Over There explores the social impact of America's global network of more than 700 military bases. It does so by examining interactions between U.S. soldiers and members of host communities in the three locations-South Korea, Japan and Okinawa, and West Germany-where more than-two thirds of American overseas bases and troops have been concentrated for the past six decades. The essays in this collection highlight the role of cultural and racial assumptions in the maintenance of the American military base system, and the ways that civil-military relations play out locally. Describing how political, spatial, and social arrangements shape relations between American garrisons and surrounding communities, they emphasize such factors as whether military bases are located in democratic nations or in authoritarian countries where cooperation with dictatorial regimes fuels resentment; whether bases are integrated into neighboring communities or isolated and surrounded by "camp towns" wholly dependent on their business; and whether the United States sends single soldiers without families on one-year tours of duty or soldiers who bring their families and serve longer tours. Analyzing the implications of these and other situations, the contributors address U.S. military-regulated relations between GIs and local women; the roles of American women, including military wives, abroad; local resistance to the U.S. military presence; and racism, sexism, and homophobia within the U.S. military. Over There is an essential examination of the American military as a global and transnational phenomenon.
Contributors
Donna Alvah
Chris Ames
Jeff Bennett
Maria Hoehn
Seungsook Moon
Christopher Nelson
Robin Riley
Michiko Takeuchi
Industry Reviews
"This book gives a nuanced analysis of the power relations of the American empire and militarised masculinity within it... a most enlightening comparative overview of the impact of American military bases in the three most important host countries of the US military empire." Trond Ove Tollefsen, European Review of History "This volume investigates the social impact of more than 700 American military bases outside the United States, asking how US military relations with local communitiesare affected by factors such as the host country's political regime, the relationship between soldiers and local women, and the type of community in which bases are located." Survival "Over There is a splendid book. Maria Hohn and Seungsook Moon are themselves experienced investigators into the multi-layerings of U.S. Military influence in Germany and South Korea. Here they've combined their gender-smart research with that of insightful contributors to offer us fresh understandings of how German, Japanese, and Korean women and men see the American bases in their midst and cope with U.S. Policies designed to make them complicit. I have learned a lot from Over There."--Cynthia Enloe, author of Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War "This wide-ranging, interdisciplinary collection makes critically visible the sprawling network of U.S. Military bases in two inseparable ways. First, base societies are revealed to be diverse social landscapes in which global questions of sovereignty and the relations of unequal nation-states have been deeply imprinted on everyday life. Second, the book powerfully identifies gendered and sexual politics as central to the construction, and contestation, of the U.S. Military presence. Richly attuned to local variation and perception, resistance and historical change, these essays offer an inspiring agenda for globalized histories of gender and U.S. Militarization."--Paul A. Kramer, author of The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines
