Review of International Studies (1999), 25, 475–491 Copyright © British International Studies Association Masculinities, IR and the ‘gender variable’: a cost-benefit analysis for (sympathetic) gender sceptics

CHARLOTTE HOOPER1

Abstract. While it is commonplace to argue that international relations reflects a ‘masculinist’ world of men, this article reverses the argument and asks whether international relations might also discipline men and help produce masculinities. In thinking through this question, the article provides an alternative route to understanding the feminist argument that the ‘gender variable’ cannot simply be added to mainstream analysis. By drawing attention to the epistemological and methodological problems which would arise even with empirically oriented research on the subject, the limitations of mainstream approaches to this hitherto largely neglected area of research are highlighted, and alternatives suggested.

Introduction

One point feminist contributors to IR have made on numerous occasions, and which even sympathetic mainstream academics seem particularly resistant to, is the idea that gender cannot just be grafted onto existing explanatory approaches which are profoundly ‘masculinist’. An adequate analysis of gender requires more radical changes, including an ontological and epistemological revolution.2 In arguing this, feminists have tried to counter the naive approach to gender which argues along the following lines: if international relations marginalises both women and the feminine, then why can’t women and the feminine be brought in to mainstream approaches in the same way that other previously neglected variables have been incorporated?3 For that matter, in the interests of ‘balance’, why can’t a gender focused analysis of men and masculinity also be incorporated into mainstream approaches? 4 This article would like to argue that while in some limited way, it might be possible to add the

1 The author would like to thank the Economic and Social Science research Council for financial help during the research for this article, and also members of the International Politics Research Group at the University of Bristol for their helpful comments. 2 For example: Rebecca Grant, ‘The Sources of Gender Bias in International Relations Theory’, in Rebecca Grant and Kathleen Newland (eds.), Gender and International Relations (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), pp. 8–26; J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations (Oxford, 1992); V. Spike Peterson, ‘Introduction’, in V. Spike Peterson (ed.) Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 1–64; Christine Sylvester, and International Relations in a Postmodern Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 3 See Robert O. Keohane, ‘International Relations Theory: Contributions of a Feminist Standpoint’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 18:2 (1989) pp. 245–50; on incorporating feminine qualities into IR, and the critical reply by Cynthia Weber, ‘Good Girls, Little Girls and : Male Paranoia in ’s Critique of Feminist International Relations’, Millennium, 23:1 (1994), pp. 377–49. 4 See Adam Jones, ‘Does Gender Make the World go Round? Feminist Critiques of International Relations’, in Review of International Studies, 22:4 (1996), pp. 405–30. 475 476 Charlotte Hooper

‘gender variable’ to the long list of variables which are variously deemed to inform the practices of international relations, to do so would be to exclude analysis of the most salient ingredients of the relationship between gender and international relations. Such ingredients should be of interest to mainstream IR scholars because they are bound up with power politics—albeit power politics of a different sort from the ones usually focused on in the discipline. While, as indicated above, this is hardly a novel argument in feminist circles, it has not been readily understood or accepted by others, beyond a few post-positivist sym- pathisers. Mainstream critics of feminist approaches, who might consider themselves open to persuasion with regard to the ‘gender variable’, have been baffled by both the language and concerns of feminists, and have accused them—particularly post- structuralist feminists—of failing to produce a relevant research agenda.5 Feminist discussions of the epistemological limitations and inherent masculinism of main- stream IR have on the whole started from the premise that international relations reflects men and ‘masculinity’ and excludes women and ‘femininity’. Their sub- sequent explanations that one cannot merely add women and the feminine because gender constructions are relationally defined, that they are linked to a whole series of gendered dichotomies in which masculine traits are valued and feminine ones devalued (forming a residual ‘other’); and that scientific methodologies reflect valued masculine traits rather than devalued feminine ones, appear to fall on deaf, or at least sceptical ears. But the argument that mainstream approaches are ontologically and epistemo- logically inadequate to deal with gender can also be approached from a different angle, one which would perhaps provide another opportunity for sceptics to reconsider their dismissal of the relevance of feminist claims, and to think through the possible range of consequences of acknowledging gender in their work. Rather than focusing on what is excluded from the discipline as conventionally defined, one can focus on what is included: that is the activities of men in the international arena. While it is commonplace to argue that international relations reflects a world of men and masculinity, it is also worth examining the possibility of a current of influence running in the other direction. One could ask whether international relations plays any role in the shaping, defining and legitimating of such masculinity or mascu- linities? Might causality, or at least the interplay of complex influences, run in both directions, in mutually reinforcing patterns? Might international relations discipline men as much as men shape international relations? 6 In order to investigate the intersections between gender identities and inter- national relations, one cannot rely on approaches which would take gender identities

5 Keohane, ‘International Relations Theory’; J. Ann Tickner ‘You Just Don’t Understand: Troubled Engagements Between Feminists and IR Theorists’, unpublished paper given at the School of International Relations, University of Southern California, August 1996. 6 This question has occasionally been asked by feminists before, most often specifically in relation to soldiering and war. See for example Barbara Ehrenreich ‘Foreword’, in Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, vol. 1. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. ix–xvii; Cynthia Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993); and Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London, 1996). In more general terms the question remains relatively neglected, although it was raised recently by Marysia Zalewski and Cynthia Enloe in ‘Questions about Identity in International Relations’ in and Steve Smith (eds.), International Relations Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995). Masculinities, IR and the ‘gender variable’ 477 as ‘givens’, or as independent, externally derived variables.7 Instead one would need to move towards those which could examine the (international) politics of identity construction. As this article will argue, such a move, even if it is primarily concerned with the generation of an empirical research agenda with regard to the production of masculine identities through practices which form the so-called ‘core’ of the discipline (such as war, foreign policy, and the globalisation of the world economy) will almost certainly reveal some of the ontological, methodological, and ultimately, the epistemological limitations of mainstream approaches. This is because such approaches attempt to restrict the relevant field to the ‘public’ if not the ‘inter- national’ levels of analysis, and also treat theory as entirely separate from the subject matter being investigated—whether the purpose of such theory is scientific ‘explanation’ or more historically oriented ‘interpretation’.8

