touchstone in our understanding of feminist international relations. It begins with the basic question: Where are the women? A recent photo series showed political gatherings (legislative sessions, conferences, etc.) around the world first as the pics were initially taken and then with the men removed. In one photo after another, a lone woman, or a handful of women, remained. This is a stark reminder of how gendered politics remain, how unrepresented women are in the halls of power, how unusual it still is to have a woman president, or, more strikingly, how it's simply not a thing to have a majority of parliamentarians or legislators be women. But Enloe wants us to go deeper. In a series of in-depth chapters (tourism, nationalism, military bases, diplomacy, the banana business, the apparel business, and domestic work) Enloe brings home some basic truths: norms around women's behavior have been traps. What's a "nice" woman, a "classy" woman, a "well-dressed" woman, a "feminine" woman, a "fallen" woman, a "well-bred" woman, a "supportive" woman, a "nurturing" woman? What's women's work, what are women "naturally" good at, where do women "belong"? And, corollary to all of it, and informing all of it, where do women fit in a world of men, manliness, masculinity, men's roles, and male needs and priorities? In one set of conditions after another, Enloe picks apart norms and institutional decisions and rules that constrain women's options and systematically reduce women's value, subordinate women's freedom and agency and opportunities to men's interests in sex and profit and power. She explains the deliberate social and institutional (political, corporate, religious) structures that prevent women from making common cause, communicating across their individual experiences, and organizing. She highlights how women's labor is expected to be free and, when paid, is degraded as "cheap" and therefore not worthy of living wages. If the narrative is that women are born knowing how to cook and clean and sew and raise children, then they need not be paid, respected, appreciated, or rewarded for doing any of those things well, even if, in reality, each requires tremendous skill-building, learning, attention, intention, and effort. This then becomes a nasty cycle as women must rely on other women to take care of these things for them at home if they are going to be paid to do these things for others, so employers are getting two for the price of less than one. Add to that vulnerabilities built into access to healthcare, property ownership, and so much more, and women are made insecure no matter how hard they're working. Compound this with socio-sexual mores and expectations and women's worth amidst the rest of this is measured by how "good" they are, whether they get married and assume all the extra unpaid labor that usually entails, whether they are desirable (but not too desirable). If circumstances force them to fulfill the enormous demand for prostitution, they are debased, physically vulnerable, humiliated, criminalized, and socially rejected even as their customers' needs are prioritized; this then becomes institutionalized by military and corporate organizations trying to ensure that their populations of mostly male workers are sexually satisfied, an issue to which the men who run these organizations pay outsized attention and to which they're more than happy to sacrifice the dignity, opportunities, and mental and physical well-being of women whose options have run out. And this is often done for racialized/racist reasons, in which men are prohibited from fraternizing with local "good" women whom they might marry or impregnate, or for deeply sexist reasons, wherein men are dissuaded from marrying and thus increasing the community for which the organizations in question must make resources available. Although Enloe offers many cases in which women finally were able to organize and lobby and begin to change the oppressive systems in which they were functioning, and even though this is an impressively chunky book, she ends up being able to just scratch the surface of the challenges facing women in political, social, and economic structures designed by men for men. She takes us around the world, but each of her cases could be a book in itself. Each unspooling story could be spun farther out. It's a strong start though. It reminds us how much women do in the background, without acknowledgement, to keep the world running, and how crucial it is to foreground them, amplify their voices, demand that they be paid and recognized and seen and valued for their contributions. More to say, but've run out of time for now.

[Xiaoqing Wang · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wrote the review as part of a course assignment.




In the 2000 edition of Cynthia Enloe’s book, Bananas, Beaches and Bases, she warns us of the danger of not taking women’s experiences seriously in International Politics and underestimating the political nature of both femininity and masculinity (xiv.). Enloe declares that she attempts to ‘create a more realistic description of and explanation for international politics” through gendered lenses (ibid.). If the recurring theme of the book can be summarized by one sentence, it would in my opinion be “the personal is political/international, and the political/international is personal” (195-201). By and large, I think Enloe has achieved this task in a thought-provoking way, and convincingly to a certain extent. Despite written over a decade ago, many of her points remain relevant and refreshing. What follow in this paper will be a critical assessment of this book and an evaluation of its contribution to the field of feminist school of international theory. To do this, I will first distill the main arguments of the book. I will then offer some observations I have drawn and critical comments. I will also look at secondary sources to complement depicting the book’s status in and contribution to the feminist school of international theories. I will end this review with a brief summary and an overall conclusion.

