Pub Date : 2022-07-28DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2022.2106101
S. Jude
ABSTRACT This article develops our knowledge of war preparations in Critical Military Studies (CMS) by studying visual representations of the Romanian armed forces’ military training. It draws on feminist and critical military geography to examine geopolitical imaginations that shape, and are shaped, by actors, places, and landscapes of military exercises. While arguing that war preparations are (geo)political practices of power that produce identity, space, and violence, this article opens two new directions in the CMS literature. Firstly, it explores the role of ethnicity in constituting militarized masculinity within military alliances. Specifically, this article shows that exercises envisage the Romanian military as an actor that blends ancient Dacian heroism with technological prowess. This image helps both the Romanian armed forces and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to present themselves as strong and credible military actors. Secondly, it develops our understanding of the spatial construction of militarization. Specifically, it shows that military preparedness animates discourses of Easternness and Westernness, whose coexistence constitutes Romania as a key NATO ally while erasing its past (Socialist) support for peace, anti-militarism, and anti-imperialism. The article contributes to our geographical knowledge of the intersections between militarism, postsocialism and postcolonialism in feminist and critical military studies.
{"title":"Geopolitical imaginations of war preparations: visual representations of the Romanian armed forces’ military exercises","authors":"S. Jude","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2022.2106101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2022.2106101","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article develops our knowledge of war preparations in Critical Military Studies (CMS) by studying visual representations of the Romanian armed forces’ military training. It draws on feminist and critical military geography to examine geopolitical imaginations that shape, and are shaped, by actors, places, and landscapes of military exercises. While arguing that war preparations are (geo)political practices of power that produce identity, space, and violence, this article opens two new directions in the CMS literature. Firstly, it explores the role of ethnicity in constituting militarized masculinity within military alliances. Specifically, this article shows that exercises envisage the Romanian military as an actor that blends ancient Dacian heroism with technological prowess. This image helps both the Romanian armed forces and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to present themselves as strong and credible military actors. Secondly, it develops our understanding of the spatial construction of militarization. Specifically, it shows that military preparedness animates discourses of Easternness and Westernness, whose coexistence constitutes Romania as a key NATO ally while erasing its past (Socialist) support for peace, anti-militarism, and anti-imperialism. The article contributes to our geographical knowledge of the intersections between militarism, postsocialism and postcolonialism in feminist and critical military studies.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44012051","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-24DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2022.2094069
Andrew Gibson
Abstract Officers of the Irish Defence Forces have studied at civilian university since 1969, with the introduction of a policy referred to as the University Service Academic Complement (USAC) scheme. In attending university through USAC, officers are obliged to sign a contract stipulating that they will repay the full costs of their time at university. This paper draws on a study of 46 retired and serving officers, to analyse how they discussed their career and the military officer’s experience of civilian higher education. While the agreement officers are obliged to sign is a legal contract, interviewees consistently characterised their experience of the USAC scheme in terms that omitted this economic reality of the financial implications of attending higher education. Instead, they favoured terms that almost exclusively excluded such a perspective, and instead made the USAC scheme appear to be a ‘gift’ in Marcel Mauss’s terms. This paper illustrates how and why this is the case, in that the use of ‘gift language’ is a type of ‘resanctification’ of the military profession by individual officers in the face of the threat to cohesion and their symbolic universe. Beyond and at the societal level, resanctification through gift language also implies a political 'double-bind' for officers in terms of their relationship with civilian military authorities and the military organisation itself. This paper concludes with an overview of some of the implications of a gift analysis for militaries and their surrounding societies.
