UCLA

This dissertation describes the International Women's Network Against Militarism's (IWNAM) political epistemology of security from an archival perspective, and how they create community archives to evidence this epistemology. This research examines records created by Women for Genuine Security (WGS) and Women's Voices Women Speak (WVWS), U.S. and Hawaii based partners of the IWNAM. These records document the emergence of the IWNAM between 1997 and 2012, as women from the countries of South Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Philippines, Australia, Republic of Belau, Guam, Marshall Islands, Hawaii, U.S., Puerto Rico, and Vieques shared information about the negative effects of militarism and strategies of resistance. By describing the archival systems of WGS and WVWS, insight on the IWNAM's knowledge production and archive creation processes are revealed. The archive is conceptualized as the expression of a record creator's "will," an immaterial force that materializes through the dynamic creation of records and recordkeeping systems that coordinate resources and labor to build organizations, institutions and infrastructures. The IWNAM archive is embedded in the Imperial Archive, an imperialist will that creates bi-lateral security agreements, such as the Status of Forces Agreements (SOFA) between the U.S. and South Korea and the U.S. and Japan; and the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between the U.S. and the Philippines. The functions of these agreements are to adapt Westphalian philosophies of security, i.e. Eurocentric militaristic development and international relations, into new territories and contexts. Autoethnography, action research, and archival analysis were used to examine how the IWNAM's record creation and recordkeeping processes are driven by social practices and research to redefine security. The IWNAM archive is conceptualized as a complex adaptive system that facilitates public self-reflection on community embeddedness within militarized orders and creative agency to transform their conditions.