Enloe criticizes traditional schools of international theories of putting power at the center of analysis, its conceptualizing of which failing to sufficiently take into account the internal complexity and variety of power at work. In conventional international theories, women remain invisible. Yet through a series of angles to challenge this notion, Enloe unveils that current power relations are very much gendered, and that the ‘packages’ of masculinity and femininity are very much shaped by political resources and agendas and themselves create and sustain global inequalities; as McClintock (1990: 2) puts it, Enloe “shows how mightily the day-to-day brokering of global power depends on constructions of gender”. Only by recognizing this can we have a more coherent and realistic understanding of international politics. Topics that Enloe covered in her discussion include international tourism, nationalism, diplomacy, military expansion, and international trade. Perhaps we can trace some clues in the title of the book. “Banana” refers to international agribusiness. Here, governments and transnational plantation companies depend on and manipulate ideas of gender to achieve their profit-seeking or political ends, for example, the use of images of Carmen Miranda as a ‘subtle form’ to advance ‘American regional influence’; while real women workers in Latin America remain “marginalized by a potent combination of ‘Good Neighbor’ diplomacy and agribusiness advertising” (Enloe, 2000: 149). “Beaches” refer to international tourism, and it is in every bit about internationalized power. Here, Enloe argues that “without ideas about masculinity and femininity- and the enforcement of both- in the societies of departure and the societies of destination, it would be impossible to sustain the tourism industry and its political agenda” (ibid. :41). “Bases” mean international military bases. Enloe explores the roles played by wives of enlisted personnel, diplomats, and women who provide sexual services to the soldiers. It turns out these relationships depend upon women acting in a certain way. Different women’s experiences with military bases reveal gendered bases political policy that maintain a sense of security by turning women into ‘sexual or ideological rivals’ (ibid.: 91).

In the book, Enloe states that her agenda is “not that we would abandon our curiosity about arms dealers, presidents’ men and concepts such as covert operations; rather, we would no longer find them sufficient to understand how the international political system works” (2000: 11). In this sense, she provides a much-needed complementary account of the international politics: to say that the personal is political and international and vice versa implies perpetual permeation of power into all realms of our lives, women and men alike, but in dramatically different ways. Our understanding of international politics will remain incomplete if we do not look at the world through women’s perspectives, through deconstructing of the meaning of being a man and of being women and ask ourselves, how can things be different? Enloe’s solution to the question ‘where are the women’ is that we should listen to “woman carefully- to those trying to break out of the strait-jacket of conventional femininity and to those who find security and satisfaction in those very conventions” and that we should make “concepts such as wife, mother, sexy broad, central to our investigations” (2000: 11). Enloe calls for a dismantling of the wall the “separates theory from practice” (ibid.:201)" by making women heard. She says, “we don't need to wait for a 'feminist Henry Kissinger' before we can start articulating a fresh, more realistic approach to international politics. Every time a woman explains how her government its trying to control her fears, her hopes and her labors such theory is being made” (ibid.). While her rhetoric may make a strong emotional appeal, I cannot help but doubt how effective feminist discourse is in actually making any changes. More than two decades after the original publish of the book, we look around and we do not see much difference.

To continue the point made above, the style of narration of Enloe’s book also feels different from traditional literature in International Theories, maybe more ‘feminist’. Her writing is more emotional, more intimate, more creative, more refreshing, and in an often bottom-up way, she puts individual agency at the spotlight of her argument. McClintock calls Enloe’s style “scintillating and lucid” (1990: 2). I am not sure to what extent is her style strengthened her argument and to what extent it undermined the validity of her points. To a third person’s eyes, Enloe’s writing is susceptible to being called ‘biased’. Similarly, I find Enloe’s repeated bifurcation of women into ‘First World’ and ‘Third Women’ to be unconvincing and her discourse of ‘global sisterhood’ to be political unviable. I also find that her definition of ‘masculinized’ to be at times arbitrary and what constitute a ‘feminist’ alternative to be fuzzy. For example, I cannot see how a ‘demasculinized’ form of tourism would look like.

Banana, Beaches and Bases is no doubtedly seen as an essential text, one among the first and most important, in the field of feminist international theories and has received praises. For example, Runyan comments that, “at a time when there is a need to explore the complex interplay of cultural, social, economic, and political forces in the face of the bankruptcy of modernist and masculinist ideologies, orders, and institutions as well as the enormity of global problems, this contemporary feminist reading of world politics makes eminent sense.” (1991: 334-335). Parikh comments that Enloe’s book has ‘broadened the field of international relations beyond its exclusively masculine focus.” (1991: 128) and is a major contribution to the IR discipline and Beckwith comments that Enloe’s book provides us with “a point of origin to make feminist sense of international politics” (1991: 292).

