{"title":"Gendering the military past: Understanding heritage and security from a feminist perspective","authors":"C. Åse, Maria Wendt","doi":"10.1177/00108367211007871","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article showcases how a feminist perspective provides novel insights into the relations between military heritage/history and national security politics. We argue that analysing how gender and sexualities operate at military heritage sites reveals how these operations dis/encourage particular understandings of security and limit the range of acceptable national protection policies. Two recent initiatives to preserve the military heritage of the Cold War period in Sweden are examined: the Cold War exhibits at Air Force Museum in Linköping and the redevelopment of a formerly sealed off military compound at Bungenäs, where bunkers have been remade into exclusive summer homes. By combining feminist international relations and critical heritage studies, we unpack the material, affective and embodied underpinnings of security produced at military heritage sites. A key conclusion is that the way heritagization incorporates the ‘naturalness’ of the gender binary and heterosexuality makes conceptualizing security without territory, or territory without military protection, inaccessible. The gendering of emotions and architectural and spatial arrangements supports historical narratives that privilege masculine protection and reinforce a taken-for-granted nativist community. A feminist analysis of military heritage highlights how gender and sexualities restrict security imaginaries; that is, understandings of what is conceivable as security.","PeriodicalId":47286,"journal":{"name":"Cooperation and Conflict","volume":"56 1","pages":"286 - 308"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2021-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/00108367211007871","citationCount":"9","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cooperation and Conflict","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367211007871","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 9
Abstract
This article showcases how a feminist perspective provides novel insights into the relations between military heritage/history and national security politics. We argue that analysing how gender and sexualities operate at military heritage sites reveals how these operations dis/encourage particular understandings of security and limit the range of acceptable national protection policies. Two recent initiatives to preserve the military heritage of the Cold War period in Sweden are examined: the Cold War exhibits at Air Force Museum in Linköping and the redevelopment of a formerly sealed off military compound at Bungenäs, where bunkers have been remade into exclusive summer homes. By combining feminist international relations and critical heritage studies, we unpack the material, affective and embodied underpinnings of security produced at military heritage sites. A key conclusion is that the way heritagization incorporates the ‘naturalness’ of the gender binary and heterosexuality makes conceptualizing security without territory, or territory without military protection, inaccessible. The gendering of emotions and architectural and spatial arrangements supports historical narratives that privilege masculine protection and reinforce a taken-for-granted nativist community. A feminist analysis of military heritage highlights how gender and sexualities restrict security imaginaries; that is, understandings of what is conceivable as security.
期刊介绍:
Published for over 40 years, the aim of Cooperation and Conflict is to promote research on and understanding of international relations. It believes in the deeds of academic pluralism and thus does not represent any specific methodology, approach, tradition or school. The mission of the journal is to meet the demands of the scholarly community having an interest in international studies (for details, see the statement "From the Editors" in Vol. 40, No. 3, September 2005). The editors especially encourage submissions contributing new knowledge of the field and welcome innovative, theory-aware and critical approaches. First preference will continue to be given to articles that have a Nordic and European focus. Cooperation and Conflict strictly adheres to a double-blind reviewing policy.