{"title":"Making gifts from contracts: symbolic resources and resanctification in officers’ language","authors":"Andrew Gibson","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2022.2094069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2022.2094069","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Officers of the Irish Defence Forces have studied at civilian university since 1969, with the introduction of a policy referred to as the University Service Academic Complement (USAC) scheme. In attending university through USAC, officers are obliged to sign a contract stipulating that they will repay the full costs of their time at university. This paper draws on a study of 46 retired and serving officers, to analyse how they discussed their career and the military officer’s experience of civilian higher education. While the agreement officers are obliged to sign is a legal contract, interviewees consistently characterised their experience of the USAC scheme in terms that omitted this economic reality of the financial implications of attending higher education. Instead, they favoured terms that almost exclusively excluded such a perspective, and instead made the USAC scheme appear to be a ‘gift’ in Marcel Mauss’s terms. This paper illustrates how and why this is the case, in that the use of ‘gift language’ is a type of ‘resanctification’ of the military profession by individual officers in the face of the threat to cohesion and their symbolic universe. Beyond and at the societal level, resanctification through gift language also implies a political 'double-bind' for officers in terms of their relationship with civilian military authorities and the military organisation itself. This paper concludes with an overview of some of the implications of a gift analysis for militaries and their surrounding societies.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43188588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-15DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2022.2088082
C. Gopalkrishnan
ABSTRACT In this article I share my experience of using William Blake’s 1793 poem America a Prophecy as a lens to explore the mythic, subconscious and literary constructions of military interventions in the Indo-Pacific for my painting Australia a Prophecy. For this painting I invited Blake’s 18th century character Orc to travel forward in time to Australia to guide an alternative imaginary lens, rather than the conventional political, military or international intervention analysis that is currently shaping the region where I live. Along the way Blake’s poem also inspired insights into the complex emotions and desires which seem to be driving the masculine messianic archetypal thinking of new global conflicts. Using poetry and literature has been part of my visual art practice throughout my 36-year artistic practice. I have not followed a formal or academic artistic pathway. Instead, I have chosen an experimental and experiential journey of self-learning by collaborating with artists and researchers on topics as I strive to understand the human condition. In my search to identify the hidden narratives that underpin our political and military decisions I have used various metaphors including Broadway and Hollywood musicals, medieval French epic poetry and literary and religious texts. I hope the story behind my painting will help to stimulate conversations between experts from completely different backgrounds to explore the hidden narratives that drive our political and military decisions.
{"title":"An Artists exploration of the mythic, subconscious and literary constructions of military interventions in the Indo-Pacific","authors":"C. Gopalkrishnan","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2022.2088082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2022.2088082","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article I share my experience of using William Blake’s 1793 poem America a Prophecy as a lens to explore the mythic, subconscious and literary constructions of military interventions in the Indo-Pacific for my painting Australia a Prophecy. For this painting I invited Blake’s 18th century character Orc to travel forward in time to Australia to guide an alternative imaginary lens, rather than the conventional political, military or international intervention analysis that is currently shaping the region where I live. Along the way Blake’s poem also inspired insights into the complex emotions and desires which seem to be driving the masculine messianic archetypal thinking of new global conflicts. Using poetry and literature has been part of my visual art practice throughout my 36-year artistic practice. I have not followed a formal or academic artistic pathway. Instead, I have chosen an experimental and experiential journey of self-learning by collaborating with artists and researchers on topics as I strive to understand the human condition. In my search to identify the hidden narratives that underpin our political and military decisions I have used various metaphors including Broadway and Hollywood musicals, medieval French epic poetry and literary and religious texts. I hope the story behind my painting will help to stimulate conversations between experts from completely different backgrounds to explore the hidden narratives that drive our political and military decisions.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48830572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2022.2081301
M. Andersen, Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud
ABSTRACT This article investigates the puzzling case of the unsolicited rocket: a Norwegian research establishment successfully developed a weapon system that no one wanted or had asked for that was later widely adopted. We argue that the ‘Terne’ weapon existed not because it was needed based on rational calculations about efficiency, but because of the narratives, coalitions, and competitive dynamics that surrounded it and made it useful. Conventionally, war and technology are often considered distinct ‘things’ with immutable essences, used as variables to explain other phenomena, rather than being examined on their own terms. In this case, we focus empirically on the configuration of sociotechnical imaginaries, and the capacities for action that arise out of it. In foregrounding sociotechnical systems, this is not a case of the ‘militarization’ of civilian society and research in peacetime. Rather, agency lay in competitive networks of narratives and coalitions between technologies, individuals, professions, technological communities, military organizations, and funding bodies, together shaping how ideas and technologies become authoritative and dominant.