International Relations and the production of masculinities

In asking whether international relations might influence masculinity or masculini- ties, there is an assumption that masculinity is not a fixed, biologically based set of personality characteristics, but is in some way malleable to social influences. While lack of space precludes a long discussion on the construction of gender identities, it is worth briefly noting that historical and anthropological research suggests that there is no single ‘masculinity’ or ‘femininity’ and that both are subject to numerous and fairly fast-changing historical and cultural variations.9 For example, dominant forms of Anglo-Saxon masculinity have drawn on an eclectic mix of competing and partially overlapping and historical archetypes. The main ones include, firstly, a Greek citizen/warrior model which combined militarism with rationalism and equated manliness with citizenship in a masculine arena of free speech and politics. This was joined by a patriarchal Judaeo/Christian model with a domesticated ideal of manly responsibility, ownership and the authority of the father of fathers. Later came an aristocratic honour/patronage model in which personal bonds between men, military heroism and taking risks were highly valued, with the duel as the ultimate test of masculinity. Finally, there developed a Protestant bourgeois rationalist model which idealised competitive individualism, reason and self- control—and combined respectability as breadwinner and head of household with

7 External to the relevant practices of international relations, that is. Of course as argues, not everything that varies is a variable—nor are any variables truly independent of the theoretical perspectives in which they are embedded. See Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), ch. 1. 8 Terms as used by Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, in Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 9 See for example Peter N. Stearns, Be a Man: Males in Modern Society (London: Holmes and Meier, 1979); J. A. Mangan and James Walvin (eds.), Manliness and Morality: Middle Class Masculinity in Britain and America 1800–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987); Michael Roper and John Tosh (eds.), Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (London: Routledge, 1991); R. W. Connell, ‘The Big Picture: Masculinities in Recent World History’, Theory and Society, 22 (1993), pp. 579–623; Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne (eds.), Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (London: Routledge, 1994); Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman (eds.), Theorizing Masculinities (London: Sage, 1994). 478 Charlotte Hooper calculative rationality in public life.10 Elements from and combinations of all these models are still in cultural circulation today. Gender also intersects with other social divisions such as class, race and sexuality to produce complex hierarchies of (gendered) identities in which the relevant ingredients of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ may vary considerably. For example, while ‘rationality’ has historically been associated with masculinity in European modernity, in racist hierarchies black men have been deemed incapable of this trait. Meanwhile the physical frailness of Victorian femininity was also apparently confined to white women.11 What, one might ask, has any of this to do with international relations? Firstly, if there is no single ‘masculinity’ attributable to all men, but rather a range of historically and culturally specific masculinities, than perhaps it might be worth examining whether specific gender identities embodied by groups of actors produce patterns of predictable behaviour. If so, such patterns might act as explanatory variables which could be incorporated into strategic analysis in much the same way as other local ‘cultural’ or ‘ethnic’ variables.12 Particular processes of gender identi- fication may inform other, more conventionally defined political and military struggles identified in IR literature. For example, US foreign policies in the latter part of the Vietnam War and its aftermath—up to and including the Gulf War, may have been inflected by a desire to rescue and bolster American manhood after its humiliation at the hands of the Vietcong (sometimes characterised as a bunch of women and children) as much as by rational foreign policy interests.13 However, the picture generated by an analysis of gender motivations would not be very illumi- nating, if it ignored the effects on gender identity produced through the practices of international relations. The model of gender identification put forward here does not confine its interest to developmental matters but rather implicates all areas and levels of social and political life in the production and maintenance of gender identities. International relations would be no exception. Indeed, as international relations, conventionally defined, is made up largely of the activities of men, then it may be an area of life that is particularly significant for the production and maintenance of masculinities. It is likely that political events and masculine identities are both simultaneous products of men’s participation in the practices of international relations. Considering the three dimensions of gender identity discussed above, all the possible links between men and the practices of international relations are illustrated by the arrows in Figure 1. The two way arrows indicate that not only do men make international relations but that international relations may discipline men and help produce and maintain

10 Sources: Stearns, Be a Man; Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981); Joan Cocks, The Oppositional Imagination: , Critique and Political Theory (London: Routledge, 1989); David H. J Morgan, Discovering Men (London: Routledge, 1992); Connell, ‘The Big Picture’; Victor J. Seidler, ‘Fathering, Authority and Masculinity’, in Rowena Chapman and Johnathan Rutherford (eds.), Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), pp. 272–302. As both Seidler and Morgan argue, Weber’s seminal work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism can be fruitfully read as a discussion of modern bourgeois masculinity. 11 Lynne Segal, Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men (London: Virago, 1990). 12 See Ole Waever, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup and Pierre Lemaitre, Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe (London: Pinter, 1993), for a recent example. 13 Zalewski and Enloe, ‘Questions about Identity’. Masculinities, IR and the ‘gender variable’ 479

Figure 1. The relationship between men and international relations.

masculine identities through the same channels in reverse. The separation of elements in this diagram is illustrative only. Of course there are complex relation- ships between the dimensions of embodiment, institutional practices and symbolic meanings—which are often all present in the same ‘event’. Nevertheless for explanatory purposes the connections are separated here. To illustrate this diagram and explain these connections there follows a fairly arbitrary selection of examples drawn from existing research. Some illustrate the links through all three dimensions, while others operate most clearly through one or two dimensions. All have been chosen to highlight the influence of international relations on masculinities rather than vice versa, as this is the direction of influence under consideration. Military combat in the pursuit of wars is a clear example of how international relations helps to shape men. War has been deemed central to the discipline itself, and has historically played a large part in defining what it means to be a man in the modern era, symbolically, institutionally and through the shaping of men’s bodies. Firstly, the symbolic dimension: the argument that men take life while women give it is a cornerstone of one powerful ideology of gender differences. This ideology has been central to modern warfare and underpins the masculinity of soldiering and the historic exclusion of women from combat. In symbolic terms, engaging in war is often deemed to be the clearest expression of men’s enduring natural ‘aggression’, as well as their manly urge to serve their country and ‘protect’ their female kin, with the one implying the other.14 The popular myth is that military service is the fullest expression of masculinity, and in 1976 there were about 20 million men under arms in about 130 standing armies world-wide.15

