In/Visible War addresses a paradox of twenty-first century American warfare. The contemporary visual American experience of war is ubiquitous, and yet war is simultaneously invisible or absent; we lack a lived sense that “America” is at war. This paradox of in/visibility concerns the gap between the experiences of war zones and the visual, mediated experience of war in public, popular culture, which absents and renders invisible the former. Large portions of the domestic public experience war only at a distance. For these citizens, war seems abstract, or may even seem to have disappeared altogether due to a relative absence of visual images of casualties. Perhaps even more significantly, wars can be fought without sacrifice by the vast majority of Americans.
 
Yet, the normalization of twenty-first century war also renders it highly visible. War is made visible through popular, commercial, mediated culture. The spectacle of war occupies the contemporary public sphere in the forms of celebrations at athletic events and in films, video games, and other media, coming together as MIME, the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network.  
 

In the continuing estrangement between the West and the Muslim Middle East, human rights are becoming increasingly enmeshed with territorial concerns. Marked by both substance and rhetoric, they are situated at the heart of many foreign policy decisions and doctrines of social change, and often serve as a justification for aggressive actions.

In humanitarian and political debates about the topic, women and children are frequently considered first. Since the 1990s, human rights have become the most legitimate and legitimizing juridical and cultural claim made on a woman's behalf. But what are the consequences of equating women's rights with human rights? As the eleven essays in this volume show, the impact is often contradictory.

Bringing together some of the most respected scholars in the field, including Inderpal Grewal, Leela Fernandes, Leigh Gilmore, Susan Koshy, Patrice McDermott, and Sidonie Smith, Just Advocacy? sheds light on the often overlooked ways that women and children are further subjugated when political or humanitarian groups represent them solely as victims and portray the individuals that are helping them as paternal saviors.

Drawn from a variety of disciplinary perspectives in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, Just Advocacy? promises to advance a more nuanced and politically responsible understanding of human rights for both scholars and activists.

Analysts today routinely look toward the media and popular culture as a way of understanding global security. Although only a decade ago, such a focus would have seemed out of place, the proliferation of digital technologies in the twenty-first century has transformed our knowledge of near and distant events so that it has become impossible to separate the politics of war, suffering, terrorism, and security from the practices and processes of the media.

This book brings together ten path-breaking essays that explore the ways our notions of fear, insecurity, and danger are fostered by intermediary sources such as television, radio, film, satellite imaging, and the Internet.  The contributors, from a wide range of disciplines, show how both fictional and fact-based threats to global security have helped to create and sustain a culture that is deeply distrustful.  Topics range from the Patriot Act, to the censorship of media personalities, to the role that television programming plays as an interpretative frame for current events.

Designed to promote strategic thinking about the relationships between media, popular culture, and global security, this book is essential reading for scholars of international relations, technology, and media studies.