{"title":"The unsolicited rocket: a story of science, technology, and future wars","authors":"M. Andersen, Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2022.2081301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2022.2081301","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article investigates the puzzling case of the unsolicited rocket: a Norwegian research establishment successfully developed a weapon system that no one wanted or had asked for that was later widely adopted. We argue that the ‘Terne’ weapon existed not because it was needed based on rational calculations about efficiency, but because of the narratives, coalitions, and competitive dynamics that surrounded it and made it useful. Conventionally, war and technology are often considered distinct ‘things’ with immutable essences, used as variables to explain other phenomena, rather than being examined on their own terms. In this case, we focus empirically on the configuration of sociotechnical imaginaries, and the capacities for action that arise out of it. In foregrounding sociotechnical systems, this is not a case of the ‘militarization’ of civilian society and research in peacetime. Rather, agency lay in competitive networks of narratives and coalitions between technologies, individuals, professions, technological communities, military organizations, and funding bodies, together shaping how ideas and technologies become authoritative and dominant.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46377874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-03DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2022.2070692
Victoria M. Basham
{"title":"Everyday modalities of militarization: beyond unidirectional, state-centric, and simplistic accounts of state violence","authors":"Victoria M. Basham","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2022.2070692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2022.2070692","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48366974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-03DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2022.2047502
Victória M. S. Santos, Maíra Siman
{"title":"Civil-military relations as a ‘coordination problem’? doctrine development and the multiple ‘missions’ of the Brazilian Armed Forces","authors":"Victória M. S. Santos, Maíra Siman","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2022.2047502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2022.2047502","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48469568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-02DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2022.2033915
H. Gray
ABSTRACT The British military institution, like other armed organizations worldwide, relies heavily on the unpaid domestic labour performed by civilian women married to its servicemen. This labour does not often feature in public understandings of how the military functions, and feminists have argued that its invisibility contributes to the naturalization of military power. The silence surrounding military wives’ unpaid labour, however, is not complete, and this article explores how such labour is represented in autobiographical accounts written by British military wives. These texts are often centred around descriptions of domestic labour and, moreover, make overt claims about its importance to the institution itself. In my analysis, however, I explore how the texts simultaneously make claims about the importance of this labour and make it invisible as labour by positioning it, instead, as acts of love. Taken together with the idea that outsiders cannot fully understand life in a military family, I demonstrate how this framing serves to close down space for critique of the military. In addition, I argue that paying attention to how militarism functions not only through fear and suffering but also through love helps to flesh out our analyses of militarism and war as social institutions.
{"title":"The power of love: how love obscures domestic labour and shuts down space for critique of militarism in the autobiographical accounts of British military wives","authors":"H. Gray","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2022.2033915","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2022.2033915","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The British military institution, like other armed organizations worldwide, relies heavily on the unpaid domestic labour performed by civilian women married to its servicemen. This labour does not often feature in public understandings of how the military functions, and feminists have argued that its invisibility contributes to the naturalization of military power. The silence surrounding military wives’ unpaid labour, however, is not complete, and this article explores how such labour is represented in autobiographical accounts written by British military wives. These texts are often centred around descriptions of domestic labour and, moreover, make overt claims about its importance to the institution itself. In my analysis, however, I explore how the texts simultaneously make claims about the importance of this labour and make it invisible as labour by positioning it, instead, as acts of love. Taken together with the idea that outsiders cannot fully understand life in a military family, I demonstrate how this framing serves to close down space for critique of the military. In addition, I argue that paying attention to how militarism functions not only through fear and suffering but also through love helps to flesh out our analyses of militarism and war as social institutions.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47430787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-29DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2021.1965819
E. Tauchnitz
ABSTRACT Despite a proclaimed strengthening of international human rights norms on an international level, the fundamental human ‘right to life’ is not always able to act as a barrier against state violence and militarization on national levels. As illustrated by Operation Michoacán, which in retrospective marked the start of the Mexican ‘war’ on drugs, the right to life has been interpreted and implemented by domestic state actors in ambiguous and often very counterproductive ways. Specifically, the argument to protect innocent citizens’ lives against drug criminality served as a major justification for the use of lethal force by the military in Mexico. While norm compliance and so-called norm ‘localisation’ processes have already received considerable scholarly attention, the possibility that state authorities evoke fundamental human rights norms for legitimizing their own violent practices (= norm instrumentalisation) has so far not formed part of the academic debate. This paper bridges this gap by conducting an in-depth discourse analysis of key state actor’s statements surrounding the start of Operation Michoacán.