14 J. Ann Tickner, ‘Identity in International Relations Theory: Feminist Perspectives’, in Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil (eds.), The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996), pp. 147–62. 15 Bob Connell, ‘Masculinity, Violence and War’ in Michael S. Kimmel and Michael A. Messner (eds.), Men’s Lives (New York: Macmillan, 1989), p. 194. This figure allows for an estimated 2 million women in total armies of 22 million. 480 Charlotte Hooper

However, as Barbara Ehrenreich argues, ‘it is not only men that make wars, it is wars that make men’16—literally and physically. Military service has served as a rite of passage for boys to be made men throughout much of the modern era, while at the level of embodiment, military training explicitly involves the physical and social shaping of the male body. Indeed it can be argued that ‘war and the military represent one of the major sites where direct links between hegemonic masculinities and men’s bodies are forged’.17 Joanna Bourke has examined the relationship between masculinities and embodiment in Britain in the First World War, when soldiering became intimately bound up with notions of masculinity.18 Soldiering disciplined the male body, helping to shape its style of masculinity as well as its physical contours. This shaping was inflected by class. As one middle-class soldier, Ralph Scott, graphically noted in his diary: I looked at my great murderous maulers and wondered idly how they had evolved from the sensitive manicured fingers that used to pen theses on ‘Colloidal Fuel’ and ‘The Theory of Heat Distribution in Cylinder Walls.’ And I found the comparison good.19 If middle class men found themselves transformed from bourgeois rationalists to warrior-citizens, then for the working classes, the emphasis was much more on basic fitness. At the beginning of the war British authorities had been horrified at the quality of their raw material, as British manhood was by and large malnourished, disease ridden, stunted in their growth and poorly educated. Such men had to be ‘converted’ into soldiers, both physically and mentally. The increased surveillance and regulation of male bodies which this entailed was sustained through the inter- war years, when regular exercise through military type drills was widely adopted in schools and other institutions. Military drill therefore constituted an institutional practice which had been established through war and which had a widespread effect on men’s bodies. Drill was also deemed to make men economically efficient, to promote emotional self control, and even to enhance brain development.20 Men who did not fight were looked down on, while the ‘real’ men who fought carried a high risk of death or physical disablement. The return of thousands of youthful war-mutilated servicemen, who were hailed as masculine heroes, changed the medical and technological approach to disablement for good, and even modified public attitudes for a while. Initially, although the most disfigured were kept out of sight, the lightly maimed soldier was regarded as ‘not less but more of a man’.21 These were ‘active’ rather than ‘passive’ sufferers, who deserved respect, not pity, and who were even deemed especially attractive to women.22 To be physically maimed was far more manly than to be a ‘malingerer’ or shell shock victim. The dead were also heroes. In the long term however, sympathy changed to disgust at the carnage involved, and disabled ex-servicemen who could not fulfil a role as breadwinners became increasingly marginalised and feminised.

16 Ehrenreich, ‘Introduction’ in Male Fantasies, p. xvi (see fn.6 above). 17 David H. J Morgan, ‘Theatre of War: Combat, the Military and Masculinities’, in Brod and Kaufman, Theorizing Masculinities, p. 168. 18 Bourke, Dismembering the Male (see fn.6 above). 19 Quoted in ibid., pp. 15–16. 20 Ibid., pp. 178–80. 21 Ibid., p. 58. 22 Ibid., p. 56. Masculinities, IR and the ‘gender variable’ 481

Although Bourke finds evidence to suggest that the majority of soldiers in World War I retained a longing for a quiet domestic life, at the extreme the relationship between masculinity, male bodies and war can be brutal and misogynistic. Klaus Theweleit investigated the literary fantasies of the Freikorps.23 This was a volunteer army, derived in part from World War I ‘shock troops’, who helped to put down the attempted socialist revolution in Germany following World War I, and who later became the core of Hitler’s SA. These troops lived for battle and had a reputation for enjoying violence. In their novels and memoirs communists and the rebellious working class were represented as a feminised ‘flood’ or ‘tide’ threatening to break down both masculine integrity and established social barriers. Meanwhile their own male bodies were constructed as dry, clean, hard, erect and intact, but always threatened by contamination from feminine dirt, slime and mire. Physical violence was integral to the construction of the masculine self—without it the Freikorps could not sustain their bodily integrity in the face of desire, pain, and internal viscera—the feminine ‘other’ forever lurking within.24 While the image of male bodies going into battle as clean and hard, and the feminisation of awkward adversaries (as indicated by terms such as ‘quagmire’ applied both to Vietnam and Bosnia) are relatively commonplace in popular culture, it has to be said that the experience of the majority of conscripts was far more prosaic and that the homoerotically tinged extreme of the Freicorps has been untypical in practice. Continuing with the military example, militarisation as an institutional process has followed different paths under different international circumstances. Cynthia Enloe has discussed the varied relationships between women, degrees and types of militarization, constructions of masculinity and international practices in different locations and at different times.25 That the links between masculinity and militarism are contingent and are produced through institutional practices is highlighted in her account. For example, under British colonial rule, the construction of imperial armies was no mean feat, as colonized groups of men often took some persuading that soldiering was in any way a manly pursuit. Where coercion alone would not secure sufficient loyalty and competence, complex bargains over conditions of service had to be struck, depending on differing local requirements of manly respect- ability.26 Recruitment policies have also helped to define hegemonic and subordinate masculinities. In many countries, while for the majority of men conscription has been the price of adult citizenship, ethnically or religiously subordinate groups of men, along with homosexuals, have been barred from active military service or given restricted roles.27 Such restrictions, justified by nationalist security ideologies, have helped to construct the subordinate status of these groups more generally, through the implicit and explicit links between military service and citizenship. Full citizen- ship rights are often denied to men who do not participate in defending the state, in much the same way as they have been for women.28

