In this radical analysis of globalization, Cynthia Enloe pulls back the curtain on familiar scenes—governments promoting tourism, companies moving their factories overseas, soldiers serving on foreign soil—to reveal the crucial role of women in international politics today.



With new material and analysis for the 21st century, including a new chapter on women and events over the last decade, Enloe describes how many women's seemingly personal strategies—in their marriages, in their housework, in their coping with ideals of beauty—are, in reality, the stuff of global politics. In exposing policymakers' reliance on false notions of "femininity" and "masculinity," Enloe dismantles an apparently overwhelming world system, revealing it to be much more fragile and open to change than we think.

Cynthia Enloe is Professor of Government and International Relations at Clark University and is the author of many books, including Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women's Lives and Ethnic Soldiers: State Security in Divided Societies.

Cynthia Enloe won the Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement in Peace Studies Award from the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA).

"Written in scintillating and lucid prose, this is that rare combination, an eminently readable and eminently erudite book. Enloe takes on topics usually flicked aside as too trivial for foreign policy debate—the sex tourism industry; fashions for colonial nostalgia; the lives of base women and diplomatic wives; the politics of food. . . . She shows how the male-order world of international politics could not survive a day without its structures of gender."—Women’s Review of Books

"In an era in which materialist and idealist feminists are at each other’s throats, Enloe calmly going about her business of assuming the unity of culture and political economy is a refreshing sight."—The Nation

"[Enloe] illustrates the extent to which governments depend on certain kinds of relations between men and women, and it is the exposure of this interconnectedness, of this nexus between the private and the public, that will help to take the study of international phenomena beyond a study of the male policy elite."—Diplomatic History

"Bananas, Beaches, and Bases offers refreshing, insightful, and critical departure from conventional, top-down treatments of international politics. 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.—American Political Science Review

"This is a most unusual book. First, it breaks new ground in being the first attempt to construct a feminist view of world politics. Secondly, it is written in a refreshingly direct and challenging way which makes it irresistible reading. . . . In fact, thought-provoking photographs and a swift, acrobatic style have the reader panting to keep up with the agility of the author’s mind. Read this book: it will knock your socks off."—Asian Studies Review

"[Enloe’s] analysis is clear, complex, amusing, demystifying, accessible, and insightful. . . . Bananas, Beaches & Bases has many strengths. Enloe is sensitive to race, class, and ethnic differences among women; she avoids characterizing ‘women’ as homogenous and as passive victims. Her documentation is extensive, current, and inclusive of non-Western sources. . . . Bananas, Beaches & Bases succeeds in raising important questions about our understanding of international politics by shifting to a feminist perspective."—Journal of Politics

"A major contribution to existing perspectives in international relations. Through the author’s survey of common and uncommon topics, . . . she has broadened the field of international relations beyond its exclusively masculine focus. . . . 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."—Journal of the History of Sexuality

"This is the work of a well-travelled feminist mulling over the inequalities of the postmodern world. In a lively overview of tourism, the food industry, army bases, nationalism, diplomacy, global factories, and domestic work, Enloe persuasively argues that gender is key to the workings of international relations."—Aihwa Ong, University of California, Berkeley