Cynthia Enloe
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Through Feminism and Militarism
Biography
Cynthia Enloe was born in New York City 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 Berkeley, 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. For much of her professional life she taught at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. At Clark, Enloe served as Chair of the Department of Political Science and as Director of Women's Studies. She also served on the university's Committee on Personnel and its Planning and Budget Review Committee. Enloe was awarded Clark University's Outstanding Teacher Award on three separate occasions.
At the beginning of her career, Enloe mainly focused on studying ethnic and racial politics. She completed her dissertation in Malaysia on a Fulbright Scholarship from 1965 to 1966. There, she researched the country's ethnic politics. Ten years after receiving her PhD, Enloe had written six books on the subject of ethnical tensions and its role in politics; however, she had yet to look at any of these subjects from a feminist angle, something she admits being "embarrassed of". It was not until she first began teaching at Clark University, in the middle of the U.S.-Vietnam war, that Enloe really began to develop her feminist thought. She spoke with a colleague at Clark, the only man on the faculty who was a veteran, about his experiences during the Vietnam war. He mentioned that Vietnamese women were hired by American soldiers to do their laundry. Enloe began to wonder how history would be different if the entire war had been told through the eyes of these Vietnamese women.
Ever since, Enloe's work has primarily focused upon how feminist and gendered politics have shaped the national and international conversations. Enloe focuses on the unfair treatment of women in globalized factory and the many ways in which women are exploited for their labor. She also critiques global as well as U.S. militarization, specifically the roles women play in combat. Enloe is not afraid to address security from a feminist perspective. She argues that the U.S. military model trains men to be the protectors of women and then produces an environment in which women are the victims of physical violence. One of Enloe's many contributions to feminist writings has been her coining of the term "feminist curiosity". It came about in 2003. when Enloe was giving a talk at Ochanomizu University, a historic women's university in Tokyo, Japan. She has said that she wanted to come up with a phrase that she felt could be understood in both English and Japanese, as her lecture was being translated for those who attended. Enloe created this idea of "feminist curiosity" as a way of saying that feminism is about the questions you ask, not just the answers you give.
Having retired from Clark, Enloe is a research professor in the Department of International Development, Community, and Environment and is still a frequent and energetic lecturer. In addition to serving on the editorial board for scholarly journals such as Signs and the International Feminist Journal of Politics, Cynthia Enloe has written fifteen books, mostly published by the University of California Press. Much of Enloe's research centers on women's place in national and international politics. Her books cover a wide range of issues encompassing gender-based discrimination as well as racial, ethnic, and national identities. She is also a member of the academic network of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
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, Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club. Enloe has also listed Diane Singerman, Purnima Mankekar, and Cathy Lutz as people who have inspired and influenced her work. When asked how she defines feminism for herself, Enloe stated that "Feminism is the pursuit of deep, deep justice for women in ways that change the behaviors of both women and men, and really change our notions of what justice looks like." She has been awarded honorary doctorates by Union College (2005), the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (2009), Connecticut College (2010), the University of Lund, Sweden (2012), and Clark University (2014).
She currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with partner Joni Seager.
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Selected other writings
- The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy, Oakland, University of California Press, 2018.
- Enloe, Cynthia (December 2016). "Flick of the skirt: a feminist challenge to IR's coherent narrative". International Political Sociology. 10 (4): 320–331. doi:10.1093/ips/olw017.
- Contributor, International Relations Theory for the Twenty-First Century, Martin Griffiths, ed., USA: Routledge, 2007
- "Conversation with Cynthia Enloe", in Signs. Summer, 2003.
- "The Surprised Feminist", in Signs. Vol. 25, No. 4 (Summer 2000) 1023-1026.
- The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War, Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1993 (published in Japanese, 1999); new ed. Berkeley & London, University of California Press, 2000 (published in Turkish, 2003).
- Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women's Lives, London: Pandora Press; San Francisco: Harper\Collins, 1988 (editions have been published in Finnish and Swedish).
- Ethnic Conflict and Political Development, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1973 (repr. University Press of America, 1986).
- Coeditor (with Wendy Chapkis) Of Common Cloth: Women in the Global Textile Industry, Amsterdam: Transnational Institute; Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1983.
- Contributor, Loaded Questions: Women in Militaries, Wendy Chapkis, ed., Amsterdam: Transnational Institute; Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1981.