23 Theweleit, Male Fantasies (see fn. 6 above). 24 Ibid., pp. 385–438. 25 Enloe, The Morning After (see fn. 6 above). 26 Ibid., p. 79. 27 Cynthia Enloe, Ethnic Soldiers: State Security in a Divided Society (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1980). 28 A contemporary example that springs to mind is of Arab citizens of Israel, and of Palestinians in many other Arab countries. 482 Charlotte Hooper

Within the military itself, institutional practices also help to shape different masculinities and masculine identities. Bob Connell argues that the basis of military organisation was historically a relationship between two masculinities—one based on physical violence but subordinate to orders, and another dominating and organisationally competent (in Britain this relationship between ‘officers’ and ‘ranks’ has reflected and helped consolidate the class system). In the last century a third masculinity—that of the technical specialist, has become increasingly important, necessitating a ‘general staff’ of planners, strategists, and latterly technicians, separate from the command of combat units.29 Moving on from the military example, the symbolic and institutional practices of European colonialism have also helped to consolidate hegemonic and subordinate masculinities on a global scale. A global, racialised hierarchy of masculinities was created as part of the institutionalisation of a complex set of race and gender identities sustaining European imperialism, and which still have a cultural legacy today. At the symbolic level, British and French imperialists imagined the ‘Orient’ as an exotic, sensual, and feminised world, a kind of half way stage between ‘Europe’s enlightenment’ and ‘African savagery’. While ‘Oriental’ men were positioned as effeminate (and ‘Oriental’ women as exotic), black Africans of both sexes were deemed uncivilized and, in a projection of European sexual fantasies, were seen as saturated with lust. In Britain, sex was seen as both natural (uncivilised) and a threat to the moral order. White women were regarded as ‘pure’ symbols of this moral order who were always in danger of being raped by black males, if they were not protected. The ‘English gentleman’ positioned himself at the top of this hierarchy, as a self-disciplined, naturally legitimate ruler and protector of morals. He regarded his sexuality as overlaid and tempered by civilization. He became the embodiment of imperial power, seeming to rule effortlessly, and justifying his colonial mission as a civilizing one. As a type then, the Victorian English Gentleman was at least as much a product of imperial politics, as of domestic understandings of Englishness, aristocracy and masculinity. This point is worth emphasising because it is a clear example of how a distinct and apparently domestic masculine type (the English Gentleman) was in fact formed through the international politics of colonialism. In the USA a similar sexualisation of race took place under slavery, where the con- struction of white women as chaste, domesticated and morally pure was accom- plished through the positioning of black slave women as promiscuous, black men as brutes and potential rapists, and white men as protectors. Chinese immigrants occupied the halfway house of indentured labour. They were seen as effeminate because they often did so-called ‘women’s work’ in laundries and kitchens. However they were also regarded as a sexual threat to white women.30 Turning to sport, the production of masculinities and disciplining of male bodies through competitive team games is another legacy of the Victorian colonial era with strong contemporary relevance in institutional and embodiment as well as symbolic terms. Promulgated at first through elite western educational establishments but

29 Connell, ‘Masculinity, Violence and War’. 30 Sources: Segal, Changing Masculinities, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, ‘Introduction’ in Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres (eds.), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991); Richard Fung, ‘Burdens of Representation, Burdens of Responsibility’ in Maurice Berger, Brian Wallis and Simon Watson (eds.), Constructing Masculinity (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 291–98. Masculinities, IR and the ‘gender variable’ 483 soon becoming institutionalised on a global scale, they affect not only sporting relations between states and the lives of international sportsmen, but also the everyday lives of boys and men in schools, clubs and leisure activities, across the globe. The training techniques and the languages of sport and war overlap considerably, with each being used as a metaphor for the other, strengthening the connections between them. At the symbolic level, international sporting com- petitions, particularly in gender segregated team games such as football, rugby and cricket, also mobilise and fuse national feeling, masculine identification and male bonding amongst players and spectators alike.31 Specific foreign policies also lead to the institutionalisation of particular kinds of masculinity. Take for example, the Cold War, which according to Cynthia Enloe: is best understood as involving not simply a contest between two superpowers, each trying to absorb as many countries as possible into its own orbit, but also a series of contests within each of those societies over the definitions of masculinity and femininity that would sustain or dilute that rivalry.32 David Campbell argues that in the American case, an explicit goal of foreign policy was the construction and maintenance of an American identity. A ‘society of security’ 33 was created in which a vigorous loyalty/security program sought to define Americans by excluding the communist ‘other’, both externally and internally. Campbell notes the gendered nature of such exclusionary practices, so that, for example, communists and other ‘undesirables’ were linked through feminisation, as indicated by the abusive term ‘pinko’. Although he doesn’t emphasise the point, this American identity which was constructed through communist witch hunts and the associated tests of ‘loyalty’ was essentially a masculine identity. Indeed it was the very same form of masculinity which was also shaped by fear of ‘latent homo- sexuality’ as discussed by Barbara Ehrenreich.34 The threat of effeminacy, or latent homosexuality, was used to coerce American men into forming a reliable work force who would voluntarily support wives and children in the 1950s. Masculinity was equated with adulthood, marriage and the bread winning role, and homosexuality was demonised as the ultimate escapism. This ideology was backed up by theories from a host of psychological, medical and sociological experts. Any man who failed to fully live up to the bread winning role by walking out on his wife or job (or worse still—remained unmarried or unemployed in the first place) might be diagnosed as suffering from ‘latent’ or ‘pseudo’ homosexuality. Every heterosexual man was on his guard against such possibilities. It was the equation of latent homosexuality with femininity rather than with sexual deviance which guaranteed its effectiveness as a threat. Integrating Campbell’s and Ehrenreich’s work, it becomes clear that vigilance against the possibility that unsuspecting liberals might unwittingly help the

