Preserving and progressing: Tensions in the gendered politics of military conscription

IF 2.5 Q1 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Saskia Stachowitsch, Sanna Strand
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

After all-male universal conscription had been deactivated in many European countries in the post-Cold War era, the past decade has seen a surprising reversal of this trend, with several countries reactivating, voting to retain, or even extending military conscription to women. Due to the strong historical link between conscription and the formation of hierarchical gender orders, this paper conducts a feminist analysis of debates on conscription in Sweden and Austria and asks how gender served to legitimise the ‘return’ of mandatory military service. We find that a neoliberal, individualistic discourse legitimised Sweden’s gender-neutral conscription as an efficient and progressive model that presents as competitive, while the Austrian all-male model was justified on the basis of conservative, communitarian sentiments of fostering responsible male citizens and preserving a solidaric national community. Moreover, while conscription was envisioned as strengthening Swedish defence and war preparedness, conscription in Austria was rather associated with containing militarism and preventing involvement in armed conflict. Despite these differences, we suggest that hierarchical notions of masculinity and femininity, intersecting with classed and racialised dichotomies, served to render conscription acceptable and even appealing in both cases.
保留与进步:应征入伍的性别政治中的紧张关系
在冷战后时期,许多欧洲国家停止了全男性的普遍征兵制度,但在过去的十年中,这一趋势发生了令人惊讶的逆转,一些国家重新启动、投票保留甚至扩大了对女性的征兵制度。由于征兵制与性别等级秩序的形成之间有着密切的历史联系,本文对瑞典和奥地利的征兵制辩论进行了女性主义分析,并探讨了性别是如何使义务兵役制的 "回归 "合法化的。我们发现,新自由主义、个人主义话语将瑞典不分性别的征兵制度合法化,认为这是一种高效、进步的模式,具有竞争性;而奥地利的全男性征兵模式则是基于保守、社群主义的情感,即培养负责任的男性公民和维护团结的国家社群。此外,征兵被认为是为了加强瑞典的国防和备战能力,而奥地利的征兵则是为了遏制军国主义和防止卷入武装冲突。尽管存在这些差异,但我们认为,男性和女性的等级观念与阶级和种族的二分法交织在一起,使得征兵在这两种情况下都是可以接受的,甚至是有吸引力的。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
3.40
自引率
13.60%
发文量
30
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