logo
episode-header-image
Jan 2025
46m 5s

Jennifer Greenburg, "At War with Women: ...

NEW BOOKS NETWORK
About this episode

At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Jennifer Greenburg reveals how post-9/11 politics of gender and development have transformed US military power. In the mid-2000s, the US military used development as a weapon as it revived counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military assembled all-female teams to reach households and wage war through development projects in the battle for "hearts and minds." Despite women technically being banned from ground combat units, the all-female teams were drawn into combat nonetheless. Based on ethnographic fieldwork observing military trainings, this book challenges liberal feminist narratives that justified the Afghanistan War in the name of women's rights and celebrated women's integration into combat as a victory for gender equality.

Dr. Jennifer Greenburg critically interrogates a new imperial feminism and its central role in securing US hegemony. Women's incorporation into combat through emotional labor has reinforced gender stereotypes, with counterinsurgency framing female soldiers as global ambassadors for women's rights. This book provides an analysis of US imperialism that keeps the present in tension with the past, clarifying where colonial ideologies of race, gender, and sexuality have resurfaced and how they are changing today.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Up next
Oct 7
Hannah Pool, "The Game: The Economy of Undocumented Migration from Afghanistan to Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025)
To seek asylum, people often have to cross borders undocumented, embarking on perilous trajectories. Due to the war in Afghanistan, the rule of the Taliban, and severe human rights violations, over the past decades thousands of people have risked their lives to seek safety. By wh ... Show More
51m 19s
Oct 6
Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India
Selfies are more than fleeting images—across India, they shape how people imagine themselves, connect with others, and inhabit spaces. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Avishek Ray about his co-authored b ... Show More
25m 30s
Oct 5
Meredith L. Roman, "The Black Panthers and the Soviets: A Comparative History of Human Rights Movements" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
The contemporaneous movements for human rights that Soviet rights defenders and the Black Panthers waged during the 1960s are analysed in a comparative fashion here for the very first time. The book also examines the extra-legal measures that both the KGB and FBI employed to dest ... Show More
54m 10s
Recommended Episodes
Jan 2025
Jennifer Greenburg, "At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War" (Cornell UP, 2023)
At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Jennifer Greenburg reveals how post-9/11 politics of gender and development have transformed US military power. In the mid-2000s, the US military used ... Show More
46m 5s
Dec 2024
Melissa Johnston, "Building Peace, Rebuilding Patriarchy: The Failure of Gender Interventions in Timor-Leste" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Over the two decades since the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, peacebuilding interventions around the globe have increasingly incorporated gender perspectives. These initiatives have used both development programs and gend ... Show More
1h 1m
May 2024
Tanisha M. Fazal, "Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dramatic improvements in American military medicine have had an unanticipated effect: saving more soldiers' lives has vastly increased ... Show More
56m 51s
Nov 2024
Roxani Krystalli, "Good Victims: The Political as a Feminist Question" (Oxford UP, 2024)
In the latest edition of Ethnographic Marginalia, we talk with Roxani Krystalli about her new book Good Victims: The Political as a Feminist Question (Oxford UP, 2024). Roxani describes the dilemmas she faced in her research on encounters between those recognized as victims of th ... Show More
1 h
Oct 2023
Stephenie Foster and Susan A. Markham, "Feminist Foreign Policy in Theory and in Practice" (Routledge, 2023)
In 2014, Sweden announced the world’s first “feminist foreign policy,” an approach more than two dozen other nations have since adopted. But different national approaches and a range of theoretical frameworks complicate definitions of what feminist foreign policy should or could ... Show More
34m 39s
Dec 2024
Sara Cantillon et al., "Feminist Political Economy: A Global Perspective" (Agenda, 2023)
Challenging mainstream narratives in political economy, the new book Feminist Political Economy: A Global Perspective (Agenda Publishing, 2023) serves as an introduction to a new era of critical research. It is written by Prof. Sara Cantillon, Dr. Sara Stevano and Prof. Odile Mac ... Show More
32m 5s
Nov 2023
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale, "Why Men?: A Human History of Violence and Inequality" (Hurst, 2023)
How did humans, a species that evolved to be cooperative and egalitarian, develop societies of enforced inequality? Why did our ancestors create patriarchal power and warfare? Did it have to be this way? These are some of the key questions that Dr. Nancy Lindisfarne and Dr. Jonat ... Show More
1h 14m
Sep 29
Gina Vale, "The Unforgotten Women of the Islamic State" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The Unforgotten Women of the Islamic State (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Gina Vale explores the governance of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization through the lives and words of local Iraqi, Syrian, and Kurdish women. While the roles and activities of foreign (p ... Show More
56m 55s
Sep 29
Gina Vale, "The Unforgotten Women of the Islamic State" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The Unforgotten Women of the Islamic State (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Gina Vale explores the governance of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization through the lives and words of local Iraqi, Syrian, and Kurdish women. While the roles and activities of foreign (p ... Show More
56m 55s
May 2024
Sa’ed Atshan, "Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique" (Stanford UP, 2020)
In Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique (Stanford University Press, 2020) anthropologist and activist Sa’ed Atshan explores the Palestinian LGBTQ movement and offers a window into the diverse community living both in historic Palestine and in diaspora.His timely and urgent ... Show More
55m 47s