31 David Jackson, Unmasking Masculinity (London: Routledge, 1990); Michael J. Shapiro ‘The Sport/War Intertext’ in James Der Derian and Michael J. Shapiro (eds.), International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 69–96. 32 Enloe, The Morning After, pp. 18–19. 33 David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 166. 34 Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (London: Pluto Press, 1983). 484 Charlotte Hooper communist cause, paralleled and intersected with the vigilance needed to ward off the threat of ‘latent homosexuality’. While the institutional practices which supported this identity were eventually reduced in reach and scope, Ehrenreich suggests that the symbolic legacy lasted longer, so that ‘communism kept masculine toughness in style long after it became obsolete in the corporate world and the consumer marketplace’.35 Finally, the popular media and current affairs operate largely through the symbolic dimension of the links between men and international relations (see Figure 1). Between them they disseminate a wealth of popular iconography which links western masculinities to the wider world beyond the borders of the state. There is a long-standing and continuing association of foreign adventure with virile mascu- linity in the popular media: from boys stories in the 19th century, through the legend of Lawrence of Arabia and the myth of the French Foreign legion, to contemporary pot-boilers and adventure films.36 Diplomacy, spying and the reported activities of presidents and statesmen have helped to define hegemonic masculinities in the popular imagination. For example, the Cold War relationship between the real and fictional worlds of espionage has been close, with influences in both directions. James Der Derian has identified an intertextual blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction in Cold War spy culture which he argues represents a field of ideological contestation where national security strategies, with their endgames of impossibly real wars of mass annihilation, can be played and re-played for mass consumption as a simulation of war in which states compete, interests clash, and spy counters spy, all in significant fun . . . In the confusion and complexity of international relations, the realm of the spy becomes a discursive space where realism and fantasy interact, and seemingly intractable problems are imaginatively and playfully resolved.37 Popular fictional accounts of espionage borrowed heavily from real life, while real spies not only consumed vast amounts of spy fiction, but also modelled themselves on fictional characters. Spy culture glamourises the alienated world of realpolitic, and its popularity crossed all classes in the Cold War period: even American presidents helped to allay their fears of nuclear annihilation and national insecurity by reading spy fiction—with John Kennedy reportedly being a fan of Fleming’s James Bond, while Ronald Reagan enjoyed Tom Clancy novels.38 The symbolic link between espionage and is demonstrated by James Bond films, which promoted a ‘gentlemanly’ and ‘aristocratic’ ideal of manhood: a man of leisure leading a glamorous lifestyle—updated for Cold War politics. James Bond, suave, sophisticated, and never too busy to frequent casinos or date women as well as outwit the thinly veiled Cold War enemy, epitomises the ‘playboy’ lifestyle identified by Ehrenreich.39 This is one of conspicuous con- sumption and heterosexual flight from domesticity; but with the added bonus of an

35 Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men, p. 103. 36 Helen Kanitkar, ‘“Real True Boys”, Moulding the Cadets of Imperialism’ in Cornwall and Lindisfarne, Dislocating Masculinity, pp. 184–96; Graham Dawson, ‘The Blond Bedouin: Lawrence of Arabia, imperial adventure and the imagining of English-British masculinity’, in Roper and Tosh, Manful Assertions, pp. 113–44. 37 James Der Derian, ‘Spy Versus Spy: The Intertextual Power of International Intrigue’ in Der Derian and Shapiro, International/Intertextual Relations, pp. 163–74. 38 Der Derian, ‘Spy Versus Spy’, p. 172. 39 Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men. Masculinities, IR and the ‘gender variable’ 485 aristocratic English twist. With his aristocratic background, his unflappable cool, ruthlessness and superior brain, he embodies all the virtues of an Anglicised version of a Machiavellian prince, his intrigues updated for a technocratic twentieth century with electronic wizardry and consumerism thrown in. His later, post 1970s appear- ances may have become more parodic,40 but they are still a potent signifier of masculine power and a glamorous international elitism. In the post-Cold War world this playboy image has been transferred to the globe- trotting businessman. For example in the mid nineteen nineties The Economist newspaper (a prominent business and international relations newspaper with a global readership) was still metaphorically invoking the world of Bond fairly regularly, through such images as ‘The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Foreign Report (presented as ‘Your private intelligence service’); a picture of James Bond (Piers Brosnan) in a watch advertisement;41 and the appearance of ex diplomat (and master at diplomatic intrigue) , featured sitting next to an Economist reading businesssman on a plane journey in a film/television promotional advertisement for the paper. 42 Meanwhile, to reinforce fiction with fact, the paper carried a CIA recruitment advertisement offering ‘the ultimate overseas career’ with ‘the clandestine service’.43 Clearly diplomacy and spying and foreign adventure still resonate with post-Cold War constructions of elite masculinity. Meanwhile, in the news and current affairs, media attention is focused on personalities, ‘international players’ who are icons of glamorous wealth and power. Statesmen and presidents are presented as the ultimate hero figures (and sometimes, villains)—popularised larger than life images of exemplary masculinity, judged constantly in terms of their manliness or lack of it (of course this imagery relates to the symbolic role of presidents and statesman, not their actual practices). Even language reveals the gendering of the world beyond state borders: not just explicitly sexual phrases such as ‘conquest of virgin territory’ but also more mundane phrases and slogans such as ‘a man of the world’; and ‘join the army, see the world’; invite men to flee the domestic hearth in the search of manhood—the further the better. Much of the appeal of these glamorised connections between international adventure and masculinity is that the worlds depicted are worlds where women have traditionally been entirely absent, or were presented as threats to masculinity. The very word ‘international’ implies privileged access to a higher plane above and beyond the borders of the state behind which historically most ordinary people have rarely ventured. Although this may no longer be literally the case in the era of cheap jet travel, it still carries symbolic meaning. These cultural connections between notions of masculinity and the ‘international’, together with media representations of glamorised masculinities in an international context, are no less important in constructing masculinities than practices on the ground. They provide a continuing source of imaginative inspiration which informs the meaning of such practices, and also help to reflect and produce the highly gendered cultural framework within which such practices are shaped and interpreted. While they are not all directly relevant to international politics, they form a network of cultural meanings within

