Militarized Currents

Toward a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific

2010
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Setsu Shigematsu and Keith L. Camacho, editors
Foreword by Cynthia Enloe

Exposing the consequences of U.S. and Japanese militarization

Foregrounding indigenous and feminist scholarship, this collection analyzes militarization as an extension of colonialism from the late twentieth to the twenty-first century in Asia and the Pacific. The contributors theorize the effects of militarization across former and current territories of Japan and the United States, demonstrating that the relationship between militarization and colonial subordination shapes bodies of memory, knowledge, and resistance.

The volume is a provocative one which offers much to politically-engaged scholars of colonialism in the Asia-Pacific. The range of material is broad, the approaches diverse, but the effect, overall, is remarkably consistent.

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Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies

Foregrounding indigenous and feminist scholarship, this collection analyzes militarization as an extension of colonialism from the late twentieth to the twenty-first century in Asia and the Pacific. The contributors theorize the effects of militarization across former and current territories of Japan and the United States, such as Guam, Okinawa, the Marshall Islands, the Philippines, and Korea, demonstrating that the relationship between militarization and colonial subordination—and their gendered and racialized processes—shapes and produces bodies of memory, knowledge, and resistance.

Contributors: Walden Bello, U of the Philippines; Michael Lujan Bevacqua, U of Guam; Patti Duncan, Oregon State U; Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, U of Hawai‘i, Mānoa; Insook Kwon, Myongji U; Laurel A. Monnig, U of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign; Katharine H. S. Moon, Wellesley College; Jon Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio, U of Hawai‘i, Mānoa; Naoki Sakai, Cornell U; Fumika Sato, Hitotsubashi U; Theresa Cenidoza Suarez, California State U, San Marcos; Teresia K. Teaiwa, Victoria U, Wellington; Wesley Iwao Ueunten, San Francisco State U.

Setsu Shigematsu is assistant professor of media and cultural studies, University of California, Riverside.

Keith L. Camacho is assistant professor of Asian American studies, University of California, Los Angeles.

Cynthia Enloe is professor of government and women’s studies at Clark University.

The volume is a provocative one which offers much to politically-engaged scholars of colonialism in the Asia-Pacific. The range of material is broad, the approaches diverse, but the effect, overall, is remarkably consistent.

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Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies

This volume of essays on the militarization of the Pacific and parts of Asia is a welcome, much-needed contribution to a woefully small body of scholarly work.

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The Contemporary Pacific

As a whole, the essays in Militarized Currents develop a useful definition of militarism as a hegemonic structure that supports empire and demonstrate how competing and colluding militarisms weave into the cultural fabric enabling at times coercive, at times subversive, effects.

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College Literature