On Sept. 6 and 7, anthropologists, historians, sociologists and even an exiled Peruvian general will join forces on the Cornell University campus to consider the question: How is the military being redefined in different corners of the globe as the 20th century draws to a close?

“Demilitarization, Remilitarization after the Cold War in Germany, Japan, Peru and the U.S.A.” is a workshop being organized by Cornell anthropologists John Borneman, Billie Jean Isbell, Robert J. Smith and Theodore Bestor and sponsored by their department as well as Cornell’s East Asia Studies Program, Latin American Studies Program, Institute for European Studies and Peace Studies Program and the Rose Goldsen Fund on Images of Society. The workshop is free and open to the public.

“By attending this workshop, people will hear some of the most original minds today address how militarization is being redefined as practices of defense, arming and security,” Borneman said. Topics to be addressed include how changes in morality influence concepts of security; changes in civil/military relations; notions of enemies in Germany; right-wing militarism and local mobilization in the United States; and the use of militaries to fight or facilitate drug trafficking or to eliminate internal rebel groups like the Shining Path in Peru and the Red Brigades in Japan.

Workshop organizers chose the four countries, Borneman said, because “they provide the most radical contrasts of ways in which the domain of the military is being redefined.”
The workshop begins Friday morning in Room G-08 of Uris Hall, with a focus on the U.S. military. Speaking will be Jeffrey Longhofer of the University of Missouri and Lauren Berlant of the University of Chicago, followed by a discussion by Cornell’s Mary Katzenstein, associate professor of government.

Friday afternoon, Michael Geyer of the University of Chicago, Konrad Jarausch of the University of North Carolina and Peter Katzenstein, Cornell government professor, will discuss the meaning of prewar militarization and postwar demilitarization in Germany.

Saturday the sessions move to 215 McGraw Hall, where a morning session will focus on Peru, with Orin Starn of Duke University, Tom Holloway, Cornell professor of history, and Gen. Alberto Arciniega, the former director of the Peruvian Military Forces Human Rights Commission and former commander in Peru’s coca-growing region.

An afternoon session on Japan will feature the University of Pennsylvania’s Akiko Hashimoto, the University of Hawaii’s Patricia Steinhoff and Victor Koschmann, Cornell professor of Japanese history.

Borneman said his hope for the workshop is that it “will offer new perspectives on the military for researchers and a new vocabulary for framing questions about defense and security issues – and that it will open up possibilities for more critical research on militarism.”

For information about the workshop, contact Borneman at (607) 255-6790 or Mary Jo Dudley of the Latin American Studies Program at (607) 255-3345.