Social movements near American military bases have been increasingly successful at opposing the continue militarization of their home communities. Focusing on groups from Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawai'i and Okinawa –as well as the global “No Bases” network – this paper examines how social movements in presently colonized places organize their multi-scalar activism to challenge the legitimacy of militarism. While the American state views many of these places as sacrifice areas for an imperial national security, these organizations resist this banal colonialism through campaigns for a localization of sovereignty and a redefinition of security. Inspired by strategies of decentralized organization, affinity, direct action and mutual aid these ‘newest social movements’ are not merely petitioning the imperial state for greater access to rights through a politics of demand, but are engaged with creating secure physical and social environments through struggles for local self-determination, demilitarization, and environmental decontamination. Through their activism these organizations challenge not only the legitimacy of contemporary imperialism, but also the notion that the nation-state is the proper institution (and scale) to define rights, sovereignty, health and security.
AgambenG. (1998) Homo Sacer.Stanford: Stanford University Press
2.
AgambenG. (2005) State of Exception.Chicago: University of Chicago Press
3.
AguonJ. (2005) Just Left of the Setting Sun.Tokyo: Blue Ocean Press
4.
AguonJ. (2006) The Fire this Time: Essay on Life Under US Occupation.Tokyo: Blue Ocean Press
5.
andAkibayashi K., TakazatoS. (2009) Okinawa: Women's Struggle for Demilitarization in LutzC. (ed) The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against U.S. Military Posts (pp. 243–269). New York: NYU Press.
6.
AldrichR., and ConnellJ. (1998) The Last Colonies.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
7.
BaldacchinoG. (2010) Island Enclaves: Offshoring Strategies, Creative Governance and Subnational Jurisdictions.Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.
8.
Benitez-RojoA. (1997) The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective.Durham: Duke University Press
9.
BernazzoliR., and FlintC. (2009) Power, Place, and Militarism: Toward a Comparative Geographic Analysis of Militarization.Geography Compass, 3393–411.
10.
BevacquaM. (2010) The Exceptional Life and Death of a Chamorro Soldier: Tracing the Militarization of Desire in Guam, USA in ShigematsuS., and CamachoK. (ed) Militarized Currents: Towards a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific. (pp. 33–62) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
11.
BrownM., and StaeheliL. (2003) ‘Are we there yet?’ Feminist Political Geographies.Gender, Place and Culture10: 247–255.
12.
CarlssonC. (2008) Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-Lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future Today!Oakland: AK Press.
13.
CritchlowR. (2005) U.S. military overseas basing: new developments and oversight issues for congress.Washington: Congressional research service.
14.
DavisJ. (2005) Representing place: ‘Deserted isles’ and the reproduction of Bikini Atoll.Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95, 607–625.
15.
DavisJ. (2007) Scales of Eden: Conservation and Pristine Devastation on Bikini AtollEnvironment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25: 213–235.
16.
DavisJ., Hayes-ConroyJ., and JonesV. (2007) “Military Pollution and Natural Purity: Seeing Nature and Knowing Contamination in Vieques, Puerto Rico”GeoJournal, 69(3): 165–179.
17.
DavisS. (2011) “The US military base network and contemporary colonialism: Power projection, resistance and the quest for operational unilateralism”Political Geography, 30: 215–224.
18.
DayR. (2005) Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements.London: Pluto
19.
DeLoughreyE. (2007) Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures.Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press
20.
DeningG. (1996) Performances.Chicago: University of Chicago Press
21.
DowlerL., and SharpJ. (2001) A feminist geopolitics?Space and Polity, 5: 165–176.
22.
EnloeC. (1990) Bananas, Beaches, & Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics.Berkeley: University of California Press
23.
EnloeC. (2007) Globalization and Militarism: Feminists make the Link.New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers
24.
Gibson-GrahamJ-K. (2008) Diverse economies: performative practices for ‘other worlds.’Progress in Human Geography, 32: 613–632.
25.
GlassmanJ. (2001) From Seattle (and Ubon) to Bangkok: the scales of resistance to corporate globalization.Environment and Planning D: Society and Space19: 513–533.
26.
GregoryD. (2004) The Colonial Present.Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publisher
27.
GregoryD., and PredA. (2007) Violent Geographies: Fear, Terror and Political Violence.New York: Routledge.