- Ethnic Soldiers: State Security in Divided Societies, London: Penguin Books, 1980; Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980.
- Police, Military, Ethnicity: Foundations of State Power, New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1980.
- Coeditor (with Dewitt Ellinwood), Ethnicity and the Military in Asia, New Brunswick: Transition Books, 1980.
- Coauthor (with Guy Pauker and Frank Golay), Diversity and Development in Southeast Asia: The Coming Decade, New York: McGraw-Hill and Council of Foreign Relations, 1977.
- Coeditor (with Ursula Semin-Panzer), The Military, The Police and Domestic Order: British and Third World Experiences, London: Richardson Institute for Conflict and Peace Research, 1976.
- The Comparative Politics of Pollution, New York: Longman's, 1975.
- Multi-Ethnic Politics: The Case of Malaysia, Berkeley Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1970.
- Editorial board of the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy.
- Enloe, Cynthia. Twelve Feminist Lessons of War. University of California Press, 2023.
Critiques of writings
Bananas, Beaches and Bases would be considered Enloe's best-known work. It links various feminist issues regarding international relations throughout prior periods in time and throughout different cultures and places them at the forefront of discussion. In The Journal of Politics Karen Beckwith writes: "Enloe poses an initially simple question which leads to complex if necessarily partial conclusions: What happens to our international understanding of politics if we make the experience of women's lives central to our analysis?" Beckwith later states: "Her analysis is clear, complex, amusing demystifying, accessible, and insightful." In The American Political Science Review Anne Sisson Runyan writes: "Bananas, Beaches, and Bases offers a refreshing, insightful, and critical departure from conventional, top-down treatments of international politics." Runyan later states: "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." In The Journal of the History of Sexuality, Manju Parikh writes: "Enloe's analysis is not only a timely contribution but also entertaining reading, which is a welcome addition to supplement the usual dry textbooks in the field." Enloe also incorporates class and ethnicity into the shaping of women's behavior and our understanding of international relations as well. In Contemporary Sociology Kathryn Ward writes: "When seen from the everyday perspective of poor women of color, who are at the heart of our analyses, women's central roles in the world economic and political system become very clear, in contrast with past theories of the world economic and political system that have focused on the activities of white, elite men." Ward later states; "Such analyses may disturb some who are invested in past theories or who are uncomfortable with activism. However, I would argue, as does Enloe, that some of our most insightful and compelling analyses and theories will come from decentering past theories and looking at experiences, ideas, and emerging theories by activist women of color from around the world."
In Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women's Lives, Enloe addresses the impact of militarization on gender relations and the social status of women. In The Journal of Peace Research, Veena Gill writes: "In the context of militarism, [Enloe] analyzes the different roles of women from a social and economic perspective as army wives, nurses, prostitutes, soldiers, workers in defense and allied industries, and from the point of view of feminism. The military institution is exposed as a powerful patriarchal institution which women are urged to resist in their overall efforts towards social justice and equal status."
In Maneuvers; the International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives, Enloe expands on her themes from Does Khaki Become You. She emphasizes the different experiences of women located in varied ethnic, national, class, and occupational contexts and how they are tailored to the needs of militarism, therefore embedding themselves in policy. In The American Political Science Review, Mary Fainsod Katzenstein writes: "Those already among Enloe's wide readership will know some of this text's central arguments, but Maneuvers offers a trove of new insights. A thesis even more powerfully developed here than in Enloe's earlier writings is the title of the book—how policymakers maneuver to make strategic choices." Katzenstein later states: "Maneuvers has more than a functionalist lesson; by emphasizing policy choices and variability across time and national context, Enloe shows that militaries are not governed by primeval identities."
Honors and recognition
- Fulbright awards to Malaysia and Guyana
- Guest professorships in Japan, Britain and Canada
- "Outstanding Teacher", Clark University (3 times)
- Fellow of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute (2000–2001)
- Honorary Doctorate, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (2009).
- The Susan B. Northcutt Award, Women's Caucus for International Studies, International Studies Association, to recognize "a person who actively works toward recruiting and advancing women and other minorities in the profession, and whose spirit is inclusive, generous and conscientious." (2008)
- The Susan Strange Award, International Studies Association, for "a person whose singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and organizational complacency in the international studies community during the previous year." (2007)