40 Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men, p. 104. 41 Advertisement for Omega watches. The Economist, 6/4/96, p. 4. 42 Discussed in the Independent on Sunday, 20/10/96, review p. 34. 43 The Economist, 9/9/95, p. 9. 486 Charlotte Hooper which international relations is embedded, and without which its practices cannot be fully understood.

Academic IR and the politics of identity 44

The above discussion indicates that there may be numerous ways in which inter- national relations are implicated in the construction of masculinities and masculine identities: through the direct disciplining of male bodies, through political and institutional practices, and through broader cultural and ideological links. In con- trast IR as a discipline has generally shown little interest in, and has been ill- equipped to deal with, issues related to the politics of identity construction. The consequence of this is not only that mainstream international relations remains blind to its own masculinist reflections, but also that the construction of gendered identities through the practices of international relations is rendered invisible to the discipline. Before the intervention of feminists, the closest mainstream IR got to acknowledging the relevance of gender identities was in the assumptions about (masculine) human nature which underpinned theory in the classical tradition, and which tended to mirror the prevailing naturalised discourses of gender. For example, Keohane quotes Morgenthau as describing the ‘limitless character of the lust for power’ which ‘reveals a general quality of the human mind’, and which accounted for war.45 After the Second World War, much of IR theory was revolutionised by behaviourism, which sought to turn it into a science of quantifiable and measurable exactness. Such assumptions were questioned and criticised as being vague and unprovable, but rather than criticisms opening up a series of interesting political questions about the absence of foundational identities in politics, attempts were made to contain questions of identity in bureaucratic or psychological models of human behaviour; to mechanise them in the ubiquitous rational actor model, or to do away with them (along with many other relevant topics) by resorting to purely systemic explanations, all in the name of science.46 Given these moves to either codify, or, in Waltz’s case, to remove ‘human nature’ from the discipline it is hardly surprising that the politics of identity construction has been neglected. Leaving the epistemological questions raised by the behavioural revolution aside, one can see that one reason for the inability of IR to deal with questions of gender identity is ontological, and is connected to the way in which the discipline itself has historically been conceptualised in mainstream theory and analysis. International politics has been divorced from politics within states in disciplinary terms because of apparently distinct features which make international politics qualitatively different from other kinds of politics. In the 1950s and 60s, the dominant view was that while politics and ‘the good life’ 47 could be pursued within the secure borders of states,

44 Some of the arguments made in this section have been adapted from an earlier discussion in Charlotte Hooper ‘Masculinist Practices and Gender Politics: the Operation of Multiple Masculinities in International Relations’, in Marysia Zalewski and Jane Parpart, (eds.), The Man Question in IR (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997). 45 Robert O. Keohane, ‘Realism, Neorealism and the Study of world Politics’, in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neo-Realism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 11–12. 46 E.g. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (see fn.7 above). 47 Martin Wight, ‘Why is there no International Theory’ in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966), p. 30. Masculinities, IR and the ‘gender variable’ 487 survival, fragile laws, and uneasy alliances and balances were all that could be expected in an international arena which is above all characterised by anarchy. With anarchy (between states) and sovereignty (within states) as its principal guiding forces, IR theory found it easy to ‘black box’ the state, deeming all that goes on in it as irrelevant except where it is expressed as ‘national interests’. As the discipline of IR has developed since then, the domestic politics/ international relations division has not been strictly adhered to. It has often been breached, for example in foreign policy analysis, when both the domestic determinants of foreign policy and the international determinants of domestic politics have been examined. Such breaches have led to debates over the ‘levels of analysis’ problem, which asks whether international relations should be explained by reference to properties of the system of states, to the behaviour of individual states, to pressures arising from domestic politics, or to the activities of individual people such as particular statesmen.48 Moreover, characterisations of international ‘anarchy’ have also become much more varied and sophisticated.49 It would be unfair and inaccurate to say that mainstream IR now ‘black boxes’ the state, except in one or two influential examples. However, anarchy of one kind or another is still the defining feature of international relations for mainstream analysis, and the domestic politics/international relations divide retains a crucial symbolic import- ance, as it remains the principal justification for the existence of a separate discipline of IR in the first place. Breaching the domestic politics/international relations division, however, will not in itself lead to a clearer understanding of the involvement of international relations in the politics of identity construction or the production of masculinities. This is because of a second boundary (or rather series of overlapping boundaries) which is rarely referred to in mainstream IR literature but which is also highly relevant to its conceptual space. This is the boundary between the public sphere of politics (and economics) and the private sphere of families, domestic labour and reproduction, which has been challenged by feminists.50 Domestic and family life has tended to fall outside both the state and civil society in liberal schemes. As for the newer distinction between the public realm and personal life, the right to privacy has merely tended to reinforce the idea that family relations should be exempt from questions of public and social justice.51 Putting these private/public and domestic/international boundaries together, modern life has been conceptually divided into a number of separate spheres (a division which has only been strengthened by the disciplinary separation of IR from Politics and Government). These spheres can be categorised in a number of ways, but include the domestic/private (which can be divided into familial and personal); the non-domestic/public (which can be further divided into the public state and private civil society); and the international. Thus personal life, domestic and family life, and even much of civil society has been evacuated from IR. Where IR dips into the ‘black box’ of the state it is usually to deal with public political or economic issues and affairs of the state—and even liberal perspectives that emphasise trans-