HannahM. (2006) Torture and the ticking bomb: The war on terrorism as a geographical imagination of power/knowledge.Annals of the Association of American Geographers96: 622–640.
30.
HarveyD. (1996) Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference.Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers
31.
HarveyD. (2003) The New Imperialism.Oxford: Oxford Press
32.
Hau'ofaE. (1994) Our Sea of Islands.The Contemporary Pacific6: 148–161.
33.
HavlickD. (2007) Logics of Change for military-to-wildlife conversions in the United States.GeoJournal, 69(3): 145–164.
34.
HermanR. (2008) Inscribing Empire: Guam and the War in the Pacific National Historical Park.Political Geography, 27, 630–651.
35.
HezelF. (1995) Strangers in their Own Land: A Century of Colonial Rule in the Caroline and Marshall Islands.Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press
36.
HollowayJ. (2002) Change the world without taking power.London: Pluto
37.
HoweK. (2000) The Knowing of Oceania.Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press
38.
HyndmanJ. (2004) Mind the gap: bridging feminist and political geography through geopolitics.Political Geography23: 307–322.
39.
InoueM. (2004) We are Okinawans but of a different kind.Current Anthropology45: 85–104.
40.
JohnsonC. (2007) Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.New York: Metropolitan Books
41.
JohnsonG. (1980) Nuclear legacy: Islands laid waste.Oceans13: 57–60.
42.
KirkG. (2008) Gender and U.S. Bases in Asia-Pacific.Foreign policy in Focus. March 14, 2008
43.
KruparS. (2007) Where eagles dare: an ethnofable with personal landfill.Environment and Planning D: Society and Space25: 194–212.
44.
KuletzV. (1998) The Tainted Desert: Environmental Ruin in the American West.New York: Routledge.
45.
LutzC. (2001) Homefront.Boston: Beacon Press
46.
LutzC. (2002) Making war at home in the United States: Militarization and the current crisis.American Anthropologist104: 723–735.
47.
LutzC. (2006) Empire is in the Details.American Ethnologist, 33, 4: 593–611.
48.
LutzC. (2009) The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against U.S. Military Posts.New York: NYU Press.
49.
MarstonS. (2000) The social construction of scale.Progress in Human Geography24: 219–242.
50.
McCaffreyK. (2002) Military Power and Popular Protest: The U.S. Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico.New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press
51.
McCarthyJ. (2005) Scale, Sovereignty, and strategy in Environmental Governance.Antipode37: 731–753.
52.
O’ TuathailG. (1996) An anti-geopolitical eye: Maggie O'Kane in Bosnia, 1992–93.Gender, Place and Culture3: 171–185.
53.
PetersenG. (1998) Strategic location and sovereignty: modern Micronesia in the historical context of American expansionism.Space and polity2: 179–205.
54.
PoyerL (2001) The Typhoon of War: Micronesian Experiences of the Pacific War.Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
55.
RogersR. (1994) Destiny's Landfall: A History of Guam.Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
56.
SantanaD. (2006) La lucha continúa: Challenges for a post-Navy Vieques.CENTRO18: 108–123.
57.
SatokoN. (2011) Hatoyama's Confession: The Myth of Deterrence and the Failure to Move a Marine Base Outside Okinawa,The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 9 No 3, February 28, 2011.
58.
ShigematsuS, and CamachoK. (2010) Militarized Currents: Towards a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
59.
SeagerJ. (1993) Earth Follies: Coming to Feminist Terms with the Global Environmental Crisis.New York: Routledge
60.
SmithB. (1992) Imagining the Pacific in the Wake of the Cook Voyages.Yale University PressNew Haven
61.
UeuntenW. (2010) Rising Up from a Sea of Discontent: The 1970 Koza Uprising in U.S.-OccupiedOkinawain, ShigematsuS., and CamachoK. (ed) Militarized Currents: Towards a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific. (pp. 91–124) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
62.
VineD. (2004) War and forced migration in the Indian Ocean: the US military base at Diego Garcia.International Migration42: 111–143.
63.
WarfB. (1997) The geopolitics/geoeconomics of military base closures in the USA.Political Geography16: 541–563.
64.
WilsonR. (2000) Reimagining the American Pacific: From South Pacific to Bamboo Ridge and Beyond.Durham: Duke University Press.