In this paper I have briefly looked at the main argument and contents as delineated in Enloe’s book Banana, Beaches, and Bases and offered some of my observation’s as well as some secondary comments on her book. In a recent interview, Enloe (2012) explains her notion that ‘gender makes the world go round’: that “the whole cluster of ideas about gender drives decision-making…it allows for certain kinds of structures to seem normal and therefore unchallengeable—until a feminist comes along!” In this sense, her book is truly significant in that it challenges the traditional masculine-dominated field of IR and opened new angels ‘of investigations.

[R · Rating 2 out of 5]

For an updated edition (released 2014) I was suprised and somewhat let down that the rhetoric and language of some chapters still reads outdated (the more directly political chapters somewhat have the #girlboss effect in the forefront, and also sex work appears to be an issue Enloe does not want to address so head on). Nevertheless some of the recent additions are quite good, such as the chapter on the garment industry, and the conclusion is not entirely fluff. Overall an interesting and seminal book on the subject but for those who are already critical of IR and second-wave feminism, you might find the book lacking, as I did.

[layla · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fundamental text for anyone studying International Relations, Politics, post-colonial theory, or feminism. Actually, everyone should read this even if they aren't studying any of those subjects. It provides an eye opening insight into how capitalism and orthodox IR theory work hand-in-hand to facilitate the economic and sexual exploitation of BIPOC around the world.

Enloe delivers her analysis on the matter in a proactive manner. She intertwines empirical realities with a biting narrative that reads akin to a journalistic piece, whilst still paying respect to the facts on the ground. Respect is an important word here: being a white, upper-class American woman Enloe has a lot of privilege, but she manages to treat all the women she writes about with utmost compassion. This is reflected in her referencing of marginalised scholars from Global South backgrounds who are often ignored in academia because their research is not considered worth publishing. She engages with BIPOC scholars throughout the text, elevating their voices, and encouraging the reader to do further research from own-voices scholarship.

This is definitely an excellent starting point if you want to see how gender shapes global politics and how capitalism and militarism shape gender relations, in turn.

One of the few things I've read for an assignment that I actually derived pleasure from. Still so good even after constant re-reads and still so damn relevant!

[Kathleen in Oslo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just dipped back into this for the first time in a while for work reasons and reminded how much I love this book. A classic in feminist international relations and security studies, but also hugely readable and accessible for non-academics. Enloe's starting point is a simple question: where are the women? Not simply in terms of sexed bodies, but in the gendered roles, expectations, dependencies that underlie global security, militarization, international political economies, etc. Enloe writes with great precision and sharpness, but also with great empathy and curiosity - the latter often lacking in academic texts. Sadly still overlooked by many within more "mainstream" positivist IR and political science traditions, Enloe's work pushes us to denaturalize and destabilize the systems that many of us take for granted, and to really interrogate who is doing the (waged and emotional) labor in them and how.

[Matthew Mendenhall · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s democratic and revolutionary. The theory of the book is that knowing and analyzing behavior of every day people helps make sense of superstructure power, legitimacy, and decision making. Enloe is no optimist when it comes to how the world functions internationally. There’s an argument to be made that she may not even be making sense of the world. Why describe the actions of everyday people when you can describe the interests, power, and decision making of institutions that make those micro decisions possible? I think some chapters fall flat on bleak descriptions without prescriptions for how to change policy or behavior. In sum, if making feminist sense of why the world sucks excites you on an everyday level, I highly recommend it to you. BEST CHAPTER: Going Bananas