48 Hollis and Smith, Explaining and Understanding. 49 See for example Barry Buzan, Charles Jones and Richard Little, The Logic of Anarchy : Neorealism to Structural Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 50 See for example, Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988). 51 Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 488 Charlotte Hooper rarely transgress the public/private divides. The production of mascu- linities through the practices of international relations, as illustrated above, is rendered invisible by these divisions that discourage an examination of the inter- connections between the international, and the private world of personhood. Questions of gender identity are generally assumed to be private aspects of adult personality (invoking the right to privacy from public scrutiny), and are rooted in the domestic realm of childhood and family life (invoking the familial/non-familial or domestic/non-domestic divide), if not determined at birth—far from the reach of IR’s focus of analysis. One might argue that transcending the levels of analysis problem and widening the remit of international relations to include an analysis of domestic and personal subject areas previously excluded would solve the problem of how to analyse the connections between international relations and masculine identities more thoroughly. This would also bring into view women and their traditional supporting roles, as advocated by Cynthia Enloe, who coined the phrase ‘the personal is international’.52 Such a move would go a long way towards bringing gender into view, but only if accompanied by appropriate methodologies. In terms of scientific methodologies, while more profound and extensive criticisms could be and have been made in relation to gender,53 it should be immediately apparent from the discussion above that if gender identities are simultaneously causes and effects of international relations then there is no clear-cut unit of analysis on which to base explanations. Rational actor models and other such units of analysis are totally unsuited to the task of investigating how identities themselves are formed. They would have to bear yet another round of improbable modification and qualification or be dispensed with altogether. Assuming this could be done, the scientific language of cause and effect, with its emphasis on being able to isolate distinct and measurable phenomena, would also probably have to give way to one of mutually reinforcing influences. Nor, given the scientific interest in uncovering behavioural regularities, and making predictions on the basis of these, are scientific methods as generally applied in IR particularly suited to the analysis of phenomena that are undergoing rapid and multidimensional historical change. If scientific or explanatory approaches are not particularly suited to this type of investigation then perhaps the traditional alternative of historical analysis would be more applicable. Drawing on the methods of the humanities this approach leans more towards understanding than explanation and involves a less constraining methodology. However, while such an approach may better capture the complexities of the two way influences between masculinities and international relations there would remain an epistemological problem that might block a full analysis of these interconnections. This problem is connected to the symbolic dimension of gender identities, and the problem is that both the discipline of IR and the perspectives and theories produced within it form part of the symbolic realm. Thus IR scholarship is itself implicated in the production of masculinities through the symbolic dimension of gender identification. No perspective that treats theory as distinct and separate from social reality can fully explore this aspect of the relationship between inter-

52 Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Relations (London: Pandora, 1990), p. 195. 53 See for example, Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986). Masculinities, IR and the ‘gender variable’ 489 national relations and the gender identities of men. Therefore, when it comes to analysing IR’s own contribution to the production of masculine identities, post- positivist or reflectivist epistemological positions which can examine the symbolic and discursive functions of IR scholarship itself would be the most effective. Such approaches need not be unduly abstract or ephemeral. For example, Campbell’s analysis of the symbolic and discursive functions of US foreign policy,54 discussed above, is a good example of historically detailed post-structuralist scholarship. Reflectivist methods can uncover or deconstruct the ways in which masculinities are inscribed into the discipline. Feminist critiques of IR’s masculinism already provide a wealth of information on this point and make a good starting place for further investigation. Tickner, for example, finds ‘three models of man’ inscribed into different perspectives on IPE.55 Building on Tickner’s observations, one can see that the different archetypes of hegemonic masculinity mentioned above are variously incorporated into different IR perspectives. Neorealism embodies an eclectic and often contradictory combination of the warrior-citizen (Machiavelli), patriarchal (Hobbes) and bourgeois rational (scientific language and rational actor) models. Meanwhile neo-liberal institutionalism more clearly reflects bourgeois rational masculinity which is itself closely connected to liberalism. The often fierce inter-paradigm debates which have marked the development of the discipline may include a dimension of rivalry between these different masculinities.56 New forms of elite Anglo-American masculinity associated with technocracy and globalisation are also emerging, both within the discipline and on the ground.57 Returning to the private/public/international divides discussed above, an important feature of such divides is their highly gendered nature. The conceptual relegation of women and the ‘feminine’ to the domestic and the private, in classical and liberal theory is well documented as is their almost total practical exclusion from the international and all but the lowliest of public spheres.58 International relations then symbolically forms a wholly masculine sphere of war and diplomacy, at the furthest conceptual extreme from the domestic sphere of families, women and reproduction in the private/public/international divides of modernity.59 Gender divisions and inequalities depend to a great extent on the segregation of social life into separate spheres for men and women, so that gender differences can be con- structed and the lines of difference made visible.60 The cultural and social production of gender differences and gendered character traits segregates the sexes in various ways, in order to construct and make visible the lines of difference

