Week 9 -Naima

The first reading for Monday by Enloe talks about how women react (their actions and feelings) to imperial presence. Enloe dedicates a few pages initially to talk about how women from the Innu tribe in Canada, Tokyo and Okinawa react to military presence and share their experiences of foreign military bases. She mentions how women, and men, take on the persona of a woman living inside the alliance between the American "Empire" and the foreign country, in an effort to make women more visible in power politics. Although it was interesting to read what people came up with, I am not really sure what the purpose of the exercise are...also, on page 275, she discusses how the exercise influenced our thinking of how women respond to imperial enterprise and make five complicated observations that i did not understand very well.

I found the case study of women's participation in Afghanistan very informative. Also interesting was the narration of the experiences of the deputy minister and the efforts of the female lawyer Suraya to suggest clauses to the constitutions that allow women's participation in government and women's protection from domestic violence and social injustices. I remember reading i think in the Mohanty article how the American government gathered support for the invasion of Afghanistan promoting the liberation and empowerment of women,; however, on the contrary, the U.S. Military's most trusted ally in Afghanistan was the Northern Alliance led by Ismail Khan, an organization that opposed modernization, secularization and women's empowerment. By partnering with the Northern Alliance, the U.S. Military promoted certain forms of local masculinity.