Anti-militarism: Political and Gender Dynamics of Peace Movements

314 Pages·2012·1.631 MB·English

by  Cynthia Cockburn (auth.)

Anti- militarism
Also by Cynthia Cockburn
FROM WHERE WE STAND: WAR, WOMEN’S ACTIVISM AND
FEMINIST ANALYSIS
THE LINE: WOMEN, PARTITION AND THE GENDER ORDER IN CYPRUS
THE POSTWAR MOMENT: MILITARIES, MASCULINITIES AND INTERNATIONAL
PEACEKEEPING (C o- edited with Dubravka Zarkov)
THE SPACE BETWEEN US: NEGOTIATING GENDER AND NATIONAL
IDENTITIES IN CONFLICT
BRINGING TECHNOLOGY HOME: GENDER AND TECHNOLOGY IN
A CHANGING EUROPE (C o- edited with Ruza Fu˝rst-Dilic´)
GENDER AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE MAKING
( Co- authored with Susan Ormrod)
IN THE WAY OF WOMEN: MEN’S RESISTANCE TO SEX EQUALITY IN
ORGANIZATIONS
TWO-T RACK TRAINING: SEX INEQUALITIES AND THE YOUTH TRAINING
SCHEME
MACHINERY OF DOMINANCE: WOMEN, MEN AND TECHNICAL KNOW-HOW
BROTHERS: MALE DOMINANCE AND TECHNICAL CHANGE
THE LOCAL STATE: MANAGEMENT OF CITIES AND PEOPLE
Anti-militarism
Political and Gender Dynamics of Peace
Movements
Cynthia Cockburn
Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology, School of Social Sciences,
City University London, UK, and Honorary Professor, Centre for the Study of
Women and Gender, University of Warwick, UK
© Cynthia Cockburn 2012
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012
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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2012 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
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ISBN 978–0–230–35974–1 hardback
ISBN 978–0–230–35975–8 paperback
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
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ISBN 978-0-230-35975-8 ISBN 978-0-230-37839-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230378391
To Elsa Maria and Josie Cockburn
born 2 February 2007
For you, for all of us, a peaceful world.
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Contents
Acknowledgments x
Glossary of Acronyms xi
Introduction 1
Choosing where to look: a panel of cases 2
A quest for coherence 4
Research funding and approach 5
Starting out: conceptual resources 8
Sequence of chapters 13
1 Finding a Voice: Women at Three Moments of British
Peace Activism 19
The Peace Society: public men, silenced women 23
The Great War: the masculine birth of nations 27
Nuclear weapons: internationalism, direct action and
women-alone 33
Towards a holistic analysis of war 42
2 War Resisters and Pacifist Revolution 46
For nonviolent revolution 47
Cold War and hot liberation movements 50
Emerging from the brotherhood of man 51
Feminist a nti- militarism and the ‘continuum of violence’ 54
The struggle for the feminist agenda 58
War resistance today 62
Active nonviolence: Vredesactie 63
New Profile, Israel 65
Transcending and surviving 68
3 Legitimate Disobedience: An Anti- militarist Movement
in Spain 74
Collectivizing many individual acts of refusal 75
Denying legitimacy to the militarist state 78
Post- professionalization: a state- wide anti- militarist
movement 80
Doing disobedience 83
Anti-m ilitarism, prefigurative movements and the left 85
vii
viii Contents
Antipatriarchalism: the principle and the practice 90
Inventing feminist anti-militarism 93
Double militancy: careful choices 96
4 Midlands City: Faiths and Philosophies Together
for Palestine 103
Spontaneous response to an act of violence 105
Interfaith relations put to the test 109
Leicester’s Muslim organizations: for ‘peace’ or ‘Palestine’? 112
Belief in God, faith in humanity 115
Feminism, faiths and peace activism 119
Towards a realistic and sustainable alliance 121
5 Saying No to NATO: Divergent Strategies 126
The elements of a campaign 128
Peace and a nti- war movements 128
The parliamentary parties 130
Radical left and anarchist tendencies 131
Preparing a weekend of action: hopes and fears 132
Reasons for opposing NATO 135
A feminist case against NATO 138
NATO, nations and patriarchy 139
NATO’s overbearing presence in member states 140
The militarization of daily life 141
NATO as a perpetrator of wars 142
The rally goes up in flames 143
Picking through the ashes 146
6 Seeing the Whole Picture: Anti- militarism in
Okinawa and Japan 152
Cynthia Cockburn and Naoko Ikeda
War, occupation and war again 154
Anti-B omb and anti- Treaty: the emergence of a
peace movement 156
The Okinawan anti- base movement 161
Okinawa Women Act against Military Violence 165
Making connections between sources, forms and
scales of violence 169
‘Comfort women’ and the rightwing agenda 171
The right, the peace movement and patriarchy 174
Contents ix
7 A State of Peace: Movements to Reunify and
Demilitarize Korea 180
Building two Koreas 182
The movement for reunification 185
Crossing the Line 188
A different left: anti- militarist, anti- war and
peace movements 190
Two women’s initiatives 194
The once and future ‘nation’ of Korea 196
Attitudes towards North Korea 199
Roads to peace 204
8 Guns and Bodies: Armed Conflict and Domestic
Violence 211
A movement to stop the proliferation of small arms 212
Gender and guns 216
Women’s a nti- gun activism 220
Uganda: awash with weaponry 223
Ugandan government measures to control arms 225
Women’s projects of disarmament 226
The gun, or the hand that holds it? 231
9 Towards a Different Common Sense 237
Divergences of thought and action 240
Capitalism and state as causes of war: a plural left 241
War in 3-D: the feminist a nti- militarist standpoint 244
Choice of strategy: the significance of nonviolence 246
Co- existence or cohesion? 250
Making connections: a ‘continuum’ of violence 253
The movements’ problematic: where to draw the line? 256
Violence and nonviolence as choices 258
References 264
Index 277