For an introductory course at the University of Florida

1. Seeing red
ANT 2140 FEB. 27, 2014
RACHEL WAYNE

2. Militarization
• MILITARIZATION: "the contradictory and tense social process in
which civil society organizes itself for the production of violence”
• This process involves an intensification of the labor and
resources allocated to military purposes, including the shaping of
other institutions in synchrony with military goals. Militarization is
simultaneously a discursive process, involving a shift in general
societal beliefs and values in ways necessary to legitimate the use
of force, the organization of large standing armies and their leaders,
and the higher taxes or tribute used to pay for them. […]While it is
often called by such names as "military strength," or framed as a tool
to defend freedom, militarization is a process that helped spawn the
violence of September 11 and the violent response of October 7: To
understand militarization, so many must hope, is to put some
impediment in its deadly path. [Lutz 2002:723]

6. Questions
• What is military pride? What is freedom?
• Answer anthropologically!
• What are the social effects of the military?
• How is the military marketed?

7. Gender and sexual orientation and the
military
• President Barack Obama on Friday certified the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell," the
policy preventing gays from openly serving in the military. ‘Our military will no longer
be deprived of the talents and skills of patriotic Americans just because they happen
to be gay or lesbian,’ Obama said in a statement released by the White House. The
move came after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Joint Chiefs of Staff
certified that the military was ready to end the ban.” (NBC News, July 11, 2011)
• “Pentagon officials Friday said an Army colonel who wrote an internal email
suggesting photos of attractive women should be avoided in promotional materials
has stepped down from duties involving a gender study. Army spokesman George
Wright said Col. Lynnette Arnhart is stepping aside, and Gen. Robert Cone,
commander of the Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Eustis, Va., will lead the
gender-integration study “to protect the integrity” of the work.” (AP Nov. 23, 2013)
• [Defense Secretary Leon Panetta] argued that women, who already make up 15
percent of the force, have increasingly found themselves in the "reality of combat"
during Iraq and Afghanistan. He said not everyone can meet the qualifications to be a
combat soldier but that everyone is entitled the opportunity. (Fox News Jan. 24, 2013)

10. questions
• Has the normative soldier changed?
• How are dissonant characteristics of a soldier (based
on race/gender/sexual orientation) handled?
• What processes are occuring in both the media and
legislative efforts surrounding these issues?
• A personal perspective.

11. questions
• Has the normative soldier changed?
• How are dissonant characteristics of a soldier (based
on race/gender/sexual orientation) handled?
• What processes are occuring in both the media and
legislative efforts surrounding these issues?
• A personal perspective.
• hegemony
• legitimization
• normatization
• social constructivism