Conscription, Family, and the Modern State A Comparative Study of France and the United States

Advance praise: 'Military conscription is a charged issue that dramatically brings to the fore the complex understandings of rights and responsibilities that make up modern citizenship. In this important study Dorit Geva compares conscription - and claims for exemption from it - in two paradigmatic modern nations, France and the United States. Sharing revolutionary traditions, the two countries arrived at different systems of conscription, but through two world wars struggled over similar core ideas about what it means to be a citizen, to be male, and to have family as well as national obligations. The study casts light not only on the gendered role of military service in citizenship but on core ideas about fairness, obligation, and sacrifice.' Craig Calhoun, Director, London School of Economics and Political Science Advance praise: 'Soldiering and fathering - the 'two sides of masculine citizenship' in the modern state - are at odds. If men soldier, they aren't around to support - and rule - their families. If they father, they are less available to fight. How modernizing states in France and the United States negotiated these tensions is the subject of this fascinating book, which analyzes the rise and decline of family-based exemptions to military conscription as well as women's rights in family law. By showing how citizenship is gendered for men as well as women, Geva breathes fresh air into the study of gender and the state.' Mala Htun, University of New Mexico