M IL ITA RIZ ATI ON
ROBERTO J. GONZÁLEZ
HUGH GUSTERSON
G U S TA A F H O U T M A N
EDITORS
anthropology | politics | military studies
Militarization A Reader
ROBERTO J. GONZÁLEZ , HUGH GUSTERSON , and GUSTAAF HOUTMAN , editors
A READER
December 488 pages, 26 illustrations paper, 978-1-4780-0623-7 $31.95/£24.99 cloth, 978-1-4780-0546-9 $114.95/£95.00
Militarization: A Reader offers a range of critical perspectives on the dynamics of militarization as a social, economic, political, cultural, and environmental phenomenon. It portrays militarism as the condition in which military values and frameworks come to dominate state structures and public culture, both in foreign relations and the domestic sphere. Featuring short, readable essays by anthropologists, historians, political scientists, cultural theorists, and media commentators, the Reader probes militarism’s ideologies, including those that valorize warriors, armed conflict, and weaponry. Outlining contemporary militarization processes at work around the world, the Reader offers a wide-ranging examination of a phenomenon that touches the lives of billions of people. In collaboration with Catherine Besteman, Andrew Bickford, Catherine Lutz, Katherine T. McCaffrey, Austin Miller, David H. Price, David Vine GLOBAL INSECURITIES A series edited by Catherine Besteman and Daniel M. Goldstein
Roberto J. González is Professor of Anthropology at San Jose State University and the author of Militarizing Culture: Essays on the Warfare State. Hugh Gusterson is Professor of International Affairs and Anthropology at George Washington University and author of Drone: Remote Control Warfare. Gustaaf Houtman is editor of Anthropology Today at the Royal Anthropological Institute, London.
anthropology | asian studies | peace and conflict studies
Bomb Children Life in the Former Battlefields of Laos
LEAH ZANI Half a century after the cia’s Secret War in Laos—the largest bombing campaign in history—explosive remnants of war continue to be part of people’s everyday lives. In Bomb Children Leah Zani offers a perceptive analysis of the long-term, often subtle, and unintended effects of massive air warfare. Zani traces the sociocultural impact of cluster submunitions—known in Laos as “bomb children”—through stories of explosives clearance technicians and others living and working in these old air strike zones. Zani presents her ethnography alongside poetry written in the field, crafting a startlingly beautiful analysis of state terror, authoritarian revival, rapid development, and ecological contamination. In so doing, she proposes that postwar zones are their own cultural and area studies, offering new ways to understand the parallel relationship between ongoing war violence and postwar revival. August 184 pages, 17 illustrations paper, 978-1-4780-0485-1 $24.95/£19.99 cloth, 978-1-4780-0422-6 $94.95/£79.00
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Leah Zani is a Junior Fellow in the Social Science Research Network at University of California, Irvine.