Woman, the state, and war

International Relations

Volumn 23, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 289-303

  Elshtain, Jean Bethke ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

And War; Causes of war; Feminist international relations; Gender; Human nature; K. N. Waltz; Levels of analysis; Man; Reductionism; The State; Women and war

Indexed keywords

EID: 69249168889     PISSN: 00471178     EISSN: 17412862     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0047117809104640     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).
2. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987).
3. To call such women 'sex workers', as 'politically correct' feminism dictates, is preposterous, as it suggests this is just another job and thereby fails to get to the ethical and human disaster and abuse of women such sex trade involves.
4. Elshtain, Women and War.
5. Public Man, Private Woman was published by Princeton University Press, 1981.
6. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and Politics: A Theoretical Analysis (University Microfilms: Ann Arbor, MI, 1973), p. 5.
7. Elshtain, Women and Politics, pp. 346-7.
8. Elshtain, Women and Politics, p. 316.
9. For a full discussion of such approaches see Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman.
10. Betty Reardon, Sexism and the War System (New York: Teacher College Press, 1985). Reardon indicated she was not pessimistic, as behavioral science would win the day. First, though, we had to resist cleaving the 'total human potential and personality' and move to some sort of androgynous personality.
11. See, for example, the discussion by Rebecca Grant, 'The Sources of Bias in International Relations Theory', in R. Grant and K. Newland (eds), Gender and International Relations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 8-26.
12. See my discussion of these once popular extreme formulations - how widely circulated they are at present I cannot say - in Women and War, pp. 237-41. At the time in question - the mid-1980s - they were inescapable in feminism and peace movement activities.
13. Waltz, Man the State, and War, pp. 4, 5.
14. See p. 20 for the following: Reinhold Niebuhr, a theologian who in the last twenty-fi ve years has written as many words of wisdom on problems of international politics as have any of the academic specialists in that subject, has criticized utopians, Liberal and Marxist alike, with frequency and telling effect. I should note that in the world of Niebuhr scholarship there is division on whether Niebuhr's 'take' on St Augustine is adequate or wanting in signifi cant respects.
15. Waltz, Man the State, and War, p. 41.
16. To be fair, Waltz could not possibly do full justice to all the thinkers he takes up briefly. But Augustine carries much of the conceptual weight for fi rst-image pessimism so a richer account of Augustine's position would be welcome. Otherwise, one winds up tilting at windmills of one's own creation, at least up to a point.
17. The quote from Freud reads: So long as there are nations and empires, each prepared callously to exterminate its rival, all alike must be equipped for war. See Waltz, Man, the State, and War, p. 187.
18. Waltz, Man the State, and War, p. 4.
19. There is a mountain of Augustine scholarship, old and new, given the extraordinary revival of interest in every aspect of Augustine's work. For a discussion of the civic theology/cultural representations question - or at least an introduction to such matters - see Jean Bethke Elshtain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1995).
20. See Sigmund Freud, Thoughts for the Times of War and Death, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 14 (London: Hogarth Press, 1964), pp. 275-88;
21. Sigmund Fred, Why War?, Standard Edition, vol. 20, pp. 199-215.
22. Addams limned these themes in various essays but see, especially, The Long Road of Woman's Memory (New York: Macmillan, 1917).
23. Details on her arguments and a critical response can be found in Jean Bethke Elshtain, Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
24. See also Jane Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace (New York: Macmillan, 1915).
25. Waltz, Man, the State, and War, p. 122.
26. Waltz, Man, the State, and War, p. 186.
27. The quote is from Waltz, Man, the State, and War, p. 238.