54 Campbell, Writing Security. 55 Tickner, Gender in International Relations (see fn. 2 above). 56 The inscription of different masculinities into the discipline and the rivalries between them is discussed in more detail in Hooper ‘Masculinist Practices and Gender Politics’ (see fn. 44 above). 57 Some post-structuralist scholarship in IR may embody a new informal and playful but technocratic form of hegemonic masculinity associated with globalisation. See Hooper ‘Masculinist practices and Gender Politics’, and also Charlotte Hooper ‘Hegemonic Masculinity in Transition: The Case of Globalization’, in Marianne Marchand and Anne Sisson Runyan (eds.), Gender and Global Restructuring: Shifting Sights and Sightings (London: Routledge, forthcoming). 58 Pateman, The Sexual Contract; Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy. The position of women and children in families was devalued in classic liberal discussions of justice and freedom. 59 Which is why much feminist scholarship on international relations, which bridges these divides, is often seen as irrelevant. See Tickner, ‘You Just Don’t Understand’. 60 It has been argued that in societies where there is greater segregation of the sexes, there are generally more marked gender inequalities. See David Gilmore, Manhood in the Making (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). 490 Charlotte Hooper between them. Generating gendered constructions is an integral part of any such segregational practice. As the private/public /international divisions inscribe international relations as a virtually all-male sphere, then it follows that the activities and qualities associated with this gender-segregated space cannot help but inform the definition and production of masculinities. The emphasis on power politics in both theory and practice then reinforces the associations between such masculinities and power itself, associations that are crucial to masculinism. Having inscribed an all-male sphere which serves as an arena for the production of masculinities, the private/public/ international divisions simultaneously obscure this process. The structuring of IR theory to exclude questions of the politics of identity has some interesting effects. It both serves to uphold the existing gender order and also indirectly confirms the importance of international politics as one of the primary sites for the production and naturalisation of masculinities in the modern era.

Conclusions

This article challenges the disciplinary assumption that international relations and the politics of identities (including gender identities) are discrete areas of research that have no important interconnections. It has not been concerned to answer in any adequate way the question of how international relations helps produce masculine identities, but rather to demonstrate how merely asking the question and beginning to consider how it might be answered highlights some of the ontological, methodo- logical and epistemological problems of mainstream approaches to IR with regard to gender. If breaching the domestic/international and private/public divides which help to define the discipline of IR in order to examine the production of masculine identities through international relations would profoundly alter the ontology of the discipline, then a full examination of the symbolic dimension of gender identi- fication also raises epistemological issues about the role of theory and the discipline itself. This is a case where the attempt to create an applied, empirical research agenda might quickly lead to the post-positivist revolution in order to facilitate a more comprehensive analysis of the so-called ‘gender variable’. That an account of the relationship between masculine identities and inter- national relations would be extremely difficult within conventional approaches should be clear. One cannot simply take mainstream IR and merely add ‘men’ or ‘masculinities’ to get a gendered analysis, any more than one can take mainstream approaches and add either ‘women’ or ‘femininity’. Gender issues profoundly disturb conventional forms of analysis. Molly Cochran argues that even empirically oriented feminist IR scholarship may have implications too radical for its easy incorporation into mainstream analysis.61 This echoes the feminist argument that even (often seen as the mildest form), if carried through to its conclusion, would have profoundly disturbing consequences for liberal politics.62

61 Terrell Carver, Molly Cochran and Judith Squires, ‘Gendering Jones: , IRs, Masculinities’, Review of International Studies, 24:2 (1998), pp. 283–97. 62 Zillah Eisenstein, The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1981). Masculinities, IR and the ‘gender variable’ 491

Therefore, because of its ultimately radical potential, empirical and historical analysis of the relationship between (masculine) gender identities and international relations would be helpful, even where overtly reflectivist approaches are rejected (after all, feminists themselves adopt a variety of epistemological positions). In many ways this question of the ‘gender variable’ parallels the security debate63 and forms part of the question of identities and culture more generally.64 The salience of such questions for international relations has been highlighted recently, both in the post-Cold War resurgence of ethnic rivalry and of identity politics in domestic, international and transnational situations, and in the writings of post- positivist academics. As Yosef Lapid argues, ‘a swing of the pendulum toward culture and identity is . . . strikingly evident in post-Cold War theorizing’.65 This is in response to an awareness amongst IR scholars’ of their mounting theoretical difficulties with apparently ‘exponential increases in global heterogeneity and diversity’.66 As a consequence, constructivist approaches to identity and security have begun to influence mainstream IR academics, although not unprob- lematically.67 As Tickner argues, most feminist scholarship also takes a broadly constructivist (although not necessarily structuralist) approach to gender.68 If it is important at this juncture for IR scholarship to get a grip on both gender and the politics of identities, then at the minimum, sympathetic mainstream academics who are willing to look at constructivist arguments with regard to security and cultural identities, need to expand their horizons to include gender. At the same time, they could usefully draw on the insights of feminism with regard to the politics, social construction and embodiment of identities more generally. They would need to be willing to transcend the ‘levels of analysis’ problem and transgress the private/public/international divides. They would probably have to make fairly major methodological changes if they are used to working with scientific rather than historical methods. Hopefully, sooner or later, they might also find themselves willing to actively engage with the substance, if not the language, of post-positivist debates and positions with regard to the role of theory.69 What is completely inadequate to the task of dealing with the issue of gender identity however, even in empirical terms, is the straightforward grafting of a ‘gender variable’ on to main- stream analysis.

63 In which Campbell, for example, calls for a serious engagement with post-positivism. See Campbell, Writing Security. 64 See Zalewski and Enloe, ‘Questions about Identity’ (see fn. 6 above). 65 Yosef Lapid, ‘Culture’s Ship: Returns and Departures in International Relations Theory’, in Lapid and Kratochwil, The Return of Culture and Identity (see fn. 14 above), p. 3. 66 Lapid, ‘Cultures Ship’, p. 7. 67 See , ‘Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics’, in International Organization, 46, 2 (1992), pp. 391–425; and the debate in Lapid and Kratochwil, The Return of Culture and Identity. Wendt divides constructivists into modern and post-modern varieties. However, Wendt’s own (modern) constructivism leans problematically towards an overly deterministic structuralism, which, while avoiding some of the problems of methodological individualism, can only examine one direction of influence in the two-way traffic between identity construction and international relations. 68 Tickner, ‘Identity in International Relations Theory’. 69 In at least, such debates have been articulated with reference to the need for applied research agendas. See Harding, The Science Question.