{"title":"The deadly protection trap: the ‘instrumentalisation’ of fundamental human right norms by state actors in the Mexican Drug War","authors":"E. Tauchnitz","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2021.1965819","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2021.1965819","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Despite a proclaimed strengthening of international human rights norms on an international level, the fundamental human ‘right to life’ is not always able to act as a barrier against state violence and militarization on national levels. As illustrated by Operation Michoacán, which in retrospective marked the start of the Mexican ‘war’ on drugs, the right to life has been interpreted and implemented by domestic state actors in ambiguous and often very counterproductive ways. Specifically, the argument to protect innocent citizens’ lives against drug criminality served as a major justification for the use of lethal force by the military in Mexico. While norm compliance and so-called norm ‘localisation’ processes have already received considerable scholarly attention, the possibility that state authorities evoke fundamental human rights norms for legitimizing their own violent practices (= norm instrumentalisation) has so far not formed part of the academic debate. This paper bridges this gap by conducting an in-depth discourse analysis of key state actor’s statements surrounding the start of Operation Michoacán.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48009863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-13DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2021.2022852
Nivi Manchanda
{"title":"The Janus-faced nature of militarization","authors":"Nivi Manchanda","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2021.2022852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2021.2022852","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41517792","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-08DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2021.2014237
Alexandre Christoyannopoulos
ABSTRACT The red or ‘Flanders’ poppy has become the ubiquitous emblem of British war commemorations, yet it is also becoming more hegemonic and militaristic: the poppy’s meaning has always been contested, but its dominant interpretation has become increasingly intolerant. Building on literature on the poppy and war commemorations, on pacifist approaches to security studies and on militarism, this article sketches a pacifist critique of the poppy’s increasingly hegemonic militarism. It starts by sketching out a history of the poppy’s contested meaning. A first-order critique then reflects on the hegemonic poppy narrative’s internal dissonances, on the selective memory which it reveals, and on the blinkered horizon of compassion and identification which it promotes. A second-order critique exposes the broader political and ethical consequences including for the military-industrial-entertainment complex, for liberal institutionalist projects, and for veterans. The final section reflects on the resulting unease that can be triggered by the poppy’s hegemonizing function in British civil religion and calls for poppy commemorations to better accommodate deeper reflections on the causes of war, militarism, and the potentially complicit role played by war commemorations.
{"title":"A pacifist critique of the red poppy: reflections on British war commemorations’ increasingly hegemonic militarism","authors":"Alexandre Christoyannopoulos","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2021.2014237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2021.2014237","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The red or ‘Flanders’ poppy has become the ubiquitous emblem of British war commemorations, yet it is also becoming more hegemonic and militaristic: the poppy’s meaning has always been contested, but its dominant interpretation has become increasingly intolerant. Building on literature on the poppy and war commemorations, on pacifist approaches to security studies and on militarism, this article sketches a pacifist critique of the poppy’s increasingly hegemonic militarism. It starts by sketching out a history of the poppy’s contested meaning. A first-order critique then reflects on the hegemonic poppy narrative’s internal dissonances, on the selective memory which it reveals, and on the blinkered horizon of compassion and identification which it promotes. A second-order critique exposes the broader political and ethical consequences including for the military-industrial-entertainment complex, for liberal institutionalist projects, and for veterans. The final section reflects on the resulting unease that can be triggered by the poppy’s hegemonizing function in British civil religion and calls for poppy commemorations to better accommodate deeper reflections on the causes of war, militarism, and the potentially complicit role played by war commemorations.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46520584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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