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up because it interweaves two topics that I've done a good amount of reading on recently - feminism and international politics. Taking two such massive topics together could quickly get overwhelming, but Cynthia Enloe does a great job making sense of them together. The central question throughout this book is "Where are the women?" In examining trade between nations (bananas), international tourism (beaches), and soldiers serving on foreign soil (bases) among other topics, she puts the experiences of women front and center. She argues that without including female plantation laborers, sex workers, or wives of diplomats we will at best get a very incomplete picture of international politics.
I found this to be a very enlightening book. Enloe is very convincing in her argument that understanding the personal lives of women across the globe is essential for understanding international politics as a whole. She brings to light how powerful men leading nations and international corporations do their business with the assumption of available and cheap female labor. While this book has aged fairly well since it was written in 2001, I think an updated version would do an even better job of shedding light the importance of women in our globalized world.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book argues that dominant IR approaches are gendered in that they only look at gendered notions of power which ignore the experience of women and their role in international relationships. She asserts that power infuses all relationships. This book aims to take women's experience of international politics seriously, and argues that this can help acquire a more realistic understanding of how international politics actually works. She looks at roles usually ignored by IR, including tourists (the 'beach'), prostitutes (the 'base') and even the manner in which Carmen Miranda is used to sell exploitation of third world women to first world women (the 'bananas'). She argues that 'one of the simplest and most disturbing feminist insights is that â'˜the personal is political'. Disturbing, because it means that relationships we once imagined were private or merely social are in fact infused with power, usually unequal power backed up by public authority. She also notes that the international is personal, since governments rely upon certain kinds of allegedly private relationships in order to conduct their foreign affairs.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I probably would have liked it a lot more if I didn’t have to take notes and write an essay on it, but still I gave it four stars I’m honestly having trouble finding something wrong with it for my review paper. It’s very good but one thing I felt was that it could be repetitive and I feel like the sections could have been ordered better. At times it seemed more like a collection of essays with a similar theme than an entire book. I find myself recommending it to a lot of people that are also interested in international politics.

Also, this book is fairly long (though at least for second edition a lot of the end is endnotes so it’s actually not as long as it looks). If you pick it to, for example, write an essay in a University class on global governance for which you have to take extensive notes, I would reccomended giving yourself a lot of time so you don’t end up finishing it three days before you have to turn in an essay draft.

[=====D · Rating 4 out of 5]

it seems pretty essential, and overlooked, to consider the fact that the politics of gender are on the minds of those whose goal it is to keep a docile, productive labor force, a loyal defense force, a vain, insecure, and self-indulgent consumer base, etc. Should soldiers stationed on overseas army bases be allowed to marry? should they have access to native prostitutes just outside the bases gates? how does one justify paying young women less than men for performing identical work? what does it mean to acknowledge womens' unpaid contributions to industrial productivity? these are questions which have been debated by those in charge of making decisions for years, they should also be on the minds of those attempting to understand and resist certain oppressive institutions.

[Kaela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only read a few chapters for some research I'm doing, but this is a key text for Feminist IR Theory, as it emphasizes the role gender plays in creating and maintaining social, political, and international structures. While some people, including some feminists, might argue that we need more women in politics, Enloe argues that, if we accept that "the personal is political" as given, women already *are* involved. We just need to open our eyes to the gendered power dynamics already in play. This book is an exploration of the many ways current structures are dependent on highly gendered relations between men and women.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am halfway through this book and really enjoying it. A little disappointed in fact that I didn't read it sooner - like in the beginning or middle of an IR masters program as opposed to two months post complete.... seems like a great constructivism 101 read...

The books info is clearly 20 years old but the message and a lot of the issues remain unchanged. I do however wish the author would update to another edition since her 2001 edition just missed 9/11 and its repercussions. I'll have to check out some of Enloe's other works...

Overall Great read!

[Laura Waters]

This is the "textbook" for a third year unit of my degree, "Feminisms, Gender and International Relations", and it's a really accessible but still academic book on how traditional International Relations has ignored and dismissed the feminist perspective, to its detriment. It's frank discussion of issues that would not be considered international relations fodder and it's relational approach to how these issues are placed within the international political system is, in my opinion, enlightening.

[Erica · Rating 1 out of 5]

I came to this book thinking I'd find my intuitive understanding of this topic mirrored with careful evaluations and methodical context. But the tone so turned me off that I couldn't finish it. I wanted to follow Enloe and I believe many of her conclusions about how women's roles have been sidelined in discussions of international politics, but the scattershot and assumptive way she arrives there is unconvincing and frustrating.

[Rita]

1989.
wrB sees in this book her mastery of a feminist perspective on militarism.

WRB notes her chapter in a more recent book [Seriously! Investigating Crashes and Crises as if Women Mattered, 2013]
"Why Feminists Take Daily Life SEriously" in which
"she shows how the power and dynamics in so-called private, trivial interactions, in sites from the family and community to mulitinational factories in free trade zones, is causally connected to power in national and interstate public spheres."

[Nanto]

untuk sebuah textbook, non-mainstream lagi, data buku ini di goodreads cukup menarik. Dari 189 yang memasukan buku ini ke raknya, horoskop (pembintangan maksudnya :p) buku ini tercatat, "5 stars (45), 4 stars (54), 3 stars (24), 2 stars (3), 1 star (0). Rata-rata pembintangannya 4,12. Cukup diminati untuk sebuah textbook yang mengupas dunia internasional dari sisi keperempuanannya.